This remarkably accomplished first full-length feature from director David Kittredge plays like a queer take on David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME suffused with the nightmare logic of David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY. Like Cronenberg, he meditates at length about the nature of "extreme" imagery, how it's perceived by us viewers (staged vs. "real") and why we keep coming back for more. The complex if not inaccessible story structure, twisting three separate strands into a largely coherent whole, requires a free associational stream of consciousness approach to make sense. As an old school holdout, I still have reservations against the digital video format, though it has clearly progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years. As with the Tom Six tolerance-testing HUMAN CENTIPEDE however, the technology's immediacy significantly narrows the distance between audience and action unfolding on screen. DoP Ivan Corona displays a keen eye for composition, cleverly incorporating avowed aficionado Kittredge's myriad movie references often serving as signifiers triggering memories of a common cultural past.
It's 1995 and down on his luck "former gay porn star" Mark Anton (Jared Grey) heeds a call from his erstwhile sleazy manager Billy (Nick Salamone) for that ominous one last job that should set him up for life, $ 40,000 split down the middle for a private show. Accepting the offer but unwilling to share the profits, Mark returns later that night to drug and rob Billy of the full amount. At the given address, he's welcomed by a booming voice over the intercom, urging him to reveal far more than he's comfortable with. Defiantly refusing to comply, Mark's accosted by a monolith of a man wearing a mask made out of what looks like strips of skin and a ring with a stylized Masonic type symbol that will turn up throughout the proceedings. Suffice it to say that Mark Anton was never heard of again. Where do burnt out porn stars go ?
Flash forward to the present day as investigative journalist Michael Castigan (Matthew Montgomery) lands an amazingly affordable New York flat to set up house with his boyfriend William (Walter Delmar), alerting an attentive audience that something's not quite right. Pressured into writing a book about the history of gay pornography, apologetically generalized into a sociological study of homosexuality's cultural representation, Michael uncovers a sordid past reluctantly revisited by the surviving protagonists, fueled by the uncanny ability of his conspiratorial video "dealer" Harry (Larry Weissman) to locate missing presumed lost film prints. Relating to shot on video as opposed to 35mm porn in a way shockingly similar to my own, as a "poor cousin", we have perhaps both overlooked how instrumental home video has been in the distribution of porn, reducing the cinema's larger than life image down to intimate proportions. To quote adult industry icon Harry Reems, video took porn out of the theaters and put it back where it belongs, in the bedroom. To Michael, the old stuff feels more genuine, not just a bunch of overly professional models going through their tired carnal choreography. A line of dialog in Mark Anton's main claim to fame, MANHATTAN VIDEO BOYS, leads Michael to a tape of the missing star's apparent torture and possibly worse. Noticing punctures in the walls all over the apartment, suggesting the one time presence of security cameras, convinces him the video was shot right there !
Just as the strangeness starts piling up in what appears to be the central storyline, shedding retrospective light on the mystery of Mark Anton's disappearance, Kittredge yanks the viewer out of his cynical complacency by turning the narrative on its head, revealing that all that came before was - that hoariest of cinematic clichés - just a dream by current gay porn golden boy Matt Stevens (Pete Scherer) who wakes up excited on the day he's about to direct his self-penned script...the Mark Anton Story ! Unnerved to learn that there was indeed a "real" Mark Anton and not just the product of his fevered imagination, assimilating a history he doesn't recognize as his own, Matt learns that his move to the other side of the camera comes with the condition that he will also star in the title role. Reliving disturbing episodes from the subject's life, especially when his former co-star Jason Steele (Dylan Vox a/k/a gay porn performer "Brad Benton") materializes looking exactly like some two decades earlier, the line between Matt and Mark begins to blur as characters return in different (?) capacities, most notably William spilling out of Matt's dream as his new screen partner and possible road to redemption Jason.
While theories will continue to fly hard and fast as to what PORNOGRAPHY's ultimately "about" for some time to come, the film's very title might be as good a place to start as any. The relationship between the objectified performer and his "consumer" is a natural component to elaborate upon and extend into cannibalism of both the metaphorical and literal kind. Like Michael, we want something that is "real" and, just because pornography's penetrations so clearly are, we either choose or need - reducing us to addicts ? - to believe that the people performing them are as well. Porn holds a place in gay men's lives that is perhaps subtly different from its heterosexual counterpart, in a way that it seemingly came out of nowhere, without predecessors in terms of representation. Homosexuality was a hushed up secret until porn blew off the lid in the wake of Stonewall and brought the subject literally out in the open as the '60s segued into what was to become the most significant decade in our social and cultural development. An act of revolutionary defiance and rebellion against an establishment reluctant to admit our very existence even, porn remains inextricably linked to who and what we are and the road we have traveled to the precarious - an element not always acknowledged by younger generations - freedom we possess today.
It's 1995 and down on his luck "former gay porn star" Mark Anton (Jared Grey) heeds a call from his erstwhile sleazy manager Billy (Nick Salamone) for that ominous one last job that should set him up for life, $ 40,000 split down the middle for a private show. Accepting the offer but unwilling to share the profits, Mark returns later that night to drug and rob Billy of the full amount. At the given address, he's welcomed by a booming voice over the intercom, urging him to reveal far more than he's comfortable with. Defiantly refusing to comply, Mark's accosted by a monolith of a man wearing a mask made out of what looks like strips of skin and a ring with a stylized Masonic type symbol that will turn up throughout the proceedings. Suffice it to say that Mark Anton was never heard of again. Where do burnt out porn stars go ?
Flash forward to the present day as investigative journalist Michael Castigan (Matthew Montgomery) lands an amazingly affordable New York flat to set up house with his boyfriend William (Walter Delmar), alerting an attentive audience that something's not quite right. Pressured into writing a book about the history of gay pornography, apologetically generalized into a sociological study of homosexuality's cultural representation, Michael uncovers a sordid past reluctantly revisited by the surviving protagonists, fueled by the uncanny ability of his conspiratorial video "dealer" Harry (Larry Weissman) to locate missing presumed lost film prints. Relating to shot on video as opposed to 35mm porn in a way shockingly similar to my own, as a "poor cousin", we have perhaps both overlooked how instrumental home video has been in the distribution of porn, reducing the cinema's larger than life image down to intimate proportions. To quote adult industry icon Harry Reems, video took porn out of the theaters and put it back where it belongs, in the bedroom. To Michael, the old stuff feels more genuine, not just a bunch of overly professional models going through their tired carnal choreography. A line of dialog in Mark Anton's main claim to fame, MANHATTAN VIDEO BOYS, leads Michael to a tape of the missing star's apparent torture and possibly worse. Noticing punctures in the walls all over the apartment, suggesting the one time presence of security cameras, convinces him the video was shot right there !
Just as the strangeness starts piling up in what appears to be the central storyline, shedding retrospective light on the mystery of Mark Anton's disappearance, Kittredge yanks the viewer out of his cynical complacency by turning the narrative on its head, revealing that all that came before was - that hoariest of cinematic clichés - just a dream by current gay porn golden boy Matt Stevens (Pete Scherer) who wakes up excited on the day he's about to direct his self-penned script...the Mark Anton Story ! Unnerved to learn that there was indeed a "real" Mark Anton and not just the product of his fevered imagination, assimilating a history he doesn't recognize as his own, Matt learns that his move to the other side of the camera comes with the condition that he will also star in the title role. Reliving disturbing episodes from the subject's life, especially when his former co-star Jason Steele (Dylan Vox a/k/a gay porn performer "Brad Benton") materializes looking exactly like some two decades earlier, the line between Matt and Mark begins to blur as characters return in different (?) capacities, most notably William spilling out of Matt's dream as his new screen partner and possible road to redemption Jason.
While theories will continue to fly hard and fast as to what PORNOGRAPHY's ultimately "about" for some time to come, the film's very title might be as good a place to start as any. The relationship between the objectified performer and his "consumer" is a natural component to elaborate upon and extend into cannibalism of both the metaphorical and literal kind. Like Michael, we want something that is "real" and, just because pornography's penetrations so clearly are, we either choose or need - reducing us to addicts ? - to believe that the people performing them are as well. Porn holds a place in gay men's lives that is perhaps subtly different from its heterosexual counterpart, in a way that it seemingly came out of nowhere, without predecessors in terms of representation. Homosexuality was a hushed up secret until porn blew off the lid in the wake of Stonewall and brought the subject literally out in the open as the '60s segued into what was to become the most significant decade in our social and cultural development. An act of revolutionary defiance and rebellion against an establishment reluctant to admit our very existence even, porn remains inextricably linked to who and what we are and the road we have traveled to the precarious - an element not always acknowledged by younger generations - freedom we possess today.