Ceci N'est Pas Une Porn: John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus"

In contrast to yesterday's premier of the Masque trailer, today I present what could be its polar opposite: the ultra-slick trailer for "Shortbus", John Cameron Mitchell's much-anticipated indy film with hardcore sex:

(Spotted on Towleroad.)

I met John Cameron Mitchell at the GayVN awards five years ago and when I asked him why he was there, he coyly alluded that he was researching an adult film project he had planned for the near future.

What followed between then and the movie's premier at Cannes earlier this year was an excruciatingly drawn-out development, starting with a reality-TV-style open casting call (using "real people" was always a crucial part of his vision), and several "can he really pull it off?" style articles in major media outlets every few months since.

A massive fan of "Hedwig", the project seemed extremely exciting to me when announced but I can no doubt feel a bit burnt out after so much waiting and hype now that the movie's October 6 release is around the corner. The trailer, unfortunately, does little to feed my fast-waning enthusiasm.

The journey to bring hardcore sex in a "non-porn" film has been a slow but steady race: Andy Warhol and John Waters began flirting with the idea as early as the sixties. Vincent Gallo got a blowjob from Chloë Sevigny in 2003's "Brown Bunny" and Michael Winterbottom spattered Sundance audiences with Kieran O'Brien's cum in "9 Songs" in 2004. But the brass ring will go to whomever can make a movie that gets a modicum of distribution outside the film fest circuit (do you know anyone who's seen "Ken Park"?).

And for now you can forget about a gay porn that has "indy film" in it getting any sort of distribution. An Australian film board blocked a screening of Tony Comstock's unabashedly triple-X doc "Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together" due to some vague guideline violation.

-- Jack