March 2004 Cover
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By
Giacomo Tramontagna
Joe Gage Sex Files, Vol. 1: Jack-Off Party at Billy Bob's
Rating: 3 Stars
Produced by Tony Alizzi. Written and
directed by Joe Gage. Starring Rhett O'Hara,
John Carlos, Derek Dewars, Deacon Frost,
Michael Gomez, Jordan, Michael Knight,
Lex
Kyler, York Powers, Damian Steele, and
Walt Walters.
How to order
Joe Gage is back, and MSR, the studio whose slogan is "Men Are Pigs," has got him. In his late '70s, early '80s heyday, Gage was not prolific, but his classic road
trilogy-- Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976),
El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1977), L.A. Tool and
Die (1977)-- secured his place in the porn directors' pantheon. His films defined an era, putting to rest the
tubercular-poet stereotype of gay men and supplanting it with images of rugged, queer masculinity. Reaching beyond adult film and into the mainstream, Gage's influence can be detected in men's
fashions, television commercials, Hollywood movies, and the work of still photographers Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, and Arthur Tress.
When videotape replaced film stock as the standard medium for porn production, Gage left the adult entertainment industry to write and direct low-end Hollywood films like
Breeders and The Occultist under the name Tim Kincaid. In 2001, he returned to porn after a 17-year hiatus and attempted his first video production, Men of Odyssey's
Tulsa County Line. Within a year, he moved over to MSR Videos for a remake of his 1980
Closed Set, a film that didn't need remaking; the 2002 video version, though filled with sizzling moments, never hit the
ecstatic heights of the pre-condom original.
With Gage's new, laid-back, fluidly edited
Sex Files series, he completes his transition from filmmaker to video artist. Simultaneously spoofing and honoring
cinéma vérité, these
pseudo-documentary vignettes carry a quietly devastating erotic charge. They have an air of authenticity that makes them seem like video counterparts of Boyd McDonald's true-sex stories. In
the initial volume, Jack-Off Party at Billy
Bob's, Rhett O'Hara plays a lubricious young dude who invites a succession of male friends into his bungalow for beer, straight porn, and
masturbation. There's a bit of oral sex in the third episode, courtesy of Michael Gomez, but mostly the action is manual. These ostensibly heterosexual, recognizably human, working-class types range
in age from early twenties to mid-forties. The five-man session in the fourth and final scene may be the most effective sequence of its kind in years.
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