The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

by William Friedkin

  The Lorimar Company was about to go into the feature film business. They were best known for the television series The Waltons, a phenomenal success that presented a wholesome, idealized image of the American family. One of the ironies of Cruising is that Lorimar wanted to finance the film. Jerry and I met with Merv Adelson, Lorimar’s chief executive, and told him we planned to pull no punches. Merv said fine, but we had to get an R rating. They could not release an X-rated film; I would have to make whatever cuts the ratings board required to get an R.

  Our first choice to play Burns, the police officer who goes undercover, was Richard Gere. A subtle actor, he possessed a toughness as well as an ambiguous quality. I met with him, and he agreed to do the film. Weintraub and I were about to make him an offer when a call came from Stan Kamen, head of the William Morris Motion Picture Department: “Pacino read your script. He loves it and wants to do it.” Al and I met several times when we were planning Born on the Fourth of July, but I didn’t think of him for Cruising. He was not only a movie star, he was considered one of America’s best stage actors. Lorimar, with the backing of United Artists, made him a firm offer of $3 million, a top salary in those days, and he accepted. Our budget was $7 million, and if we spent less, we could keep what was left in addition to a percentage of the profits. But we were “on completion,” meaning that if we went over budget, it would come out of our pockets, Jerry’s and mine.

  When an announcement of production appeared, Arthur Bell fired a warning shot in the Village Voice: “Cruising will negate years of positive movement work . . . send gays running back into the closet and precipitate heavy violence.” A backlash against the film began before filming started. Gay groups petitioned Mayor Koch to deny us a filming permit, but that was rejected. The mayor cited “free speech,” but this inflamed activists even more. Every major gay journalist declared war on the film before the first day of shooting. My partners felt this was great free publicity, but I was less sanguine. Bootlegged copies of the script appeared, highlighting the most controversial sections. My recent failures were cited, along with the “exploitive” nature of The Exorcist and the retro take on gay life portrayed in The Boys in the Band.

  Then came death threats, anonymously, by mail and phone; first a trickle, then a barrage.

  We had permission to shoot in the Mineshaft and the Anvil, but other bars that originally welcomed us, the Eagle’s Nest and Ramrod, were pressured to turn us down. I couldn’t blame them. Attempts to prevent the film from being made became a cause célèbre in New York.

  Pacino arrived filled with enthusiasm but little knowledge of gay life, let alone S&M, and he didn’t want to see the locations before filming. He wanted to experience them fresh as his character would. A week before shooting was scheduled to begin, Al decided to have his hair styled by a gay barber. The “look” then was shorter hair. After his visit to a barber in the West Village, he came storming into the trailer that was our production office. The door flew open and Pacino appeared screaming: “Look what they’ve done to me!” He was trimmed almost to a crew cut, and he no longer looked like Al Pacino. His hair was his “power”—like Samson’s; without it, he appeared a frail little man. This was disaster. This was not the Al Pacino audiences would recognize. He knew it, and came unwound. He wouldn’t do the film looking like this, nor would we. “What are we gonna do?” he screamed. I tried to make light of it: “What am I, a barber?” I joked.

  Years later, Jerry and I could laugh about it. At that time, we were stunned. Jerry leaped into action. He brought in some of the best hairstylists in New York and Los Angeles. Wigs were tried. Extensions. Nothing looked good, nor satisfied Al. The experts said it would take at least six weeks for his hair to grow back in. So we postponed the start date, with the clock running, and Jerry and I responsible for budget overages. Al was given various potions to make his hair grow faster as his mood grew darker. After a month, and with a few hair extensions and an expensive personal stylist, we were able to set a start date. I cast Paul Sorvino, the consummate pro who played Jazz Maffie in The Brink’s Job, to play the chief of detectives. Karen Allen was cast as Al’s fiancée. Randy Jurgensen was our technical adviser and played a detective in the film, as did Sonny Grosso. Richard Cox, a New York stage actor, played the young man I modeled after Paul Bateson.

  On the first day, we were waiting for Pacino outside the Criminal Courts Building downtown. We were going to film in the office of the chief of detectives, where Pacino is given his undercover assignment. Shooting was to start at 8:00 a.m.

  Ten a.m.: still no Al. We panicked and called his apartment. We called his agent. We called every number we could think of, including the teamster assigned to drive him. There were no cell phones then, and we couldn’t reach anybody. We worried that something happened to him, or that he’d quit without telling us. Had the gay protests freaked him out, or was it his hair?

  At about ten thirty, two and a half hours late, his car and driver pulled up, and Al stepped out, accompanied by his makeup man. He was all smiles, and as though nothing was wrong, he gave me a hug and a high five. I was furious, but he was disarming, so I choked back my anger and introduced him to the crew. “What are we doin’ today, Billy?” He had no idea what was scheduled on the first day! Or most days thereafter. As I walked him to the makeup trailer, I said, “Al, what happened, why are you late?” His expression turned dark. “Jeez, I didn’t know . . .” He trailed off. He seemed hurt. His makeup man took me aside and whispered, “He always does this. If you want him on the set at eight, give him a six o’clock call or even earlier. It’s known as a Pacino call.” That’s what we had to do for the rest of the shoot. I can’t remember one day that he came to the set knowing his lines. He’d look at the pages just before the set was lit and camera-ready. Then he’d require a number of takes to get the lines right. He called it “spontaneity,” which I love, but spontaneity comes from preparation, which gives an actor the freedom to create. The other actors were always ready and had to endure while their best takes were wasted until Al was ready to move on. Often, I thought he’d hit the right note and say, “Great, let’s go to the next shot,” and he’d invariably hold up an index finger or whisper, “One more,” and sometimes it would be five more or ten or twenty more.

  We shot scenes in Central Park at night, in an area called the Ramble, where gay sex went on at all hours; we shot in a cheap hotel in midtown, where one of the murders was staged; in West Village apartments; in the clubs and in the morgue, where the renowned coroner Michael Baden let us photograph actual body parts from the CUPPI murders. When word of this leaked out, Mayor Koch fired Baden. It became a public scandal, on the front page of the New York newspapers. Most of the scenes were shot at night while hundreds of protesters shouted insults to the cast and crew. In one scene, Pacino had to walk alone down a dark street in the Village. Across the street, behind police barricades, hundreds of protesters were screaming, “Pacino, you fucking asshole, you little faggot.” Piles of garbage were strewn on all our locations. Death threats mounted, and outside the Mineshaft late one night, protesters threw rocks and bottles at us, and we threw them back. It was a full-fledged street fight, and members of our cast who were in the S&M world joined us in fighting the protesters. For weeks we had every mounted police officer in New York protecting the set, and Al had to have a police escort. He had heard only the cheers of the crowd since early in his career, never boos nor curses.

  As protests continued, we were denied additional shooting permits. Columbia University in Morningside Heights pulled our permit to film on their campus, so I went there with Pacino, Richard Cox, and a small camera crew and “stole” the shots I needed.

  We were allowed to film everything that went on in the Mineshaft, with no restrictions. The club regulars were paid as extras, since no Screen Extras Guild members could be asked, nor would they be able to simulate what took place there.

  Despite the “Pacino call,” Al continued to arrive late and unprepared. A
s the “takes” piled up, my uncertainty over his performance affected my attitude. Everyone on a film set has anxiety over his or her work, but when the director does, it can rock the foundations. Weintraub did his best to keep morale up and to keep Al calm, as the reactions of the gay community became more heated. Al was scared. He was not homophobic and couldn’t understand why he was being treated the way he was. Sonny Grosso and Randy Jurgensen increased security around him, but it was like filming in a war zone. Al and I grew distant. We pressed on with a sense that it could explode at any time. Weintraub was supportive as always, but I was disappointed with Al’s performance. I remember the same feeling about Hackman during the filming of The French Connection, and I was hopeful we could make this work in the cutting room.

  We shot a scene where Burns (Pacino’s character) confronts Gregory (James Remar), the roommate of his next-door neighbor Ted (Don Scardino). Gregory views Burns as a rival for Ted’s affections, and the scene becomes heated. A threat of violence hung in the air, and Pacino suddenly exploded to life. For a scene lasting only a few minutes, I could see a flash of his powerful charisma as an actor. It’s sprinkled over a few other moments as well, such as the interrogation-room scene at the precinct, where Pacino and a suspect he’s entrapped are being roughed up by detectives. At one point, a muscular six-foot-eight-inch black man wearing only a black cowboy hat, a jock strap, and black boots slaps Pacino in the face, then turns and exits without a word. This was a technique used in police interrogation at the time. Later when the suspect was arraigned, a judge would ask who hit him. He’d say, “This big black guy in a cowboy hat and a jock strap.” The judge would laugh it off as a lie or a fantasy.

  In the cutting room it occurred to me that as the killer and the victims were all dressed in leather caps, jacket, and Levis, black leather boots, and dark sunglasses, there might be multiple killers. All the CUPPI murders had not been solved, though Bateson confessed to many of them. It would be interesting to suggest there was a killer still at large at the end of the picture and that it might be Burns (Pacino). In one of the last scenes, set in a hospital, the chief of detectives (Sorvino) offers the suspected killer (Richard Cox) the same deal detectives offered Bateson: “Confess to these other murders, and we’ll reduce your sentence.” Bateson accepted the deal. The Richard Cox character denies he killed anyone, but his denial is in the voice of his dead father, who he believes urged him to kill gay men. None of this was in my original script.

  Weintraub invited Richard Heffner, the new head of the Ratings Board, to have dinner at his home and see Cruising. Heffner replaced Aaron Stern, who gave The Exorcist an R rating with no cuts.

  It was highly unusual for the head of the board to watch a film before it was rated, let alone at a producer’s house. But Weintraub was persuasive. He and his wife, Jane, lived on a cliff in Paradise Cove overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The house was painted blue, and there were two large stained-glass windows flanking the front door, each one depicting Jerry and Jane on the phone. “Blue Heaven” was built on seven acres and included a large swimming pool, tennis court, a separate guesthouse, and a stable for six horses, Tennessee Walkers that Jerry and his guests used to ride on the beach.

  Heffner showed up for dinner. It was just him, Jerry, Jane, and me. Small talk. Jokes. Good wine. Heffner was as unlike his predecessor as ice cream and French fries. He was conservative in his dress and opinions.

  After dinner we went into the living room, where a screen came down from the ceiling, a projector lit up, and we sat in easy chairs watching the first cut of Cruising. Heffner was in front of me. On the screen a disembodied arm appears in the Hudson River. The arm is then examined on an autopsy table, tossed into a drawer in the morgue marked CUPPI that contains other disembodied limbs. A man picks up another man in a leather bar. They taxi to a hotel. A violent murder is shown in graphic detail. And I hear a loud “Ohhh,” from Heffner’s chair. The victim’s body is viewed in the autopsy room by the medical examiner and a detective. We see in detail the pattern of the stab wounds. Then another victim is stabbed and murdered in the Ramble in Central Park. From Heffner’s chair, another groan went up. Pacino goes into the Mineshaft and sees men being chained and whipped; a bathtub where a man is up to his chest in the “Golden Shower”; one man is fist-fucking another . . . more groans from Heffner. His jacket comes off, then his tie. I can feel his discomfort. I hear a loud, “Oh nooo!”

  Finally another brutally beaten and murdered man is discovered in an apartment in the West Village in the building where Burns (Pacino) was staying. Burns comes home to his fiancée. She tries on his leather jacket and cap, admiring herself in a mirror. In the bathroom, Burns is shaving. He looks into the bathroom mirror, directly into the camera. A tugboat cruises the Hudson River as at the opening of the film. The lights come up. Heffner is sweating! His shirt is soaked, his face a blotchy red color.

  “Good Lord!” he shouts. He isn’t smiling.

  “So what do you think, Dick?” Jerry asks, facetiously.

  Heffner is quick to respond: “What do I think?” Then calmly, “Jerry, this is the worst film I’ve ever seen!”

  Jerry forces a smile: “But what’s the rating?”

  “The rating? There aren’t enough X’s in the alphabet for this picture!”

  Jerry segues from the charm factor to a more serious mode: “Dick, you can’t do this to me. I’ve got money in this picture. I can’t get an X.” Heffner reaches for his jacket. Jane and I watch, dumbfounded, as Jerry blocks his path and says in a mock pleading voice: “You gotta help us. What do we have to do to get an R?” Heffner tries to move away: “I have no idea. An X usually means excessive. Excessive language or nudity or sexuality. This picture is beyond the pale in all three.” It went back and forth like this until Heffner offered a suggestion:

  “Sometimes, when we have a difficult rating problem, we suggest hiring a consultant, my predecessor. Aaron Stern. He’s been able to advise producers, and he often achieves successful results.”

  This was good news. I called Aaron, and he said he’d be happy to help us. He’d have to see the film, and his fee was a thousand dollars a day. We took the work print to New York and ran it for him. After fifty days of Aaron’s negotiations with the ratings board, we got an R rating! We had to superimpose smoke over shots of naked men in the clubs or selectively blur them out. I cut at least half an hour from the club scenes and the murder scenes. I had purposely let these scenes of pornography and violence run long, knowing they’d be cut and I’d be left with the story I wanted to tell. Despite these cuts, the film pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in an R-rated film, something the critics were quick to point out.

  When I had an approved version, I ran it for Pacino. Bud Smith was with me. I thought the film was powerful, but I knew it would receive as much scorn as praise. When it was over, Al was slow to get out of his seat, and when he turned to Bud and me, his expression was unhappy. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, gravely.

  “What do you mean?” I could see his anger and disappointment.

  “I mean I don’t get it, Billy. It doesn’t work,” he said quietly.

  “I disagree, Al.”

  “Well, we’ll have to try and fix it,” he said.

  “Like how?” I started to feel anger myself.

  “We have to go into the cutting room and start over,” he said.

  “Give me some idea of what you have in mind, Al.”

  “I’d take out some of the early scenes. The arm . . . the pickup in the bar . . . the murder in the hotel . . .,” he offered.

  “Where would you start the film?”

  “When you first see me, when I come into Sorvino’s office. But I’d make other cuts . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “The murders should all be off-camera, and you’re suggesting that my character is one of the killers—”

  “That’s right,” I said firmly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he sho
uted.

  “I honestly didn’t discover it until I got into the cutting room.”

  He started to pace as his anger built. “I would have played it differently if I’d known . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I didn’t want you to play it differently,” I said, raising my voice. But I could see his point. As a serious actor, he didn’t want information kept from him by his director. Had I discovered this twist during production, I would have told him. For me it was a late discovery; for him, a betrayal.

  Bud Smith didn’t say anything as his face reddened. I stood up. “Al, let me tell you something. I like the film. I have final cut. There’s no way I’m going into the cutting room with you. Is that clear?”

  I doubt he’d ever been talked to in this way. But the gloves were off.

  Weintraub, Merv Adelson, and Al’s agents all tried to calm him down, but he wasn’t having it. He did no publicity for the film; no interviews—a public silence he’s maintained to this day. Word of course got out that he hated the film, and this was used to fire the resentment felt by many others.

  The first screening for critics and journalists took place at a theater on the East Side. I walked to the theater alone when I knew the screening would end, to do a Q&A. As I approached, I saw a man walking toward me. Gay Talese. “Boy, are you in for it,” he said. I asked him why, and he told me the reaction was incendiary. The audience was booing, shouting at the screen, cursing—he had never seen anything like it. He wished me a tentative “Good luck.”

  When I entered the theater, the negative vibes were palpable. People were shocked, angry, disgusted. The questions from journalists were hostile, along the lines of, “Why would you make a film like this?”