Brent Corrigan & Judas Kiss

Given that I've been yammering over recent months about gay cinema, mainstream and indie, and suchlike, and given that I'm a strange fiction writer by trade, with y'all being presumably of similar tastes, I thought it made sense to point up this gay spec fic movie currently looking for funding on Kickstarter. Behind it are J.T. Tepnapa and Carlos Pedraza, who've worked on various short films and a whole lot of Star Trek fan movies (the latter of which I won't hold against them, heh, in my role as hater of pretty much all things Trek -- post the original series, that is.) I can't really speak for the quality of that work, but the premise of Judas Kiss looks pretty cool. Not sure if I'm doing it justice, but as I understand it, a gay film-maker returns to his alma mater and ends up furled in some sort of weird time-bending malarky with a student.

Wait! What's that you say? A gay movie that's not a) a drearily earnest coming-of-age / coming-out drama, or b) an appallingly puerile "comedy" that makes American Pie look sophisticated? Ye gods!

The cast is interesting too, to say the least: there's Charlie David, one of the stars of Dante's Cove (a guilty pleasure of mine,) and one of the few on that show who actually looks able to act if given a decent script and direction (cause as much as Dante's Cove is a guilty pleasure, it's in the Sunset Beach league of soap-operatic... um... excess, we'll say); then there's Timo Descamps, a Flemish actor who's voiced several roles in Flemish dubs of some major Hollywood flicks, and who came out publicly as gay just last year; there's Richard Harmon, who played the gamer Heracles in Caprica, (the kid Adama Sr. goes to in his attempt to track down his daughter's ghost AI); and last but not least, there's Brent Corrigan, best known for his gay porn performances, but now trying to break into the mainstream.

I'll happily confess to having got to know of Corrigan via the adult work (and in part via the controversy that erupted when he revealed he wasn't actually adult when some of it was filmed,) but as hot as he is in the porn, he's also a fascinating blogger, and someone worthy of more than a little respect for his candour about the industry and his own experiences within it, and for his commitment to safe sex. He's someone who learned the hard way about how naivety is exploited on that scene, with underage actors blithely cast in barebacking scenes by studio guys who pay little attention to age certification legislation. He blew the whistle and has weathered the backlash -- with court cases and all manner of vitriol thrown at him -- to come out the other end, it seems, wise beyond his years, an outspoken campaigner for condom use in gay porn and for gay rights in general. And when he writes about the intersections of celebrity and reality, there's an honesty and insight that makes his site way more interesting than you might expect, given that it is also a professional venture aimed at keeping food on the table -- i.e. a porn site offering subscriptions to cam shows and suchlike.

It was that blog actually where I saw the heads-up about Judas Kiss being on Kickstarter, in an entry about a recent gay bingo fundraiser that amusingly juxtaposes the supportive attitude of Jennifer Love Hewitt with the less-than-supportive attitude of some reality TV ligger (where the former happily threw her money into the cause, the latter was apparently scared of gay cooties tarnishing her rep or her relationship with ABC, or some bollocks like that.) If you're afraid of gay manflesh, by the way, that entry is relatively free of exposed body parts, but Corrigan's blog in general is, of course, not exactly work-safe. There's a lot of good entries on it though, so if you don't mind the occasional raunchy image (and I can't say as I mind them much at all, heh,) it's worth keeping an eye on. He's a smart guy, with much to say, and I'm watching with interest as he tries to make the transition from porn to mainstream. I wish him the best of luck.

Anyways, yeah, as a gay sf writer, I reckon the whole Judas Kiss project is well worthy of support, so I thought I'd give it a little pimpage on me blog, for what it's worth. They've got 11 days to reach their goal of five thousand bucks, and were about halfway there last time I looked, so if yer inclined to support indie cinema -- and gay indie cinema and sf indie cinema at that -- go on over and chuck a few dollars into the pot. It's a good cause, I'd say.

As you were.