Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 44

Sunday, Feb. 17, 1980 Santa Cruz Sentinel-45 Johnny Carson Applies For A Gaming License LAS VEGAS. Nev. (AP) Entertainer Johnny Carson has submitted an application for a Nevada gaming license to state officials in conjunction with a New York company's effort to buv the Aladdin Hotel. Carson, who will share in the management of the resort if his application and that of National Kinney Corp.

are approved, had the papers filed Friday by a Las Vegas law firm. Carson and former Del Webb Corp. executive Ed Nigro and teaming up with National Kinney to buy the resort tor $105 million. The hotel will be renamed "Johnny Carson's Aladdin" if gaming officials license the prospective owners. Under the agreement with National Kinney.

Carson and Nigro will each receive 500,000 shares of the company 's stock and Carson will perform exclusively at the Strip resort National Kinney filed its application for licensing with the state more than a week ago, but Carson's attorney Henry Bushkin said the comedian's application was delayed to go over it more closely. 475-9930 We're located at 215 Esplanade in Capitola "On the LUNCHES Every Day 11:30 to 3:00 SUNDAY BRUNCH MONDAY NIGHT IS SENIORS' NIGHT a.m. to 2:00 m. 8 SENIORS ENJOY Classified Just Dial 426-8000- DINNER -W A WfcW FOR ONLY SUNDAY SHOWTiMES ffTglgftteiigl "MOON" JlIftlfel KIM 5:05 9 05 MONDAY SHOWTIMES WCriSL "MC3M" tfflw "KIDS" 9:05 ONLY (PG) ENDS TUESDAY I Hi 111 $2.99 Al Pacino (center) plays detective Steve Burns in William Friedkin's "Cruising." CONTROVERSIAUCRUISING' Painting The Screen With Blood WITH KING'S TABLE DINERS CLUB CARD sibilities for drama and sus- DINNER IIOl'RS: 4 30 to 8 00 Kri. Sut.

4 30 to 9:00. Sun. 11:00 to 8 00 lDti 41st. Ave. iNrti 47S-4043 lable MS pense in the script.

There is a certain amount of craft apparent in both Pacino's portrayal and Friedkin's con-tribution to this film but neither go far enough to undo the creepiness inherent in the entire undertaking. By RICK CHATENEVER Sentinel Staff Writer As you may have noticed, there seems to be, uh, a difference of opinion about "Cruising," William Friedkin's brutal new film starring Al Pacino which opened Friday at the 41st Avenue Playhouse. Film RevieW fTTtVTli noru nmiv X-RATED vrui vNiki a AT 10 A.M. PLUS "What happens when kids grow up and parents don't" recorded with almost X-rated explicitness. There is no question that the film takes an exploitative approach to this bizarre, brutal and frightening subculture.

Camera angles and the film's editing all operate on the basis of teasing the viewer, whether they are illustrating sex or murder. Pacino, doing a sort of "son of Serpico" routine, plays a green cop who is assigned to penetrate this world in his search for the murderer. "Cruising's" "statement" revolves around his own disintegration as he is drawn further and further into this realm. The film uses his heter-osexuality as a gauge of this decline. Pacino's involvement with his lover (Karen Allen) evolves through levels ot v.

lence until he is unable to relate to her at all. Similarly, he even attempts to get off the case when he realizes the effect it is having on him but by then, it is too late. By the film's end, the roles of pursuer and pursued have been reversed, with the film's sickness seeming to pervade everything it has touched. While Friedkin's professional "interest" in this subject matter is suspect to begin with, the fact that the film opts for exploiting rather than understanding this milieu adds to its overall feeling of sordidness. The filmmaking precision so apparent in "The Exorcist" is lacking this time around, so that "Cruising" doesn't even fully take advantage of the pos- mh fa 7 Uil ft 2019 NOFIC Ml sc.

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7i dp! if III ft I 1 1 1 re One side of the argument represented Friday night by more than 200 demonstrators picketing the theater says that the film should not be shown, and if it is shown, it should be boycotted. According to spokespeople for the Coalition for Fair Images of Lesbians and Gay Men in the Media, the film perpetrates a new stereotype of homosexuals, which, they charge, encourages violence against the gay community. The other side spurred on by a media blitz (including saturation television commercials during coverage of the Olympics, and "hard news" coverage of the. demonstrations taking place across the country in response to the film) has crowds turning up at the box office, just to see what all the fuss is about. One of the ironies about all this is that the demonstrations are probably working in reverse, generating curiosity about a film that otherwise would die a quick and deserved death, merely on the basis of word of mouth.

After all, how large do you suppose the audience really is for a film about an undercover cop (Pacino) who immerses himself in the seamy, nauseating underworld of New York's "sado-masochistic gay leather scene" in pursuit of a maniacal murderer who preys on members of this milieu? But the demonstrations are taking what is basically a compulsive study of a sick subject, and elevating it to the stature of a First Amendment test case. The film's producer Jerry Weintraub has shrewdly observed that making the film a "national hard news" story" takes care of a lot of his marketing problems for him. Controversy is titillating. Titration is good for business. By itself "Cruising" is a troubled, troubling, unsuccessfully realized vision of degredation.

Friedkin has focused on the "sadomasochistic gay leather scene" a subculture so brutally bizarre that it is its repulsive-ness should be obvious to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. The plot is standard murder mystery stuff, transplanted into this grim and grimy setting. A sadistic murderer preys on leather bar habitues, luring them into isolated settings under sexual pretexts, before he murders them. The murders themselves are sensationalized and graphic, painting the screen with blood. Indeed, the film's gratuitous violence and its sordid mood of exploitation are so abhorent by themselves, that polarizing the protest around the issue of homosexuality only serves to distract from what's really wrong with "Cruising." For director Friedkin whose previous credits include "The Boys In The Band," "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist" the gay leather scene is both "fascinating and exciting." Frame after frame are filled with images from this world, as the weirdly dressed, or undressed, "regulars" engage in sexual acts A- 9TH IVEEKl WINNER MUTRO-GOLDW YN-MAYER Presents RITTER ANNE ARCHER in "HERO AT LARGE" rzr-t I C-rilJ'WW JOHN 4 Ytfl 2 A SIPHEN FRIEDMANKINGS R0AD PRODUCTION ()VrL3 Marring btKI UUNVY RIVIFI WCUAKmi 1.a?-VI?-1- Associate Producer ROGER M.

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CONTINUOUS MATINEES MONDAY! JLAST MARRIED Cf UPLE GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS DUSTIN HOFFMAN Kramer Kramer Richard Benjamin Valerie Harper and Dom DeLuise Jr vr IJ-5S A UNIVERSAL PICTURE flM MIDNIGHT MADNESS nKwmiiAi irifTAii nrnnn rnnir rrl If- BRAD WILKIN, MAGGIE ROSWELL STEPHEN FURST, DAVID WECHTER MICHAEL NANKIN MILLER wntni ra ro a DAVID WECHTER MICHAEL NANKIN 1 II, IMII TodayMon. 3 Tue. XL FRI SATSUNM0N.