Al Pacino Saw 'Cruising' as Problematic; Donated Salary to Charities
Al Pacino reveals in his new autobiography that he gave his salary from "Cruising" to charities after seeing the problematic final cut.
"I took the money, and it was a lot, and I put it in an irrevocable trust fund," the actor wrote.
"I gave it to charities, and with the interest, it was able to last a couple of decades... I don't know if it eased my conscience, but at least the money did some good."
He said that he wanted to donate the money anonymously because he didn't want to seem like a publicity stunt.
"I just wanted one positive thing to come out of that whole experience," he wrote.
In "Sonny Boy: A Memoir", he writes that he thought he and the late director William Friedkin were "pushing the envelope" in 1980 with their dark thriller about a detective (played by Pacino) who gets caught up in the queer leather scene while investigating a series of murders of gay men. During the location shooting in the city's bars with local gay men as extras, the film was protested by queer groups for being exploitative.
In his book, Al Pacino recalled the dark thriller "became very controversial during its production," and he saw gay rights protesters at shooting locations "almost every day" trying to disrupt filming. But writes in "Sonny Boy" that he didn't see it as "exploitative" during filming. It was when he saw the final print that he saw the problems, but he "remained quiet" and did not promote the film when released and donated his pay to charity.
When Friedkin published his autobiography, "The Friedkin Connection," in 2013, he was asked by The Wrap about the controversies surrounding "Cruising."
"'Cruising' came out before the AIDS virus, but at a time that the gay community had made enormous strides. There had been the Stonewall riots a couple of years before. So this was not the best foot forward for the gay rights movement, but I never intended the film to be critical of gays. I just thought the S&M world would make a good backdrop for a murder mystery, but I did not in any way mean for it to reflect the gay lifestyle. I understood at the time that people who were trying to achieve gay rights were not going to appreciate such a tough picture. It's still very tough, very hard edged and ambiguous."
He also addressed his clashes with Pacino while making the film. "I have not seen him a lot," Friedkin said about his post-"Cruising" relationship with the actor. "We never moved in the same circles. I wanted Richard Gere for the role. Having seen the film at special screenings, I've come to realize [Pacino] is still pretty damn effective in it, but he gave me a rough time for reasons other than the normal actor-director relationship. He wasn't on time and often didn't know what we were doing on a particular day."