Sex, "love" and dyxploitation

From the magazine: For the weekend, horny, porny and corny films to intellectually and or physically stimulate your every desire.

Hey wicked pisser,

Sometimes when you’re thinking about writing things, you need a ‘lil excuse to do it. In the case of my list of films which range from Times Square Strip to Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, I imagined a slow day at the glory hole after the weekend rush, with a small box television set playing a rolling array of cassettes curated by the Parsons film student working the Tuesday shift. Or maybe you’re just the SATC girls watching Jocks and Cocks 4 to your prude friend’s surprise.... It feels like a public service to let you all in on my little fantasy, so I decided that you can find out for yourselves what it might have been like when Times Square was the capital of smut and those sticky peepshow holes and gay porn theaters made the neighborhood a hub of nocturnal activity. (Also, please enjoy this example of graphic design, which is clearly my passion).

From 1975-1995, the Adonis was the largest gay porn theater in the country, seating 1,400 guests who could watch hardcore and plot-driven sex films while having fun themselves. Register manned by a woman named Bertha, Adonis changed locations in 1990 before being driven out of business by an NYC zoning law in 1995 which prohibited various types of “adult establishments,” both gay and straight, from operating in the Times Square neighborhood.

Then mayor (now psycho legal gremlin) Rudy Giuliani cracked down on what he thought were seedy venues across the city in an effort of urban revitalization after the chaos of the 1970s and early 1980s. This move drove queer sex films back underground in New York and eventually on the internet, where now a screen separates the bodies of the performer and the viewer to a degree that changes the way we relate to our own sexualities in real life.

For now, invite a boy over with biscotti (see how long you last lol) and enjoy this list of films which would have played at Adonis and some others they might’ve screened as a break between the action:

A Night at the Adonis

Jack Deveau’s 1978 A Night at the Adonis is a plot-heavy gay fuck fest and also one of the first films to employ the Steadicam, which was used for the opening shot. Set inside The Adonis itself, one of Times Square’s most famous gay film houses, it featured a cameo from Bertha, the IRL cashier at The Adonis and was screened for a 1,400 person audience to great reviews—not that anyone was actually watching.

L.A Plays Itself

In 1972, Salvador Dalí went to a viewing of porn director, hustler, publisher and club owner Fred Halstead’s L.A Plays Itself and left declaring, “new information to me.”

Imagine creating an experimental gay art porn film so bewilderingly genre bending that even the kingpin of all surrealists worldwide thought it was indescribable!

It opens with Halstead spotting a nude blonde to whom he offers head, before getting interrupted by bulldozers in an homage to threats against the Santa Monica coastline at the time. There’s a fucked-up fisting scene, spliced with news clippings of the Manson murders, shots of sex clubs, and sex workers and cruising in Griffith Park.

Halsted later said, “One of the purposes of L.A. Plays Itself was to get S&M and allied perversions out on the screen where people could look at them, think about them, analyze them, let it affect them, whatever they wanted, but not have it hidden anymore, and leave it open where people can deal with it easily.”

It’s beautifully shot and was made with no plan at all. It also inspired Stephen Burrows to make a porn project that folded due to bad funding! But watch it for yourself and witness how Halsted transitions the shots from surreal to too-real as smooth as Crisco.

Driggling

Lots of people think Larry Clark’s Driggling is some kind of deep cut but there’s 1 minute and 46 seconds of it on YouTube. Morgan Lane Bennet’s part dribbling, juggling and speed skating is a relic from 2009 with “Comfortably Numb” playing in the background as he skates across the frame, in shorts and very buff, throwing around his balls is a very suave and appealing way.