When I was a teenager I bought a complete recording of this play performed by the original cast and to a young gay boy in a small town who didn’t know any other gay people it was a thrilling experience, but a few years later during my freshman year in college, post stonewall, this movie was released and it had already dated badly. Rather than being thrilled by the drama I was embarrassed. These characters not only didn’t resemble anyone I knew they barely resembled anyone human. If the sad, pathetic, self loathing homosexual is what appeals to you then by all means have a wallow with the boys in this band, but please don’t think you are gaining any insight into the so-called homosexual lifestyle (whatever that is). I must admit, however, that I will try to watch this movie again once the dvd is released. It’s been many years since I’ve seen it and I will watch it again to see if, with the passing of years, I have more tolerance for this relic of what is, thankfully, a bygone age.

I was appalled when this soap opera made it to the Broadway stage and even more appalled when it was immortalized on film — it has every tired cliche in the book and then some about the poor, unhappy, closeted gayboy and his equally vacuous friends. Its claustrophobic milieu is the Upper East Side of Manhattan and its denizens, who summer on Fire Island — a small enclave of a gay ghetto. These characters have nothing to do with anyone I’ve ever cared to know — they are shallow, superficial and boring. The only two interesting characters in it are the bitchy, self-loathing pock-marked queen and the hustler — who is as dumb as a box of rocks but drop-dead gorgeous (played by the late Robert LeTourneaux who made a career out of the role). The picture it paints of gay life is depressing and dreary; if all gay people were like this, they should commit suicide. They’d be happier. While this play and film were highly praised and accepted at the time, the dark and brooding “Cruising” was denegrated and rejected by the queens who loved this one. “Cruising” was equally insular in its depiction of a small sub-culture of the gay scene; but one that the mainstream gay man did not want to acknowledge. For a historical glimpse of “what it was like then,” get them both and compare. But don’t take this one seriously. It’s time was past before it was ever produced.

Apparently, this is a love it or hate it movie. It shows gay men at their most pathetic level. It brooks no positive view of gay men in 1970. This is seriously not what life was like then. This movie represents how Hollywood wanted gays to appear. In movies of the 70s, gays were pathetic losers or insane or hopelessly doomed to loneliness. In American cinema, real men were strong, so homosexuals were weak. Friedkin was the bigot who gave us Cruising.I hate this movie.