Vintage USA porn: 'Skin Deep' 1982
A young writer of sex fantasies (that we get to see) has an affair with a muscular hustler. The hustler, Michael Christopher, starts to fall for the writer, Johnny Dawes, and wants more.
"We both sell skin. You lay it out on paper, I lay it out on the sheets."
A new favourite piece of gay erotica, probably the best example of the form I've seen since seeing the works of Arthur J. Bresson last year. Like Bresson, this is more a love story than a porn film but it's not ashamed of it's eroticism. Instead, it uses that to tell the story. Johnny Dawes and Michael Christopher are beautiful and their love story here is touching, fiery and hot.
The cinematography is STUNNING, with beautiful lighting and artful framing. Special mention must be paid to the setting, an enormous enviable loft, so strange spatially. Film is perfectly paced with a gorgeous mood enhancing soundtrack. The first song in the film, 'And Here You Are' by Stuff, is ethereal, haunting, tender and sexy, while also sounding a bit like a lounge remix of the Nightmare on Elm Street theme. Fitting for a film about the collision of sex and reality, dreams and expectations.
The Ask Any Buddy episode on this film just enhances it's greatness, noting instances of especially artful framing and providing some great backstory, including exploring the lives of some of it's stranger stars (Benjamin Barker's insane cinephilia, Chris Burns, a man taught by Bruce Lee, who used his skills in martial arts to teach gays and lesbians how to defend themsleves against gay bashings). Desperate to read the Beau Matthews essay they mention, as it sounds sobering and fascinating.
