Hustler White

If you never haunted LGBTQ and independent film festivals in the late 1990s and early 21st Century you may not be familiar with the work of the filthy, sensationalist auteur Bruce LaBruce.

This was a booming time for queer filmmaking when artists had venues for their work but very little backing, so the material maintains and edginess that funded art cannot embrace -- think of Jean Luc Godard and Fran�ois Truffaut hustling for gay sex on a little bit of LSD and a lot of crystal meth.

Now on Blu-ray Disc, Strand Releasing has reissued LaBruce and Rick Castro's 16mm film "Hustler White," restored in HD.

Some of LaBruce's more recent work includes the Zombie shocker "Otto, or, Up With Dead People," the somewhat pornographic "The Raspberry Reich" and the more mainstream "Gerontophilia." Rick Castro made his reputation in nude male art photography, particularly bondage and BDSM themed work that focuses on a culture that thrived in the 1980s and 90s. He now owns and runs the unique fetish art gallery Antebellum.

In a spoof of "Sunset Boulevard," Montgomery Ward (Madonna's former supermodel boyfriend Tony Ward) begins the movie floating face down in a hot tub. The film then flashes back to a random hodge-podge of events revolving around his adventures in sex work and porn-set fluffing. This is done with frequent allusions to Hollywood and pop culture (including a thoroughly random yet charming visual reference to the films of Andy Warhol with Joe Dallesandro.) In the meantime, an obnoxious cultural anthropologist Jurgen Anger (Bruce LaBruce) attempts to research hustling as a social phenomenon and ends up stalking Ward.

Though the film is absolutely fictional, by using real hustlers and porn models, and being shot on location (with scenes often captured in one take), it documents a subculture of the American gay experience in a way that is appallingly authentic. Its style is completely corny high-camp, mixed with graphic sexual depictions and nudity, but it reflects (in an exaggerated way) the hustling culture on Santa Monica Boulevard during the late 90s.

For the more seriously inclined, there is a recorded introduction to the film by LaBruce at a recent Toronto film festival as a bonus feature. And rather than having an audio commentary by the director, there is a video recording of LaBruce sitting on his couch with a couple of male prostitutes attempting to watch a VHS tape of "Hustler White" while he makes observations about it. The director gets bored and fast forwards through scenes, and the sex workers lose interest and start fooling around for the camera.

"Hustler White"
Blu-ray Disc
81 minutes / Not Rated (contains nudity, sexual activity and semi-stiff erections)
www.strandreleasing.com