Job Site

A gay take on 1979's CHOPSTIX, JOB SITE happily rises to the impressive bar set by its predecessor. I've long admired Joanna Williams' film as one of the most charming and ebullient examples of golden age porn, so I was thrilled to discovered Marathon Films' remake matches it beat-for-beat, delivering an engaging and arousing slice of gay erotica.

Switching out the French finishing school of the original for an East Coast military academy (the better to encourage homoerotic experimentation), JOB SITE finds hero Tad (Gador) called to Los Angeles to accept his inheritance from a wealthy industrialist. Finding himself the new owner of a dilapidated house, aging lunch wagon, and rundown bar in the Valley - along with $25,000 in back taxes - Tad immediately falls prey to scheming executor Weinblatt, who tricks him into signing over the rights to his new properties should he fail to pay off their debt.

Retreating to his new house with the intention of scrounging up enough money to return back East, Tad is surprised to find the place is a gay bordello, presided over by his uncle Charlie (Mark Edwards), a cheerful old queen who takes him under his wing and serves as a de facto fairy godmother. Quickly seizing on the idea of combining their current business model with the food truck's "meals on wheels" delivery system ("I know a couple women who tried the same trick in San Francisco a few years back," Charlie muses), the two are off to the races, carting around a bevy of young studs to service the sexual needs of LA's sweaty construction set.

Viewers familiar with the original will find little changed here, though not much need be - if you're going to rip off a porn film, CHOPSTIX is certainly a safe bet. Instead, JOB SITE, like its distaff forebear, concentrates on delivering hot, solid sex spiked with just enough plot to keep things moving. The cast is uniformly attractive, with at least one stunner in every scene and not a single guy worth kicking out of the sack, and the sex, by and large, is hot, heavy, and well photographed. Worth particular mention is mononymic lead Gador, who is heart-breakingly gorgeous under the right light and, while not much of an actor, still perfect to embody the character of a young naïf in over his head. Bonus points are awarded for the whorehouse scene, which features hot guys of various races (Latino, black, and even Native American!), a rarity for films of this type and a plus for viewers who appreciate the diversity of the male form.

Beyond the sex, solid plotting and production design further buttress the production. While it obviously can't hold a candle to the original (gay flicks being generally more impoverished than their straight cousins), some effort was still obviously put into sourcing locations (several apparently real construction sites, along with the bar and military academy) and assembling a large enough cast to fit the needs of the story. The concluding orgy, itself preceded by a 6- or 7-guy bout that would be more than enough to end most films, is a real show-stopper, with 12 or 14 guys going at it at once, leading to a mounting litany of climaxes, each underscored by the ring of the bar's cash register in a touch that could launch a thousand Linda Williams thinkpieces. Going the extra mile has long been the MO of Marathon, from early films like BORN TO RAISE HELL to GAYRACULA, this feature's immediate forebear, but JOB SITE still manages a high watermark in narrative gay pornography, providing one of the most fully realized and well mounted features I've witnessed in the genre. It may not be a grand artistic statement, but it is great porn, and JOB SITE proves that whether gay or straight, CHOPSTIX is one classic that's easy for everyone to play.