Check out my latest column on page 73 of Amsterdam Magazine!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sex and De Stad: A Brush with Romance
Check out my romantic Jordaan column on page 74 of Amsterdam Magazine!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Sex and De Stad: Celebrity Fantasies
Check out my Celebrity Fantasies column on page 79 of Amsterdam Magazine!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Sex and De Stad: Open-Air Sex!
Check out my No Sex On The Beach, Please column on page 77 of Amsterdam Magazine!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
!Women Art Revolution
"The women of the '70s had been earnest and breast-beating—and it just didn't work," announces the lady in the gorilla mask, one of the few self-aware voices featured in Lynn Hershman Leeson's over-40-years-in-the-making “!Women Art Revolution,” its sprawlingly clunky title a portent of things to come. "The bra-burning didn't actually effect social change," this member of the Guerrilla Girls—the feminist art movement's answer to the Yes Men—goes on to explain toward the end of Hershman Leeson's doc. And with those two sentences, the anonymous radical activist exposes the clueless arrogance that emanates from much of the doc's footage—archival as well as the director's own personal collection of interviews with her fellow feminist artists, curators, and historians of the '60s generation.
To read the rest of my review visit Slant Magazine.
To read the rest of my review visit Slant Magazine.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Interview with “Vacation!” Director Zach Clark
I first met Zach Clark last October when his excitingly subversive, sex-scene-less SXSW hit "Modern Love Is Automatic" opened Pornfilmfestival Berlin (where my own short "The Story of Ramb O" had its premiere). Since we barely had the chance to chat in the buzzing, jam-packed Moviemento hub, I was thrilled when I heard recently that Clark’s follow-up "Vacation!" was already on the festival circuit and would be playing theatrically at Brooklyn’s own reRun Gastropub Theater in May. Finally I had an excuse to find out what makes this offbeat yet seemingly well-adjusted director of a feature about a nurse who moonlights as a dominatrix, and now a flick about four chicks whose weekend getaway goes bizarrely awry, tick.
To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.
To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Sex and De Stad: How It All Started
Check out my welcome to Holland column on page 72 of Amsterdam Magazine!
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sex On Film: Stephan Brenninkmeijer and Jennifer Lyon Bell
Check out the interview between Stephan Brenninkmeijer and Jennifer Lyon Bell in my “Sex On Film” piece on pages 60-61 of Amsterdam Magazine!
Monday, March 7, 2011
CineKink 2011: Notes on Kink
“We love the filmmakers because without them we’d all just be here drinking.” So noted CineKink Film Festival founder Lisa Vandever after calling for a round of applause at this year’s midtown kickoff at the Taj Lounge, which saw burlesque performances — by Leta Le Noir, Sweet Lorraine and “N — “The ONLY Letter in Burlesque” followed by a small shorts program. With films containing a slick music video/Calvin Klein commercial aesthetic (Roy Raz’s “The Lady Is Dead” from Israel), to scenes of anatomical pottery (Debi Oulu’s “My Erotic Video Art,” another flick from Israel — what’s up with the Israelis?) to visuals as predictable as its title (“Love Hotel” from its better-named, Spanish director Erika Lust) the diversity on display served as a teaser, naturally, to the eclectic main event. And then there was my evening favorite from the good ole U.S.A. Toby Fell-Holden’s sweetly hilarious “Shake It” takes masks and half-naked men to Muppet silliness proportions. All this and a fundraising raffle with prizes including stainless steel toys — who could ask for anything more?
To read the rest of my rundown visit Filmmaker magazine.
To read the rest of my rundown visit Filmmaker magazine.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
“When Harry Met Chesty” Premieres at CineKink Film Festival
Join me at Anthology Film Archives at 1PM on Saturday, March 5th for the world premiere of my short film “When Harry Met Chesty” (preceding the doc “Run, Run, It’s Him”) at CineKink NYC 2011.
Where else ya gonna see Doris Wishman's "Deadly Weapons" colliding with Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" in a tit-filled tale of bittersweet romance?
Cinekink Film Festival 2011: Kink Crusaders
"I am a role model simply because I'm here," Mr. Leather Ottawa announces from his wheelchair in Michael Skiff's “Kink Crusaders,” a documentary shot during the 2008 edition of the International Mr. Leather contest, held annually in Chicago for the past 30 years. Moving back and forth from archival footage and talking-head interviews with IML founder Chuck Renslow, past winners, and current hopefuls, to the contest itself, Skiff's rote filmmaking is fortunately topped by his eye-opening subject matter. Within the LGBT community, leather men (and women) have always been marginalized—which, ironically, has allowed IML to slowly expand even as the gay community itself has narrowed its focus to chasing once exclusively hetero dreams. "We are inclusive. That's one of the things that made us grow," Renslow emphasizes, recalling the first black man to be named International Mr. Leather. Indeed, the latest incarnation of IML is a microcosm of true diversity, with a skinny WWII vet (returning soldiers were the fathers of the leather scene), a pierced German with a voice like Werner Herzog, an Asian top skilled in the rope bondage used on prisoners brought before Japanese emperors, and even guys from unlikely locales such as Iowa and Oklahoma, all duking it out with the cosmopolitan, gay white male base. When you've got straight guys proudly competing in a contest that started in the back of a frequently raided bar (Renslow reminisces about the early days of paying off local policemen during the earliest days of Mayor Richard M. Daley's reign), this is progress.
To read the rest of my review visit: The House Next Door at Slant Magazine.
To read the rest of my review visit: The House Next Door at Slant Magazine.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Happy Valentine's Day to the Haggards
I confess. Ted Haggard is my hero. Ever since the once-fallen preacher became the victim of both the religious right that kicked him out of the New Life mega church that he built—and in an ironic Biblical twist, even his homeland of Colorado Springs—and the equally narrow-minded, left-wing "journalists" that tried to make a name for themselves by smearing the loving family man as a homo hypocrite. (I guess it takes one to know one. That ironic twist came courtesy of the same folks that otherwise insist, "It's who you love not who you screw" that makes one gay.) So I was quite pleased to read The Last Temptation of Ted in the February issue of “GQ,” in which reporter Kevin Roose probes Pastor Ted with an open and questioning mind—and has his own preconceptions about not just sexuality but life itself wonderfully upturned in the process.
An excerpt:
"Here's where I really am on this issue," he half whispers. "I think that probably, if I were 21 in this society, I would identify myself as a bisexual."
After a weekend of Ted trying to convince me of his unambiguous devotion to his wife and kids, I'm at first too surprised to say anything.
"So why not now?" I ask finally.
"Because, Kevin, I'm 54, with children, with a belief system, and I can have enforced boundaries in my life. Just like you're a heterosexual but you don't have sex with every woman that you're attracted to, so I can be who I am and exclusively have sex with my wife and be perfectly satisfied."
"But what does it have to do with being 54?"
"Life!" he says. "We live an ordinary life.”
Roose then goes on to allow: "In a way, hearing Ted talk about his self-imposed boundaries makes it easier to understand how he can seem so fulfilled with his new, cleaned-up life. These days what Ted craves is not total sexual satisfaction but exactly the things he used to have—a church, a loving wife, camping trips with his boys—and getting those things back will require amputating a part of who he is and what he might, at some point, have wanted."
In other words, Roose has made the startling discovery that Ted Haggard is…a grown up! Like every other mature adult regardless of sexual orientation, Pastor Ted has decided to "amputate"—though the more appropriate term would be "sacrifice"—some superficial youthful desires for the sake of deeper ones. Why? Because at the age of 54 screwing is just not high on his priority list any longer—a concept that both the sex-obsessed religious zealots and young and horny queer bloggers couldn't possibly fathom in their immaturity. The middle-aged preacher isn't in denial, forcing down a teenager's raging hormones, but has simply found peace and fulfillment in spending time with his kids and growing old with the woman he loves. (Yes, as hard as it may be for some to believe, snorting meth with a male escort pales in comparison.) So I salute you, Gayle and Ted! If happiness is the best revenge, then this resurrected pastor and his wife of 32 years have had the last laugh.
An excerpt:
"Here's where I really am on this issue," he half whispers. "I think that probably, if I were 21 in this society, I would identify myself as a bisexual."
After a weekend of Ted trying to convince me of his unambiguous devotion to his wife and kids, I'm at first too surprised to say anything.
"So why not now?" I ask finally.
"Because, Kevin, I'm 54, with children, with a belief system, and I can have enforced boundaries in my life. Just like you're a heterosexual but you don't have sex with every woman that you're attracted to, so I can be who I am and exclusively have sex with my wife and be perfectly satisfied."
"But what does it have to do with being 54?"
"Life!" he says. "We live an ordinary life.”
Roose then goes on to allow: "In a way, hearing Ted talk about his self-imposed boundaries makes it easier to understand how he can seem so fulfilled with his new, cleaned-up life. These days what Ted craves is not total sexual satisfaction but exactly the things he used to have—a church, a loving wife, camping trips with his boys—and getting those things back will require amputating a part of who he is and what he might, at some point, have wanted."
In other words, Roose has made the startling discovery that Ted Haggard is…a grown up! Like every other mature adult regardless of sexual orientation, Pastor Ted has decided to "amputate"—though the more appropriate term would be "sacrifice"—some superficial youthful desires for the sake of deeper ones. Why? Because at the age of 54 screwing is just not high on his priority list any longer—a concept that both the sex-obsessed religious zealots and young and horny queer bloggers couldn't possibly fathom in their immaturity. The middle-aged preacher isn't in denial, forcing down a teenager's raging hormones, but has simply found peace and fulfillment in spending time with his kids and growing old with the woman he loves. (Yes, as hard as it may be for some to believe, snorting meth with a male escort pales in comparison.) So I salute you, Gayle and Ted! If happiness is the best revenge, then this resurrected pastor and his wife of 32 years have had the last laugh.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
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