No Skin Off My Ass (1991)

I no longer feel any need to make my own movies. I no longer feel I have anything necessary to say. I have seen my movie. I have experienced the best that film has to offer. I have a new queer filmmaking hero and his name is Bruce La Bruce.

"No Skin Off My Ass" is nothing short of gay pornography. But it is so much more as well. La Bruce reinvents the ideal of Super 8 no-budget film here. He pays homage to gay porno loops of the past, Warhol, John Waters, Altman, the male physique and more. His film sparkles with crisp irony. It says something about the nature of a homosexual male's longing and desire. It also gives you a rod like you would not believe.

The film opens with an extended ideal of it's star, the cute, baby-faced skinhead named Klaus von Buecker who introduces us to the story and theme by wandering around in the dismal cityscape of Toronto. Meanwhile, La Bruce, our protagonist, lazily watches the credits to Altman's "That Cold Day in the Park." Immediately, La Bruce sets the tone for the film. It is artistic, wonderfully grainy black and white, and it attunes itself with a pop consciousness which references other films. It references the title sequence of a film it derives from directly after it's own title sequence. It's really something to see how La Bruce cuts this and makes something new and unique out of it. He opens up the format of the avant-garde to utilize it to express what he is wanting to say in the film. As it evolves, filming and filmmaking will pay an integral role in "No Skin Off My Ass."

Next, the film takes on it's most dynamic impact when La Bruce begins to narrate the piece. As he meets the sullen skinhead guy in the park, he narrates the film with a queeny, gay, lispy sense of ennui that is just amazing. In juxtaposing his nancy hairdresser against this seemingly hardened and tough albeit demure youth, La Bruce sets up the most ironic approach to gay relationships ever shown on film. La Bruce's wonderful sense of subtle satire highlights the improbability of the story that is about to unfold before us. His "couple" here are definitely unlikely but they represent the ideal of every gay man's fantasies. Here his limp- wristed, bored, skinhead obsessed, poseur hairdresser somehow becomes involved with a coy, quiet, sexy, tough, baby-faced skinhead. This is a gay man's fantasy come to bold life! The fact that it is an obvious FANTASY (reminiscent of gay porn) only serves to prove La Bruce's erotic and ironic point. It's brilliant.

There is a lot of extraneous junk about the skinhead's sister that seemingly acts as filler. This is where the more Waters and Warhol aspect of the film come in. Obsessed with making a movie about the "Girls of the SLA," the sister also seems to have an unhealthy interest in her brother. She's a lesbian and an activist (another poseur) however, so we expect her to be pretty ridiculous. Overall, her usage here seems to be to give La Bruce a feminine voice that is, in reality, simply a reflection of his own. At one point she even says, "If you want to be in my life, you have to be in my movie." This is surely an ideal La Bruce adheres to rigorously.

La Bruce uses the film seemingly as a way to get into von Buecker pants. This is the most amazing aspect of the film. This is what seems to make it a "guerilla" film. For, most assuredly, von Buecker is one of the most beautiful and desirable young men ever to grace the silver screen. (This is his only film appearance I can find). The fact that he engages in pornographic gay sex acts with La Bruce on screen isn't as amazing as is his ability to seem completely "straight" throughout. He is obviously at least bisexual but he spends most of the moments on film here simply allowing La Bruce to handle him in any way the filmmaker desires. He oft times endures this attention with a look of wan boredom. He is the modern punk Joe Dallesandro. It is incredibly erotic. von Buecker seems to completely understand the aspect of his character's sexuality as it is also suggested that he is trying to rectify his homosexual feelings with his skinhead dogmatism. This may be thematic silliness from La Bruce but von Buecker makes it work. The filmmaker takes what is surely his own wonderfully perverse sexual desires and, using von Buecker as his "object," splays them openly and unfiltered onto the screen. That von Buecker takes part in it all and seems to comprehend the ironic subtlety of it all is the film's true genius.

La Bruce completely utilizes every no-budget technique at his disposal. His film's grainy quality is integrated into the movie by making the piece an homage to grainy, old, black and white, gay porno loops, including those old 50's 8mm films that glorified the male physique. His narration due to the lack of sync sound in the 8mm format becomes an asset when he uses the soundtrack to give voice to his characters and themes. Again, this is much like porno with non-sync sound and ridiculous words accompanying overt sexual acts. La Bruce uses the soundtrack to flavor the film with his own unusual spoken thoughts and plays up the irony with that whispy queer voice he effects. He also seasons the entire film with seemingly his own musical tastes which, yet again, chronicle the gay man's inability to rectify his true sexual nature. In one obvious scene, the gay hairdresser's Carpenters tape is removed by the skinhead and replaced with a skanking version of "These Boots Were Made for Walking." The filmmaker's musical score often wavers between punk and syrup. For example, La Bruce also uses an instrumental version of "My Favorite Things" as the backdrop for a visual excursion of several pictures of skinheads (providing an insight to the sexual longing his character has for them). And even Tiny Tim can be found on the score here. La Bruce does not waste one minute of film or soundtrack in the piece. Every moment, every frame, has a message or a meaning, whether erotic, ironic or exposition.

La Bruce deconstructs gay pornography, low budget filmmaking, gay eroticism and a plethora of other cinematic and homosexual ideals with "No Skin Off My Ass." It may very well be the most important gay film ever made for gay men. Straight people will not only NOT comprehend this film, they will not want to. They will, simply put, run screaming away in droves. It will scare them. And rightly so. Those gay men and lesbians hooked into the ideal of promoting a gay agenda will also hate it. It's a fag movie. And it does not necessarily present the "community" in a desirable light. More importantly, it is definitely politically incorrect. There is no talk of AIDS, no use of condoms, no homosexual angst, no real coming out story (although it is hinted at a bit), and no pleading for acceptance from the straight world. (Thank you La Bruce!) But for those gay men, like myself, who consistently try to rectify our sensitive and aggressive sides, who want hearts and flowers and romance yet dream of leather-clad and handcuffed sexual encounters, the film opens up the ironic and improbable nature of our very sexual existence to us. It reminds us of the complete unlikelihood of our ever finding true happiness with another person on the planet. And then, thankfully and graciously, provides the "happy ending" that we all dream of.

And yet, even here, La Bruce continues to push the buttons of the film's "fantastical" ideal by utilizing the pairing's climax as the film's climax and then reminding us of the complete ridiculous and forced nature of it all by having his narrator film the sexual encounter (on an old 8mm camera he has lying around) and supplementing the sound with an inappropriate laugh track. La Bruce is able to make light of the improbable nature of his own wants and desires while he also makes these "fantasies" a reality before our eyes. The joke is also that he finds true love and then films the first sexual encounter saying in his whimsical narration, "I knew I would never show it to anyone..." and then showing it to us, of course. It's the delicious and salacious ironic capper to the entire film.

At the film's end, however, the question still plagues us: What is von Buecker's real role here. Is he simply an actor? A pornographic performer in a demanding film role? Did he share some sort of real life relationship with La Bruce? Where does the film end and reality begin? Regardless of the existential questions you may encounter, all that is really important is that you will need a towel. Questions and thoughts may plague us throughout and after the film, but they cannot distract us from the highly charged sexuality we get on screen here. It smolders here with a dreamy eroticism and perverse sexuality that we cannot take our eyes from. Even as La Bruce's wonderful and wry queer commentary continually point out the hopeless absurdity of it all.

Note:

La Bruce's own webpage (www.brucelabruce.com) says that the role of the skinhead was "played quasi-convincingly by his then-boyfriend Klaus von Buecker."

The film received much notice from the censors. The video version in England is highly edited. In his native Canada, footage was seized as pornography but La Bruce was able to retrieve it without losing any film.

Report Card

Script: A+

Acting: A+

Cinematography\Lighting: A+

Special Effects\Make Up: A+

Music:A+

Final Grade: A+