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When I told my friend George, who hates movies, that I was going to write a brief survey of frontal male nudity in this year's San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, he nodded sagely and raved, "Most movies are so horrible, only dick can redeem them!" With this sentiment in mind, I've tried to catalog some cinematic sightings of our oft-discussed but rarely seen spongy-tissued little pal. This list isn't at all comprehensive, because I haven't seen everything in the festival, but it should serve as a preliminary guide for male viewers who prefer some anatomy with their artistry.
For fans of drag dick, Chocolate Babies is de rigeur. Wiry Max (claude e sloan, jr.) spends much of his time getting drunk and screaming epithets from a rooftop, dressed in a loosely woven net dress that hides none of his ample endowment. Latin Boys Go to Hell moves us into butcher territory — or as butch as can be expected from men who watch soap operas. The poster boy for the film is the gorgeous Carlos, whose hefty schlong is inexplicably rejected by Justin, a twink he covets. However, this entry also falls into the dreaded "Where's the Penis?" category when one of the characters is castrated. David DeCoteau's Leather Jacket Love Story, in the "Silverlake" subgenre of gay features, pays considerable attention to another handsome hunk in the buff. Mike is a thirtyish leatherman who falls for an 18-year-old blond naif who writes poetry. Don't let that angle put you off. Mike appears to be a true rarity in gay cinema: a convincing butch. He has numerous nude scenes as he grinds away on top of Poetry Boy. Size queens will leave this one smiling.
A porn documentary without penises is hard to imagine, but William E. Jones' Finished, about sex star/suicide Alan Lambert, somehow managed to make one. Perhaps the NEA credit at the end of the film explains why there are so many shots of ocean waves and industrial landscapes, and so little of Alan Lambert's drool-inducing body. Fortunately, the other two porn docs in the festival fill the void. Ronnie Larsen's Shooting Porn chronicles two different productions, then follows cast and crew after filming is done. A variety of dicks are on display, along with much reassuring cocksucking and buttfucking. England's archaic laws apparently allowed the makers of A Star Is Porn to show limp dicks, but no action (it's optically censored, like Japanese porn). On the other hand, even a clearly visible hard-on might not have been able to redeem these pioneering, but quite homely, Brit porn stars.
Some of this year's films have minimal or discreet frontal nudity that only whets the appetite. Denis Langlois' L'Escorte has some extremely fetching French-Canadian flesh, but alas, we get only an eyestrain-inducing glimpse of the sacred objet d'sex during a naked stroll through a dark hallway. Nancy Meckler's Alive and Kicking makes up in narrative power what it lacks in lingam, so perhaps we shouldn't complain about this one. Yon Fan's Bugis Street has a sexy, self-worshipping piece of trade whose endless hours in front of the mirror prove only a tease when he fails to rip off his bikini brief. John Greyson's Lilies is another of the many features that pivot on a beautiful man whose obtainability is in question. There are snatches of frontal nudity in this baroque mix of Brecht and Firbank, but as always, never enough.
Greyson is also the probable winner of this year's PPSI (penis-per-square-inch) award for Uncut. This challenging work is a virtual Shangri-La for the prick voyeur. Most intriguingly, the director uses Peter Greenaway-like windowbox inserts to show circumcisions and dicks in various states of arousal. Greyson's "cock consciousness" covers the most minor details — where else could you find a film where all the major male characters are named "Peter"?
July 1997 | Issue 19
Copyright © 1997 by Gary Morris
MORE PENISSPOTTING: Penisspotting '98, Penisspotting '99, Penisspotting 2000, Penisspotting 2001, and Penisspotting 2002
ALSO: Our collected articles on gay and lesbian cinema
