NEW YORK — Actor James Franco and gay filmmaker Travis Mathews have cut a teaser for "James Franco's 40 Minutes," a re-imagining of footage edited out of director William Friedkin's controversial 1980 gay serial killer drama "Cruising."
The 90-second clip features various gay men "cruising" a camera seductively. PaperMag.com scored the exclusive teaser.
"I wanted to show 2012 guys and their interpretation of cruising because I feel like in a lot of the ways in the gay community the idea of cruising is sort of a lost art," Mathews told PaperMag.com. "Everybody has their phones now, it's not like how you would go to the park or go into the bar and a lot of serious cruising would happen.
"Some of these guys were like, 'What do you mean? I don't know what cruising is.' I thought that was interesting. I just thought it would be fun to have a collection of guys cruising the camera, just the way in which they interpret what that means."
Friedkin's "Cruising" starred Al Pacino as an emotionally unstable cop sent to infiltrate the city's gay BDSM underground in an attempt to find the homicidal maniac killing homosexual men and discarding their body parts in the Hudson River.
The film received an X-rating from the MPAA for its graphic content and Friedkin was forced to cut 40-minutes from the film to score an R-rating. The edited footage was later lost by Warner Bros.
Mathews, a gay documentarian who made his feature film debut this year with "I Want Your Love," a relationship drama produced by gay adult VOD provider NakedSword, sold Franco on the idea of recreating Friedkin's lost footage.
"James basically asked me to take the weekend to see if there was anything having to do with 'Cruising' that was exciting and inspiring for me," Mathews said. "So I thought, 'why don't we do something that's like 'James Franco's re-imagined 40 minutes from 'Cruising.'"
"James Franco's 40 Minutes" is expected to make the festival rounds later this year. The film will reportedly include real — non-simulated — gay sex scenes.