Ron Athey Movies

Activist documentarian Catherine Saalfield made this profile of gay performance artist Ron Athey, a former heroin addict with HIV. His parents planned for him to become a Pentecostal minister, but Athey reacted by running away from home at age 15 to do a decade of drugs. In 1990, he danced at L.A.'s Club F*ck, site of performances by the late self-mutilation artist Bob Flanagan (of Kirby Dick's 1997 documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist). Athey wore a metal crown of thorns when he appeared in an AIDS-themed Saint Sebastian tableau titled "Martyrs and Saints," followed by a bloody show at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) which led to 1995 cuts in the National Endowment for the Arts budget. This film features excerpts from Athey's stage shows, plus articulate interviews as Athey and associates examine relevant issues -- death, drugs, disease, gay identity, emotional scars, religion, and the loss of friends to AIDS. With a blow-up from video to 35 mm, this film was shown at the 1998 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Bruce LaBruce produced, co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in this satiric black sex comedy about gay hustlers and their customers in Santa Monica, California. Monti Ward (Tony Ward), a male prostitute, is dead, floating face down in a Jacuzzi as the story begins, and in voice over, Monti describes the circumstances that led him to this cruel fate. Jurgen Anger (Bruce LaBruce), a writer from Europe, is in California researching a book on prostitution, and when he sees Monti, he decides that this is the man he wants to be his tour guide. Jurgen offers Monti $1,000 to tell him stories about "work" (which is more profitable and less taxing than what most of his clients put him through), and Monti agrees. However, Monti is no male whore with a heart of gold; earlier the same day, he stole a car and ran over the foot of Eigil Vesti (Kevin P. Scott), another hustler (though after his foot has to be taken off, Eigil discovers a lucrative sideline working with amputation fetishists). As Monti regales Jurgen with tales about johns who like knives, duct tape, or any number of other strange and disgusting things, the writer finds himself developing a serious crush on his hustler. Leading man Tony Ward previously worked as a model and appeared in several videos with Madonna, including "Justify My Love" and "Cherish." ~ Mark Deming, Rovi