Lindsey Haun | Coming To / 2015

 

an odd choice

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nick Roth, Lindsey Haun, and Tony De Marco (screenplay), Lindsey Haun (director) Coming To / 2015 [5 minutes]

 

Tony (Jacob DeMonte-Finn) wakes up naked in a hallway; the only items upon his body consist of a cock ring (so reads the promotional commentary) and a sequined scarf. He knows only that he probably overdosed, evidently an event he’s encountered before—although he later recalls that he hasn’t used drugs in over 7 months. But where he is in this strange building—which he soon perceives in an apartment complex—how did he got there, and what happened that left him in that stairwell are all wiped from his memory. His only sensation, a terribly strong one, is the need to urinate.

 

     As he enters the hallway of the building, he randomly tries doors, all of which are locked. One door opens, the man inside demanding he leave immediately, even his request to use the bathroom met, understandably given his nakedness, angrily denied.

      Suddenly, as his piss trickles onto the hall floor, the idea comes into his head that he’s in Koreatown in Los Angeles, that he may have been drugged, and that he needs to look for Room 1104.

 

    Entering that room, he discovers the bathroom door closed, a shadowed figure showering within. Who is the man in shower? He remembers meeting him and even liking him, but has no comprehension who he might be. On the table in from the couch where he now sits is a wide variety of drugs, in power and pill form, along with a wide variety and drug paraphernalia. The scene reminds him of nearly every apartment in which he has taken meth.

      He calls someone named Joseph, either his companion or good friend, explaining that he doesn’t know where the fuck he is. Joseph tells him that he can’t “go down that road” with him again. But he orders him to put his pants, shoes, and shirt on and leave the place, presumably reporting on the phone where he is once he glimpses a street sign.

      Tony remembers now that they had spent the entire day snorting lines of crystal meth, mixing the meth with GHB (Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid) and squirting it up their asses. Codeine, Xanax, and other drugs followed. He now remembers as well, getting off on the bus on Western and Olympic. He remembers snorting the first line. And then, so he reports in the continued voice over, “I remember Mike. He said he could tell I wasn’t happy. And I told him he was right. And I remember feeling safe.”

      As the elevator doors begin to close, he suddenly pushes them open and returns, one assumes, to the apartment from which he has just attempted to escape. Clearly, feeling safe—despite all the evidence that the stranger’s apartment is no safe haven—is more important to him than kicking his habit. Obviously, he does not feel “safe,” whatever that means in this context, with Joseph. And it is hinted that he sees his relationship as part of the reason he has returned to drugs.

      One doubts that in an apartment filled with the drugs and apparatus we witnessed he will be able to go straight, but that evidently is not the issue. It is still more welcoming than his own home, far preferable to waiting to be picked up by his companion and taken to his Silverlake home. Is there violence in his home? Has he been threatened because of his addiction? We know even less than Tony has known awakening naked in that stairwell. For that matter, we don’t even know if Tony is gay or that Joseph even represents someone with whom he is in a relationship. But the choice our gradually awakening hero has made seems almost to be a matter of life or death. Perhaps he has chosen the latter.

     As thought-provoking as director / actor Lindsey Haun’s short film may be, it seems that if she and her writers had provided us with just a little more information, we might have been able to care about this character’s decision, if nothing else. As it is, we can only shrug our shoulders and say, “well that seems an odd choice.”

 

Los Angeles, May 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).

Jake Jaxson and R. J. Sebastian | Meet the Morecocks / 2015 [TV movie]

feuding cocked-up boys

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cilantro Che Guevara and Jake Jaxson (screenplay), Jake Jaxson and R. J. Sebastian (directors) Meet the Morecocks / 2015 [34 minutes] TV movie

 

Even as I began these volumes, I realized that it would be difficult to completely exclude pornography from my discussions. And over the decades it has increasingly become difficult to isolate the two, particularly given the gradual acceptance and embracement of pornography by audiences, both male and female. In a few cases, porn films have become cinematographically superior to numerous narrative features, and as in the example under discussion here, narrative, documentation, and promotional videos have become blurred with cinematic sex acts. Although most LGBTQ films and shorts do not focus on the genitals, sexual acts are regularly portrayed and even genitalia are increasingly featured in independent and even traditional studio filmmaking.   

      The porn studio CockyBoys was founded in Los Angeles by Kyle Majors in 2007, whose vision of porn was limited primarily to a voyeuristic approach to sex focusing primarily on jocks, tattooed models, and all things of the Southern California culture. There was seldom any narrative, and the attempt was, in the studio’s words, to present “no complicated stories, just a great location with hot boys fucking—no lavish costumes or stupid uniforms—just cock pounding ass.” The original CockyBoys films, in short, defined just what I could easily exclude from discussion in my pages.          Three years later, however, the studio was sold to New York-filmmaker Jake Jaxson, who decided to bring the studio to New York city, making it one of only two major gay adult studios in the city’s boroughs. Instead of featuring anonymous performers, Jaxson chose to hire models, featuring their studio names such as Mason Star, Gabril Clark, Tommy Defendi, and earlier the three boys featured in this documentary-like promotional film, Jake Bass, Levi Karter, and George Alvin (who performed under the name of Max Ryder).

 

    Jaxson also attended, with his lover cinematographer R. J. Sebastian to issues of cinematography and editing. And with their mutual lover Benny Morecock and web designer, all films began by narratively placing the actors in relationship to one another, pointing out their previous sexual encounters and their personal relationships in a manner that helped the viewer to see the entire enterprise of CockyBoys to be something like a large porno family with characters that love and fought with one another along the way.

     With works like Max & Jake’s Road Trip (2013), starring Max Ryder and Jake Bass, and Project GoGo Boy (2012), for whom Jaxson hired the professional dancer Jett Black with subsequently was expelled from the Royal Winnepeg Ballet for his work in porn, the studio began drawing international attention, particularly when CBC News in Canada interviewed Jaxson and Black on a feature that ran online and on television concerning the “scandal.”       

     The same year, 2012, New York Magazine profiled an essay titled “He & He & He” about the relationship between designer Benny, the director Jake, and the cinematographer R. J. It was later adapted into play titled, “Gay Sex,” the student writer at Vassar College leading a panel discussion with the three of them about their love life and the art porn movement.

      The following year the studio received news attention again when the New York Daily News revealed that the journalist behind the essays and film about Edward Snowden and the US National Security scandal, Glenn Greenwald had been Jaxson’s for business partner.

        The next year, 2014, German editor Bruno Gmünder partnered with CockyBoys to publish a book of erotic photography, A Thing of Beauty, which lead to the international book tour that Meet the Morecocks features.

 

      Unless you’re a true fan of the porn company and its early trio of Bass, Karter, and Ryder, there’s not much of interest in this documentary. The characters and reasons for the tour and film are quickly established, the boys are eager to go with Jaxson and Sebastien to visit, most of them for the first time, London, Paris, and Berlin. Ryder, however, has just announced his movement away from being an active porn figure as he attempts to move into becoming a model and work in promotion for the company. But his hurt and anger—never fully explained—which resulted in his abandonment of screen sex is palpable as he spends much of time pouting and attempting to justify why he cannot fully join the others in displays of public affection and nudity when it is precisely that which the book signing audiences are expecting. Tensions begin to rise between the former best friends Bass and Ryder, and by the time the tour comes to an end, they have broken off communication.

       Their audiences—which Morecock and Jaxson describe as being made up of "fan girls, moms, teenagers, older gentleman, male and female couples, male and male couples, bisexuals and transgender people”—are fervent and interesting to imagine, but unless you truly love watching boys sign the coffee-table books, lounging around their bedrooms in complete chaos (porn boys evidently never pick up the clothes they cast off). and talking about and demonstrating the consumer goods they’ve picked up as trophies on route, along with watching mini-interviews Jaxson has with Bass and Ryder, each trying express their frustrations with one another, you won’t find much here to be of significant interest.

       Even Jaxson and Sebastien finally leave the two feuding cocked-up boys to themselves, going off to shoot scenes with Karter for their next film, Answered Prayers: The Banker, part one of their allegorical morality play “set against an ancient family feud and the follies of men.” The six-part series was later profiled by The Village Voice. And the same year two CockyBoys films, Fuck Year Levi Karter, another documentary film about that porn star, and the first part of Answered Prayers were selected for the 2014 Berlin Porn Film Festival.

       The following year, the thruple appeared at the Schwules Sex Museum in Berlin, exhibiting yet another photo book, Joyful Gay Sex. At the exhibition at Sex Museum Jaxon, Sebastian and their actors Tayte Hanson, Levi Kaarter, and Liam Riley participated on a panel to discuss “Romantic Porn.” By 2020, the studio had earned over 80 awards for their films.

 

Los Angeles, September 27, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2023).