Michael Sullivan narrates this German-made English language film, a downbeat documentary about male sex for sale in LA. The focus is on 9 diverse interview subjects, including muscular HIV-positive real estate broker Cole Tucker, actor Matt Bradshaw, fashion model Tony Ward (Madonna's former lover and contributer to her "Justify My Love" video), photographer Rick Castro, performance artist Ron Athey, and homeless hustlers David and Patrick. The 9 men want to have successful lives, and it's a film about survival, fashion models, hustlers, porn actors, photographers and performance artists. They all work with their bodies to realize their dreams and each dream is different. The film shows the most intimate views of their lives behind cover photographs. It includes very private parts of Tony Ward and his story of success and failure in Hollywood. Shot on 16 mm film.
"Sex/Life in L.A. 2: Cycles of Porn" is a follow up and another revealing glimpse of a world where sex, art and business collide in LA. The film begins with a look behind the scenes at Chi Chi LaRue's "Live and Raw Hotel", a hotel filled with webcams and host to a group of boys, filming every moment for the world to see. Produced 7 years after the filmmaker's first documentary portrait, director Jochen Hick checks up with some of his previous subjects: Adult film stars Kevin Kramer, Cole Tucker and Matt Bradshaw.
Surprisingly Cole Tucker is not like his onscreen persona and it is nice to see what a down to earth man he is, much like the rest of them. But sexuality is constantly evolving, and styles, tastes and even new technology are providing a new supply of up-and-coming talent. Hick deftly explores a culture in which young men occupy a house outfitted with webcams for a sexy chat site, and nomad filmmakers rove the country looking for impromptu stars of their condom-free "bareback films". The dreams, disappointments and unwavering reality of the gay adult industry are all opened up with insight and humor in this interesting film. Sex parties, drugs, and more sex round out the film that just begins to scrape the surface.
The documentaries waste no time in introducing us to a mixed bag of current and former gay sex workers, all of whom are affiliated with the porn industry. The more intelligent of these young men seem particularly sad because even when they're expressing their hopes and dreams for a different future, they don't seem to really believe that they'll get it. They're barely legal age, yet they've already developed a mature cynicism. The least appetizing portion of the second film depicts one of the young men from the "hotel" going to a sex party with a group of older men who are sucking on pipefulls of crystal meth, very disturbing considering one of the young participants from the first film had died from a combination of crystal meth and heroin.
Walking a fine line between pathos and humor, the older porn stars first chronicled in Hick's initial film, emerge as older, somewhat different people than they were seven years earlier. Cole Tucker shows up as a stable businessman involved in a long-term relationship, appreciative of his experiences in the porn industry, but mature enough to accept the need to move on. Living with his sister in bible-thumping Baton Rouge, La., Matt Bradshaw seems resigned to his current circumstances, to the point of being almost evasive about much of his experience as a performer in porn movies.
The bareback production team from Hot Desert Knights, a specialty film company, hires men in the same age bracket as Cole Tucker. They seem happy and contented with their lives, despite the fact that all are admittedly HIV-positive. These men have confidence and maturity, with no tinge of the bitterness and cynicism of their younger counterparts. There are brief scenes of hardcore sex, but these guys are mostly dull. A bit higher IQ for the subjects would have been more interesting. There's not much introspection or thought here. The high points of the film are a bathtub masturbation scene including "the money shot" by very tired looking model Tony Ward, and self mutilation scenes by performer Ron Athey. James Hardway/Harrow composed the music, and Jochen Hick wrote the screenplay and directed.
