Review of Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) by Jhuan D — 24 Jan 2014

The front runner for worst movie and idea of 2014. James Franco explores the idea of controversial movie making and does it around a movie that was known for it's controversy. It's based around William Friedkin's Cruising. A film from the 80s that depicted homosexuality rather explicitly and starred Al Pacino. That film revolved around a serial killer who was killing homosexuals and Pacino had to infiltrate this world by going undercover in the gay leather bar scene to find the killer. The gay community hated Cruising to the point where they protested the making of the film and Friedkin himself was plagued with death threats, but that wasn't all he had to put up with and it's also the basis for Interior. Leather Bar.

The MPAA (also known as Satan's ASSHOLE) told Friedkin to cut 40 mins from the film in order to avoid an X rating. 40 mins had to be cut and the footage that was cut was never screened publicly. That's where James Franco and his co-director Travis Mathews steps in to create exactly how THEY think that footage must've looked like.

They get someone to play Pacino's part. His name is Val Lauren. He's straight, but is having some second thoughts about the part as did Pacino himself when he was playing the role. There's this exploration of homophobia that didn't quite sit well because of it's intrusive design to force a rather subjective idea down the throat of it's audience. Unless you're a James Franco fan, I would immediately avoid this one. It was made purely to explore actors and their very uncomfortable roles into what is meant to portray artistic creativity. Not sure what is so artistic to recreate actual gay fucking which was part of what was cut from Friedkin's film. Free will to express your artistic intentions wasn't something William Friedkin could do since he was restricted by the MPAA. An artist should be able to express without a filter. No question, but something very frightening can be done when you let an artist go into the extreme areas of movie making. That part isn't really explored since it's more about Franco's ego of what he really wants to see in movies today.

This films REAL intention is to protest over the restrictions over homosexuality in mainstream films. I admire James Franco's sledgehammer advice near the middle of the film where the normalcy of everyday things should be torn down. However, homosexuality is rampant enough as it is and seeing the sex of it taking place in mainstream movies isn't going to make anyone really feel any better about it. So Franco's intentions sort of backfire in his interpretation or he could've simply just been feeling bored and wanted to pull a "fun" subjective experiment on the nature of what we can't see in mainstream movies. Whatever the reason was it was down right BORING!!! Thank God it was only an hour.

I have a challenge for Franco. If he really wanted to recreate something that was meant to be disturbing then he should try re-imagining the newborn porn scene in the movie A Serbian Film. I would gladly like to see what he has to say about the level of pedophilia that movie had to offer.