A while back, we told you James Franco was planning on making a "gay sex art" film.
Now we have the lowdown on the down-low flick, straight from director Travis Mathews.
Mathews says Franco brought the idea of a hardcore homage to the 1980 film Cruising to him. He says:
"He knew he wanted real gay sex in it. His people went looking for a filmmaker who had filmed real gay sex, and I suspect someone who would complement his vision. We talked about why we would be interested in still looking at this film."
The original Cruising starred Al Pacino as a cop who had to go undercover in the late 70s gay S&M scene in order to catch a killer.
But a real-life mystery popped up around the movie. Director William Friedkin was forced to cut 40 minutes from the film to keep it from getting the dreaded X rating.
As far as Franco and Mathews can tell, those mysterious 40 minutes are lost forever. Mathews says:
"Recently, when [Friedkin] was getting ready to do an anniversary edition, Warner Bros. told him that the footage was destroyed. It's possible those 40 minutes implicate Pacino's character in the gay S&M culture. That was the place we started from as a launching point: James Franco's version of those lost 40 minutes."
So if we have this right, James Franco wanted to see the original vision of the highly protested film so much that he's making it himself.
There really is nothing this actor/writer/director/producer/teacher can't won't do!
Will he come out already. It's becoming so obvious now. NO straight man, I don't care how deep of artist he is, is interested in the gay lifestyle like this.
I just watched Cruising the other day.
