Gay Porn Dispatch: Hardcore Sex at Sundance!

I just got back from an Ugg-studded Park City and while Wet Palms won’t be competing this year, the 2005 Sundance Film Festival has more sucking and fucking on its hallowed film screens this week alone than in the entire history of Utah.

On Friday night, directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato premiered their penetrating look at Linda Lovelace et al. with Inside Deep Throat. The doc interviews everyone from Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown to Gore Vidal and Harry Reems (the wacky doctor who discovers that Linda Lovelace’s clitoris is at the base of her throat). Unlike so many porn docs, the Brian Grazer-produced film lets the original Deep Throat speak for itself, with an explicit and funny shot of Linda going down on Reems, taking the cock like a pro. While one audience member did express dismay that this was not a documentary about Watergate, the rest seemed prepared to accept the sex-cess.This weekend also saw the debut of another NC-17 flick, director Michael Winterbottom’s daring 9 Songs. The artcore film features a smokin’ Englishman with a thick uncut cock and a sex-positive girlfriend who is willing to take it all for the sake of ‘art’. The screening was preceded by “Elke’s Visit,” a sex-filled short that takes place on a train. Both had full penetration (vaginal, lingual, digital, oral) and audiences were more aroused than shocked. I was bored, but it could have been the cunnilingus.

Have directors taken the cue of the famously unsuccessful Brown Bunny (where Chloe Sevigny goes down on Vincent Gallo)? While it’s daring to try and break down the barriers between hardcore and mainstream films, it risks being more boring than breakthrough if you don’t have a reason (other than shock value). It’s too bad that Verhoven and Esterhas won’t be working in this town any longer. If anyone should be given the right to poke at the mainstream market, it’s those two.

Or maybe me and Jack. The next three episodes of the hit gay porn soap should be appearing next week (or so the kids at NakedSword.com and Jet Set tell us).

— Mike