Gay old time

Cruising had the city's gay community up in arms in '79, but what was all the fuss about?

In the 1960s, a New York City patrolman named Randy Jurgensen was assigned to investigate the harassment of gay men by a shakedown crew known as Salt and Pepper. Claiming to be cops, the duo (one white, one black, thus the nickname) prowled the piers and pickup spots of the far West Village, "busting" guys caught busting a nut and demanding payoff. Jurgensen went deep undercover in hopes of provoking an encounter. Setting up in a Village apartment, he donned the uniform of the leather scene and studied its rituals, making nightly forays to the decadent bars clustered at the terminus of Christopher Street.

So Jurgensen recounts his stint as a downtown daddy on the upcoming DVD debut of Cruising, William Friedkin's notorious thriller starring Al Pacino as a NYPD cop deranged—sexually and otherwise—by his contact with the hardcore gay underground. Currently being rehabilitated by a theatrical re-release in advance of the DVD, Cruising's seedy ambience and dubious sexual politics inflamed the gay community, leading to protests throughout its filming in the summer of 1979, and continuing outside movie theaters when it opened in February of 1980. Despite the notoriety and marquee star, Friedkin's downbeat, ambivalent, and flamboyantly pervy fag noir was a critical and box-office disappointment.

Read the rest in the Village Voice.