Jerker
Yep, Vinnie's gone gay again with this one. A shot-on-video adaptation of Robert Chesley's scandalous '80s stage play, Jerker is set in 1985 and begins with Bert (Tom Wagner) receiving an obscene phone call from a guy who ultimately identifies himself as J.R. (Joseph Stachura). Naturally the call quickly turns into a session of wildly erotic phone sex! Soon J.R. is calling regularly and what began as a phone sex relationship evolves into something much deeper. Not an all-out porno, though the first half hour of this movie consists of Bert and JR engaging in thoroughly XXX-rated dialogue (and both actors spend the bulk of the film in the buff). Written shortly after AIDS had begun to ravage the gay community (at a time when everyone was anti-gay sex), Chesley set out to write a play that depicted sex in a positive way. Although the story's a time capsule, it's still surprisingly shocking, poignant and relevant in an age of cybersex -- and the title has dual meanings.
Released as the first of the ill-fated Pride Playhouse Collection (a series of gay plays shot for video) in 1991, it doesn't appear that the tapes had a very wide distribution (there's not a single review of any of the Pride Playhouse flicks on imdb), and the video quality is somewhat lacking. The film opens with a intro by the play's original director (and part-time porn actor) Michael Kearns, and it concludes with a 20 minute interview with Chesley -- his last on-camera interview, as he passed away three months later. It's a shame that the flick's not on DVD.
As a post-script, in 1986 excerpts from the play (that featured the ridiculously overlong title Jerker, or The Helping Hand: A Pornographic Elegy with Redeeming Social Value and a Hymn to the Queer Men of San Francisco in Twenty Telephone Calls, Many of Them Dirty) were broadcast on an L.A. radio station, so a minister filed a complaint with the FCC and, subsequently, the FCC revised their guidelines on what constituted indecency. Weird.
LINKS:
amazon (VHS)
Vinnie's words of wisdom: Mean people suck... but nice people blow.
(So please be nice and blow me.)