James Franco Goes Gay Again With 'Gay Sex Art' Cruising Film

James Franco is no stranger to playing gay roles: he's starred in "Howl" as iconic beat poet Allen Ginsberg and as Harvey Milk's lover Scott Smith in "Milk." He also plays gay poet Hart Crane in the yet unreleased "The Broken Tower," a film Franco wrote, directed and stars in.

Franco has taken his gay-centricities a littler further with his new "gay sex art" film inspirited by the 1980s film "Cruising," directed by William Friedkin and starred Al Pacino who plays a cop searching for a serial killer in New York's gay S&M scene, Perez Hilton reported.

According to E!, "James Franco's Cruising" "focuses on 40 minutes of sexually graphic footage that Friedkin had to cut in order to secure an R rating."

"He knew he wanted real gay sex in it. His people went looking for a filmmaker who had filmed real gay sex, and I suspect someone who would complement his vision," Travis Matthews, the director, said. "We talked about why we would be interested in still looking at this film."

Matthews says the 40 minutes cut out of the original film are gone.

"Recently, when [Friedkin] was getting ready to do an anniversary edition, Warner Bros. told him that the footage was destroyed," he said. "It's possible those 40 minutes implicate Pacino's character in the gay S&M culture. That was the place we started from as a launching point: James Franco's version of those lost 40 minutes."

A still from the film has surfaced and shows Franco covered in sweat and wearing a tank top while dancing with another man in a leather harness. Shirtless men and another dude in a jockstrap stand behind the movie star.

Unfortunately for many of us, Franco will not appear nude in the project, Matthew claims.

"That will not be happening," he said. "It's an art film. He makes a lot of art films. He makes a lot of big studio films. This is one of his art films."

A portion of the movie will debut during New York's Fashion Week before the full-length film makes the rounds in film festivals next year.

Matthews also adds Franco is making the film because he could not get the rights to recreate "Crusing."