A few weeks ago we reported that James Franco has shot a gay art film called James Franco’s 40 Minutes. Now the first look at the film has emerged, although unfortunately you’ll have to head over to Papermag to take a look.
The idea behind the movie is that William Friedkin’s controversial 1980 movie Cruising supposedly had 40 minutes chopped out of it which were too much for the censors, and dealt explicitly with the gay S&M subculture and Al Pacino’s character’s descent into it. Cruising sparked controversy even before it was shot, and protesters attempted to disrupt filming on what they saw as a movie that would paint gay people as S&M obsessed perverts one step away from being psychopathic serial murderers.
Franco had originally wanted to update Cruising, but rights issues meant he couldn’t, and so instead he and director Travis Mathews have created a film that’s both a fictitious look at those lost 40 minutes of Cruising and an exploration of the making of the James Franco’s 40 Minutes, which Mathews has described as a ‘Homo-Sex-Art-Film’.
Head over to Papermag to see the first clip from the film, as well as an interview with Travis Mathews.