EXCLUSIVE: One of the most eagerly anticipated documentaries premiering at Tribeca Festival is set in Tribeca’s backyard.
Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, directed by Jeffrey Schwarz, dials back to the summer of 1979 when William Friedkin was shooting his thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino as “a cop going undercover to catch a serial killer targeting gay men in leather bars.” Filming took place in Greenwich Village and nearby locations.
“When the shooting script was leaked to Village Voice reporter Arthur Bell,” notes a synopsis of the documentary, “he was horrified, fearing the film would portray gay men as dangerous and pathological, as well as fuel discrimination at a time when the community was fighting for visibility and dignity. Bell encouraged his readers to protest the film, and thousands heeded his call. Protestors swarmed the streets, disrupting production and demanding Hollywood stop exploiting queer lives for sensationalism.”
We have your first look at the film in the clip above.
Watch on Deadline
Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders not only examines the protests over the Friedkin film’s production, but the underlying series of actual murders that inspired Cruising, “including the 1977 killing of Addison Verrill, a respected entertainment journalist and reporter for Variety. Addison was drawn to the underground world of leather bars like the notorious Mineshaft [in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district], where one night he went home with someone and was murdered in his own bed. The identity of his killer – and the shocking connection to William Friedkin himself – remain startling revelations, even today.”
The synopsis continues, “In recent years, Cruising has undergone a critical reevaluation, with a new generation embracing it as a rare document of a vanished pre-AIDS world. Yet as the film’s reputation has been reconsidered, the real murders that inspired it have faded into the background. Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders explores how Hollywood fiction has overshadowed real tragedy, and unravels the mystery of who killed Addison Verrill.”
Schwarz’s directing credits including Boulevard! A Hollywood Story, The Fabulous Allan Carr, Tab Hunter Confidential, I Am Divine, and Vito.
“My first encounter with Cruising was as a 13-year-old in suburban Queens, watching a special episode about gay films on Siskel & Ebert’s Sneak Previews,” Schwarz writes in a director’s statement. “The clips they showed of a dark and violent gay world disturbed me deeply, but I couldn’t look away. I didn’t have the language to understand why the film both terrified and fascinated me, but those images burned into my memory.”
“When I came out in the early 1990s, I discovered Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet and devoured his history of LGBTQ+ representation on screen. I set out to watch every film he discussed, hungry to understand my own community’s complicated relationship with Hollywood. Russo described Cruising as a film where ‘the monster is homosexuality itself.’ Gay men were portrayed as both predators and prey, feeding into dangerous stereotypes at a time when the community was fighting for survival.
“When I finally saw Cruising, I understood why it had sparked such fury. Released in 1980, in the wake of Harvey Milk’s assassination, and as gay men were being murdered in the streets, Friedkin’s film felt like a betrayal. Yet Cruising also captured something real. It was filmed on our streets, in our bars, and featured many of the men who inhabited the late 1970s gay world. It was a document of a moment that would soon be erased by AIDS and gentrification.”
Schwarz continues, “For years, Cruising was a notorious ‘bad object,’ reviled as one of the most harmful films ever made about us. But in recent years, it has undergone a critical reevaluation, with a new generation embracing it as a rare document of a vanished world decimated by AIDS. Many of the men visible on screen would be dead within a decade. Underground bars like the Mineshaft were shuttered. And the entire area where the scene once thrived has been so thoroughly gentrified that almost no trace remains of what existed there.
“Yet as the film’s reputation has been reconsidered, the real stories behind it have receded into the background. This film is my attempt to bring them back into focus and to reckon with a chapter of our history that deserves to be remembered.”
Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders premieres this Saturday (June 6), with additional screenings on Sunday, June 7, and Tuesday, June 9.
Tribecal Festival runs June 3-14. Artistic Director Frédéric Boyer writes, “Mineshaft combines true crime and cinema history for a documentary that captures decades of gay life through the lens of a single film.”
Watch the clip from Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders above.