Shooting Porn and Beefcake

A few days ago I rented Beefcake. Or thought I did. At home I found I’d been given Shooting Porn. Since I’d thought about watching the latter I wasn’t upset.

Shooting Porn is a documentary on the gay porn biz. Mostly it is clips from interviews with gay porn stars and directors. Unless you are very naïve, the film is empty of surprises. There’s lots of boring prep: shaving your ass, shaving your cock so it’ll look bigger (although the people who used to IM me wanted me to shave their cock as a form of humiliation). The bottoms having to give themselves enemas so the top’s cock won’t show any shit.

I’ve never watched more than a few minutes of a gay porn movie. Without being able to predict the details I knew the quotidian matters would be pedestrian. No surprise that first timers have problems summoning up that all-important erection.

Most interestingly from a director working for what was uselessly described as a ‘big company’ was learning that when he was working for them he couldn’t allow his actors to say things like “Suck that cock,” slap an ass or use Baby Jesus’ name in vain. Gay porn without force or irreligion. Top or bottom, the inability to speak forcefully has to be missed. Is there a bottom that doesn’t enjoy aggression? (Well, OK, there are plenty. But I’d hope that guys watching a porno movie aren’t watching for scenes of candlelit dinners or whatever clichéd romantic rubbish might they’ve learned from the Lifetime channel.)

Shooting Porn bored Charles. I stopped the tape so I could curl up next to him while he drifted off. I’d planned to finish the tape but never did. Much of the power in mass-market entertainment is in the hands of the producers and distributors. As unnamed sources they might talk for to a writer but not to a poor documentary filmmaker. Any work pretending to study the mechanics of gay pornography isn’t complete without the men with monetary power.

Watched part of Beefcake today. The trailer I’d seen made it seem much funnier. Not a fan of the Athletic Model Guild I’m interested in early gay erotica. Parts of the movie are clips of the original movies and pictures. Much of it is imagined ‘docudrama.’ You switch back and forth between interviews with models and photographers and imagined scenes with the entrepreneur and his mom. Too fractured, you couldn’t help but smile at the old clips but the attempt at recreating the porn entrepreneur’s days was a weak sitcom.

Some of the snippets from interviews the guys who worked for Athletic Model Guild are a waste. It was interesting to see Joe Dallesdandro a little older than the last time I saw him (he had a recurring role in a TV show whose title I’ve forgotten). But his contributions didn’t rise above “Duh.”

Sometimes when I watch a conventional old movie I can’t help but reflect on how the ideals of body beauty have changed. Many of the women in the old movies have thicker waists. Male muscularity has shifted sharply. Athletic men of the 1950s didn’t have access to steroids and erogenic aids. They look skinny compared to the bodybuilders who began to emerge in the late 60s as anabolic hormones became available. Like more conventional technology diet, improved anabolics, diuretics, weightlifting and coaching evolved beyond the naïve days. The bodybuilder of today has huge hams hanging off his shoulder. The weightlifters of earlier days were lucky.

Erotically there wasn’t much for me in Beefcake. There was one pretty face dressed up as an angel. The fluffy wings made a neat accessory.

As with Shooting Porn Charles went to bed, I meant to finish Beefcake but never returned to it.

My interest in early male homoerotic artifacts hasn’t abated. I can’t escape the notion there are amusing objects and absorbing stories I’ve yet to encounter. URLs always welcome.