7/10
Al Pacino starred in a movie in 1980 called Cruising, about a cop going under cover in New York's gay and S&M scene. Roughly 40 minutes had to be cut out of the movie for it to get the MPAA's approval, and those 40 minutes have purportedly been lost forever. James Franco and Travis Mathews set out to "reimagine" what that footage would have been. Interior. Leather Bar. is not that footage, however, but a documentary about filming that footage - so most of it centers on the casting process and how the participants (straight and gay alike) feel about essentially shooting gay S&M porn, focusing in particular on the straight actor playing Al Pacino's part, Val Lauren.
The question raised almost immediately is if this is an authentic documentary or not - everything seems a little too perfect, with Lauren's vague homophobia being the perfect foil for Franco to come in, deliver some "we are the world" speech, and see the light. It's also incredibly self-reflective - in one scene we see Lauren, sitting alone in a parking lot against a brick wall, reading aloud from the script for "Interior. Leather Bar." which describes how the Pacino character is reading the script alone in a parking lot against a brick wall. At another point we hear a voice "directing" a conversation between actors that initially appeared to be just a casual conversation.
What blunts the film is its hour-long running time. Rumor has it Franco's schedule only allowed 2 days for shooting, so this is what we get, rather than a complete film. There are interesting questions posed and the film is shot in a nifty way, but it's hard not to feel like it's only half-baked.
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