William Friedkin died in 2023. He had been a solitary icon of New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s with films like THE EXORCIST and THE FRENCH CONNECTION. In 1980 he directed the often marginalized copthriller CRUISING with Al Pacino. Here we witness a series of murders terrorizing the gay leather subculture of NYC. Reactions on the making of this film grew political amongst the gay liberation movement, and the AIDS-crisis was already there.

Jack Fritscher, PhD, from Berekley University, has been the editor of DRUMMER magazine, central to the leather scene in the 1970s. As a writer and film maker he is a witness to at least 5 decades of subculture. In this podcast he is openly discussing the subculture, its history and icons (from Pasolini to Michel Foucault), and the meaning of CRUISING as a document of an era.

Jack Fritscher Website: https://jackfritscher.com/