Interior. Leather Bar.

I, too, was expecting something else, but although this is weird, choppy, and appears to have no point on the surface; I like how Franco (please just come out already) casts the point-of-view from the perspective of the straight guy who is new to all this and just got dragged into it and so on. Franco's point (to him, and to the viewer) is just because something (in this case, gay sex) is not only outside your experience, but something you have been programmed to hate, does not necessarily make it so for the people involved, hence the loving gay couple. Basically I got to see it for free on Netflix, an hour of time I could have spent watching the violence he is railing about. I don't mind the hour, would recommend it to somebody who's seen a million movies and willing to try something different. And if you're a little pervy there isn't much, but there is some nice flesh on display here. (check that one butt shot) lol

This film promotes itself suggesting it re-imagines the 40 minutes excised from the movie "Crusing". It is actually a contrived and boring "behind the scenes" making of 10 re-imagined minutes from the original movie and, as shown, I highly doubt they are what Friedkin would have actually filmed.

The re-shot "Crusing" minutes are provocative and very sexually explicit, but they don't make up for the other 50 minutes where we watch the straight actor in the Al Pachino role trying to come to terms with taking on a gay-themed role.

I thought the 60 minutes of this movie would never end.

This film is the behind the scenes of re-imagining and reproducing the unseen footage of a film called "Crusing".

I am disappointed and I feel cheated after watching "Interior. Leather Bar.". The description says that it is the re-imagination of the lost 40 minutes of footage, too explicit to be shown in the cinema. However, it really is just a behind the scenes documentary of why James Franco wanted to make this film, then getting the actors to play it, then briefing the actors, the actors mingling, actors telling what they feel about making the film. That takes 50 minutes of the screen time already, and there is only 7 minutes of re-imagined scene in a leather bar. "Interior. Leather Bar." is marketed in such a misleading way, it's actually all sauce and no beef.

Maybe James Franco was a little ahead of his time with this? He does make a point towards the end that illustrates the pointed refusal of mainstream American cinema to show scenes of active gay sex. People can merrily blow each other to bits, heterosexuals and lesbians can fill their boots - but man on man penetrative sex without recourse to endless shadows or subtly placed duvets is as rare as hen's teeth. That may have been his laudably ultimate point here, but the remainder of this rather dull documentary pits together a bunch of largely straight actors, clad (or not) in skimpy leathers and plunged into darkness for a sex-room style series of supposedly random sexual encounters - one or two of them briefly graphic and another quite painful! Anyone expecting the missing forty minutes from "Cruising" (1980) to be presented is in for quite a disappointment. The vast majority of this consists of talking heads between the Z-list "talent" recruited who are struggling to intellectualise the fact that they are just required to get naked and fumble with another bloke. It's called acting, boys - it's not Shakespeare! Good on James for asking some questions, but most of this is just like porn in general - it's much more fun to take part the to watch.

I love reconstructions, forensic investigations and film mysteries, so I was really looking forward to this. Alas this film lost me about five minutes in, when Mathews casually declares they haven't got the money or the time (nor, I imagine, the discipline or the ability) to reconstruct the missing footage, so they are going to do a bit what they want. Ah, great -- not. It goes downhill from there, pretty much. In reality it isn't even a re-imagination: it's more like a making-of of itself. A big theme is the squeamishness of the straight actors, which is so very 2005. Perhaps at the time it was still a big deal for a straight guy to play gay, I am not sure. In any case, this is pretentious, meaningless rubbish.