My Private Go-Go

This film didn't turn out to be what I thought it was going to be...it was better.

As an old fart it took me a short while to adjust to the style of the film making. It's truly wonderful how affordable and accessible film making has become these days....Thanks Apple. Just start watching and let it all wash over you. Be patient.

The young actors were superb. I had seen Tanner Cohen in Were The World Mine. He was very good in that as well. Mathew Camp seems to have made his debut in this film. Very competent and naturalistic in his performance. Amazing in his complete, complex character portrayal. Who knows? Maybe he is so similar to and comfortable in his characters skin. I don't really care. He was just a pleasure to watch as was Tanner.

I believed both of those boys characters.

The arc was just as it should have been. Realism to the core.

Don't know if the dialogue was improvised or loosely scripted. It seemed so spontaneous and natural that either those two boys are extraordinary actors or the writing is excellent or all of the above.

That's what I liked about the film....believability and accurate portrayal of those two individual's humanity. Served to show that love, especially young and fresh love, never changes. It's a blissful state of insanity. I have experienced the situations and feelings of both these characters back in the days of innocence, youthful optimism and raging testosterone.

This film reflected all of that.

I have been vague with details of the film because discovering it as one goes along is an important part of the pleasure.

Here's how much I was impressed, mesmerized, entertained and stimulated....I just bought the film from Wolfe Video.

It's available on NetflixStreaming, clips on YouTube, VOD from Wolfe Video.

I'm in love with both of those boys.

Great job.

There are too many sequences of this film that drag on past the narrative point of including them. In particular the final near silent montage of kissing delays the climax far too much. The pace of the story is killed as a result. Further, several of the montages of Go border on the hypocritical given the rest of the film's commitment to discuss the rampant objectification of people in the gay community. The film is 20 minutes too long as a result. Likewise, there is a amateurish quality to the performances that prevent a more polished film. Camp and Cohen have good chemistry but they are not great actors. Camp, especially, doesn't seem to understand what subtext is. The docudrama construction feels like a vain attempt too hide this. The film is largely experimental in its filming (They shot at Camp's actual apartment for example) and this can be rather off putting at times.

With that being said the film is quite good. The story is a painful, and a painfully accurate exploration of several major tensions present within the gay community. The notions of too much sex, the cost-benefits assimilation, how to be gay, the various "tribes" of gay men and fickle nature of the male gaze all get a hearing in the film. I related to much of it but I can't say I found it much more than hey this problem exist. A lot of it is left unresolved. That is probably a realistic viewpoint but it adds to the indie vibe of the film.

The film is quite forward in its depiction of homoeroticism. I found the sex scenes very naturalistic. I am not sure if I have seen gay sex depicted as realistic as I have seen here. The film does provide a nice counterpoint to the heteronormative depictions of the male form one usually finds.

I am glad I own this but it is a challenging film to watch.

A gorgeous, early-20s gay virgin in Manhattan (if you believe there ever could be such a person), just about to graduate from Columbia and then west to Iowa for grad school, fakes a documentary film project in an attempt to meet a gorgeous gay go-go dancer he's become obsessed with online. To his surprise the dancer goes along with the idea. The fake documentary leads pretty quickly to some very real sex and a lovely, tender, sort-of relationship.

Actor and singer Tanner Cohen, the star of Were the World Mine (made by the same guys who made this one, but MUCH different), plays Doc, the almost-Columbia-grad virgin. Matthew Camp, a real live go-go dancer, plays Go, who is actually himself. The movie was shot in Camp's own apartment, gym, club, supermarket, etc, and follows his regular daily and nightly routine. The only fiction is the business with Doc.

From beginning to end, nothing about this movie is conventional or predictable. Unlike 99.9% of gay men who see this, I thought Doc was lots sexier than Go, but the nerdy type with a totally natural body appeals to me lots more than the buff, shaved, go-go boy type. But Go is very smart and has an angelic face, and inside he's ten times sweeter and more appealing than Doc is - one of the sweetest and most appealing characters ever to appear in a gay movie. Matthew Camp is thoroughly delightful. Definitely, definitely worth seeing.

A small surprise: an extremely low budget movie, much of it shot on an iPhone, that manages to explore issues like objectification and heteronormativity with intelligence and wit and even some tenderness. It takes a romcom setup and transcends it, turning stock figures - the nerd and the hunk - into real people, thanks to shrewd performances by its leads, Tanner Cohen and Matthew Camp, who improvised a good deal of their dialogue. Cohen plays a college student and aspiring writer whose sex life is almost entirely online, jerking off to images of men, particularly a go-go dancer in a gay bar. He becomes obsessed with the dancer, and one drunken night emails him, claiming to be a documentary filmmaker who wants to do a film about the life of a dancer in a bar. To his surprise, the dancer responds, and he finds himself rounding up the necessary camera equipment. The dancer, known in the film as Go, wants to know if he'll be paid, and the student, whom Go calls Doc, agrees to give him five percent of any profits the film might make - although he knows full well that there will probably never be a real film. And then they fall into a real relationship, which, in conventional romcom fashion, we know will be damaged when Go finds out the truth. Except that it doesn't quite work the way, a smart reversal of our expectations. Getting Go doesn't seem to have found much of an audience beyond LGBTQ film festivals, but its attractive performances and intelligent dialogue make it a film that should be more widely known.

My initial thoughts of this were not great. The iPhone arms-length POV style of juddery photography made me think it was going to be an amateur effort. Well it is, but it isn't... The gorgeously charismatic Tanner Cohen is the younger than his years, inexperienced - on all levels - ("Doc") who falls for an erotic dancer online whom he calls "Go" (Matthew Camp) and comes up with a ruse to get to meet him and explore how he lives his life. Surprisingly, "Go" accepts the proposals and we end up with a love story told in a mix of cinematographic styles with one of the most erotically charged sex scenes I think I've ever seen from US gay cinema. Not raw sex with noise and sweat; but based on intimacy and a genuine affection for each other. Occasionally the scenes may linger a little too long; the pace of the editing could certainly have been tighter - but then maybe it would have lost some of it's authenticity and the characterisations some of their depth. Sometimes real life meanders a bit - we all have plenty of pointless times/conversations in our lives - adds to the richness. I hated the ending; but that's because all I wanted for the pair simply wasn't what they wanted for each other. In a world of largely frothy, contrived plastic drama, this is a stand out piece of creative, observational cinema with two really good, fun, engaging performances.