Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders
+ Welcome To The Tool Shed

The release of William Friedkin's controversial 1980 thriller Cruising sparked outrage within the LGBTQ+ community, with activists fearing the film's depiction of gay men would fuel homophobia and violence. Decades later, Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders revisits the film's complex legacy while uncovering the shocking true crime that inspired it—the brutal 1977 murder of journalist Addison Verrill. Through archival footage and interviews with activists, historians, filmmakers, and members of New York's leather community, director Jeffrey Schwarz explores the intersection of queer history, protest, censorship, and cinema, offering a nuanced portrait of a pivotal and often misunderstood moment in LGBTQ+ cultural history.

PRECEDED BY SHORT FILM:
Welcome To The Tool Shed
Daniel Talbott, Andrew Klaus-Vineyard, 22 mins, English, USA, 2026
The documentary takes an in depth, searing dive into the colorful community of queer senior citizens who congregate at the Tool Shed, a long-standing gay bar and sanctuary for queer people in Palm Springs, CA. Many of its denizens are the oldest survivors of the AIDS epidemic. This film talks about the warrior mentality and spirit, the fortitude and the humor, and the queer community’s emphasis on chosen family that has seen them through centuries of hate, discrimination, and persecution. The Tool Shed provides an oasis in the dessert for leather loving, sex-positive seniors and their admirers. The film examines the generation who never expected to become senior citizens in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and decades of oppression, who now find themselves trailblazers again as the first openly LGBTQ seniors.