Muscle Distribution

[Adam X]

For those interested in the label, The Disc Connected podcast posted a pretty good interview with Liz Purchell in March, that gives a nice overview of Muscle’s past, present & future.

[ianthemovie]

I contributed! Happy to support Liz and Muscle, and anything related to Curt McDowell!

[beamish14]

Pumping Iron II: The Women is one of my favorite documentaries ever. I was happy to pledge $300 in total, and I really hope they reach their goal

[Lowry_Sam]

Pumping Iron II: The Women is one of my favorite documentaries ever. I was happy to pledge $300 in total, and I really hope they reach their goal

I remember Siskel & Ebert both giving this a thumbs up. Maybe with a restoration I'll finally get around to watching it.

[schlockvalue]

I was puzzled by that as well but the reasoning is sound at least. And as someone who finally watched Thundercrack! the news of more Curt McDowell is quite welcome.

Maybe a risk on our part, but I really wanted this to be framed as more of a fundraiser vs. a glorified preorder -- especially since the goal is to do the best and most we can with each of the films theatrically and digitally first instead of having the pressure to rush discs or downloads out to backers as soon as possible, as I've seen happen with other campaigns.

Happy to see the enthusiasm for Pumping Iron II and Sparkle's Tavern, I'm really thrilled to be working on both of them. The latter has been in the works for several years and is one that is especially meaningful -- I'm excited for more people to finally see it.

[senseabove]

Just noting that while Muscle funded their initial kickstarter, they've now added a stretch goal to strike a new 35mm print of Pumping Iron II with the original soundtrack and closing credits, which are otherwise only on one hard-to-access and quite worn circulating print.

[beamish14]

Just noting that while Muscle funded their initial kickstarter, they've now added a stretch goal to strike a new 35mm print of Pumping Iron II with the original soundtrack and closing credits, which are otherwise only on one hard-to-access and quite worn circulating print.

That is wonderful. I think they’re referring to the North Carolina School of the Arts’ print.

[Matt]

For those who aren't bothered by vintage gay porn, I want to give my strongest recommendation to Muscle's first Wakefield Poole collection. I had not seen any of these films before, and they are a revelation. Like Marguerite Duras with fellatio. Lots of dreamlike scenes of guys walking around in parks, down the street, through old houses, apartments, and motel rooms. Very little dialogue.

I haven't looked at the tech notes yet (if they are even in the booklet), but the seven films themselves are magnificently presented from what looks like 16mm prints and VHS transfers for shot-on-video works.

As with the Pierre Creton set I just finished, I'm going to do a watch through of this Wakefield Poole set and maybe write them up if I have any thoughts worth posting. First up:

Freedom Day Parade: San Francisco 1974 (1974): 11 minutes

Just like it says, footage from the Gay Freedom Day Parade (what we would now call a Pride parade) in 1974. In many ways, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Lots of drag, but what would be considered more "genderfuck" drag in the style pioneered by The Cockettes and which you don't see much of anymore (at least in the mainstream): exaggerated make-up over hippie beards and mustaches, purposely shabby clothing from thrift stores or flea markets (long before "vintage" became desirable), no attempts to "pass" to be "flawless." Basically more of a middle finger to gender norms and probably a polar opposite of what would have been called "female impersonators" like you'd see in the documentary The Queen. My favorite might be the Carmen Miranda-style performer on silver rollerskates being pulled by a rope behind a float, then perhaps the group dressed in what I can only call "funeral drag"—black dresses, veils, hankies—which I thought was very funny.

But then there are also fun things like a little band of men in short shorts and bow ties drumming on toy snare drums, a troupe of baton twirlers, men in hard hats doing cheerleader routines with pompoms. So, still flipping the bird to gender norms but not in such an exaggerated way. The Wakefield Poole-ness of the film comes out after the parade proper when some nudists start frolicking in the fountain in front of City Hall, and the camera lingers on their bodies in a slightly leering fashion, then he picks out the faces of several attractive men in the crowd for his camera to capture. Then some people (including someone with an unexpected mohawk) dancing to a band before the film ends.

There's no sync sound, just snippets of music over the footage, a random assortment like a Beatles track, some Carmen Miranda, some striptease music. It's a fun and obviously important document of the period, that little pocket of time between Stonewall and AIDS when full equality seemed possible in the very near future. The event (or more likely Poole's selection of footage from it) is very male, very white, but it looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

Roger (1977): 12 minutes

Due to the presence of a (pretty daring) soundtrack, I can't assume this was a porn loop meant to be played on 8mm film in a peepshow type booth. I imagine it was shown in between features or strippers at a gay theater like the Nob Hill which features in some of Poole's other films. It's been a good 20+ years since I've seen Poole's Bijou, but I remember it having an opening scene or a segment similar to this: a naked man lit by red gels in front of a black void of a backdrop, showing off his oiled-up, impressively muscular body, masturbating. The soundtrack builds up into this kind of manic combination of a drum solo, rhythmic breathing, and some electronic sounds. It's not anything you might expect from a film like this, but if perfectly suits the shape of the film: slow rise, climax, comedown. Roger begins the film in a standing position with his back to the camera, full body view, then slowly turns and drops to his knees, does his thing for several minutes, then rises up again and turns his back to the camera. So even if not designed to be run in a loop, it does actually form a loop, which is pretty dang cool. The full-body views of Roger lap dissolve with close-ups or are sometimes overlaid with still images, so the film is extremely, self-consciously "arty" while still functioning as erotica.

[Matt]

Moving! (1974): 63 minutes

Not trying to be prudish or coy here, but just a warning for anyone approaching these films cold: the last third of this film is a little extreme even by today's mainstream porn standards.

This film is a triptych made for the 1970s equivalent of the home video market: mail order 8mm film purchases. This version is transferred from the 16mm reversal original and has synced music. The 8mm home versions would have been silent, but Poole's introduction states that music selections were recommended to those buying them. All of the segments are based around dwellings of some sort.

In the first segment, Casey Donovan is exploring the grounds of a house for sale. He first sees Val Martin in a greenhouse and then by the pool, materializing like an apparition. As with Bijou, it's been well over 20 years since I've seen Boys in the Sand, but I remember Donovan's entrance in the film being similar, materializing from the waves. I'm not the biggest fan of Donovan. I get that he was the ideal all-American blond, tan, boy next door type who would do anything and look hot doing it, but he just doesn't do anything for me. He always looks like he's performing sex, not enjoying it, and that's so unsexy. And even when fairly young he looked leathery. Anyway, Donovan and the balding, craggy, sweaty Martin (to each his own, I guess) go at it very energetically but very off-puttingly, writhing around dramatically and slapping at each other and spitting. There's some business here involving bootlaces which, I understand why but also... why?

The opening rapid-fire montage of "for sale" signs and the shots of Donovan exploring the house before Martin stops vanishing are actually interesting, but once the sex starts you're just kind of waiting for it to end. The sex in all the segments of this film is so choppily filmed and edited that it becomes almost impressionistic. That sometimes works in its favor in this segment, such as with the many closeups of wet skin where it's initially unclear as to what body parts we're even looking at. But other times it's just confusing. I'd say this segment is "erotic"—in scare quotes like that—and it's the least interesting and least actually erotic of the three. The musical accompaniment here is Scriabin's Le poème de l’extase, which makes it even more ridiculous and overcooked.

The second segment has Burt Edouards and Curt Gerard taking up residence in a motel room. It's probably the most straightforward of the three segments. No dreamlike scenario, no hesitant exploring of space. But in contrast to Donovan and Martin, these guys are actually youthful and attractive, equally matched in size, and seem to enjoy being with each other. Some of the sex is a little ridiculous, more like party tricks than anything you'd actually do with another human's body, but it's the most naturalistic segment overall. I could do without the zooms and the frenetic cutting, though. It's set to jazz/funk instrumentals by Paul Humphrey, one of which sounds like it has one of those siren whistles in it, which has about the same erotic and comedic effects of a slide whistle or a trombone.

The third segment is the most dreamlike but also, as I said above, the most extreme. Adorably elfin Tom Wright finds an empty San Francisco row house for rent and goes inside. He explores room by room until he opens some sliding doors that reveal a life-size drawing of a bearded man with tribal arm tattoos. As Wright caresses it, the drawing comes to life as Peter Fisk (who was also in Boys in the Sand and Bijou and was a very handsome, imposing man). Wright is just a little slip of a man, so the contrast in size and body type is pronounced here and intriguing. But unlike the flip-flop equality of the second segment, it's pretty clear here which of these guys is going to be demolishing the other. Fisk dominates Wright pretty thoroughly throughout the film, at one point even buzzing Wright's hair off with a pair of clippers, which is honestly pretty neat. And then—well, there's no way to soft-pedal this—the fisting begins. But all in all, this might be the most loving depiction of sex in the entire film, Wright totally trusting Fisk and the whole thing actually being quite affectionate overall. You will wince at one point, though. As with the first segment, Wright is shown leaving the house just as he showed up, and it's suggested that the scenario was imagined. The music here is "Des Helden Friedenswerke" from Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, which is surprisingly effective.

Poole admits that this was made for the money, the mail order trade being much more lucrative than theatrical distribution. I haven't seen enough of his work in whole to know if the overall choppiness of the filming and editing are characteristic. I don't remember that from the earliest features, and it's not evident in Roger, so I assume it's attributable to the run-and-gun nature of the making of this particular film. It works strongly against building any kind of mood or sustained eroticism, so it's a tribute to the performers that they can make any of this work as intended.