Todd Verow | Bottom / 2012 [documentary]

the opposite of sex

by Douglas Messerli

 

Todd Verow (director) Bottom / 2012 [documentary]

 

US director Todd Verow’s Bottom is like no other documentary ever made. Usually. documentaries reveal someone or a series of events that we have perhaps heard of but about which we have never known the full facts or have been unable to glean a complete perspective. Or, in some cases, a documentary reveals to us a force of action of a person or group who has/have previously never been fully recognized and deserve our attention.

    Very, very few people have even imagined the existence of the totally anonymous individual of this work, of whom to maintain the subject’s anonymity, the director provides no full picture or even a name. We never see his face, although his ass and cock are fully featured. And none one but the 600-hundred some fuckers in this film have known of his existence or actually seen his face if they even ever bothered to look.

    One might describe this work as a strange kind of pornography except that although we see a great deal of anal action and an endless amount of ejaculate on screen there is utterly no attempt to make what is portrayed sexy—unless you belong to that small group of men who find it exciting just to think someone’s ass filled with the cum of many other men who got there first.  

    I might even admit that there could be a slight excitement in the delight of placing one’s cock in a receptor filled with the spew of strangers, except that none of parts of the human anatomy portrayed seem to be even the slightest bit attractive—most of the fuckers appear to be flabby-assed and overweight, and the “bottom,” or as he likes to describe himself, the “cum dump,” has a rectum that has been so often penetrated that the open hole that remains seems particularly unattractive even for those who might describe themselves as impatient “tops.”

     The central “character” of this strange work, in fact, is not really interested in sex as a sensual act. He only likes the sensation of having something in his ass and the sticky drip and smell of cum left behind. Several times in this film, in fact, he is just as delighted to receive cum via anonymous condoms or other containers saved up by his visitors or which he has found on the floors of gay sex dens. Except for verbal abuse, he is not at all interested even in speaking with his sexual partners and in his endless desire for more “loads,” he prefers those who come, do it fast, quickly put their clothes back on and leave quickly before the next potential partner rings the doorbell.

     The central figure, whose voice as even been altered so that no one might recognize him as a real being, is interested in only one thing, acquiring as many loads in his ass each day as possible—in the busiest day portrayed in this film he acquires 50 loads—and by the of this film he notes that he has so far received 600-some loads and hopes by the end of the year to end up with a couple thousand.

     Finally, if you are still somehow sexually aroused by his acquisitiveness—he somehow keeps all the loads he receives in one day within his rectum (does he ever shit or even fart?)—he makes it clear that he is HIV-positive, although he adamantly denies that he has passed on syphilis to one of his partners, berating him, in any event, for not realizing that when you practice bareback sex you might expect STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) come with the territory.

    This vague figure, all ass and erect cock, spends his entire life, day after day calling up men on his phone who might want to fuck him, or trolling dark rooms of known and unknown sex clubs, or participating in private sexual gatherings at people’s living rooms and beds who like bareback fucking. There is absolutely nothing else in his life, except perhaps for his conversations with Verow, presumably the individual who he keeps calling the “video man,” who at one point comes over his face and into his mouth but never joins the others in increasing the total of his cum dumps.

    Except for the clear audacity, stupidity, and unattractiveness of his actions (Mr. Anonymous often even participates in what he describes as “mercy fucks” with men even he finds disgustingly ugly and old) there is not much here to watch except for cocks being pumped in and out of his ass and rubbers being emptied of their contents through devices that open his hole wide enough for an easy emptying of their contents into his butt. One such scene might possibly arouse an open-minded gay viewer, but several dozens simply make the mind numb, the pupils retract, and any erection it may have initiated goes immediately limp.

      I went staggering through this 1 hour and 25 minutes of his gathering of cum—taking many long breaks to return to the intelligent and sentient real world around me—to wonder why I had tortured myself to this film’s completion. In the end (pun intended), the only thing I realized is that no matter how much this bag of human flesh was filled with cum, he otherwise remained totally empty.

      I’d rather watch a man count the clouds or stars he sees than faithfully count the loads of semen others insert into his butt. This film ultimately has nothing at all to do with sex, let alone with gay or LGBTQ love.

 

Los Angeles, September 14, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).