Beefcake
(1999)

with JOE DALLESANDRO AS HIMSELF, Daniel MacIvor, Joshua Peace, Carroll Godsman, Jonathan Torrens, Jack Griffin Mazeika, Valentine Hooven III, Jack LaLanne, Jim Lassiter, Joe Leitel, Dave Martin, Wayne Stanley, Russ Warner. Directed by Thom Fitzgerald. Canada, 93 minutes.

Among the many things younger gay audiences take for granted these days is the availability of homoerotic photography. You don’t have to secret yourself into a sleazy sex shop in the city or out on rural Highway 51 to find it. It’s at the newsstand, on television, in the movies, at the bookstores, and on the Net. Just sample an Abercrombie & Fitch ad, a Calvin Klein shoot, or a cologne tear-out. What was once blatantly gay imagery has been successfully co-opted by the mainstream media over the past 25 years.

The naked male image has never been so widely accessible.

Ah, but there was a time, not so long ago...

...and Thom Fitzgerald’s docudrama Beefcake is a friendly reminder of just such a time not so long ago; the 1950s and ‘60s, a time when a closeted gay population starving for imagery that validated their feelings discovered the barely-covered subterfuge of the physique magazine.

In particular, the film looks at the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) and its founder Bob Mizer (Daniel MacIvor), who established the longest-running physique magazine and film business of them all. Director Fitzgerald "re-creates" moments from Mizer’s life and studio in scenes that have been unfairly denigrated by some reviewers. I haven’t seen a single review mention the obvious fact that Fitzgerald’s re-creations are purposely stylized to evoke a low-budget flick of the 1950s. The acting, the sets, the costumes, and the music have been designed to facilitate a cheeky, almost sitcom-ish throwback that counters the sterility of 1950s TV and its vacuum-packed world with the remarkably casual intrusion of bare butts and dangling dicks. There’s something undeniably funny about how blasé everyone is about all this nude picture taking, even if Mizer’s motives in the film remain a mystery--is he or isn’t he a "scuzzbag?" Mizer’s mother (Godsman), who really did sew the posing pouches the boys wore and offered them for sale through the magazine, is a particular treat, shocked far more by the use of her furnishings and clothing than by the fact that a bare-assed boy is being photographed by her son in their home.

Sure, there are lots of unanswered and unasked questions, as well as the usual dramatic license mash of facts and fiction, but the film’s style betrays its disinterest in a stark examination of AMG. It’s a figurative movie; a hodgepodge of fact (including material from the actual court transcripts) and fiction (the whole story of our leading man, handsomely played by Joshua Peace). This is entertainment akin to the wishy-washy movie bios Hollywood did in the ‘50s. It’s not hardcore journalism. The film only scratches the surface of a wealth of fascinating material, but it doesn’t aspire to do much more than enjoyably suggest a bygone era to a generation of gay men unaware of those who paved the way.

The new footage is highly complemented by generous helpings of archival AMG stills and 8mm loops. Fitzgerald and his editors have creatively integrated this material and much of it is a joy to behold. And don’t shut off your brain while you’re being dazzled by the beef, because there are some clever connections being made, such as which images are edited together while the "bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum" of "Mr. Sandman" is being played on the soundtrack. (Those interested in real AMG bums: http://shopping.netsuite.com/athleticmodelguild)

Enjoyable, too, are the film’s talking heads, though not all of them are captured in focus. Fitzgerald gets interesting commentary from other physique photographers of the period, Beefcake author Valentine Hooven III, Mizer co-hort Wayne Stanley, and several of the former models, including Joe Leitel, Jack LaLanne (who never modeled for Mizer, but did for others), Jim Lassiter, and, of course, Joe Dallesandro.

Joe acquits himself nicely and was in his ponytail phase of late 1997/early 1998 when his segment was shot. He shares several things about his AMG experience, including how the work trained him to be comfortable in front of a camera. He relates that Mizer was a perfect gentleman with him (no hanky-panky), and tells us that he’s personally changed his attitude about the old nudie shots because they’re a record of a body he no longer has. In addition to a selection of his nude stills provocatively projected at enormous ratio on the big screen, we also get that sample of his 8mm posing film. For the record, a narrator reads Joe’s listing from his first appearance in AMG’s Physique Pictorial magazine verbatim and therefore repeats the erroneous mention of Joe’s having appeared in Andy Warhol’s film The Couch.

And, no, that’s not Joe’s voice as a young man introducing his own posing session. The filmmakers dubbed it in; the original film is silent, with Joe just mouthing the words.

I encourage Joe fans, straight or gay, to check out Beefcake, not only for a glimpse of him, but for an entertaining--if not quite fascinating--backward glance at an era when a boy in a pouch was all it took. Beefcake may be as soft as Mizer kept his models’ genitalia for the first thirty years, but realizing that that’s not a bad thing is one of the film’s charming achievements.