Cruising the Movies

Cruising the Movies is Boyd McDonald's "sexual guide" to televised cinema, originaly published by the Gay Presses of New York in 1985. The capstone of McDonald's prolific turn as a freelance film columnist for the magazine Christopher Street, Cruising the Movies collects the author's movie reviews from 1983 to 1987. This expanded edition also includes previously uncollected articles and a new introduction by William E. Jones. Better known as the editor of Straight to Hell--a compendia of real-life sexual stories that are part pornography, part ethnography--McDonald in his film writing reveals both his studious and sardonic sides. Many of the texts in Cruising the Movies were inspired by McDonald's attentive inspection of the now-shuttered MoMA Film Stills Archive, and his columns gloriously capture a bygone era in film fandom. Eschewing new theatrical releases for the "oldies" once common as cheap programming on independent television stations, and writing against the bleak backdrop of Reagan-era America, McDonald never ceases to find subversive, arousing delights in teh comically chaste aesthetics imposed by the censorious Motion Picture Production Code of 1930. With lancing wit, Cruising celebrates gay subculture's profound embrace of mass culture, seeing film for what it is--a screen that reflects our fantasies, desires, and dreams--back cover.