‘I once brought up the topic of Curt McDowell’s films in conversation with an administrator at Art Center College of Design, where I have worked in an adjunct capacity for the last few years. A student had told this administrator that I taught an avant-garde film course, and he asked me if I had shown any of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films. I said no, and he ventured the opinion that Barney had “really raised the bar in experimental filmmaking.” I asked, “In what respect, production values?” He responded, “Yes, but in other ways, too.” Caught a bit off guard by someone skeptical of his latest diktat, he asked what interested me. I mentioned Curt McDowell and offered a brief but explicit précis of his film Loads. My conversational foray left this man temporarily speechless, so I continued to talk about my course. Whatever thoughts crossed the administrator’s mind as his eyes glazed over, it was clear that he was a man who had learned the main lesson of the great “cultural producers” of the era. What mattered in art was not what a marginal character like McDowell had to offer, frisson mixed with a faint hint of nausea, exchanges of bodily fluids, cheap thrills; what truly mattered, even to a guy who named his masterwork after a testicular muscle, was access to money. If one could see where the money went, in art as in Hollywood movies, then high seriousness and legitimacy would follow. This conversation took place during a boom in the art market, when people at art schools could talk like film industry executives without being laughed at. Perhaps now that the great gaseous bubble of cultural production is getting deflated, another conversation can begin.
‘A while later, around the time of a precipitous decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I showed Curt’s films to my avant-garde film class. The students’ reactions, as expressed in their discussions and weekly writing assignments, ranged from the indignant to the unabashedly enthusiastic. A student in the former camp had this to say:
I would be shocked if McDowell wasn’t a sexaholic. I still can’t believe that Curt filmed his sister getting screwed, the thought of it really creeps me out. Also, I think I would be very happy if I never saw another man get raped, or a man receiving a blow job from another man. That kinda rubbed me the wrong way. Oh well, the films we saw this week were pretty cool and I enjoyed them a lot.
‘I wonder if Curt would have recognized the writer’s attitude, and how many people reacted this way in the 1970s and ’80s, when he was around to present his films in person. Curt probably would have been surprised to learn that the writer of the comment was a young person, all of 19 years old. Perhaps Curt would also have been shocked at the new “generation gap” that has arisen between young prudes and their libertine elders. …
‘From the evidence of his films, it seems that Curt’s greatest pleasure was in giving straight men pleasure. As George Kuchar memorably put it, Curt enjoyed “lapping up cream filled Ding Dongs.” Never one to shrink from a challenge, Curt loved nothing more than blowing (and rimming) guys who couldn’t care less whether he got off. Curt applied himself to this service with an almost evangelical sense of mission. Today—when young Republicans go to jail on charges of “criminally deviate conduct” for sucking off their sleeping bunkmates—Curt would be called a compulsive fellator, and would gravitate to any number of websites, 12-step groups, or places where recently released convicts congregate. During the 1970s, Curt was a sexual pioneer, making movies about practices that most men preferred to keep quiet, then as now. Curt found his own fun, and most importantly for him as an artist, he also found a number of men who were vain, indifferent, or desperate enough to be filmed while they reached their climax.
‘Curt McDowell, like Pasolini before him, did not conform to society’s expectations of the abject, straight-chasing homosexual. Curt and Pier Paolo both knew what many men engaging in these sexual games eventually learn: within the surrender of giving pleasure without taking any in return, there is a species of control. The man with the rock hard cock in need of relief thinks he calls the shots, but every moment is staged and directed by the man doing the draining. As the title character of Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge confides to her journal:
The sailor who stands against a wall, looking down at the bobbing head of the gobbling queen, regards himself as master of the situation; yet it is the queen (does not that derisive epithet suggest primacy and domination?) who has won the day, extracting from the flesh of the sailor his posterity, the one element in every man which is eternal and (a scientific fact) cellularly resembles not at all the rest of the body. So to the queen goes the ultimate elixir of victory, that which was not meant for him but for the sailor’s wife or girl or simply Woman.
‘Cineastes from the days of silent cinema to the latest pay-per-view scenes on the internet have treasured the knowledge of this elixir and transformed it into art. PPP, whose oral escapades with the young men of the Friuli lost him his job and his membership in the Communist Party, fled to the slums of Rome, where for years he profited from his obscurity, avidly consuming cruel tales of working class life and rivers of working class spunk. (It’s hard to miss the admiring descriptions of men’s crotches occurring throughout Ragazzi di Vita once the details of Pasolini’s life are known.) Alas, Pier Paolo never got around to directing a cum shot, but there is little doubt that he was capable of imagining one as hilarious and profane as the shot of the devil’s asshole expelling priests at the end of Canterbury Tales.
‘The cum shot, that staple of porn—straight, gay and bi—cannot satisfy the truly devoted cum pig. All that juice spilling onto bellies, butts and faces goes to waste. A memorable, if atypical, scene from the early ’90s gay porn video Doin’ Hard Time features a fat, hairy, balding photographer seducing his model. He devours the model’s cock so avidly that when the magnificent youth finally ejaculates, only a thin white foam limning the greedy queen’s mouth is visible. Such a mistake was not allowed to occur again in the oeuvre of Latino Fan Club auteur Brian Brennan. The scene reminds us of a central contradiction in filming sex: what feels (and tastes) good does not necessarily “read” on camera. In a recurring shot in Loads, Curt plays with this contradiction as he fellates one of his tricks. Curt nibbles on the head of a man’s cock, waiting for it to erupt, and even though his eyes are closed, his hesitation seems to indicate a thought. He asks himself, do I coax this cock to shoot a wad on my face, or do I just get things over with and take it all down my throat? The answer, after some teasing, is the one that makes the most sense for the film. The suspense is broken at last by a thick line of semen spurting over Curt’s nose and forehead.’ — William E. Jones
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Stills
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Further
Curt McDowell @ Canyon Cinema
Curt McDowell @ IMDb
The Confessions of Curt McDowell
CM @ Visual AIDS
Curt McDowell curated by Margaret Tedesco
CM @ Letterboxd
Glen Helfand on Curt McDowell
CM @ Experimental Cinema
5 Encounters with Curt McDowell by William E. Jones, Curt McDowell & George Kuchar
Loads of Curt McDowell: A Restoration Retrospective
Lower Your Trousers! An Introduction To Curt McDowell
The ‘confessional’ cinema of Curt McDowell
Introduction to the Films of Curt McDowell
Curt McDowell, with Love and Leather
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Extras
Film Bad Taste is Good Taste: Underground Camp Melodrama
Excerpt: George Kuchar’s ‘The Devil’s Cleavage’ (1975), starring Curt McDowell
Curt McDowell and Marion Eaton discuss Thundercrack!
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Visual Art
‘Curt was constantly drawing, always had a notebook on hand, says the late George Kuchar & his brother Mike; in between his cinematic making (which includes over 35 films), McDowell produced a staggering number of drawings, photo collages, watercolors, posters for films, diorama style film sets, and elaborate Zip-A-Tone comics—all storyboards of sorts—the byproduct of regularly held Tuesday night art parties with The Roxie Theater family of friends. Reflecting the candor of McDowell’s sexual films, this graphic output captures the intimacy of his ever evolving and deeply rooted social circle in what would be a secondary and yet immediate practice.’
Untitled (the Beatles in autopsy), 1968
George Kuchar 2, 1968 to 1984
Auto-portrait, Toaster, 1968 to 1984
Watercolor, 1968 to 1984
Bob, 1967
Buzzy (California or Bust), 1975
Curt & Friends, 1970
George, 1974
Untitled collage, 1983
Boggy Depot (set flat), 1972-73
George, 1976
Untitled (Loretta on bed), 1979
Untitled (Loretta dead at 25!), 1980
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RONNIE
by Curt McDowell
Well I went into the park today in California, but it seems like I fell asleep for a while. I had shirt off, my shoes and stockings off, and I slept for a short period of time, but I got up and I was getting dressed. . . putting my shirt on and my stockings and shining my shoes a little bit, trying to get them to look a little better, because I’m a very fussy guy. But I saw, I noticed somebody watching me about ten feet away, fifteen feet away, so I finally got dressed, I got up. He put his shoes on and he came towards me and he said he knows me from the bus and said, “How would you like to earn some money?” And I said, “A-okay.” I’m all for it. I’m broke, and I don’t have no money, right now at the present time, so I said okay. So we went for a little bus ride, so forth and so on, and from the bus we went to a trolley car, and we finally hit his apartment. As youse already heard all what I said, and I meant every. . . meant all of it. I speak the truth. I say what I feel, and I write what I feel. As you know, I’m writing a book, Black Is. . . Black Is. . . Black and White. I hope youse buy the book. I think it’ll be a good seller, and I just need some bread to publish the thing, and it might turn out good. And I don’t believe in phone calls, and I don’t believe in letters. I believe in person to person, like I said before. I just wanted you to get that straight. So I sort of did this thing. He bought me a pack of cigarettes, which I thank him for, and he gave me a Colt 45, which I thank him for. Not that I’m trying to publish things, but it was. . . he was very. . . he was. . . he was a very nice and kind person, and I appreciate it so very much. So I talked for a little while, and I took off my clothes for a while, and he sort of did me. . . he sort of done something, and the feeling was great. I hit my climax. It took quite a while, but like I said, I’m in damn good shape, so picture me if I was with a pussy, a nice warm juicy pussy. And all I could say, it was great, it was fabulous, it was fantastic. And I tried to do my best on the film. I hope youse like it, and all I can say, I thank him for everything he done for me today. I don’t do this. What he done to me, I don’t do it. But, being it’s a film, and you have to do it, and it’s all right when the cunts strip off their clothes and dance and so forth and so on, prostitutes, so. . . . Actually, I don’t think two cents of what I done, and I’ll show it in front of a priest or a nun, because I’m proud of what I have done or what I have said. And I did it with a feeling of what I said, and actually, I don’t think two cents of it, and I could care less what the public thinks. I could give a flying fuck less. So I hope youse like the film. Now I want to. . . well, that’s all I have to say about that. And all I could say, a few things, like I said, I’ll talk at the end. I wish I was black. Black is beautiful. It’s not my favorite color, blue is, I’m sorry, sisters and brothers. As I said, I wish the Lord could come off the cross and change things. I mentioned before earlier all what I said, and there’s a few other little things to say, like a sentence or two, but I am so hungry I’m getting pains in my stomach. I got to eat. So I hope youse like it, and I’m a wonderful person, and all youse blondes, just look me up in California. I’ll be waiting for you. It’s up to you. I’m not forcing you. So I could say, I hope youse like the film, and a word to the wise, as they say, love the one you’re with. And for now, I’ll see you. My name is Ronnie. So long.
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7 of Curt McDowell’s 28 films
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Taboo: The Single and the LP (1980)
‘Blend of documentary and domestic melodrama featuring a series of sexually charged vignettes inspired by a piece of toilet graffiti.’
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Loads (1980)
‘It’s basically David Holzman’s Diary only with a lot more dick. Actually, it’s pretty much all dick. The idea that making a film diary of one’s sexual encounters with straight hustlers would qualify as a subversive artistic act now seems hopelessly quaint in our post-Dirk Yates, post-OnlyFans era. McDowell applies only the thinnest gloss of poetic reverie over all the scenes of naked posing, wanking and enthusiastic blowjobs from the auteur. Still, there’s still something arresting about the honesty and brazenness of his endeavor. If Pink Narcissus cloaks the allure of the objectified straight male body beneath a veneer of tantalizing camp artifice, Loads rather literally rips off that veil and invites us to share in McDowell’s devotional fetishism much more immediately and without alibi. Politically correct, it’s not. But when has porn ever been amenable to civilizing education?’ — David Conner
the entirety
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Sparkle’s Tavern (1985)
‘Sparkle’s Tavern is a highly autobiographical melodrama that came about because Curt wanted to make a pro-sex film about his family. Jack Stevenson has suggested Curt was creating ‘a séance as much as a movie'(iii), digging deep into his own feelings towards his family, and recreating and reliving a situation from his life, so for Curt the film performs the same role as Mrs Blake’s ‘instantaneous trip’ does for her. At one point in the film, Buster, Curt’s alter ego in the film, hears from a lonesome stranger how difficult it can be to be honest about yourself: “I figured I’d rather lose my wife, my children, everything… before I could bring myself to lie to myself, or them, about who I am. So I told the truth. And I tried to make her realise that whatever I did I loved her just as much as always and that my feelings for her hadn’t changed one iota. But she was raised completely different from me… I’m open-minded you see, and she… well, she just wasn’t.”‘ — Moving Image Artists
Download ‘Sparkle’s Tavern’ here
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Thundercrack! (1975)
‘Written by and co-starring Kuchar, Thundercrack!, which can be loosely described as a dark-and-stormy-night tale involving an octet of horny men and women (including the director’s sister, Melinda) and an even more oversexed gorilla, is exceptional in its polymorphous perversity and side-splitting dialogue. One-liners range from the deliberately corny, lubricious food metaphor (“Just a little longer and we’ll have mustard and ketchup and mayonnaise,” one fellow says to the woman who’s avidly deep-throating him) to the floridly theatrical pronouncement. The latter is the specialty of the incomparable Marion Eaton, who became a cult star largely thanks to her work with McDowell. Here she plays Gert Hammond, a widow who hosts the motley crew of fornicators — and who pleasures herself with a variety of peeled cylindrical vegetables. “A harmless excursion into the steaming tropics in the name of art,” Mrs. Hammond says, with excessive rhetorical relish, of an exploit of one of her guests — a summa that could serve as a tagline for this torrid, comic debauch.’ — Melissa Anderson
Excerpt
Excerpt
Excerpt
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Naughty Words (1974)
‘This one minute film opens with a title card that reads ‘Educational films presents, Naughty Words by Curt McDowell with some ass-istance from his sister Melinda’. We see still photos taken from the pages of porn magazines while off-screen we hear the voices of Steve Nordstrom, Wendy Miller and Michele Gross as they read out a list of naughty words corresponding to the images. Between each image it cuts to black like we are watching a slide show. This film doesn’t fail to bring out the naughty child in us and like the voices on the soundtrack it’s impossible not to laugh!’ — Movie Image Artists
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Peed Into the Wind (1972)
‘PEED INTO THE WIND smears across the screen like one of those dirty underground comic books. It’s loaded with a lot of big scenes and unusual looking people that make this epic resemble a clogged toilet. Unfortunately, since several of the performers were not as loyal as Ainslie Pryor and John Thomas, the plot is difficult to follow but in no way hinders the sewer-like sequences. It’s quite enjoyable and possesses the releasing power of an enema.’ — George Kuchar
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Lunch (1972)
‘Curt McDowell’s debut feature is perhaps the biggest outlier in his filmography: a (mostly!) straight adult film that exists at some undefinable intersection of the nudie-cutie, the stag, and the Warholian underground film. As disgustingly heterosexual as that sounds, there’s a real impish quality to McDowell’s take on the burgeoning genre, infusing the inevitable couplings with oddball humor and messages about the dullness of rigid hetero monogamy that perhaps run counter to the beliefs of the film’s primary target audience. Legitimately shocked to see that this thing played drive-ins in the Midwest.’ — Liz
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p.s. Hey. ** Sarah, Hi! I watched a trailer for the new ‘BG’, and, yeah, pretty enticing. I guess it’s not on Switch, which is my only system, but maybe I’ll go back to playing games on my laptop. I haven’t done that except for some weird, short experimental games in ages. You may have seen that some hotshot says he beat ‘BG3’ in four hours. There might be a video? Anyway, thanks for the report. I’m gonna try. NYC! Awesome! Writing like crazy is of course music to my ears, or I guess to my eyes. Writing like crazy and running out of money are a dysfunctional couple I know very well. I think the soonest our movie will see the light of y’all is if it gets into one of the upcoming film festivals, which would mean early next year. And then it’ll do the festival circuit for a while. I do so dislike the way films have to go on this protracted route before they actually get to be available to everyone. So you haven’t missed anything. Cool, thanks, happy weekend’s beginning. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Nice, family entertainment. If mice weren’t so lightning quick and human fearing, I’d pick ours up and plant him in a park, but … Fingers crossed that it leaves on its own accord. I’d like to hear love’s explanation on that one. I hope you’re not the sufferer of said non-empath, but I suspect you are. Hugs. Love helping me figure out a 2 – 3 minute song/track to place in this tricky spot in a playlist I’ve been asked to guest-curate for a radio show whose thing is playing one hour of music intended to be listened to in the dark, G. ** Misanthrope, You should go an open mic reading and read that 102-page tax document and see if you survive. You still have some time to catch up with my output if you really want to and are willing to quit your job and find a sugardaddy or sugarson or live in a state of poverty. How’s David? You haven’t mentioned him in ages. I’m assuming he has … settled down? ** David Ehrenstein, Your link didn’t work but I’m guessing Syd Vicious was at the other end of it. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think that style might be making a comeback based on my recent observations on certain metro trips. ** Steve Erickson, I’m with you on the burning cone. I did not know that about Autechre, wow, and I will make a beeline for ‘London B’, thank you. Yeah, I feel too unknowledgeable to have a real opinion on the genre. Hard not to like the strict racket aspect. ** Cody Goodnight, Howdy, Cody. I’m fine. Well, I’m always uncertain what constitutes punk exactly as opposed to post-punk or borderline New Wave punk. Like Wire is a huge favorite of mine, but I think punks would consider them too brainy or something. Obviously the SPistols. Siouxie&theB, but I think they turned more New Wave quickly. I used like this band Alternative TV. The Undertones. Stiff Little Fingers. Hm. Starship is grisly terrible. Maybe you’ll find today’s post of interest. You’ve never seen ‘Possession’? Fun. As I’ve mentioned, I have this Zoom ‘Book’ Club I do with American writer friends where we’re assigned a film and some writing to discuss. Today I’m going to rewatch this meeting’s assignment, ‘Sexy Beast’, which I remember liking. Big huge Friday to ya. ** Steven, Hi! Yeah, MANCY and you go way back. It was fun to find that post and fix the dead video links. You should do another blog day, no question about it. I’m good. How are you, man? Love, me. ** John Newton, Hi. As well as can be, I hear that. Wow, Dexedrine. Dexxys, or however people spelled that. Yes, I did my fair share of Dexedrine as a teenager. I remember it being more like a doable coke high than a consuming meth high. I didn’t know it was still out there. Hm …. I still have ‘Bruno’ cued up to watch. I bailed on University after one year, as you may know, and I’ve never ever regretted it. I would if I ever taught or wanted to, though, for sure. It’s very difficult to make a film. The difficulties Zac and I have been going through with our new film are shocking. But I guess I think it’s worth it for some reason. Filming and editing are so fascinating. It’s hard to imagine getting burnt out by them. I really don’t think the French eat horse, but I’m not 100% positive. I’ve been vegetarian since I was 15, so it’s easy to eat to live. ** Darb-o 🧼, What is that little image? A sleeping bag? When I was doing research for my novel ‘Frisk’ and wanted to know what would kill a person and what wouldn’t, I learned where the arteries are, but I don’t remember. I think I remember there’s one in the groin. Seriously enjoy hanging out with your friend and the escape period. I was into punk, but I didn’t really dress the part or anything. I cut my hippie-period hair short and otherwise just struck to t-shirts and jeans. I just wanted to look inoffensive and like a punk sympathiser. That look in that photo you linked to is excellent, obviously. Nice. The link worked, obvs, and your writing was not too long, of course. Enjoy every second of your weekend as hard as that obviously would be accomplish. ** Montse, Montse! I’m okay. We’re on a short film work break because Zac’s out of town. Next Monday! Wait, do you mean a week from Monday or do you mean this coming Monday? Either way, awesome! We’ll restart the film work probably later next week, but, even if you’re here then, there’ll be no problem finding time to see you. How exciting! Just give me the word where and when you are. So awesome! Hm, I don’t think there’s a Guibert public thing, but I don’t know for sure. His papers and stuff are probably at the Bibliotheque National and maybe can be seen/pored over if you request? I’ll do a hunt to see if I can find anything else. Yes, RIP Gary Young. That’s so sad. Did you ever see Pavement when he was in the band? That was a really exciting period of their live shows. Can’t wait to see you! I know Zac would love to see you too! Big love, me. ** Okay. Do you guys know Curt McDowell? He was a biggie in the San Francisco queer experimental film renaissance back in the 70s, 80s. His work seems to have been pretty forgotten, and it was hard to find things to put in this post, but I posit that his stuff is well worth knowing about. See you tomorrow.
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