Mineshaft:
The Cruising Murders

From a controversial flashpoint to a celebrated classic, Cruising has played many roles in gay culture. But the true story behind the film is the most surprising of them all.

During the summer of 1979, the hottest club in New York City was on the streets of the West Village where the gay community came together to protest the filming of a new Al Pacino movie called Cruising. Spurred on by a series of articles by Village Voice writer Arthur Bell, these activists took offense to the idea of a film where homosexuality was explicitly linked to murderous depravity. And yet, 45 years later, Cruising has been reclaimed as a gay cinema classic. How?

Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders takes viewers down dark industrial stairwells and into sweaty, pheromone-filled clubs like the legendary Mineshaft, where leathermen pushed the boundaries of sexual expression in the 1970s. It’s also where director William Friedkin went to party while he was researching for the film, one of many colorful details from behind the scenes. But even that’s only part of the story. Part elegy for a lost world and part tribute to the forgotten victim at the center of the case — Addison Verrill, the journalist and film critic whose horrific 1977 murder inspired Friedkin to write Cruising — Mineshaft combines true crime and cinema history for a documentary that captures decades of gay life through the lens of a single film. —Frédéric Boyer, Tribeca