Newly available on DVD this week: I’M A PORN STAR
Charlie David’s look at a handful of men making a living in gay porn debuted at Vancouver’s Out on Screen last year. It’s screened at LGBT fests around the world, including Belgrade, New Zealand, Durban, Rio, Calgary, Tampa, Atlanta, Chicago, Mix Mexico, and Rochester’s ImageOut.
David, a personable Canadian actor/filmmaker known within gay film circles for projects like the TV series DANTE’S COVE and the film JUDAS KISS, takes a mildly graphic look behind the scenes of gay porn in this apparent webseries-turned-feature. Perhaps to fill out the feature length, David adds an extended introduction, breathlessly narrating an archivally-aided and not uninteresting condensed history of gay porn from the birth of film to the present day, a portion of the film that is stylistically completely different from the rest of the project. Once that’s dispensed with, he cuts together very conventionally shot profiles of four likeable working performers in gay porn – three who identify as straight (Johnny Rapid, Colby Jansen, and Rocco Reed) and one as gay (Brent Everett) – with additional commentary from a straight director and other crew. Young father Johnny describes his polar opposite approach to sex with men vs women; Colby reveals how he fell in love with and married a MTF performer, and his conflicting feelings around his wife having bottom surgery; Rocco, who also does straight porn, contrasts the opportunities for men in that realm; and Brent recounts the supportive role played by his parents and husband in his career. Talking heads dominate, as does incessant, distracting music, and frenetic editing that often leads to repetition in the interviews. Despite some occasionally interesting and refreshing soundbites from the stars about their fluid approach to sexuality, these technical deficiencies unfortunately compromise the doc as a whole.
what (not) to doc 