Customer Reviews

Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore

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I had a special interest in Jeffrey Escoffier's book as I fairly much by chance started a gay bookstore in Dallas, Texas, in 1974 and rode the wave of the gay porn business for years. While my wave crashed in 2004, after reading Escoffier perhaps I got out at the right time considering the changed market from selling the product in person as opposed to the internet. All the characters that cross his pages are familiar from names on video boxes to friendships with such interesting persons as Richard Lawrence and Drew Onkon (Al Parker) - one story not in his book was told to me by Drew about selling the masters of his Surge Studio films to a certain "business man" in Las Vegas. If I were to point to any omission it would be from the view of the gay retailer such as myself. How my partner and I had to fly out of state for merchandise because of strict state laws, how we had to travel to San Francisco (a great sacrifice I know) to acquire Falcon 8mm films via Le Salon's then owner, and having to use a friend in the military in southern California to pick up videos from William Higgins. But his book does fill in a lot of blanks (such as who was known as the Black Budda) from my perspective.

I found this book to give an excellent overview of the gay porn industry from the sixties to the present. It did seem to focus a bit much on certain production companies (AMG in the early days and Falcon in the eighties and nineties), while ignoring or peripherally mentioning others such as Colt Studios and Titan Media. Likewise with certain of the gay subcultures with thug porn getting a separate chapter but absolutely no mention of the bear subculture. This may be due to just the wide range of gay porn out there, or might be a result of too much reliance on Manshots, that may have had its own internal biases, as a primary source of information. All in all though, this is an important history and record of an aspect of gay life whose importance and influence is often overlooked or minimized.

Gay Porn is an interesting counter-culture subject. I have read many books about the Gay Porn escapades. Basically the book by Wakefield Poole, bio on Casey Donovan and Al Parker; to the tragic story of Joey Stefano. This book is a perfect work to read.
The author executes subjects in gay porn in perfect timing. From the 60s of Andy Warhol's movies, to Wakefield Poole's classic BOYS IN THE SAND, then on to the development of FALCON and other production companies, gay-for-pay, and directors who process their own style. What got me thinking is how the author explains the difference between GAY PORN SUPERSTAR and GAY PORN STAR. There are many many GAY PORN STARS right now with the increasing demand of porn and internet, BUT there isn't a SUPERSTAR. I would have liked the author to talk about KRISTEN BJORN. Even though he is quoted in the book in certain areas, BJORN has his own style of gay porn which is unique and, I feel, artistic. This is an easy read, not boring at all. Buy this book!

There is a theory, mind you its just a theory, that a phenomenon lasts twice as long as when one first encounters it. Here, the author predicts the demise of gay pornography--at least as it is known. Born in the 1960-1970 period, gay porn has an interesting foundation. Performers really don't make that much from the films themselves but it enhances marketing of escort services by elaborating a fantasy, a remarkably affordable one. So while the author makes no predictions about gay prostitution, he makes many, many interesting observations about the appeal of gay porn, from its trumpeting of liberation to the response to AIDS to questions of race and, probably most importantly, the role of story. As such, this book is really about much more than what turns some men on (the few female viewers receive no attention). As a work on culture, its a shocker, finding the profound in what some may find banal.

Jeffrey Escoffier's studious survey of the history of male gay (and bisexual) pornography (and of some erotic film of borderline-porno nature, i.e. Canada's own Bruce LaBruce's wonderfully strange and often humourous movies, certain films of Andy Warhol, etc.) is a conscientiously thorough (well, mostly!), albeit not really inspired or exciting study of its subject. The collector should keep in mind that the American editions alike in hardback and paperback bindings, as well as the British paperback edition of the book, all bear the title "Bigger Than Life: the History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore", while the British hardcover edition perhaps bears the same title or perhaps is entitled "All-Male, All of the Time: the Larger-Than-Life History of Gay Porn Cinema", judging from an internally inconsistent listing (of two for the work) for that format edition on the United Kingdom's Amazon site but not from much of any evidence elsewhere. Escoffier covers most of the aspects, producers, and porn stars which are seminally important. I won't add more than a bit beyond that, other U.S. Amazon reviews touching on much of what I also would mention. I just want "to make a plug" for a book that is well worth reading for any gay man or student of erotic pop culture.

There are gaps in Escoffier's book. Obviously, some recently emerging stars (my favourite being Brazil's gorgeously, darkly sexy Dario Beck) have no coverage in this book, but that is an inevitable limitation of book publishing, which fixes data in time, at least from one edition to the next. On the other hand, some genres or types of gay pornographic video come up "missing-in-action". Where is coverage of the "bear" or "chubby chasing" genres? of French and other European porno cinema and video of reasonably wide distribution and hence accessibility? of loner eccentiric masterpieces like "Thundercrack"? of the output of the Bel Ami Studio and other video porn of the popular Eastern European gay scene (and of its achingly beautiful young men)? I also would have liked some attention from Escoffier to the phenomenon of videos that are of unusual length (more quanitity, often, than quality), of four hours, five hours, even ten hours duration. What is the home market for such videos, which seem better intended for circular, non-stop play in gay bars, saunas, or in other such settings?

As for the lack of illustrations, which most private readers, no doubt, who acquire this book would welcome and enjoy, this is not really so surprising for this particular monograph. Escoffier's serious and scholarly approach makes the book suitable not only for the individuals who consume video porn and who who thus buy this book to add to their own informed enjoyment of erotic cinema and video, but also for academic and other public collections, where the presence of erotic visual matter would be unwelcome, due in great part to the level of vandalism and theft that printed documents with sexually explicit illustrations can suffer in such library environments.

I am pleased that while Escoffier pays attention to some of the theoretical aspects of sexuality and of its depiction in erotic cinema or elsewhere, he avoids annoying the reader with unreasonable partisanship on these matters or excessive length devoted to such matters. Most agreeably, he discounts (more mildly than deserved) the fatuous fulminations of that grotesque blimp of a woman, Andrea Dworkin, and her absurdly bloated and self-indulgently spiteful, anti-male conceptions (not limited to the matter of pornography). It is about time that such panderers of hate-filled extreme feminism as Dworkin received the scorn that they deserve! This is a good indicator of Escoffier's level-headedness and sane approach to his subject.

The editing of Escoffier's book is not perfect. There are sentences flawed by dropped or incomplete words, grammatical errors, and by suchlike mistakes. However, they are not so numerous as to become unduly irksome. The chapter bibliographies seem to be of adequate extent and are helpful, the indexing deep enough to provide access for what most readers are likely to seek within it.

Get this book, if the subject interests you at all!

Jeffrey Escoffier's Bigger than Life promises a lot. According to the description on the dust jacket, it is at once a survey of gay porn films, a social history of the gay porn industry, an analysis of the cultural politics of AIDS, an account of the evolution of porn as a medium, and an exploration of gay porn in the context of technological change. To its credit, the book does try to offer all these things; but the jumping back and forth between the different modes of analysis results in a disjointed and often superficial work of scholarship.

As an over-aching history of gay porn, this book is something of a failure. The historical account Escoffier offers is oddly both too frenetic and too single minded to do justice to the depth and variety of the porn industry. He offers long, interesting analyses of Andy Warhol's films, for instance, but barely touches on major porn studios like Titan or Colt. Indeed, as far as studios go, Bigger than Life devotes the vast majority of its pages to only one: Falcon. Many other major gay porn studios (such as Bel Ami) are not even mentioned at all. As for technological change, Escoffier provides interesting insights into the shift to video and VCRs, but virtually nothing beyond that. There's no discussion of DVDs or On Demand and only 2 pages addressing the internet (a somewhat shocking omission for a book published in 2009).

As a social or cultural history of gay men and gay sex, Bigger than Life is slightly more successful. Escoffier's accounts of the pedagogical function of porn and the sexual identities it has helped promulgate are insightful. His discussion of AIDS and the use of condoms is also interesting, if a little too abridged. Unfortunately, Bigger than Life has nothing to offer about the changing function of gay porn in the internet era. Anyone born after 1975 will thus find little here that reflects their own experience with pornography. Escoffier also has a habit of citing academic or philosophical work to support his arguments without meaningfully identifying the works' authors and contexts (why on earth is Georges Bataille cited in this book?). This may not bother most readers, but readers approaching this in an academic context will likely be annoyed.

A last complaint, which some readers will find important, is that Bigger than Life lacks illustrations. This is particularly surprising as one would imagine the rights to things like ads and box cover images would have been easy to acquire. There's little in the way of racy anecdotes to make up for the lack of pictures either, which results in a disappointingly un-sexy history of gay porn.

A long-time gay activist, Jeff Escoffier clearly knows this material--intimately. However, he is also attentive to the economic realities of an industry that began only in the early seventies, facilitated by a series of court decisions and changes in movie-going patterns. However, the book is too scissors-and-paste, with countless quotes and references. A significant gap is documentation of growth of the gay porn industry in Eastern Europe over the last twenty years (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary). The book would have been much enhanced with a series of revealing photos of the performers.

This book was selected by others for our book club. Well put together. Somewhat pedestrian style, but not bad. It helps if you know a lot about gay porn (I don't). There are some real revelations about the porn industry in general, the lives of some of the "stars," the intricacies of the business. Written with a decent sense of humor. I really enjoyed the segment on the Mineshaft bar in NYC.

This book is merely facts and snippets of interviews all lifted from previous books, articles and other's interviews. Some of the facts are questionable at best and many of the persons quoted are not even living anymore so there's no way of verifying these quotes. You won't learn anything you don't already know if you have any interest in this subject.