A callow and asinine exercise in preening and provocation, without either the means or the skills to prove effective in either pursuit. James Franco and Travis Mathews' film purports to explore the lost 40 minutes of material that the MPAA demanded William Friedkin cut from his 1980 thriller Cruising, with its explicit scenes of non-simulated gay sex. This represents an apt, if predictable, progression in Mathews' career; in Franco's, it represents just another throwaway venture into the homosexual psyche, in an ever-lengthening list of fatuous artistic endeavours in this field, either as part of some trivial and ineffectual practical joke, or to bolster his hipster cred. I have more faith in the latter premise, since I believe only a maniac would risk their livelihood to begin a career in entertainment based on having utterly everybody on. I almost believe that Interior. Leather Bar. is a practical joke itself, in that the participation of others (namely, Mathews and actor Val Lauren) willing to humiliate and debase themselves in so doing can surely not be sincere. Franco's wannabe-radical philosophical discourse, however, is entirely sincere, but what value it may have in fundamental terms, it vanquishes by being trite, simplistic, inchoate and already old hat, and in Franco's dilettantish smugness. The film eventually phases Mathews' input (or evidence thereof) out in favour of Franco's pig-headed vanity and Lauren's hysterical prudishness, naivety and suppressed homophobia. As for re-imagining Friedkin's cut footage? What cheap, tame, uninspired crud this pair have created doesn't come close to fulfilling their objective, and in its comparative politeness actually runs contrary to the messages Franco so proudly and vacuously announces at the world.
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