Cruising the Movies

In June 1968, Los Angeles’ Park Theatre held the world’s first gay film festival. Mixed in the usual works by figures like Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Andy Milligan was a new name: Pat Rocco. Though he’d only started making films that year, Rocco would quickly become the vanguard of a new, openly-gay film movement and a crucial figure in the history of gay liberation.

This week on the show, we’re taking a look at Rocco’s fourth theatrical film program, PAT ROCCO DARES. Consisting of a number of cinematic ‘dares’ and firsts — including, most famously, a nude ballet shot on the Hollywood Freeway — DARES found Rocco testing and pushing the limits of what could be seen on the screen and done in public.

Somewhere between RASHOMON and a telenovela, Jack Deveau’s FIRE ISLAND FEVER does what many of us wish we could at this time of year: launch from mid-winter chills to summertime splendor. Featuring a supporting cast of New York gay entertainment grand dames, FIRE ISLAND FEVER takes us to the scandals of Cherry Grove, as well as the men who came to the seaside village to find themselves. Our story not only follows the travails of tumultuous couple and beach house renters Ron and Rick, but also the temporary lovers they take up out of spite along the way—as well as a third roommate who may or may not have had an acid-induced romantic experience with a portrait he imagined into being.

While maybe not one of Hand In Hand’s best-known features, FIRE ISLAND FEVER offers a comedic and engrossing glimpse at a true gay getaway. (And, at the very least, it’s worth comparing the bustling, zeitgeist-y, cliquish portrayal of Fire Island that Deveau provides in this film to the outdoorsy, nearly pastoral depiction Wakefield Poole offered just a few years prior!) In this episode, we discuss this film’s place within Hand In Hand’s trilogy tribute to Fire Island, consider the obscure film knowledge and campy wordplay peppered in throughout, and wonder whether the movie’s truly mind-boggling amount of plot also covered up for some performance fatigue. We also appreciate AAB staple and genuine thespian Garry Hunt, theorize about the film’s confusing marketing campaign, and remember another classic director’s Fire Island series.

We begin a new year of the podcast with Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s 1985 film, JUICE. Bressan’s final adult film (and penultimate feature), JUICE is a sweet movie about 48 cruisey, humpy hours in New York City marked with a deadline. Michael Christopher plays Jim, a photographer who's about to lose his job at New York's hottest gay magazine if he can't find new faces by the end of the weekend. Will his photos make the grade? And what about the angelic runner he keeps eying in Central Park?

In this episode we discuss the perils of working in the print industry, Bressan’s relocation to the East Coast, and the never-ending struggle between respectable art and pornography. We also break down what is quite possibly one of the most absurd editing montages in the history of the genre.

On the fifth episode of the ASK ANY BUDDY podcast, we're focusing on the movie that's "exactly what you think it is"... Joe Gage's sleazy, 1981 classic HANDsome. Inspired by raunchy phone sex fantasies and Gage's own move to the East Coast, HANDsome is a cross-country trek that's also unintentionally the first safer sex film.

Over the course of this episode we will draw from an on-set journal describing the film's production and plenty of other fun anecdotes from Gage and the film's stars.

This week on the show we’re taking it to the stage with “the all-male hit of 1981,” Steve Scott’s PERFORMANCE. Featuring a bevy of West Coast superstars and up-and-comers, PERFORMANCE follows the planning and production of an all-male burlesk extravaganza, culminating with Nick Rodgers’ unforgettable (and absurd) KISS strip routine.

Over the course of the episode, we’ll dig into America’s strange obsession with male strippers, the backstories of each of the performers, and the unexpected things you find on VHS tapes.