People are voting emotionally.

disgusting, overrated, pointless

A Major Disappointment

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

I like James Franco as an actor, and he seems like he'd be a cool person to hang out with. It's James Franco the writer/director/artist/poet/musician/provocateur that's a problem for me. Part of it is envy, I'll admit (I wish I had freedom and funding to indulge all MY creative whims), but a larger part of it is I suspect that James Franco the Multifaceted Artist is a total poser."Interior. Leather Bar." doesn't dispel my belief that Franco is a poser, but it also re-enforces my belief that he'd be a cool friend. Val Lauren, the actor playing Al Pacino's character from the movie "Cruising," thinks Franco is a cool friend, Franco's involvement the primary reason he's agreed to participate in this project, even as his agent strongly advises him not to (his wife just wants him home in time for dinner). He seems more intrigued by playing a role originated by Pacino than Franco's and co-director Travis Mathews' stated thesis that the leather bars of "Cruising" represent a subculture that's fading away as homosexuals gain greater acceptance in mainstream society. (AIDS might also have had something to do with it but I guess that's too sad. Also: "Cruising" as a gay culture touchstone? Not sure about that.) When Lauren questions James Franco directly about why he thinks the missing 40 minutes from William Friedkin's "Cruising" needs to be explored, Franco says something about needing to confront the world of gay leather bars to challenge fears he has only because he was raised to have them. This seems like something that could be challenged by getting a trial subscription to any one of a number of gay porn sites, or while making all the gay-themed movies he's been a part of ("Milk," "Howl," "The Broken Tower"), but maybe he just wants to be sure he's been thoroughly challenged.But "Interior. Leather Bar." does more meandering than challenging. Actors, both gay and straight, spend most of their time wondering what's expected of them. Some of wonder if James Franco will be in the movie and if he will get naked (not really and no, respectively). Others wonder just how far they are expected to go. Pretty far, as it turns out: real, non-simulated sex takes place, though it barely makes up five minutes of screen time in the total ten minutes of leather bar footage. Consequently, the movie is labeled porn by some, though I don't think it is. In fact, one sex scene seems realer than most, and you actually sense an emotional connection between the couple involved. Pretty impressive when you consider they've got an audience — including an Oscar-nominated actor — circling them as they get busy on a sofa. It's not a surprise to learn immediately after that the actors are a couple off-screen. Though Lauren seems pretty shell-shocked by the action on set, he compliments the two men, telling them they appear to have a great relationship. For his part, Franco isn't a co-director so much as the project's instigator. Mathews does the bulk of the directing, with Franco shown leaving early, right after watching two dudes have sex. Make of that what you will."Interior. Leather Bar." is presented as being the re-creation of the missing 40 minutes from "Cruising," but it's more like a glorified DVD extra accompanying a movie that was never finished. It's strangely fascinating but also frustratingly pointless.

After watching this video, I feel like I've been cheated. This is neither excellent nor awful. But a complete waste of time.Just like everybody, I thought this is a movie 'made' by James Franco and Travis Mathews. But this is not a movie. This is not even a documentary. Surprisingly this is not even 'behind the scenes' of a movie. This is just a video of a 'supposedly' behind the scenes of a movie never made by James Franco and Travis Mathews. The whole reference to Al Pacino's 1980 movie "Cruising" is completely irrelevant, misleading and a lie. This is just gay porn which does not include James Franco. He is just either filming it or watching it. Which is kind of funny. LOL. I think his involvement in this movie is to make this main stream and attract large number of audience.There are explicit gay sex scenes which are nice(wink). Which is the message of this Video. This is "Art Porn" as described by the cutest guy in the cast. About the cast, there are only four guys we see a few times in the movie, the rest are seen in the beginning introductions and again in the end during credits.The so-called lead 'Val' is fine, but what's disappointing is that he 'almost' looks into the camera, sometimes, during the so-called behind the scenes, when none of the supporting cast does that.During these behind the scenes conversations, James Franco and Val, always have a 'refraining smile' on their faces. Which is horrible.I don't recommend this, but this isn't even an hour long. So go ahead.

I saw this film at the Berlinale film festival 2013, where I felt myself severely misled by the synopsis on the festival website. I saw a lot of meta-talk about cruising, about straight actors playing a gay role, about an actor being advised against getting involved in the project for the sake of his future career, and so on, with emphasis on "meta" and "about". And the bit of sex that was shown, was in a dancing atmosphere and not the traditional dark room. Maybe offensive for straight people but not very explicit, yet the festival website devoted a lot of attention to the revival of scenes deleted for fear for censors. Finally, I completely missed the insight in the film making process that was promised too. In short, an unnecessary film, not even a bit informative about this different universe we know nothing about.

This film takes as inspiration the 1980 film Cruising, which I've only seen clips of (e.g. in documentaries about film), and the idea that there's 40 minutes or so that was destroyed in order to achieve a more favourable rating. (I'll assume you know all about Cruising because you can look it up here on IMDb).Yet this film is not a replacement of those supposed 40 minutes, nor is it a documentary about how Franco and Mathews attempted to re-imagine them. Instead, they play fictional versions of themselves, so doing. So they get two shots at re-imagining those 40 minutes.On the simplest level, there is the scene of actor Val playing Al Pacino's character Steve from the film Cruising, which to me seemed entirely believable, and could have fit into the original film. Then there are more sexual scenes, including scenes of oral sex between men. Together, these form a vivid re-imagining of what might have been shot and destroyed. Maybe.But the story is where the actual re-imagining is. Val (the character) is straight, like Steve in Cruising. Through his work, he is put into an in-your-face gay sexual environment, and overcomes initial hesitation, to become comfortable with the people in that environment. (I can't compare further with Cruising, not having seen it).I think there's a third layer, which is the audience who is also taken to a place cinema doesn't usually go to. The film doesn't interact back with us, but it's a sense of what Val and Steve experienced.In the film, James makes some interesting points regarding the explicit sex, and there's no doubt that's the big discussion topic for this film. I think he might be just a year too late to be correct about what audiences watch, but still his point that intimate love and sex should be shown without timidity in film, including same-sex, is correct.An earlier film that I really liked was 9 Songs (2004). A large portion of that film is the leading man and leading woman making love together. But it told a story about the course of that couple's relationship, and I don't think it could have been done any other way. There should be room for this kind of film in cinema, so these stories can be told without being dumped in with the porn, and then overlooked.But specifically regarding explicit gay sex in the telling of a story, it's already happened, via Shortbus (2006). Other audiences have seen I Want Your Love, a short and then a feature-length film by director Mathews (of this film) and including explicit sex between men. And the recent Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, I'm told, includes explicit sex between women. So this film is a bit late to break truly new ground.But more generally (and in stark contrast to television) cinema, and even this film oddly, has been afraid to show much in the way of male couples having the anal sex everyone thinks they're having. I don't think since Brokeback Mountain (2005) there has been a major male film star do this until this year's Kill Your Darlings. Hollywood ought to be able to do a lot better than that. Everyone is already thinking it, so just show something appropriate to the film.On the theme of missing same-sex film scenes, a (much, much tamer) scene from the film 54 (1998) was recently leaked online showing a kiss filmed between its stars Ryan Phillippe and Breckin Meyer. So apparently old footage does sometimes find its way to audiences.Part of the experience of seeing this film, I think, is the locale in which you see it. Much as I never expected to see a Bruce LaBruce film series at a mainstream festival in the middle of 1999 Dallas, I wouldn't have expected to see this in Windsor, Ontario. That's how it should be seen.