Truly Dreadful Film

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

"Pornography: A Thriller" starts off as a story about Mark Anton (Jared Grey), a porn star trying to get out of the biz, whose last gig turns out to be the last time he's seen, ever. Fifteen years later Michael (Matthew Montgomery), a writer working on a history of gay porn, and his boyfriend, move into a "New York City" apartment that becomes less and less fabulous as Michael uncovers clues—like "old" camera mounts that just happen to fit modern camcorders— that link it to Mark Anton's disappearance. Things get really spooky until—cut to Los Angeles, where present day porn icon Matt Stevens (Pete Scherer) is determined to make "The Mark Anton Story," surprised to discover Anton was a real person when the whole story came to him in a dream. Weird! Things get weirder as the movie goes into production and Stevens becomes unhinged. One of his stars mysteriously disappears. He starts seeing things. Reality and fantasy become blurred. Will re-enacting Mark Anton's end also be the demise of Matt Stevens? Would some full-frontal nudity help?Writer-director David Kittredge had some promising ideas for three possible movies. Unfortunately, he failed to finish any of them and tried to cover it up by imitating David Lynch. Several actors occupy dual roles, most prominently Walter Delmar as Michael's boyfriend and Stevens' co-star/lover. Michael receives mysterious photos in the mail, the same photos that were taken by Anton, who was studying photography at the time he disappeared. Then Michael receives photos relating to Anton's murder, and after that, photos of himself in his apartment looking at these photos. There is a ring with a symbol on it, a symbol that links to some underground snuff film producer that may or may not be real. People spout lines of dialog that I'm sure were meant to be profound—like Anton saying he likes doing crosswords because puzzles "have no ambiguity"—but comes off as pretentious horses---t. Viewers will also see nods to David Croenenberg's "Videodrome" and more than a few scenes reminiscent of "Saw." Many of the people involved in making "Pornography: A Thriller" were also involved in the gay sci-fi/horror "Socket." By comparison, "Pornography" has slightly higher production values—and I emphasize slightly—with stronger acting and some moody cinematography, though much of it looks flat and cheap. Truth be told, there are actual porn videos made with more finesse, which left me wishing Kittredge and crew just collaborated with, say, the folks at Raging Stallion or Titan Media, making an experimental porn video instead of a rambling "art" movie. At least a porn movie would have a climax. Several of them, in fact.

The first half of the film is pretty exciting, let be a bit cheesy, but that's part of the genre. Then it just gets weird in a "it was just a dream - or was it?" kind of way. Boring.I got the impression the writer didn't believe in his own script, thinking the basic story was too over the top to make it on its own. So he made a twist to save face as a serious movie-maker. Or something like that.Sorry to be so negative about it, but just like another reviewer pointed out, this movie could have been so good with so little extra work done to it.Technically it was well done, the acting/directing is okay too, I really just object to the script.

Slow and boring — a badly told story: are the two objections reviewers here reiterate in different ways over and over. And yet, the film I saw couldn't be more enticing. PORNOGRAPHY: A THRILLER is methodical, character driven, but certainly not boring; and considering its ambitious three part narrative, I'd say this seamlessly rendered film ends up being the engaging puzzle it was intended to be. Writer/director, David Kittredge has clearly thought about his subject long and hard, for the kind of cubist back and forth he's cooked up brilliantly exploits thriller hooks to explore the relationship between hardcore sex acted for the camera and the imagination of those who get off on watching it. Even with the ghost of David Lynch in obvious attendance, Kittredge's thriller plot does not seem stolen or manufactured, as others would have you think; it reflect the artist's ambiguous relationship to the subject. The film is saying that pornography arouses us, body and mind, with temptation and dread; two sides of the same coin. Here's a gay film that truly challenges its audience to think. No gay bar clichés, no stupid, camp posturing pandering to a marketable demographic. If someone says this is boring or not well done, it means the film went over their heads.

This film is a myth and the object of a cult. Desire among gay people, desire to sexually do absolutely all one may desire, but also desire that everything that someone else might desire to do to one submissive subject may be done. It tries to show that love, any love I guess, gay love here, has that kind of absolute submissive dimension and that this submissive dimension may be exploited to the extreme by some who know there is an audience for that kind of kinky adventure. Is the film well done? Probably and after a while we lose track of the characters and the places, from New York to California and back again. We seem to be mixing old episodes and recent ones and present ones and maybe future one. We lose track of time and that is important because that kind of desire is so total and absolute that there is no limit to it, no time limit, no space limit, no limit whatsoever. That discourse is interesting because that is the very definition of any passion. What is surprising in this film is that it is interspersed with some sex scenes that are in no way really artistic, nor crude enough to be realistic. The films seems to prove what is said somewhere that any sex video, even snuff videos are fake, are not true. In other words there the film stops being realistic at all. Because that is not true. And there is a market for that kind of stuff, even for the real thing to be performed, if we can say so, in front of your very eyes. But what's more this sadism that the film seems to push aside is also a real element in many societies. The death penalty is nothing else and when it is shown on TV or even organized in stadiums like lapidating and hanging, or like some torturing in prisons or during war operations that is webcasted on the Internet, we can be sure that there is a market for that kind of real thing, I mean really real. So the film is interesting in a way when it shows the exploitation of the sex drive among gay people or people in general, but it is fantasizing when it pretends the snuffing side of it does not exist. At least Christopher Rice does not hesitate to set up that sadistic side in full view. Thanks God he does.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID