The first time I saw William Friedkin’s 1980 gay crime thriller “Cruising” may have been decades ago, but I will never forget how surprised I was that a movie like that was made in the 1970s.
“Cruising” stars Al Pacino as a straight New York City police officer who goes undercover in the gay leather community to try and find a serial killer who picks up men in bars before murdering them.
A film centered on and graphically depicting the gay leather community – or any part of the LGBTQ community for that matter — was unheard of during this time.
I’d later learn that “Cruising” received immediate backlash from gay rights activists when the script was leaked to and reported on by Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell. Activists argued that the movie was exploitative and unfairly depicted the gay community as oversexed, depraved and violent. While filming on the streets of New York in 1979, protestors continually disrupted production. When “Cruising” was released, it was a critical and box office failure.
“Cruising” was inspired by a series of murders in New York City in the 1970s. At the time, law enforcement officials believed there may have been a serial killer targeting gay men when body parts of six unidentified men and clothing linked to a local leather shop were discovered wrapped in trash bags in the Hudson River.
Then, in 1977, longtime Variety film reporter Addison Verrill was viciously murdered by Paul Bateson after Verrill picked him up at a Greenwich Village bar.
Bateson was convicted of Verrill’s murder in 1979 and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison before being released on parole in 2003. While some believed Bateson, who died in 2012, was also the suspected serial killer, the theory was never proven and those cases remained unsolved to this day.
Friedkin knew Bateson because he had a bit part in “The Exorcist” playing a technician performing an angiography on Regan (Linda Blair). The director cast Bateson after observing him at his job as a radiologist at New York University Medical Center when he was researching the horror movie.
Friedkin would go on to say that Verrill’s murder became a main inspiration for “Cruising” after he visited Bateson in prison.
What I never knew until recently was that Verrill was not only a Variety reporter, but that he was also a close friend of my late Uncle Arthur.
Two months ago, I reconnected with Arthur’s ex-wife, Susan, his high school sweetheart whom he was married to in the early ‘70s. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Susan in 35 years since Arthur’s funeral. After the two divorced, my uncle came out as gay. He died in 1991 of AIDS.
While recalling some of their friends, Susan mentioned that two of their closest were Verrill and Bob Geary, who Arthur met when they were undergrads at Stony Brook University.
“Addison was murdered,” Susan said. “It was horrible.”
And then she asked me, “Do you know about the serial killer who was killing gay men in the 1970s?”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s what the movie ‘Cruising’ was about.”
Susan told me that Verrill may have been one of his victims.
It was then that I remembered hearing that Jeffrey Schwarz, the director behind queer-centered documentaries about Divine and Tab Hunter, was working on a film about the making of “Cruising.”
Turns out that Schwarz’s “Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders” is having its world premiere at this year’s Tribeca Festival. I immediately got in touch with Schwarz and told him about my family connection to Verrill. When I mentioned Bob, Schwarz said that he was one of the main interview subjects in the doc.
Andrew Epstein
The film — “Mineshaft” refers to the popular leather bar of the same name in New York City in the ’70s — isn’t just about “Cruising.” It also chronicle’s Verrill’s life and untimely death.
I was not only stunned, but also saddened when I watched “Mineshaft.” I wish it hadn’t taken so long for me to learn about Addison and Bob. But my late mom and her sister didn’t talk much about the past because they had their own traumas. Not only did Arthur die of AIDS, but they also lost their other brother, David, to the disease in 1989.
“You and I are looking for those stories from the past, and that’s why I do what I do,” Schwarz tells me over Zoom. “I’m looking for those stories and trying to find gay love stories. I did a film [2021’s ‘Boulevard! A Hollywood Story’] about a gay couple who were involved with Gloria Swanson to make a musical out of ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ It was like, ‘Wow, a gay love story from the ’50s that’s never been told. Let’s do it.’ This film follows in those footsteps of trying to find these queer stories from the past. I feel a certain responsibility to get these stories out into the world.”
How did your film come about?
I was 11 years old and growing up in Queens, New York when “Cruising” came out in 1980. Manhattan was not that far away, but for me it might as well have been another planet. I had no concept of my own sexuality or being gay at the time, but I very much remember “Cruising” being released. I remember the TV commercials, the poster, the radio ads. I remember seeing Siskel and Ebert’s review of it on “Sneak Previews.” I remember watching local newscasters reporting on the “Cruising” protests. Much later when I was coming out, I was reading Vito Russo’s “The Celluloid Closet.” I went about trying to watch every single movie Vito talked about. “Cruising” was high on the list. I was riveted by the movie. I found it fascinating, scary, sexually charged and very provocative with a lot of mixed messages. I could completely see where the protesters were coming from, but at the same time, it was a side of gay life that had never been depicted on film before. So about 10 years ago I got the idea to embark on making a documentary. I thought at the beginning it was really going to focus on the nuts and bolts of the making of “Cruising,” the protests and how it’s been rediscovered as a cult classic. While I knew the movie was inspired by real murders, when I started digging into it, I began learning more and more about Addison.
You found Bob and Addison’s sister Pamela, but was it hard to convince them to talk to you? I imagine this was something they may not have wanted to revisit.
When I first started talking to Pamela, there was a lot of caution on her part. She didn’t know me. It took some time of me sharing my work with her and talking her through what my intentions were going to be. I think she ultimately decided to participate to reclaim Addison’s story. In the film, we see her love for her brother, and also the disappointment that she didn’t get to understand his gay life. When he died, she didn’t know anything about the gay world. But when she came to New York to settle his estate, she was embraced by his friend group, all these gay men who loved Addison. She learned so much about him that she didn’t know.
When did you talk to Bob?
I would ask Pam if she remembered the names of any of Addison’s friends who I could maybe talk to. She said, “Well, there was this guy, Bob, and I think he was his roommate at one point.” All I had to go on was “Bob” and “roommate.” Bob turned out to be Robert Geary. But he wasn’t just a roommate. He was his lover for several years. Bob did not want to talk to me at all. Addison’s murder was one of the most traumatic things to ever happen to him. But eventually, similar to Pam, he decided to do it to restore some dignity to Addison.
Do you believe Paul was the serial killer?
Those six bodies were never even identified. I don’t think this was investigated very thoroughly by the cops. It was just a bunch of gay guys that got killed, so it was like, “Who cares?” The assistant DA brought up a possibility that Paul could have been responsible for some other murders because apparently Paul was bragging to a friend that he’d committed other murders. There’s no evidence that Paul is responsible for any other murders. Personally, I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think that Paul was a serial killer.
To think “Mineshaft” will premiere at Tribeca, probably walking distance from Addison’s apartment and all those gay leather bars from the ‘70s…
You could walk from the theater where we’re playing in to Julius’, where Addison met Bob. You can walk to the Meatpacking District where the Mineshaft was on Washington Street. Part of why I love “Cruising” is that you get to see a lot of those streets. Telling Addison’s story was a way to explore what was available to gay men then. But also when you look at the film now, it’s painful to watch because you know it was filmed in the summer of 1979 and the first cases of HIV were reported in ‘81. We know for a fact that a lot of guys who had the virus had it for years before any symptoms would appear. If you look at the bar scenes in “Cruising,” you have to wonder how many of those guys would be alive a year or two or five years later because Friedkin cast real men in the leather scene and porn stars as extras. Friedkin very consciously cast it with gay porn stars. The guy in the first murder scene in the beginning of movie who is tied up in the bed and gets stabbed in the back, he was a very well-known porn star called Malo. He ended up staying friends with Pacino. He’s the bodyguard in “Scarface” that gets chainsawed in the bathroom.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. “Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders” premieres at Tribeca Festival on June 6.
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