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Let's talk about the re-release of the film, and that fact that it's going to come out on DVD for the first time. I wonder what your opinion is on the culture of home entertainment that movies have become. In one way it's great that films are widely accessible, but also there's the worry that it's changing the way films are made for the worse. Is cinema still cinema?

WF: Not the way it was. I mean, I don't want to say this in a way that can be construed as sour grapes, but there are no giants at work in cinema today, or for any long period of time. Perhaps that will develop. But there are no Antonionis, no Fellinis, no Bergmans, no Truffauts, the guys who brought modern cinema into the category of art. That's not happening today. Most of the popular films are remakes or sequels or teen-oriented comedies. But the people who work at these DVD divisions of major studios are big film buffs. Most of them are guys who were stuck in the 1970s and developed a great love for the history of film, both American and international. They represent the true cinematheque. That's the real American cinematheque; the guys who run the DVD companies that bring back classic films, some of which had very small footprints in their day but were remembered as classics and would have no other way to be seen by subsequent generations were it not for DVD technology.

And I don't mean VHS, because while the VHS did bring back a lot of great classic films, they didn't look good. The process wasn't that great; it's more of a recording device than a restoration device. But DVDs also involve restoration. In a way its similar to how the great painting around the world look better than they ever did since they were first painted -- because time takes its toll even on a Rembrandt or a Vermeer -- and a restorative painter has to be someone not only of genuine talent by him or herself, but someone who can appreciate what the original artist intended. So the way we make these DVDs now is better and with more t.l.c. than they ever received as prints.




The DVD is basically a flawless process. I see these films on DVD that I first saw in theaters that look better than they ever looked in the theaters. You run a 35mm print through a projector and it picks up scratches immediately. On each subsequent run, there are more scratches, and tears, and re-splicings. I saw four films by Antonioni recently on DVD, and I remember them very well because I saw them over and over again in theaters, and the DVD is much better. It's a fantastic way to see films. The print of Cruising for theaters is also done with digital remastering. We don't have a 35mm print anymore. It doesn't exist. The negative was so screwed up and the sound was out of sync. The guy who worked on it with me to restore it told me that the only negative he's seen that was worse than Cruising was the negative for The Godfather. He said it was allowed to completely deteriorate. Because it was shot so dark, and 35mm fades after a while, that when a scene is dark it tends to go mushy as it deteriorates; the delineation between light and dark disappears and you have mush.

Do you think there's a danger in almost -- how to phrase this? -- in Hollywood embalming itself in the DVD process; in enshrining its old classics and not concentrating on creating new classics?

WF: Well, if you feel that exhibition is "embalming." I don't. Do you feel that the paintings of Van Gogh are "embalmed" in museums? No. They're there to be seen by subsequent generations. The first performance of Hamlet, which I think was in about 1601, with Richard Burbage playing Hamlet, if they had no other way to distribute that play it would have been seen then and then only. But along came the printing press, and the publication of Shakespeare's plays, the first folio, which during his time did not exist. People couldn't read Shakespeare's plays when they were performed unless they were acting in them. And even in that time, the plays were changing from performance to performance and the actors were saying, "Wouldn't it be better if I did this, or said this?"

Shakespeare's plays were reconstructed by two guys named Heminge and Condell, who went around to the surviving actors of the Globe Theatre and asked them, "What did you say? What were your lines?" And these guys recalled their lines. That's why there's a lot of controversy about the authenticity of Shakespeare's plays. At the very first performance of Hamlet-- which was done to an audience at the Globe Theatre in Stratford where they had no chairs-- they had to stand for four hours, and eat, and they used to talk back to the actors. When Richard Burbage played the death scene in Hamlet the audience screamed out, "Die again, Burbage! Die again!" He played the death scene three times at the first performance. Then they reproduced Shakespeare's plays. Is that embalming them? No. It gave them a new life for subsequent generations. Each generation interprets these plays in their own way. Each generation will interpret Cruising in their own way, based on the mores that exist, and the progress that the gay community has made since then. This was a very provocative issue when it came out because gays were just emerging from the closet. There is no closet now, really. I mean, yes, there are people who don't wish to announce their proclivities, but they don't have to [stay silent], as people did then. At that time if you said you were gay you might get fired. If you were a movie star and it came out that you were gay and you were an action hero or a romantic lead, your career was over.