CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Lollivan
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
norman-dostal
This was truly terrible. Franco wanted to make gay porn and made up a reason to do it, cloaking it as "art". It is more aptly described as "Fart" because it stinks. The film is basically 45 minutes of talking about shooting the "missing 40 minutes" of Cruising then actually showing about ten minutes of film inside a gay leather bar. Having just watched the actual movie, I can tell you that this piece would not fit into the film. Didn't look right in terms of color or atmosphere. And the guy playing Pacino? A chubby unattractive man? No. There is explicit gay sex-an actor gives oral sex to another guy and everything is shown. It's just porn-nothing more. Franco looks like a strange freakshow, almost drooling while saying "I wish I wasn't brought up in such a hetero normative world". The biggest problem here is that Franco claims that he is bothered that gay love isn't shown as fully as straight love, but then he shows 5 minutes of a man sucking another guy. Its exploitation in its worst form.
xWRL
As many reviewers have noted, this movie does not aim to capture the 40 suppressed minutes of "Cruising," even though it was billed as such. It's not clear what's behind that mismatch. Did the movie's intent shift while it was being made? Whatever the reason, it's hard to understand who benefited from the misleading marketing of the movie.We learn what the movie's about as we watch. James Franco explains his desire to overturn cultural conventions against explicit sex, which he finds odd because sex is constantly in the forefront of our consciousness. Porn, however socially unacceptable, is popular. Val Lauren plays a straight man in two senses: he's a straight guy in a gay movie, plus his questions give James Franco an opening to explain the purpose behind the film. As Val notes toward the end, the explicitness was there all right, but it wasn't nearly as big a deal as our minds had conjured it up to be.Whether or not this is someone's cup of tea, Franco reveals a refreshing degree of honesty and understanding. After all, most of the characters in the movie, in comments by them or by their family about the goings- on, are dubious to negative about the merits. That's what most of us probably think as well. The film is supposed to challenge that thinking.
Steve Pulaski
In 1980, Exorcist director William Friedkin made yet another movie that found another great way to stir up controversy and etch itself onto the front page of newspapers. His directorial effort Cruising was a film about Al Pacino's cop character going undercover in seedy gay bars in order to catch a series of murders in the specific area. The film divided critics, enraged the homosexual community, who even held boycotts and sent Friedkin death-threats over the film, and the film forever lived with a looming cloud of infamy over its head, with more comments being made about its impact over its quality.As someone who has recently sat through Cruising, I fully understand why. It's an only adequate little thriller that is levied by the fact that it is such a curious piece of film history. There's not too much special about it other than a decently ambiguous Pacino performance and some well-photographed atmosphere, specifically inside the gay bars. Adding to the curiosity of the film, legend has it that forty minutes of the film had to be cut for it to achieve an R-rating rather than the ominous X-rating films were being stamped with during this time. The forty minutes are rumored to contain graphic gay sex as well as intimate scenes in the gay bars between its patrons.This brings me to Interior. Leather Bar., a sixty-minute film by the likes of James Franco and Travis Mathews. The film is a mockumentary, following the Franco and Mathews as they attempt to assemble, cast, and reimagine the lost forty minutes of Cruising themselves. From the way Franco acts and interviews, one can easily see he's intrigued on how actors create an image once they begin and how they go about enforcing or affirming the image throughout careers. Evidently, Franco has used his fascination for public personas and celebrity images as the basis for Interior. Leather Bar., a thoroughly intriguing and deeply-contemplative film that possesses lengthy dialogs on the public's perception of sex as well as mumblecore-esque aesthetics and structure. I walked in assuming I was going to see the full forty minutes from Cruising recreated to fit Franco and Mathews' idea of how the scenes were actually conducted. Instead, both men recreate the experience of working on the set of a film with graphic scenes of gay sex when a majority of the actors - at least the main ones - are straight males, many with wives and kids. We get the opinions of all the actors working on recreating this lost footage to Franco and Mathews' liking. This provides for a feeling of seeing unseen parts of a film without seeing the specific parts, if that makes even an inkling of sex.A masterful scene comes about halfway through the film, with Franco talking to the project's main star Val Lauren, assuming the role of Al Pacino's character from Cruising. Lauren is a longtime friend of Franco, willing to help him out even on the most uncertain and unpredictable project thus far, but is having a hard time going through with a lot of the heavily gay scenes. He also has a difficult time understand the project's significance and Franco has a hard time explaining it. When Lauren and Franco (who, I believe, is playing himself here) sit down to talk about the scene, Franco goes into a discussion similar to the one I've had many times about how in many pieces of media, even something as minute and as trite as a commercial for toothpaste or toilet paper, we see a man and a woman. When we do see two men or two women together, presumably in a relationship, it isn't uncommon for there to be some uncomfortable vibes oozing through, to which Franco (and myself) blame on our exposure to one particular lifestyle for much of our life.Franco then dives into a discussion about how censorship boards shiver at the thought of graphic sexual content but barely flinch when they see explicit violence on screen. 'So violence is natural but sex, something everyone does, thinks about, and even views, isn't?' is a question he asks Lauren. Franco basically settles on the idea that he is making this film to try and steer us away from the thought of one particular lifestyle, as well as breaking down his own personal apprehension and uncomfortableness around this kind of material.Interior. Leather Bar. also seems to be acceptable to view as a time capsule for how gays are portrayed in cinema. Cruising wasn't blatantly homophobic in my eyes, but did possess somewhat understanding apprehension and caution to the lifestyle it greatly involved itself with. Interior. Leather Bar. presents its club scenes (when we do get a chance to see them, though they make up less than ten percent of the film) and even one major gay sex scene with a beautiful tenderness that would be given to an explicit sex scene between two women. Franco and Mathews' depiction of gay sex is a harmonious and wonderfully raw approach and an experience that could very well emphasize the theme of equality in the regard of how gay sex and straight sex are depicted.What a beautiful film Interior. Leather Bar. is, centering its sights on conversation and emotion rather than basic shock and awe. I'm still not one-hundred percent show I know what to make of it, but to speak fairly, I don't believe Franco really is either. However, I believe he has made something that he will likely look back on as one of his most audacious and daring films ever, which says a lot for an actor in his thirties who, judging by some risky choices recently, is just getting started.
David Massey
In 2013, James Franco sets the gold standard for self-indulgent Auteur and on a scale that rivals even Andy Warhol. 'Interior. Leather Bar.' (Co-Directed with Travis Mathews) is just one of many Franco-projects that I've found myself viewing this past year (see also: 'Child of God', 'This is the End', 'Oz The Great and Powerful', 'Lovelace', 'Maladies', 'Tar', 'Spring Breakers', 'The Iceman' - and those are just the ones I managed to catch at various festivals). Looking forward to 2014, the man has an entire lifetime of projects (for some actor/directors) in varying stages of production. My take on his absolutely madding and eclectic trajectory; Franco has found a new type of celebrity excess and, be it a creative excess or not, I can't really purport its value to anyone except Franco himself. The films vary from insightful to entertaining, slow & introspective to over-the-top and self-aware. There is not a solid through-line to this career but there is no denying that Franco has an unquenchable thirst for experience and you gotta love him just a bit for sharing it with us. Experience has to have been the impetus for the documentary 'Interior. Leather Bar.' which followings a film crew (Franco included) as they attempt to reimagine the 40 minutes of footage censored by the MPAA from William Friedkin's 1980 film 'Cruising'. The film stared Al Pacino as an undercover cop and follows his investigation of a series of murders in New York City's gay underground. 'Cruising' explores the darkest corners of gay culture: anonymous cruising for sex in public parks and notorious S&M clubs with names like the Eagle's Nest, the Ramrod, and the Cock Pit. It's unclear what footage was actually cut from the original film as it has never been viewed publicly but the general assumption is that it consisted of actual gay sex shot in explicit detail as was true to life in these pre-AIDS-era clubs. The set up for 'Interior. Leather Bar.' is a desire by Franco to expose this suppression and to face what it is that's considered subversive in our culture and explore why it is taboo. After speaking to a number of different people at the Polari Film Festival after party (at Austin's best attempt at a leather bar), I gather that few people actually believed that the film achieved this; I, myself, being one of the skeptics. Instead of placing himself in the Al Pacino role – the straight man posing as gay in the most salacious environment imaginable – Franco recruits long-time friend and acting colleague Val Lauren ('The Salton Sea' / 'Live from Baghdad'). Lauren struggles with the content (which his agent outright refers to as pornography and begs him to decline involvement for the sake of his career), he is given no script, and only the slightest direction as he is plunged into a darkly lit set, surrounded by men in the throes of passion, punishment, and partying. Franco makes appearances, gets up close with his camera, and we get a few asides with him and Lauren as they step away from set and try to come to terms with what they are doing and why; there is a genuine sense that both are disturbed by what they've accomplished and, for Lauren, this single-day shoot might be a life-changing event. Here lies the crux of this film - Franco seems to have a legion of pseudo-sycophants at his disposal who are willing to indulge his every whim. 'Interior. Leather Bar.' seems to be nothing more than one such whim with Lauren as his proxy, playing out the experiences that Franco is too frightened to touch. Alternately, this could be a truly elaborate practical joke directed toward Lauren for reasons unknown – or, perhaps, for no reason but as a salve for Franco's boredom with his own normality. Regardless of its intention the film is an exciting experiment in documentary filmmaking and as mixed as my feelings are concerning the filmmaker, he has accomplished something truly intriguing. -David Massey (www.popculturebeast.com)
