Bright Lights Film Journal | Penisspotting 2002

actor profiles

animation

book reviews

director profiles

documentaries

experimental &
avant garde

exploitation

film festivals

film noir

film reviews

gay & lesbian

hong kong films

horror

interviews

japanese cinema

music & musicals

silent film

tranny cinema

- - - - - -
To be automatically notified when the next issue is posted, join our mailing list.

PENISSPOTTING
Devil in Holy Water

Where have all the penises gone?
This year, to England

BY GARY MORRIS

Tolerance, diversity, artistry, affirmations of community — these are all well and good, and there are plenty of examples of them throughout the world’s biggest queer movie festival for those who care about such things. But what about the mindless suckhounds in the audience? The horndogs who sneak in and out of screenings hoping, praying for a sighting of the sine qua non of cocksuckers? What about their needs? In short, what about the unrepentant schlongspotters who attend cultural events merely to get a look at a prick outside its usual habitats of bar, bath, gutter?

There’s bad news and good news for the devoted dicktician at this year’s fest. The good news is that there are indeed penises to be found. The bad news is that you’ll need a telescope the size of Hubble to find them. Well, not quite. It’s just that this year, at least in the admittedly unscientific sampling of this survey, there are no full-length cock shows, no histories of the penis, no 90-minute exegeses of our spongy-tissued little pal. Of course, professional penisspotters are used to privation; they’re quite adept at occupying untenable spaces from nettle patches to sewer ducts, so adapting to the dick drought of this year’s fest won’t be as challenging as you might think.

Glaadiator

The first place to look, always, is in the shorts shows. What, after all, is meant by "fun" in the show called Fun in Boys’ Shorts? Penises, natch. This collection begins seductively enough, with Baby Blue, starring a slacker boy who wisely drops his pants almost as soon as he’s onscreen. Amid a sea of sensitive memories of childhood sexplay, slackerboy showers, paying particular attention to his substantial schlong. Also in this show is Glaadiator, a witty satire of the Russell Crowe turkey with a hunky hare-lipped butch who doesn’t strip but at least wields a long dildo against the wicked emperor. (Yes, we do count dildos in this survey, as they’re sometimes the nearest thing to the Good Thing and may have to do in a pinch.) In more tantalizing territory is Stag from Britain, about a bachelor party gone Terribly Wrong. It seems the groom and the best man had a drunken buttfucking session. Alert viewers will sigh at the sight of criminally handsome Guy’s (Stuart Laing) purple-headed pal, briefly swinging between his legs. Daniel Wascou’s well-acted short Passing Resemblances would have had even more impact, at least to certain viewers, if the hunky boys on the edge of homohood had shucked their duds.

Passing Resemblances
Passing
Resemblances

More promising is another collection, Foreign Tongues: International Gay Shorts, though purists may pout over the context in which the cocks appear. Fetching as he is, not everyone will appreciate the star of Besame Mucho, a gyrating, self-pawing creature whose enticing endowment can’t compensate for his dreaded "interpretive dancing." Two Brazilian condom ads turn out to be freak shows — one features a gallery of toilet queens exposing a series of increasingly unappetizing dildos, including the rarely seen two-headed job menacingly wagged by one of the tearoom hags. The otherwise worthy Operation YY from Israel at least has a brief shot of an Internet porn j.o. in the background.

Activist filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has long shown schlongster sympathy, peppering his movies with a pleasing assortment of dicks ‘n dildos. His doc on four politically minded trannies, Queens Don’t Lie, happily maintains his rep. Here we get not only casually nude shots of Bev Stroganov, Ichgola Androgyn, Ovo Maltine, and Tima die Gottliche but also discussions of circumcision and other ancillaries to keep the most demanding dongster excited. Elsewhere in the EU, Italy to be specific, there seems to be less to cheer. Even at Cocksucking Central, the Vatican, as seen in the documentary The Devil in the Holy Water, there’s a dearth of dick. True, there’s a sequence of faux-religious paintings placing a naked Jesus among drag queens and leatherboyz, but most ‘spotters will bristle at a two-dimensional dick in an artform that’s already two-dimensional. France, alas, also fails to live up to its reputation for libertinage. Few who see the feature The Man I Love, with its lightning-quick shot of a sexy straight boy’s middle leg, would believe this is the country that produced the de Sade.

Luster
Luster

Returning to the U.S., Everett Lewis’s Luster opens with the hint of mucho pricko to come — it’s miscellaneous male body parts writhing behind the credits. As it happens, director Lewis does indeed grasp the appeal of these Restless Confused Horny Teenboys Coming of Age movies. "Cousin Jed," a pretty boy by any definition, is seen at literal length in two shower scenes and again cavorting naked through his trashy apartment. His cousin Jackson, also pretty, strips to the skin out in public, offering his all, which is plenty, to the boy of his (wet) dreams.

Canadian Mike Hoolboom’s Tom, a brilliant experimental portrait of a friend of his, will thrill discerning viewers who don’t mind a little content with their cock. Tom Chomon’s an artist, but don’t get upset. He’s also a filmmaker, and his work is excerpted here in all its gross glory. Chomon’s shorts like The Dog Diary and Sadistic Self-Portrait feature a panoply of prick, including that fetish perennial, the Dick Candleholder.

Despite its reputation for uptightness, England leads the way in dickology with a single entry. Kristiene Clarke’s The Truth About Gay Sex is perhaps the fest’s magna carta of manmeat. Structured like a primer of homosex — and, perhaps not surprisingly given Queer as Folk and Metrosexuality, made for British TV — The Truth offers a cornucopia of cock in its deadpan delivery of sex advice, medical tidbits, and cruising etiquette. For the excessively perverted, there are photos of the "twisted, knotty variety" of penis, but the typical ’spotter will find sleazy solace in such insights as "a buckwheat pillow is best for a blowjob!" and the Queen of the Bushes pointing and screaming "Right here in the middle of London is tearoom sex!"

ACCESS: For the real thing? Your nearest bar, bath, gutter — of if you’re mated, try giving him a spin. For the two-dimensional versions described above? Check google.com or alltheweb.com periodically for queer shorts collections that may feature some of our blessed little friend.

MORE PENISSPOTTING: Penisspotting 2001, Penisspotting 2000, Penisspotting 1999, Penisspotting 1998, and The Penis in the Festival 1997

ALSO: More gay and lesbian cinema