Sex/Life in L.A.

Glossy magazines, porn awards, washboard stomachs and muscular pinups. Hollywood faithfully provides the public with a seemingly inexhaustible flood of male erotica. But there does come a time when the spotlights are turned off and the male models go about their own private lives within the city of palms on the pacific coast. Thepotentialities are enormous: innumerable clubs, sexhotlines and the sheer magnitude of partners to choose from. Nine young men in Los Angeles. Photomodels, porn actors, callboys, male hustlers, photographers and performance artists. They all have one thing in common: they earn their living with their bodies.

Matt Bradshaw, award winner and one of the most nominated porn actors in the Gay Porno Video Awards, Kevin Kramer – “the beautiful Californian boy” and already a legend in the domain of male erotica is planning his transformation from porn star to legitimate actor. Super model Tony Ward, in collaboration with renowned photographers Herb Ritts and Bruce Webber, has been crowned the “Body of L.A.” and roused the personal interest of popstar Madonna. Cole Tucker, a successful businessman, has realized a long-cherished dream – to have a career as a porn star. Rick Castro, photographer and chronicler of the life of male hustlers on Santa Monica Boulevard, is searching for the ultimate male pinup. Artist Ron Athey reminisces about his stirring performance pieces dealing with the suppressed traumas of an ever-fleeting consume-oriented gay subculture.
The body is both the object of desire and subject of art to each of the men presented here and they all give and take of their bodies freely. Not for the sake of power but to achieve a life-style full of excitement and diversity which can only be seen to enhance the limitations setup in run-of-the-mill America. For some – like the former porn actor John – it doesn’t work out and ends up in tragedy. For Tony Ward it leads to his breakup with the pop icon Madonna and results in his banishment from paradise.

You’ve never seen stories of human accomplishments and failures presented so intimately as they are here. Sex/Life in L.A. reveals the other side of celebrity and offers us a behind-the-scenes outlook into a creative part of society that is often hidden from and has remained undiscovered by a major portion of the pubIic. The film entertainingly outlines and stirs up fascinating images of Los Angeles. lt depicts in an extraordinarily intrinsic and erotic manner, the strategy of survival of its protagonists in the epicenter of gay-male imagery. –Galeria Alaska