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Despite its fascination for so many, penisspotting has received little serious study and even less respect. Some say this activity is based on birdwatching, sharing with that sport an interest in parks and woodlands and the use of a magnification device (preferably a jeweled lorgnette) for shadowy or leaf-obscured targets. Of course, the dedicated ‘spotter also includes urban environments, from backrooms to bathhouses to gutters, in his purview, and few would deny that birdwatching is far more accepted than cockwatching. To help redress this obvious inequity, if only in a small way, we offer our annual survey of cinematic dick in the SFILGFF. We make no claim to comprehensiveness; we were too busy with our own schlongspotting to watch every work in the fest.
This year’s sightings, based on more than two dozen docs and features, could hardly be called a bumper crop. Of that number, seven yielded at least one sighting. In some cases, heaven forfend, there was almost too much of that good thing (Fantasm); in others, there was little trace of the penis in places where the cockologist had every right to expect it (La Confusion de Genres). Still, there was enough evidence of the elusive little guy overall to entice even hardened dickophiles to abandon the parks and public toilets (briefly) in favor of the festival. In the present survey, the U.S. and Portugal showed the most pioneering penis spirit, while England, Canada, and France came up surprisingly short.
Hey, Happy!
Any director who trumpets his devotion to Bruce La Bruce could be expected to offer a panoply of penises, in the master’s mode. And certainly the plot of Canada’s Hey, Happy! would seem very promising in this regard. An "apocalyptic love story set in Winnipeg’s illegal rave scene," as the press notes say, the film is a hothouse mélange of UFOs, drugs, and drag queens. Sadly, though, there’s only one scene in which our spongy-tissued pal emerges. It’s a woefully brief sequence of naked queens undulating underwater. Perhaps director Noam Gonick hopes to work for Disney one day.
Ever optimistic, we turned from Canada to England, where Channel 4 has done some important work in this area. Admittedly, television, even in Britain, is not the place to surfeit, only to snack. But even we were surprised that Metrospotting, a hyper-hip, candy-colored comedy series about multiracial, polysexual Britain has but a smidgen of schlong. Director-star Rikkie Beadle-Blair displays his wares for a few seconds during a phone sex chat. Extensive testing has failed to verify another reported sighting during a hot 69 sequence between an alleged straight boy and a middle-aged queen with a pink Mohawk.
We had such hopes for French cinema after the promise of Baise Moi with its nonstop parade of hardons, but alas, the two films surveyed here, La Confusion de Genres and Adventures of Felix, never approach that level. Not that they’re bad films; in fact, they’re both quite good, which makes the lack of dick display all the more lamentable. Ilan Duran Cohen’s too-aptly named Confusion stars Pascal Greggory as Alain, a fortyish guy whose entire circle wants to get in his pants. Poor Alain can’t choose between girlfriend Laurence, faithful twink Christophe, or scary convict Marc, so he samples them all. Alain’s apparently irresistible schlong is only seen once, in a hetero tryst. For completists, there’s also a short shower scene where a homely man with a horsedick soaps up, but it’s hardly compensation to the confused ‘spotter. Adventures of Felix, directed by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, is a sweet queer road movie with one sequence that almost makes up for all those strategically placed sheets and billowing blankets and that too-discreet lighting. Handsome Felix (Sami Bouajila) gets picked up while hitchhiking by an authentic hunk, and they enjoy a woodland fuck. When the two emerge naked from their rendezvous, the film becomes a happy valentine to size queens.
Fantasm
Far less sunny but richer in other areas is Joao Pedro Rodrigues’s Fantasm, from Portugal. This excellent but very grim take on a latex-wearing garbage collector’s off-duty fuckfests is reminiscent of films like Skin and Bone, Frisk, and Hard in its unrelenting portrayal of sexual excess. Prick voyeurs will find this one a veritable feast, with dicks in every imaginable state of arousal and activity and a pleasant variety of settings. Yes, there’s actual hardcore sex here, in a steamy toilet suck scene. Some viewers may be put off by rubber boy’s hygiene habits; he’s as likely to lick the floor, the wall, or the sidewalk as a thrusting shaft. Still, as one of the most cock-clogged works in the fest, Fantasm is a strong candidate for the PPSI (penis-per-square inch) Award.
Returning to home base, we come to On the Bus, the inevitable gay backlash to the "reality TV" syndrome. Directed by one of its stars, Dustin Black, this Ode to Boy follows six gay twinks as they travel 600 miles in a bus to the Burning Man festival. Sex is a constant topic, but the filmmakers — perhaps constrained by the Internet company that financed the film — show only a couple of actual pricks: one in a background porn snippet, the other in a Jacuzzi sequence. Of course, the Burning Man festival is a notorious flesh parade, and once the twinks arrive it’s hippie-dick heaven. The use of split screen here will confound some cockwatchers, inducing eyestrain as they struggle to make sense of what they see.
Peter Barbosa and Garrett Lenoir’s Out in the Open is the answer to a penisspotter’s prayer, an hourlong doc on the subculture of gay public sex. An assortment of interviewees offer timeless wisdom ("Monogamy is a recipe for disaster!") and thoughtful assessments of the morality, logistics, and other aspects of this activity. All that theorizing is fine, but the real lure are the sex scenes, a heady mix of re-creation and reality with the emphasis on the latter. The filmmakers present the shadowy world of backroom bars and bathhouses to enchanting effect, using color filters to capture the enduring pleasures of anonymous sex in parks, sex clubs, and other natural habitats of the modern out-there queer. Out in the Open is as practical as it is provocative. Shot in San Francisco at such well-known venues de verga as My Place and the bushes of Buena Vista Park, it’s a well-drawn map to treasures festivalgoers can pursue when they’re not in the theatre.
July 2001 | Issue 33
Copyright © 2001 by Gary Morris
ACCESS: Instead of trying to hunt down these admittedly worthy movies, some of which will be available through "normal" channels, why not go out and, as Harvey Korman told Carol Burnett in an episode of Mama’s Family, "Grab life!"
MORE PENISSPOTTING: Penisspotting 2002, Penisspotting 2000, Penisspotting 1999, Penisspotting 1998, and The Penis in the Festival 1997
ALSO: More gay and lesbian cinema
