Danny Wylde

A blog and a throbbing admiration for the work of (former?) porn star Danny Wylde has brought me to this curious short film. I put the former along the quotation mark because I'm not all that sure about his retiring, since I've been hearing about it for quite some time - as of 2016, no new films on his resume. But "Danny Wylde" isn't all about the star of more than 200 adult movies in 8 years, it's also about the man behind the famous name, Christopher Zeischegg, and his experiences in the business. In case you don't know, he also happens to be a writer and his semi-autobiographical short story "On the Moral Imperative to Commodify Our Sexual Suffering" was the basis of this film, quite condensed but quite close to the writing work as well. Helps a great deal if you read his whole essay, an honest yet weird talk about the porn industry, fantasies versus reality, the money factor and some usual bizarre things on the way.

The film uses of some of his verbatim from the essay, like his first paid sexual experience; a brief analysis on the scene he had to perform with older women and the cash he'd get for those scenes; and it's not all about glamour, it's also about the downside or collateral effects if you prefer, when he narrates about why he quit porn - he mentions about being bored but we get that it's more than that when he says about the process of using drugs to keep hard for long hours and the effect it causes on the body, and for like the first time ever, I really thought about how working in porn also affects men - the discussion goes it affects more women for lots (and obvious) of reasons. But his description put more perspective on the topic (hey I love "Boogie Nights" to death but if only they had stuff like that presented to audiences!).

What I mentioned was narrated by Zeischegg/Wylde's sexy voice; the images present him stripped down of all his clothes as if preparing to shoot a scene from his next XXX project but with some strange variation: there's an obscure man with a camera, but he's not there just to film the naked actor, he's also there to use him the way he wants by cutting his chest, make some strange "art" and then place that "art" on Danny's chest by using a stapler. And porn, most of the time, is so much about uncovering the real thing, always down and dirty, that I kept thinking if those cuts and nailing were the real thing on Danny. Adding to that, comes the producer/co-writer of the project claiming this was a softcorn snuff. If there's trickery involved, well done because it sure looked real. And it echoes on Wylde's story as well: how much is real and how much is imagined or just created?

Many may wonder what's the aim of the short? What's the man getting at? It's hard to know. It's too reduced to form a great whole. A critique on the business he has endured for far too long without being all that compensated? Maybe. A certain sense of losing a lot of yourself in order to find it? Maybe. The great advantage of Zeischegg's essay is the format, he's a skilled writer with plenty of stories to tell and ideas to share (real or not) and from there you get the chance to know more about the man and the path he traveled...and those tellings were compelling, they evidenced that entering in the business was a quick way to get money to pay for his film education at the same time that money didn't come all that easy and flourishing by the thousands. I guess the film tries to work that existential reflection but without the same effect. But somehow it works.

More than just physically naked, here we have Wylde fully revealed in many different ways, possibly heart and soul. It was a different project and I liked it. 6/10