You’ve probably heard the rumors or seen the blurry, late-night forum posts about the "James Franco leather bar movie." It sounds like one of those weird Hollywood urban legends. A famous A-lister goes into the deep end of queer subculture to recreate "lost" hardcore footage from a 1980s slasher flick. People called it porn. Critics called it a vanity project. Some just called it confusing.
But if you actually sit down and watch Interior. Leather Bar., you realize it isn't really the movie the headlines promised. It's not a remake of Al Pacino’s Cruising. Honestly, it’s barely even a movie in the traditional sense. It’s a 60-minute meta-experiment that spends more time talking about gay sex than actually showing it—though it definitely shows it.
The whole thing started because James Franco and co-director Travis Mathews became obsessed with a piece of cinema history. Back in 1980, William Friedkin had to cut 40 minutes of explicit footage from Cruising just to avoid an X rating. That footage? It’s gone. Deleted. Destroyed. Franco wanted to "reimagine" it, but what he ended up with was a look at how uncomfortable straight people get when the "normative" world gets pushed aside.
Why Interior. Leather Bar. Still Gets People Talking
The core of the film follows actor Val Lauren, a friend of Franco’s who is cast to play the Al Pacino role. He’s straight, he’s a bit nervous, and he’s basically the stand-in for the audience. You watch him walk onto a set filled with men in leather harnesses, watching unsimulated sexual acts, and you see him grapple with his own boundaries.
It's awkward. It's supposed to be.
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Franco’s big argument throughout the film—one he makes while looking very much like a guy who’s just finished a grad school seminar—is that we’re totally fine with extreme violence in movies. We can watch people get torn apart on screen and nobody blinks. But the second you show two men in a consensual, explicit sexual act, the MPAA loses its mind. He calls it a "twisted" way of looking at the world.
The "leather bar" itself is a recreation of the subterranean NYC clubs of the late 70s. It’s all dark walls, chains, and heavy bass. But the film keeps breaking the fourth wall. One minute you’re watching a scene that looks like a lost 1980s film, and the next, the camera pulls back to show Travis Mathews directing the actors or Val Lauren on the phone with his wife, trying to explain why he's surrounded by naked men.
The Myth of the Lost 40 Minutes
A lot of people went into this thinking they were getting a full-blown reconstruction. They weren't. Out of the hour-long runtime, maybe only ten minutes actually focus on the recreated footage. The rest is a documentary about the attempt to make it.
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- The Intent: To challenge why gay subcultures are often "sanitized" for mainstream consumption.
- The Reality: A "meta-meditation" on celebrity and censorship.
- The Controversy: Some queer critics felt Franco was playing "tourist" in a world he didn't belong to.
Basically, Franco and Mathews weren't trying to make porn. They were trying to figure out why people are so scared of it. They talked about how the push for "equality" often means gay people have to act "straight" to be accepted—think white picket fences and sanitized romance. The "leather" scene represented the "kink" that society wants to erase.
Is It Actually Any Good?
That depends on what you’re looking for. If you want a narrative film with a plot and a resolution, you’ll be annoyed. It’s chaotic. It’s short. It feels like a high-concept art installation.
Some people find Franco’s "straight savior" energy a bit much. In the film, he talks about freeing moviegoers from their "psychosexual chains." It’s a lot. But Travis Mathews brings a level of authenticity to it that balances things out. Mathews is a filmmaker who actually works within queer cinema, and his interactions with the gay actors on set feel way more grounded and respectful than Franco’s philosophical rants.
There’s a really interesting moment where Val Lauren watches a scene being filmed and eventually tells the actors he thought it was "beautiful." It’s a small breakthrough, but it’s kind of the point of the whole exercise. It’s about moving past the "shock" and seeing the humanity in a subculture that’s usually only used as a backdrop for horror movies.
How to Watch It Today
Despite the "scandalous" reputation, Interior. Leather Bar. is actually pretty easy to find if you're curious. It’s not buried in some dark corner of the internet.
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- Streaming: It often pops up on platforms like Kanopy (which you can get for free with a library card) or Fandango at Home.
- Rental: You can usually grab it for a few bucks on Apple TV or Google Play.
- Physical Media: There was a DVD release, though it’s more of a collector’s item now.
Don't expect a masterpiece. Expect a messy, provocative conversation starter that’s more interested in asking questions than giving you a clean ending.
If you’re interested in the history behind this, you should actually go back and watch the original Cruising first. It’ll give you the context for why Friedkin’s film caused riots in the streets of New York back in 1980. Seeing the "sanitized" version makes Franco’s attempt to bring back the "filth" make a lot more sense. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the harnesses.