GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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Pornography Wolfe
Video, Director/Screenplay: Starring: Unrated, 113 minutes |
Snuff
Film Trilogy
I love a good mystery. Pornography: A Thriller, the debut film from writer/director David Kittredge, is a surprisingly intelligent, albeit confusing, mystery and ghost story revolving around the disappearance of a gay porn star. It is sexy, it is sometimes scary, and the rug gets continually pulled out from under the viewer's feet. By the end of this strange roller coaster ride, it will no longer be clear what is real and what is not. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.. |
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This isn't Hitchcock, but it is an ambitious, and enjoyable, psychological mind game.
Matthew
Montgomery also appears in
Steve Callahan also appears in: David
Pevsner also appears in:
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 CLICK THE ABOVE BANNER TO PURCHASE THIS WOLFE VIDEO TITLE |
Mark
Anton (Jared Grey) was popular because he looked like the boy next door
and everyone wants to do the boy next door. Mark dropped out of the porn
business but his attempts to go legit are backfiring. Cold water is thrown
on his aspirations to become a photographer when his art class professor
calls his work "boring." Despite having a boyfriend, who knows nothing
about his background in porn, Mark hustles on the side to make ends meet.
An old producer contacts the retired porn star with an offer. All he has
to do is make a private video for a mysterious client and he can walk
away with forty grand. He agrees and is never heard from again. 
Flash
forward fourteen years later. There is something odd about the new loft
apartment that Michael Castigan (played by gay indie favorite 
A
buddy who runs a video store, and helps him locate vintage porn, tells
Michael about an urban legend concerning Mark Anton. Supposedly a snuff
video exists wherein the missing porn star is tied to a gurney and killed.
Michael gives him the broken tape and asks if he can fix it. When the
video store owner - and the tape - vanishes, Michael begins to dig deeper
into the mystery even as he realizes that his own life might be in danger.
Supernatural elements begin to intrude and reality breaks down. 
This
scenario reaches a crescendo and a third story immediately begins. An
adult film star named Matt Stevens (Pete Scherer) wakes from a nightmare.
Dazed, he sits down at his computer and writes, in one sitting, a screenplay
called The Mark Anton Story that mirrors the film's first half
hour. Matt wants to make it into a movie and talks his producer (
A
featured review blurb on the film's website calls Pornography
"the Citizen Kane of gay porn ghost stories." This is, of course,
going a bit too far but Pornography
is a well made popcorn film that did well on the festival circuit
and should find a large audience on DVD. Does this film make rational
sense? Not by a long shot but, oddly, it hardly matters. Ghost stories
have a logic all their own and normally require the suspension of belief.
Shakespeare said it best when Hamlet declares that "There are more things
in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Fans of David Lynch, especially his enigmatic Mulholland Drive,
will find much to admire. Like Lynch's film, everything we see is in question
and it is also possible that the entire central episode might be a dream.
Beneath
the thriller veneer, the film has a few serious things to say about porn
and why we watch it. It explores the shifting nature of desire and straddles
the often-blurred line between reality and fantasy. Several characters
admit to having seen an obviously faked snuff film and this may explain
the alleged killer's insistence, while he conducts his video interviews
with both of the porn stars, that they be "real" with him. Pornography
also dares to examine what may be the cinema's last taboo when we view
the shocking tableau of masked patrons at an underground snuff movie.
This scene recalls the masked orgy in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut
and is beyond creepy.
Pornography
has more than its share of WTF moments. Characters, actors, events and
symbols recur in each of the three episodes (the same actor - Walter Delmar
- plays both Michael and Matt's boyfriends, and most of the cast pulls
double duty by playing different characters in the second and third acts).
Key lines of dialogue reappear again and again, especially the enigmatic
question: "Is this what you really want to see?" An important symbol seems
to be the crossword puzzle that the doomed porn star enjoys. The film
itself is an intriguing puzzle but I'm not sure if this puzzle
can be solved. If you give up trying to connect the dots in the three
vignettes, each can be enjoyed as a good stand-alone story in its own
right (but picking out the recurring elements is part of the fun).
Each episode is filmed in a distinctive style. The cast is terrific, Montgomery
and Scherer are especially likable and you want them to solve their respective
mysteries. 
Works
of fiction that lend themselves to a variety of interpretations keep their
audiences coming back for more. This is going off on a (probably self
indulgent) tangent but I think some of the most interesting ghost stories
are the ones that might have other explanations. Henry James' 1898 novella,
The Turn Of The Screw, is a good example. Modern scholarship suggests
that it is not a ghost story at all. Instead, it is really the psychological
study of a sexually repressed Victorian governess who only thinks
she sees ghosts coming after the souls of the two children in her charge.
As evidence, these revisionist critics cite several points, the biggest
ones being that 1): no one sees the ghosts but her and 2): she fantasizes
about her employer, she enjoys reading gothic romances, and the description
of Peter Quint's ghost matches a popular villain from the era's pulp fiction.
Pornography doesn't necessarily
lend itself towards a similar critical reassessment but the filmmaker
drops enough oblique clues and hints to make for an enjoyable hunt. He
certainly doesn't dumb down the mystery for his audience.
At
the very least, Pornography
is a feast for the senses. Director Kittredge cut his teeth as editor
and sound mixer on a fun queer horror film called 
As
I completed this review, I received a second screener with the bonus features.
The disc contains many fine extras, including deleted scenes and a short
"making of" documentary. The director, producer and cast commentary is
entertaining but, to be quite honest, the film's non-linear structure
confuses me even more after listening to some of the director's
hints. I did get a kick out of learning that Montgomery met his
partner, fellow actor Steve Callahan, on the set. They share one scene
together in a lavatory wherein Montgomery walks away when Callahan cruises
him. Montgomery calls it his least convincing performance in the movie.