Episode 75 - Cruising (1980) - "You Ever Smoked Pole, Johnny?"

This week on the pod, the boys are leathering up and heading to the seedy part of town as celebrate Pride month with a truly divisive film amongst the gay community in William Friedkin’s 1980 crime thriller; “Cruising”. Join us as we talk about this films complicated history, a film that Friedkin didn’t even seem to make, but my god if he was going to do it, it was going to be the most graphic depiction of the gay leather scene in 1980 that he could make. Unfortunately however his true vision is laid to waste as the MPAA struck yet again, knocking a whopping 40 minutes of graphic material off Friedkins cut to get this film to an R rating; footage that has been lost to the sands of time… or locked somewhere in a former United Artists rep’s closet. But smut aside, while Cruising has had a rough history of at first being admonished and shunned by the community it portrayed a small portion of, today Cruising serves as a relic of time. A community that banned together and fought for their own survival. It’s sleepy, messy and full of arms in places they aren’t native to. (Was that a serial killer pun or a fisting pun? I’ll leave that to you to figure out). All this and more on this weeks episode of “I Didn’t Need To See That!” Follow us: Email: [email protected]: @Ididntneedtoseethatpod