Customer Reviews

Gay Sex in the 70s

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The documentary Gay Sex in the 70s examines the lifestyle and culture of gay men from 1969 to 1981--the dawn of the AIDS era. The documentary was produced by former ABC Producer (20/20)Joseph Lovett. Gay Sex in the 70s is an excellent film.

The film primarily focuses on the disco era. Various gay men describe their lives and how things happened during that era. There is also a great deal of archived footage incorporated into the film. From back rooms at clubs to wild scenes in semi trucks at the docks things were definitely wild and free during that era.

Gay Sex in the 70s is a great historical film. The saddest part of the film is when the early 1980's are discussed. The dawn of the AIDS era really impacted the gay community in a major way. One man shows a pile of pictures of all of his friends who died from the disease. Another man tells a story about how one of his patients called him when he was hospitalized for what he was told was a strange cancer. One great thing the film captured is how the gay community really took a handle of things and worked hard to promote awareness about the disease before the government or any other group got involved.

Gay Sex in the 70s is a film I highly recommend to historians and people interested in gay/lesbian culture.


I for one am someone who knew nothing about this era, so I found this film very enlightning.

The title is a little misleading since it only tells the story of gay sex in New York City in the 70's, but oh well I still enjoyed the film and tripped out on all the archival photos and video especially the gay docks and St. Mark's Baths! That was crazy!

My main beef though is there just wasn't enough meat to the story. Yea, everybody is having sex, sex, sex nonstop, but hearing about it over and over got kinda repetitive. I wish there had been some interviews with somebody other than just the sex participants like city officials or doctors to look at the story from a different perspective. Also a brief introduction would have been nice, people mentioned "stonewall" a few times but I have no idea what that is. It was never explained. Still worth watching.

For those out there keeping score: numerous rear nudity, brief frontal nudity and no penetration.

While I was only a kid during the 70s, this documentary provides a fascinating, bittersweet snapshot of the "golden age of gay sex," i.e. after Stonewall and before full-blown AIDS - along with Friedkin's "Cruising," this doc shows us what NYC must have been like if you were young, hot, and single - and even if you weren't you could score, too. Hard to believe that this time period is only two decades ago, but it seems like a distant world, a long-lost era so alien from out contemporary culture. I wish the film had made an attempt to also cover other area around the nation like SF, LA, etc. but this insider glimpse of NYC nostalgia makes you pine for "the good old days" even if, in tragic hindsight, we know they could literally kill you.

I was there, and I found this film accurate. I have less nostalgia about the period though because, though it was a period of unrestrained hedonism it was also a period of transition and upheaval. In a very short time we went from total anonymity to visibility, and the experience was jarring for those in the gay community that took part and those looking on. This was not quite underlined in the film. While it was true that sex was lying around waiting to be picked up, this came at a price. The price was intimacy. Liberation came to mean being able to be promiscuous without shame; this had its upside. However, by and large, it didn't seem to diminish loneliness or desperation for a lot of people, and for many others it barred connection. The film portrayed the times honestly, and it was good to see the survivors as well as to remember those who didn't survive.

This film serves a valuable purpose by covering a topic that is mostly ignored by other chroniclers of Gay History in the 70's, However it has its own biasis and leaves one surprisingly gaping hole. The subjects interviewed are all knowlegeable and generous in sharing their personal recollections, and through their stories it's possible to get a glimpse of this otherwise blacked out area of gay culture. Unfortunatley the viewer might be led to believe that EVERYONE was using drugs back then. This is not so. While drugs were certainly prevelent at the trucks and the baths and the back-room-bars, and the abandoned piers, many people chose not to partake. In fact it was possible to frequent these places regularly, engage in sexual acts with mulitple partners, and still avoid partnering with people who were high or intoxicated. It was also possible, after spending hours sampling from a vast tapestry of different partners, to end the evening in the bed of a carefully selected mate, or to bring him home to your own apartment. I did these frequently, always sober, and (almost) always with sober partners. The other glaring omission of the film is the lack of any mention of Subway "Tea-Rooms". It is amazing that none of those interviewed talks about it. I am sure that they all must have had ample experiences in them. Younger people today find it hard to believe that subways stations even ever used to have bathrooms. But once upon a time every single subway station, in every borough, was required to have a bathroom that was working and accessible 24 hours. And what's more, Gay sex was going on all day long in every single one of them. Until the late 60's it cost a dime to enter them. Then, a law suit required the City to make them free. In the early 80's, in the face of the early AIDS hysteria, Mayor Koch closed them all down, together with the bath houses. And we all mourned. submitted by Steve Ashkinazy

Part nostalgia trip and part sociopolitical documentary, Joseph Lovett's remarkable film Gay Sex in the 70's gives us an astonishing piece of history. So much time has actually passed, yet as this movie attests, the enthusiasm for those halcyon days is infused with a certain sense of regret.

Tracing the gay movement from the Stonewall riots, through the permissive seventies to 1981 when the era ended with the onslaught of AIDS, Gay Sex in the 70's shows the glories and perils of anonymous gay sex during the one decade when people didn't feel guilty about doing it.

Incorporating some spectacular archival footage, the era is also recounted by a handful of older, sophisticated gay men including Rodger McFarlane, photographer Tom Bianchi, writer Larry Kramer, artist Barton Benes, and English professor and writer Arnie Kantrowitz, who offer considerate, articulate - and sometimes even volatile - remembrances of their indiscretions amid the Manhattan and Fire Island gay scene.

The sex happened absolutely everywhere - the West Side piers and in bathhouses, abandoned buildings, the backs of bars, and the darkened carriages of trucks. Scores of archival surveillance-like photographs are provided of men spied through windows and doors having sex with each other. Sex was on the brain, while the men, caught up in lusty expectation were mostly on their elbows and backs.

Gay men sought out each other in the streets, bars, baths, on derelict piers, truck-loading docks, in parks and discos of Manhattan, including the famous studio 54. All you'd have to do was smile at another man on the street and then it would be on - you could have a quick session with someone at lunch before you went on to your afternoon orgy.

The film does a good job of explaining how this newfound libertinism was a backlash against years of repression and shame. While in other parts of the United States - and indeed the western world - gay men were criminalized, ostracized, and institutionalized. New York City was a sanctuary and a haven for gay men to find themselves and others like them.

But of course nothing comes without risk. Little did these men - most of whom are portrayed as muscled and masculine gods - know that something seditious was lurking just around the corner in those back rooms and dark alcoves.

The interviewees acknowledge that drugs and sexually transmitted diseases were taking their toll before the outbreak of AIDS, yet the use of condoms was spurned and the notion of safe sex was seen as an insult to these newfound sexual freedoms.

The film certainly evokes a rich sense of the dawning of gay liberation. Is there's such a thing as too much freedom? Maybe, maybe not, there are however, many lessons to be learned that perhaps indulging in such extreme bacchanalian behaviour is indeed liberating and freedom inducing, yet there is ultimately a price to be paid for doing it in the form of your health and your life. Mike Leonard June 06.

Without being raunchy and taking a chance on not getting this review published,
I will say that this documentary is a good chronicle of the innocence,
wildness, decadence and recklessness of the gay community in the 1970's.
After the Stonewall Riots in 1969, gay men and women all over the U.S.
decided that they weren't going to be beaten up, pushed around and mistreated
anymore!---They decided that they were not going to live their lives in the closet
anymore, that nothing was wrong with them, they were beautiful and decent (well some of us!),
and that they were going to live life to the fullest of their personalities and
effect change in the laws of this country which they loved and paid taxes to live in!

Out of that general constructive ethos came the gay rennaisance of the 1970's!
This was a very magical, innocent, wild & frightening time all at once,
and here are some of the survivors who lived it, breathed it, snorted it, DID IT,
on a scale of hedonism not seen since ancient roman & greek times! (-:
Some of their stories are racey and raunchy, the archival footage is racey
in places, poppers, weed & coke are prevalent, but that's how they
rolled in the 70's! (-: It talks about the parties, the infamous baths,
the various clubs with different scenes for the different tastes of gay men,
it shows the openess and freeness, the recklessness of the piers and the
trucks in the old meat-packing (no pun intended) district, the drug chic,
the seeming never-neverland of Fire Island, and ultimately the heavy toll
(perhaps) that all of that wild, free and debaucherous living took in the early 80's,
when a new, horrible, mysterious "gay cancer" started to wipe out gay men
in droves and shut the door on the forever summer party boys fantasy forever!

Well, this film also shows how that same community got sober, woke up and
started to fight back against the ravages of this disease, which by 1985,
had a name, AIDS...But many were lost in those early days when nothing was
known about it, drugs were limited, and fear was high!
Many saw it as a divine judgement against gay men for what they deemed
as an unsavory & immoral lifestyle. (Nothing about AIDS is DIVINE!!)
But the gay community rallied, educated itself, and thanks to the struggles
and sacrifices of people like the late Harvey Milk and others, realized that
they had a political voice as well!
So there was much good that came from those very bad times.
But I liked that this film shows the pioneer group, the first generation
of liberated gay men who stepped out there, wild & free, and the doors that
had kept them oppressed in the closet were knocked down forever!

The younger generations of gay men and women are left to digest and discuss
these lessons and to use what they learn as it applies to their day and time.
This is good viewing for a young, entitled & frivolous gay community which
pretty much knows nothing of the struggles and gains of the past as they face
discrimination (Prop 8, The Struggle For Legal Acknowledgement of Same-Sex Marriage,
Enactment of Hate Crime Laws For Protection Under The Law, etc.) in today's world!
Even though much has been gained, the lessons of the past can educate and
strengthen you in your resolve to fight today, if you just pay attention.

As a young gay man this documentary is a very important relic in the gay history archives. As GLBT people in the new millenium we have this generation to thank for our liberation from the proverbial closet. These guys celebrated who they were and never apologized to anyone. They were the first truly liberated generation of gay men. Without them issues such as gay marraige and equality for GLBT's wouldn't even be on most political referendums.

With that said "Gay Sex in the 70's" was an eye opener! These men took free love and pride to it's apex. I often wonder, as someone who has never known a world without HIV/AIDS, would I have reveled in the hedonism and decadence of the 1970's? I won't lie, I would have had it off with a few. However, many of these guys, had they lived now, would be diagnosed as sexual addicts. It seemed like sex was the penultimate reason for existence as a gay man back then. While the celebration of sexual freedom and each other was a beautiful thing the blatant disregard for one's own health and well being was dumbfounding. The subject of "The trucks" disturbed me. They were willing to go anywhere, with anyone, just to have a moment of pleasure.

While gay men involved themselves in every sexual excess you can fathom they were innocent babes in the woods, for the most part. That is what really struck me. Rampant drug use, orgies, and public sex were just the norm in the community, and no one gave it a second thought. The sexual freedom and self love was wonderful, but there was still a degree of self loathing that came with a high price that their's and subsequent generations are paying for. The pendulum definitely shifted and that generation paid dearly for it's excesses.

Overall, I was really impressed by the documentary. My only critiques are as follows...

1.)What were the gay scenes in: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Dallas, and various other metropolises like? We only got the view of New York City.

2.)What were gay men of color(black,non black latinoes, and Asians)up to?

To me this film showcased a small microcosm of gay life in those days. Gay Sex in the 70's, I feel, would have been better served had we been made privy to ALL facets of gay life not just the elite white gay activists in NYC. Perhaps this could have been done as a series. In my opinion it was a bit too comprehensive. I wanted to know more. And I particularly wanted to know more about the toll HIV/AIDS took on the community.

However, I am glad this film was made. Inspite of it's shortcomings it was insightful. I recommend it.

As for the person who suggested that AIDS not be cured in order to ensure no more sexual revolutions you are sick. The repulsive puritanical attitude that some people have towards sex and sexuality is mind boggling.

Once upon a time, men were imprisoned, disowned, institutionalized, subjected to shock therapy, beaten and even killed in many places in the United States solely because they loved other men (and let's not kid ourselves here, many of these things continue to this day in parts of the US). With the Stonewall Riots and other acts of defiance throughout the country in the late 1960s and early 1970s, homosexuals began to take control of their lives and create new models of community, friendship and family. Joseph Lovett and Sean Kaminsky provide us with a glimpse inside the early days of this movement, focussing on the interplay of factors that gave birth to the sexual freedom of the 1970s in New York City. The period that flashes across the TV screen is one of Bacchic exhuberance and celebration, much like the frothing of a newly opened bottle of champagne. For those who lived "the life" the party seemed like it would go on forever. But like all parties, even this one eventually wound down. And then the piper required his due.

While somewhat choppy in its presentation, "Gay Sex in the 70s" provides us a necessary, unflinching, and shameless look at a slice of gay history in the words of those who lived through it. This aspect has often been swept under the rug of gay documentarians/historians. After all, to speak of gay history of that era without confronting what *being* gay actually meant is to profess devotion to Dionysos while proclaiming oneself a tea-totaler. The only fault I found was the lack of a historian's analysis in the documentary that I think might have tied all of the themes together a bit better to provide us with perspective on the "whys" of it all. The reflections of the younger gay men at the end was a very nice touch.

The 70's were an amazing convergence of socialogical factors. Joyful Gay men, for the first time, found they could practice their desires without undo police brutality. The Stonewall Riots had cemented the arrival of Out as a verb. It was literally a time of great happiness and fun.

This document, which includes much archival footage well as current rememberances by folks who were there, gives a guided tour of what could only be called Babylon.

Narrowing its focus to NYC, and The Pines, it gives an up-close and personal look at men who lusted for other men and what a wonderland a world of 'Yes' could create. The tone shifts, because even though the name of the documentary is Gay Sex in the 70's, it takes you through the '80's and the advent of the AIDS pandemic.

It helps explain the mindset of those men trapped in the opening wave of deaths. AIDS had literally infected (and in effect killed) a huge percentage of the gay men in NYC before the first syptom appeared.

It also discusses some of the hollowness of that age; the rampant drug abuse and mind-boggling disregard for personal safety that accompanied so much of 'the love that dare not speak its name' once it was shouting at the top of its lungs. I am actually old enough to have participated in this, and knew many men who did. They are all gone. I am not, primarily because I was hiding from who and what I was.

I literally hid until after AIDS hit, and by then, I was too careful to ever put myself in harms way. This movie tries to help the modern viewer see that these were intelligent, albiet driven, men. They thought, as many folks do today, that medical science would cure whatever ailed them. They were wrong, and those who see AIDS as nothing more than an inconvenience are just as wrong.

Required viewing for all men on 'the down low' or anyone young enough not to recall this time.