Now playing nearly every night on some cable movie channel (at last count, we had over 15 assorted Cinemaxes, HBOs, Showtimes and Starz!s), Mike Judge’s Idiocracy is no Office Space. It certainly has some worthwhile things to say about the conditions under which we live and what may await us down the road from here, but you don’t get the frightening moments déjà vu that you do with Office Space. Idiocracy’s premise is brilliant: In the future, our culture and people in general will be much stupider thanks to relentless advertising and the triumph of attitude over substance. The naked commercialism of NASCAR + the whup-ass of WWE Raw – interest in science or art among young people = Our Bleak Future. Concept gets an A+, but execution proves much trickier. What makes this movie worth your time—and it is—are the details.

We got a good look at the money the other night, and it still gives us a chuckle. See, in this future, money isn’t something you’d use to, say, buy a house or put your children through school. Money is flash and muscle, a sign that you’re better and cooler than everyone else. Money doesn’t translate to security or even freedom—it translates to a mad pimped ride or some other conspicuously expensive lowbrow toy. People don’t receive money because they perform a service valuable to society, they receive money because they are awesome.

One character hands Maya Rudolph a bill; she glances at it and says something along the lines of “Wow, I guess money has changed a lot.” It’s a 10 million dollar bill; the portrait in the oval is of (rather than some wussy old president) a long-haired dude wearing a black vest and a hell-yeah grimace. Slogans like “In God We Trust” have been replaced by “That’s What I’m Talkin’ About!” and “Haulin’ Ass, Gettin’ Paid!” The current-era buzzword “extreme” itself has been amped up in the future: People long for “exxxtreme” products and experiences—the 10 million dollar bill announces itself as “Ten Exxxtra Large.” Read this thorough post at SpeakUp for more insight into the 'roided-up logos and brands in Idiocracy.

The clever stupidity of Idiocracy goes on and on. Sponsorship run wild (and a dearth of creativity) leads people to name their children after products—one main character is named Frito, and the President of the United States (a former porn star and professional wrestler) is Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. The president’s cabinet members wear giant bling-bling medallions that bear their departmental seal. And the House of Representatives has a rowdy, fight-night ambience befitting its new name: House of Representin’.

Just see the movie, wuss, 'cause it’s kickass and stuff. Suck it! Hasta la vista, baby. Seeya, wouldn’t wanna be ya. Fight for your right to party. Boo-ya! Peace.

We have an affinity for indie-rock quartet The Editors, from Birmingham, England and not just because we dig their name. Sort of an Interpol from across the pond with noticeable influences by Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, The Editors are starting to break into the American scene after the release of their acclaimed second album, An End Has a Start, and appearances at trendsetting festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza. The band—featuring Chris Urbanowicz on guitar and synth, Russell Leetch on bass and Ed Lay on drums—produce a lush sonic cushion for singer Tom Smith’s sad, soulful voice to fall back upon. If Joy Division’s Ian Curtis is still out there in the ether, Smith is his medium between worlds.

Although the band channels icons of the past and the present, The Editors have a signature sound that is instantly recognizable, as when the band took the stage Monday night at Los Angeles’s Wiltern and launched into “Bones.” You might expect a singer with a somewhat wounded-sounding voice to be tepid on stage and overwhelmed by his band’s music, but you’d be way off. Smith’s vocals not only filled the near-capacity venue, but his energetic delivery kept the mostly twentysomething crowd on their feet dancing for the duration. Even when Smith sat down at the piano and slowed the momentum for a number like “Weight of the World,” the crowd swayed to his passionate lyrics. “Every little piece of your life will mean something to someone,” sang Smith. He could have been singing about the adoration he felt from the fans under his spell that evening.

Check out the embedded clip of the title song of their new album to see if The Editors are your kind of aural candy. Following is the set list for the Los Angeles show on September 24:

1. “Bones” 2. “Bullets” 3. “An End Has a Start” 4. “Blood” 5. “The Weight of the World” 6. “Escape the Nest” 7. “Banging Heads” 8. “All Sparks” 9. “When Anger Shows” 10. “Lights” 11. “The Racing Rats” 12. “Fall” 13. “Munich” 14. “Open Your Arms” ENCORE: 15. “You Are Fading” 16. “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors” 17. “Fingers in the Factories”

Our crack intern Ben Conniff takes a break from his crack interning to salute one of his heroes:

Raise a pint this Sunday for one of the world’s greatest drinkers. Legendary beer critic Michael Jackson (pictured) died on August 30 at the age of 65. Now beer lovers everywhere are saying thank you. Jackson fans have organized a worldwide toast in his honor at 9 p.m. EST this Sunday, September 30.  Jackson suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and participating bars will be collecting donations for the National Parkinson Foundation in his honor. Some bars have even pledged portions of their proceeds to the NPF.

For over 30 years Jackson traveled the world, striving to promote an appreciation for the intricacies of brewing and drinking beer. He had an ideal job; at times he tasted as many as 100 different brews in a day. But Jackson did more than just drink. He was a skilled and prolific writer. He published his first book, The World Guide to Beer, in 1977. Since then he has authored many more books, created a documentary TV series, and written a blog, titled “The Beer Hunter.”

Since my introduction I have tried many of Mr. Jackson’s selections, and he never steered me wrong. On Sunday I’ll be lifting my glass at the Hop Devil Grill in New York. Check out Jackson’s blog to see who’s hosting an event, or ask your local watering hole to join in.

 
Halo 3 is here at long last, and amid the marketing tsunami, lapidary packaging options, piles of ancillary merchandise and alternating waves of hype and backlash, it turns out there is actually a game in there as well. And, unsurprisingly, it’s quite good. The single-player campaign is meaty and satisfying, if a little short (and I’m not usually someone who complains about short videogames), and the virtues of Halo’s multiplayer action are well documented at this point. However, neither of these, shiny and next-gen though they might be, represent much of a leap away from previous versions of the game (not that I had any expectation or desire that they would). Rather, what’s kept me up later than is reasonable for the past few nights is two new features that take Halo 3 into an entirely new realm—its Forge and Theater modes.

Forge is a tool that lets you modify the game’s multiplayer maps. You can’t terraform or create buildings, but you have absolute control over everything on the map that isn’t nailed down, as well as access to a full laundry list of all the weapons, vehicles and equipment in the game that you can place anywhere you like. Last night I created a map called Beach Party. At either end of the gorgeous white-sand beach on the map Last Resort, I placed a stash of brute lasers (which take three seconds to fire after you pull the trigger, but destroy everything in their path) and Gravity Hammers (imagine a golf club with nitroglycerin on the end of it). In the middle, between the weapon stashes, I placed a massive pile of fusion coils (exploding boxes), grenades and propane tanks, on top of which I placed a Mongoose (dune buggy) and a Banshee (one-man hovercraft). The slightest shock to the Death Pile (as it has come to be known) causes a highly unpredictable explosion, complete with flying, vehicle-shaped shrapnel. For good measure, on the high walls around the beach, I placed several rocket launchers for comments from the peanut gallery. Last step was to grab all the spawn points (places you restart from when you die) around the map and scatter them around the beach and walls. Suffice to say that when you put 8 trigger-happy people in there, things get heat up real quick. That’s my kind of party.

But there’s more. As my friends and I tear each other to shreds in the most spectacular ways we can imagine, the entire proceeding is being recorded by the game in the background. After the match, I can pop into Theater mode and play the whole thing back. Better yet, I can detach from my player’s perspective and fly around to different vantage points as the pre-recorded action unfolds. Finally, once I find a particularly juicy moment, like when Jeremy causes a chain reaction by knocking Greg and his Mongoose into the Death Pile, shooting him and his ride up over the seawall and out of sight, I can set up my shot, then work the camera as I roll tape. Once I have my 10-second mayhem masterpiece, I can upload it to Xbox live where the world can view it. It’s an immense amount of fun, but more importantly, for how powerful its creation tools are, it’s shockingly easy to figure out. Within minutes you’re making things. Within half an hour, your brain is churning like the QE2’s engines, as you come up with ever more fiendish machinations.

So while Halo 3 the game is very good, Halo 3 the creation tool borders on revolutionary, taking you from active participant to true co-creator of your interactive experience. This is the first stab at a new kind of experience for console-game players (PC users with programming chops have been able to do this for some time). It will most certainly not be the last.

For a demo of Forge in action, here’s one of Bungie’s development team showing how it all works.

Our crack intern Ben Conniff went uptown last weekend. Here’s his report:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn’t the only foreign figure Columbia University brought to New York this weekend. On Saturday night, the “Columbia/Harlem Festival of Global Jazz” featured artists from Africa: guitarist Lionel Loueke  and singer Somi, the Randy Weston Quintet and Martino Atangana and African Blue Note. I admit that these artists couldn’t match the Iranian president for shock value, but those of us in the audience at Aaron Davis Hall on Saturday night got the better show.

I heard about the festival through a forwarded email. I didn’t recognize any of the names except for Loueke, who I’d read about briefly in Downbeat magazine, where he was voted the #1 rising star of 2007. I was intrigued by Loueke’s reputation for cutting edge, genre-bending tunes and wanted to see if he lived up to his reputation. But after spending the day tailgating the first home football game at Yale (my alma mater), I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep my eyes open. Then I walked through the auditorium door and a thundering drum solo knocked me on my ass. I was awake.

Loueke’s band played a unique blend of jazz, funk, and world music like nothing I’d ever heard. His guitar solos consisted mostly of delicate finger picking, and his chords sounded more like Joe Zawinul’s organ than a typical jazz guitar. Loueke shared center stage with Somi, a gorgeous singer of Rwandan and Ugandan descent. Somi exhibited an intimidating vocal range, and her smooth tones were punctuated with sudden shrieks and yelps that made me jump.

Loueke and Somi were a tough act to follow, but Randy Weston’s quintet rose to the occasion. Weston is not new to the jazz scene—he’s been a bandleader since the 1950s. He looked his age on Saturday as he hunched over the piano, but his sound was fresh. His fingers, which are twice as long as any human’s should be, still moved nimbly over the keys, and his band wove African rhythms into a mixture of cool, bop and free jazz. Behind the congas, percussionist Neil Clarke looked like a happy child with a lot of toys. But bassist Alex Blake stole the show. He had a love-hate relationship with his standup, one minute resting his head lovingly on the wood, the next slapping and tearing savagely at the strings. As his solos climaxed, Blake leaned back on his stool, kicked both feet in the air and sang along, unmiked, as though he were possessed by a demon.

The closing act, Martino Atangana and African Blue Note, took the energy up one more notch. The band brought a multitude of African rhythms together with funk and rock music. Atangana’s guitar playing was reminiscent of everything from Dominican bachata to Paul Simon to Carlos Santana. His enthusiasm continued unabated until program coordinators told him he had to stop and actually lowered the curtain mid-song due to time constraints.

I was impressed by Columbia’s ability to pinpoint music that was not only global but incredibly original. Each of Saturday’s performers obliterated stylistic boundaries to create a sound that was entirely his or her own. Yet it was still catchy; even the toddlers in the audience were bobbing their heads. Most importantly, no matter their age, all the performers exuded an infectious joy and energy.

It’s a pity that Columbia’s great program got virtually no coverage. The good news: the festival continues this weekend. Friday night the Zim Ngqawana Quartet with William Parker, and Steve Coleman and the Mystic Rhythm Society play at El Museo del Barrio. Click here for more info.

On a clammy, sweet Central Park Saturday evening, the New York Shakespeare Festival celebrated the 40th anniversary of he musical Hair with the first of a three-performance revival. Many in the crowd who were well-mixed between genuine youths and paunchier, grayer veteran youths who were in their salad days when Hair was in its single digits wondered why Festival had decided to throw a three-day party, rather than run the show for five or six weeks as one of its main summer offerings. The reason was soon apparent: Hair at 40 is thrilling but boring, exuberant but tedious, fresh but musty. You walk out humming the hit songs, and wondering how 1967, a year so seemingly clear in memory, can seem to have happened so very long ago.

One of the things that’s striking about the show is how poorly shock ages, and how very much this show must have depended on shock for its success. Saying cunnilingus on stage, imitating a hallucinogenic haze on stage, going buck naked on stage, seeing a show where all this happened on stage—these things must have marked one as quite the daring cultural pioneer in those days of yore. Now they are all quite commonplace, if not clichéd; indeed, a great corporate giant like HBO counts on being congratulated for boldly airing programs featuring nudity, profanity, and all sorts of wild behavior—plays from the Hair playbook updated and turned into home entertainment. Madonna built an enormously successful career by calculating how to take the spirit of rebellion and self-expression and turning it into cash. Sadly, when stripped of its power to shock, Hair is left being a largely bookless review and a collection of songs that for the most part bettered in lyrics and musicianship by whatever happens to be playing on your local Top 40 radio station at this very second. And that includes commercials.

However, the show’s very best songs are wonderful. Hearing the Fifth Dimension sing Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In a million times over the years cannot dilute the impact of the single soaring voice that opens the show with an almost majestic Aquarius. Later in the first act, the song Hair remains a comic joy—clever, funny, exuberant. In both songs, a splendid spirit of triumphalism joyfully explodes from the stage. In these moments, the show’s original spirit shines through, and one shares the sheer pleasure the show takes in being young, in discovering the world anew, in believing one has the power to change things.

And then there’s the show’s ending, in which the character of Claude, a sweet-tempered young man just starting to enjoy life, ends up as a casualty of war. It is unfortunately, as subtle as a brick. And yet affecting. Sobering. Anger-making. It’s sad to see this show and realize that the shock ends, the idealism ebbs, the triumphalism wanes, but the bodies and still pile up. As Sonny and Cher sang so acerbically in the same summer of love when Hair first appeared, "the beat goes on."

Lugging the mail bag around the office is starting to hurt our back, so let’s unload a few of these gems:

Kelly Ewing of Richmond, Virginia has an idea for a pictorial: “The New York Times recently published an article on young librarians as 'the new hushers.' Libraries, for some weird reason, are drawing in young, sexy, hipster types. Ever consider doing a spread of librarians? Unleash that bun, rip off those glasses, and make them return that book on time! What's sexier than that?” (If you’re hot for librarians, check out this site.)

“BMoon” of Houston speaks for a number of readers when he writes, “The entire Rubber Rules pictorial in September is top notch, but the last two photos of Louise Glover are amazing.”

Mike Newton of Boston shares a memory: “In the summer of 1992, I mailed in a crisp $20 bill for a subscription. Knowing that my parents would not approve of their 14-year-old son ordering Playboy (and that Playboy would never send the magazine), I created a fake name (Harold T. Craig) and had it mailed to my grandmother’s apartment building. I then made regular trips to visit grandma and retrieve her mail. The first issue that came was July 1992, featuring Pamela Anderson. I couldn’t believe it! I received two more issues before someone in the building caught on, as I never saw another. Now I’m 29 and I have another subscription, this time in my real name. Thanks for the entertainment over the years.” You’re welcome, Mike. We hope no one is stealing your issues.

After reading in the gossip rags that Hef plans to marry No. 1 girlfriend Holly Madison before the end of the year, Beth Hart of Lamar, Colorado writes with a suggestion: “I have a great idea for Hef to propose to Holly. He should add some words to the Hollywood sign so its reads "Hollywood You Marry Me?" and then take her on a helicopter ride so she can see it.” Thanks Beth, we’ll pass that on—you just have to hope that Holly, now an assistant photo editor at the magazine, doesn’t read this blog.
 
Ken Giangiordano of Riverside, New Jersey, also believes he has spotted a clue: “I noticed a bunch of wedding related cartoons in the June issue—is that a sign that Hef is going to do it? If Holly becomes Holly Madison Hefner, at least Hef (HMH) won't need to buy new monogrammed towels.”

Who do you think will be this season's break through player? 

It's kind of a toss up as to who I think will be this year’s break through player. I really like San Diego's safety, Eric Weddle #32. I think he came out of the gate looking great and many people are expecting him to have a great first year.

However, I think all eyes are going to be on Minnesota’s running back, Adrian Peterson, # 28. I think that after his performance in his first career game, the first 6 teams that passed on him on this year’s draft kicked themselves in the butt. Peterson has had a great three games and although the team lost in their 3rd season game against Kansas City, He still rushed for 102 yards and managed to catch three passes for 48 yards! Not to mention his 11 yard run scoring them their only touchdown. Unfortunately for Minnesota they are still 1-2...  I think as long as he stays healthy this kid definitely has break through written all over him!

And record breaking players are always fun to watch!!! Look at L.T.! People are just dying to know what the next record he will break will be. The guy is amazing! Unreal! I know this season has started rough for him, but considering San Diego has an entirely new coaching staff let's give him some time boys, the season has just begun...But don't take too long L.T. Randy Moss might prove me wrong!! So if I confused anyone... As far as a rookie break through performance keep your eyes on Adrian Peterson. As far as a seasoned player... L.T. duh!!

xoxo ~ Pilar

Brad Pitt’s new film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford opens this weekend. The film was based on a novel by the same name by Ron Hansen, who, as it happens, is a friend of Playboy’s Literary Editor Amy Grace Loyd. Ron (pictured here) visited our offices, and after dispensing with some useful gossip about the premiere ("The premiere was a kick, and Brad was as gracious and generous as ever, remembering an inscription I put in a gift first edition to him as if it were an Oscar. [Co-star] Casey [Affleck] also: just an unassuming, talented, solid guy.  I couldn't be happier for the good things coming their way"), he answered some questions about his title character:
 
Playboy: Jesse James is not exactly a neglected character in the American canon. What drew you to write about him, and how does your  interpretation differ from others?
RH: Books and movies about Jesse's bank and train robberies have been fairly faithful to the  events, but no one had yet given Robert Ford, his assassin, his full due. The shooting that occurred on April 3, 1882 was preceded by a complex series of incidents and governmental scheming that forced Bob Ford's hand, but earlier films usually presented him as a just a weasel and traitor out for quick cash, whereas I saw the dance of death that Bob and Jesse were in as a kind of Shakespearean tragedy, with the primary fault in each man being, as always, pride.   

Playboy: One of the things that's been reported about the film is the way people speak—using a 19th century vernacular that will seem very different to our ears. Is that a legacy of your novel? Can you give some examples of how the language differed?
RH: All the language in the film is lifted directly from the novel and is based on my close reading of the newspapers of the era. I took great care to avoid anachronisms by hunting up words in dictionaries of slang to find out when they first came into common use. But, again, my model was Shakespeare, and I didn't hesitate to make my characters somewhat more poetic than they probably were in real life.

Playboy: James was admired and even beloved among pro-Confederacy Missourians, and surely their devotion (and his premature death) helped bestow upon him mythic status. But did he enjoy it throughout the nation, notably the pro-union parts of the country?
RH: No, the state of Missouri was held in contempt because of its inability to stop the James-Younger gang, and Governor Thomas Crittenden was elected there based on a campaign to finally corral them. And yet,  too, there were nickel books by writers who'd never been west of Ohio who used the James brothers as protagonists in wild adventures—a form of fabrication we see in supermarket tabloids today. Eventually, Jesse's murder by Bob, his supposed friend, came to be viewed as a kind of martyrdom for the Confederacy and an example of the pernicious effects of government and the law. And Jesse became a hero for all those who feel hemmed in or put down by society.

Playboy: I find it interesting that Americans don't think of James as a terrorist, although clearly he was. But of course, America has had a lot of terrorists that we don't think of that way—John Brown, the Sons of Liberty (terrorists lite), many more. We still think of James as a more glamorous figure—an outlaw, a misunderstood misfit. I'm often mystified when people wonder who would hide the terrible killer Osama bin Laden, because I think of all the sympathizers who hid the James gang and provided succor and turned them into mythic figures. Why do we have trouble recognizing James as a terrorist?  
RH: Because the James-Younger gang had its origins in the  post-Civil War Reconstruction era, attitudes to the gang were largely governed by political feelings about the War between the States. This was the period, too, of the last frontier and westward expansion when lawlessness of all kinds was often ignored or tolerated. For some these outlaws were terrorists, and they approved of their methods of evening the score against northern industry, banks, and the railroads; and for some they were entertainers akin to the more outrageous rock and hip-hop stars today: seemingly fictional protagonists who were living out the fantasies of the stay-at-homes.     
Playboy: How is it that Frank James and the Youngers who survived Northfield were not executed? Did not some of them eventually leave prison and lead quiet lives? Do you think Jesse could ever have escaped to a place wher he could have lived a quiet life?
RH: I have no idea what determined the fate of those captured in Minnesota, but I know that Frank James was celebrated and honored after he surrendered to Missouri's governor a few months following Jesse's  death, and was eventually acquitted in a court of law because the evidence against him was so circumstantial. Frank finally did live a very quiet life, selling shoes, hitting the lecture circuit with Cole Younger, acting as a  commissioner of a horse racing track, and giving 25-cent tours of the James farm in Kearney. He died in 1915, aged 72. It's plausible Jesse could have had a similar outcome, but it's more likely the excesses of his personality would have gotten in the way. I  think Jesse too much liked the adrenaline rush of living on the edge.   
 
Playboy: I'm sure I will like the new movie, but I loved The Long Riders. What did you think of Walter Hill's film?
RH: Hill does a good job of summing up the decade when the James-Younger gang was operating, and I liked the cinematic quotations from some of the James films that preceded his. The casting of brothers to play brothers was an intriguing choice and the soundtrack is superb. Beautiful horses, too. A very fine film.  I also think Philip Kaufman's The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is terrific, and particularly liked Robert  Duvall's manic Jesse James.  Interestingly, Henry Fonda played Frank James in two of his own early films, as Johnny Cash did in the 80s, but generally Frank is given short shrift in the movies, probably because the relatively quiet final years of his life are not as compelling as a flamboyant, melodramatic, outrageous death by betrayal.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review recently asked me “Has the pickup line changed? Is it even relevant anymore? Are there new rules?”

Personally I don’t believe I have ever used one or seen a guy successfully use one. Here's what they printed from our interview:

Some guys use groaners like "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" by pretending that they realize the ridiculousness of the line. You're not fooling anyone, says Rocky Rakovic, an editor for Playboy magazine.

"The only thing lamer than using a pickup line is pretending to use one ironically. You can forgive a man who tries them because he has no natural tact, but when a man recognizes that cheesy sexual quips fail and attempts to deliver them in a tongue-in-cheek manner,that makes him an absolute loser. The best pickup line has been and always will be 'Hi,' — unless, of course, she is French, in which case try 'bonjour.'"

Worse than pickup lines, I feel, is when people ask me what my zodiac sign I am. Why? It means the person is going to prejudge me based on something as random as what month I was born. I’ll get "Oh, that means you are impulsive and selfish." While that may be true at least get to know me first.

(Art above from one of my favorite web comics Natalie Dee.)

Our intern Nicole DeLuca knows something about art history—emphasis on the history.

We’ve all done regrettable things that we hope won't permanently affect us. I’ve had friends who, on spring break, woke up the next morning with tramp stamps. While some unlucky friends woke up with worse, those with tattoos no longer have to live with the evidence.
 
The American Academy of Dermatology reports that new there is a state-of-the-art laser that targets the pigment in a tattoo. "It goes through the skin without damaging it and hits the pigment depending on which wavelength and which color you have, and it blows it into small pieces."
 
Patients with bigger tattoos have the option to receive anesthetic, and the likeliness of scarring is minimal. The cost varies depending on the doctor and how big the tattoo is, but to some people, having years of regret vanish has no price. Justin Timberlake and 50 cent may be tired of technology, but I’m not. It’s time to rethink that dodgy Chinese symbol that probably means something raunchy instead of “faith” or a tribal band that was semi-cool in 1997.  

In Cruising, Al Pacino plays an undercover cop who must delve into New York’s gay leather bar subculture to solve a case of serial killings. Directed by William Friedkin, the film sparked protest and all that when it was released in 1980. For details, here’s a piece from Slate.

Warner Home Video has just released Cruising on DVD, we gave it a watch—and we must admit, we can’t see what the fuss was all about. The film does not strike us as remotely anti-gay, nor does it judge harshly the specific subculture it depicts. Not long ago, we lived on Christopher Street in the West Village, and saw a thing or two that suggests, 20 years and an AIDS epidemic later, that scene hasn’t left us. But anecdotal evidence aside, our grasp of gay culture and subcultures is far from authoritative, so we’ll just say that the film’s settings and characterizations seemed plausible to us.

Debating political correctness, pondering whether a group is being defamed and should take offense at a piece of art, is boring anyway. The First Amendment is our Lord’s Prayer, and we don’t have a lot of time for people who’d suppress art simply because they don’t like it. What about the art? Is Cruising a good movie? Is it worth seeing? As gritty cop dramas go, it’s middle-of-the-road. From the writing to the acting, Cruising certainly can’t hold a candle to Pacino’s other undercover movie, Serpico. Detective Frank Serpico was hypnotic presence, a maverick; Detective Steve Burns is more of a blank slate, simply a good cop asked to take a strange assignment. We never learn a lot about Burns, all we know is that he is Not Gay and he’s pretending to be Gay, and that’s, you know, weird. The plot and detective work are by-the-book as well, and at times it feels like an episode of Columbo wearing assless chaps. But there’s the rub—those assless chaps. Cruising is fine spectacle and entertainment despite its dramatic shortcomings. For Christ’s sake, it’s Michael Corleone dancing with men, tied up naked, menaced by a giant black dude wearing a jockstrap and a cowboy hat—how could we not watch?

The images are what makes the film, not the dialogue. It might be a testament to Friedkin’s discretion that we never see Burns’s fellow officers ribbing him for “getting to the bottom of the case,” no “Hey boys, here comes Burns, watch your nightsticks” frat-guy talk. After taking part in an overly rough interrogation, Burns tries to tell his boss (Paul Sorvino) he wants out. For a tough city cop, Captain Edelson’s take on the nature of homosexuality is so paternal and sensitive (and sanitized—more Columbo than assless chaps) that we couldn’t help but crack a grin:

DET. STEVE BURNS (Pacino): I didn’t come on this job to shitcan some guy just because he’s gay.

CAPT. EDELSON (Sorvino): You’re gonna come into days where you have to collar a dozen guys like that. Scared, weird little guys who don’t know why they have to do what they do. It isn’t their fault, it isn’t your fault, it’s the job.

BURNS: I can’t do the job. I don’t think I can do the job, captain. I don’t think I can handle it. That’s all. I don’t know, it’s just … things happenin’ to me, you know? I don’t know that I can handle it. I want you to know that it’s not because I’m afraid or anything. There’s just stuff going down and I don’t think I can deal with it.

EDELSON: I need you. You’re my partner and you can’t let me down. We’re up to our ass in this, and I’m counting on you.