“When I was a lad, I had to go to my school clinic for a German measles vaccination,” explained the enormous body builder gone to flab, whose Australian accent made him sound uncannily like Russell Crowe, “I was cryin’ me head off - screamin’. So, while the doctor was injectin’ the needle, the nurse hugged me, causing my head to be pressed against her breasts. I got so aroused by that, I actually asked if I could have another shot!”
No, I did not hear this brontasaurus-sized man in a warm support group room, a sweaty weight lifter’s gym or in the fiery hot Outback. I was, in fact, seated in a cold, damp, sparsely
populated theater in New York City, watching a documentary, entitled “Liberty in Restraint”, concerning a Down Under fetish photographer and his sadomasochistic subjects. One of his
models was this professional male “dom”, who related matter-of-factly how he got into the giving and receiving of pain, while a woman threaded a half-dozen hypodermic needles - sans the
syringes - through the flesh of his upper arm, which was roughly the size of Russell Crowe’s torso.
This masked beast’s inoculation inspiration was notable in light of the current flu vaccine shortage that was plaguing the United States, thanks to outgoing President George W. Bush’s
injecting billions of dollars into the most destructive and wasteful American military campaign since the Vietnam War. In fact, more than a few members of Little George’s administration and the conservative and Christian right would have appreciated the festival to which this documentary belonged - CineKink, the world’s first showcase of the oddly neglected genre of bondage, S and M and fetish cinema. Why, only a week before, the world learned just how much FOX News Channel’s chief bile producer, Bill O’Reilly, enjoyed making obscene phone calls while shoving a vibrator down his pants.
As for myself, my motives for attending this, the final, awards night of this three day carnival of carnality, were only slightly more honorable than Bill’s were toward his harried
assistant. I had come to see if by some chance my science fiction short, “Proinhibition”, which had screened the previous evening, had a shot at being crowned Best Short, or at least getting an
Honorable Mention. By the end of the evening, the fact that I received neither honorarium did not bother me as much as the fact that I spent my last night in the City of Busby Berkeley watching people subject themselves and others to offenses of the mind, body and credit card.
Mind you, I initially attended the CineKink Festival with much enthusiasm, as it provided the first New York premiere in my cinematic career. While my previous features, “Made in Berlin” and “Vixen Highway”, have played at various festivals and showcases around the world, the City of Martin Scorcese had always remained elusive. I actually entered “Proinhibition” - whose story concerned Dr Rich S, the head of a rehab center in the year 2050 who must battle his own return to the bottle while obsessing over Mistress Maggie M, a dominatrix detained for treatment - to CineKink as a lark based on a friend’s recommendation. When the festival’s director, Lisa Vandever, accepted it for the 2004 edition, I was as thrilledas a submissive winning a year’s worth of free physical abuse.
Though the festival’s web site and its sponsors - mostly societies, periodicals, designers and real estate agents (I’m not kidding) devoted to “pain for pleasure” - made me uneasy, I flew
to the metropolis with high hopes. My hopes, bear in mind, were not to get a distribution deal or my face on the covers of magazines - you have to get your film into Sundance, Cannes, Toronto and a couple of other places to get those baubles. Rather, I was looking forward to making some contacts for future productions, circulating amongst members of the sexual underworld and perhaps observing an impromptu flogging or two. When I entered the location of CineKink’s opening night party, a small dance club in the East Village called Remote Lounge, things looked only moderately promising.
For starters, I was greeted by a balding, forty-ish doorman who looked like Miguel Ferrar (Jose’s actor son, best known for his role as the coke dealer in the Witness Protection Program in
“Traffic”) and who looked decidedly uncomfortable in his leather vest and pants. I told him I was one of the filmmakers featured in the show. In the tired voice of a sit com maitre d', he said,
“Well, you can get in for free, though we would appreciate a donation of five dollars.” Still feeling groovy over debuting in the City of Art Garfunkel, I whipped out a five spot and placed it in a
basket. With the same world-weary tone, Miguel said, “Wow. What did you do, roll somebody?”
Chuckling, I stepped into the small club, which contained the typically red lit, house-music-drenched dance floor, and, nearby, a small bar. So far, not a soul inhabited the dance area,
and only a handful of people circulated at the bar. Most of these folks were dressed more conservatively than Miguel, and were as heavyset and professorial as the citizens of my home town of Minneapolis. Eventually, I spotted a young brunette woman in a black skirt and a halter top that gave a generous enough view of her breasts to cause me to say, “Hi! You must be Lisa Vandever!”
CineKink’s founder confirmed my identification, and I introduced myself as the creator of the film that must surely have been the mildest entry in the schedule. “Oh, no!” Lisa replied, without a trace of irony, “Your movie is far from the mildest!” Considering that the other titles on the menu included “Slaves”, “Carve”, “Born in a Barn” - and, for the kids, “Mango Kiss” and “Hershey Kiss” - I was dubious about this.
In any case, within about a half hour, the place began to fill with patrons, only a few of whom were decked out in anything remotely “kinky.” The crowd was so ordinary, in fact, that
future Homeland Security Chief nominee Bernard Kerik could have discreetly enjoyed the proceedings with one of his mistresses, including that woman he had an affair with in a setting -a tax-sponsored boudoir near the site of Ground Zero - that practically defined “kink.” Adding to the Social Darwinism was the presence of Fiacre Douglas, the Irish-born actor who plays Dr. Rich S in “Proinhibition”, and Fiona, an actress friend of his who also hailed from Ireland. As Fiacre, Fiona and I chatted about pain, torture and Tom Jones, a long and quite annoying auction of metallic and electrical devices went on by the dance floor.
The annoyance was due entirely to the shrill voice of the auctioneer, a bloated, middle-aged S and M enthusiast named Lolita Wolf. This mad woman loudly called out bids for items,
while a strapping young stud named - what else? - “Boymeat”, stood nearby covered in nothing but swaths of duct tape. Every time a successful bid was made on some article of clothing or
confinement, the bidder could rip a piece of the duct tape off the stud, presumably causing some hair and flesh to go along with it. Boymeat’s pain, though, was nothing compared to the torment everyone in the room felt at the fingernails-on-blackboard screech of Lolita, who eventually drove me, Fiona and Fiacre out of Remote Lounge. I should note that Ms. Wolf did make up for her caterwauling a few weeks later by making special note of my film in her weekly blog. Admittedly, she crowned it “worst of the fest”, but it was good of her to help in promotion.
Whether any other entries were as deserving of this honor as mine was, I’m not sure, as I passed on the films that would be shown the following night, and day thereafter, of CineKink,
whose screenings were to take place at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. Oh, some of the titles - namely “Dominatrix Waitrix” and “Alice in Footland” - sounded fun, and a couple of
more - “Bush Beatin’” and “California State Recall - Folsom Street Style” - were certainly politically relevant. But, honestly, most of them indicated they might contain material which
would cause me to explode with vomit at one of the city’s fine restaurants.
It wasn’t until late Saturday night when I finally entered the Archives, where my movie would begin the last block of screening of the day. Neither Fiacre nor Fiona, who had to fly back to Minneapolis that morning, were in attendance, and Miguel the doorman must have been busy protecting Remote Lounge. No reporters were present, not even pretend ones like James Geckert,the guy hired by the Bush administration to lob softball questions at the boss during press conferences, who turned out not to be a reporter at all but a $200-an-hour male prostitute (and who, presumably, charged extra for any “kink” stuff). Lolita the braying auctioneer was gracing the proceedings, of course, as was Lisa Vandever. In addition to being the festival’s director, Lisa also appeared to be its usher, for I found her selling tickets at a desk outside of the screening room. I chatted with her briefly about the show’s progress, before entering the video dungeon.
Though the screen was quite huge and there were as many seats as at one of our newer, larger cineplexes, the room and the entire building had the foreboding feel of a courthouse - which,in fact, it once was. As I perused the festival program and the stills of actors looking appropriately agonized, I overheard a conversation a few rows in front of me between ten of the
sixty-odd folks in the house.
I presumed this group belonged to one of the fetish societies that got a discount on tickets. This was not based on anything they wore - almost everyone in the house was in jeans
and T-shirts - but on the serious discussion they had about thumb screws, studded clothing and, most particularly, the challenges of indoctrinating new recruits into the army of “kink.” To the concerns expressed on this final subject, one pear-shaped fellow of forty, who looked like he enjoyed after-school snacks while doling out pain, declared, “Hey, you gotta be patient! I mean, I went out with this one chick who was really reluctant about getting into my thing. Well, it took me a year, but, let me tell you, this girl was beggin’ me to fist her!”
As I gave this creep an expression I usually reserve for Halliburton executives, Lisa, standing behind a microphone on a podium near the stage, said, “Welcome to the final screening
of today’s installment of CineKink.” Creep and his cell mates, as well as the rest of the crowd, sat down obediently. After thanking those especially obsessive types who endured that day’s slate of over thirteen creature features, Lisa announced the two remaining exhibitions of that night - my work and the main attraction, Bob Zak’s “The Asylum.” Though “Proinhibition” is thirty minutes long and involves live actors, I figured it must have been serving as “Asylum’s” cartoon trailer.
However, for the first fifteen minutes of my dark comedy, this didn’t seem to be the case, as the house was dead silent. It was not until the appearance of voluptuous Jennifer Burleigh-
Bentz as Mistress Maggie M in full fetish gear that the audience responded with appreciative chuckles. When the Mistress declared herself “the best non-skat dom in my district”, the roars of laughter were loud enough to cause me to wonder if dominatrixes who choose not to use their clients as outhouses are regarded as yellow-bellies. During the film’s climax, when the dominatrix recovery group that Maggie belongs to finds out Dr. Rich has been drinking behind their backs, and subsequently beats him to a bruised and bloodied heap, everyone, including Creep and his friends, let out a mighty cheer - though, so far as I could tell, nobody pumped their fist.
As the closing credits rolled, I felt good enough about this belated but enthusiastic response that I was ready to watch “The Asylum.” The program description of this hour-long piece, which dealt with a woman, Anastasia, who is “held captive in a fetish netherworld, totally under the latex-clad domination of the evil Doctor Darenzia” initially made me queasy. But, I
figured if I could survive all two-and-a-half hours of “Caligula” - and God knows how many minutes of footage of Ron Jeremy nude - I could at least check out the first fifteen minutes of
Anastasia’s ordeal.
I left after five.
Despite my ducking out on Doctor Darenzia’s aggressive examination of her patient - and despite my wariness about being in the company of Creep, Miguel, Lolita and Boymeat - I owed it to Lisa to attend the awards show on Sunday, the final night of CineKink 2004. Though I certainly did not expect it to be a “Night of a Hundred Stars”, I assumed there would at least be a few guys in zipper masks trading zingers before a house full of roustabouts. Instead, the screening room that was so well stocked the night before had a mere twenty exhausted looking occupants. I eventually realized the meager turnout was due, in part, to the fact that the films presented this hour had already been screened during the previous three days, and also that only
two of the award winning directors were in attendance.
One of those directors, Ryan J. Wolowski, who received an Honorable Mention for his short, “I Sit on Acid” gave the proceedings the only blast of awards-show zaniness when, just
before the film screened, he warned, “Watch out, folks - this is for adults only!” As the three minute video unfolded, it was painfully clear he wasn’t being cute. After thirty seconds of close-ups of phalluses in action, I closed my eyes and contented myself with enjoying the fast, pulsating music on the soundtrack. This, of course, meant that I would never find out what the hell the title meant, but it was a small price to pay.
Once the “acid sitting” came to its screeching halt, and I opened my eyes, I was rewarded with the much more serene “Dream Human”, winner for Best Animation. The work was a computer-generated depiction of various metal parts floating in a futuristic universe that meet and meld together, before transmogrifying into a fully equipped sex pot dominatrix. Though I still dreaded the appearance of flying turds or violated sphincters, the work luckily climaxed with the dominatrix taking a bath in what appeared to be moisturizing cream. The only disappointment was that the film’s director was not present to accept her award, a let-down in that I figured anyone who goes by the name “tsubasa” has got to have an acceptance speech worth hearing.
Alas, physical suffering reared its ugly head again with the next film, the official winner for Best Short. The director, Bryan Jackson, was on hand to accept his trophy, but unlike his
predecessor, he did not provide any “adults only” warning. He would have been more than justified in doing so, as his eight minute endurance test, “Haircut”, gave new meaning to the
phrase “a little off the top.”
Fortunately, the remaining two films would be considerably more watchable. In fact, “Spanky Spanky”, a music video in which the rotund lead singer of the band Dick-n-jayne
receives demerits from a crew of high school cheerleaders, was downright perky. And finally there was that documentary, “Liberty in Restraint”, Michael Nay’s technically accomplished
and, uh, penetrating examination of the career of Noel Graydon, who traded in a life of hard drug use for a career as a photographer of Mistresses, Masters and women who can only be described as “anti-nuns.” Among these folks - all of whom talked in polite, Aussie-inflected accents about inflicting genital and other bodily mutilation upon themselves and others - was that Russell-Crowe-voiced gorilla, who let a German measles inoculation prompt him to dress like a Medieval executioner and apply the lash to high-paying Australians like ... Rupert Murdoch?
As I emerged from the chamber of the Archives and headed toward a nearby bar that - thanks to its tropical “Gilligan’s Island” theme and grass-skirted waitresses - offered a
rejuvenating breeze of tenderness, I wondered if Kona had chosen the best festival for my premiere in the City Where Russell Crowe Pounded That Poor Hotel Desk Clerk. I decided, in the end, that Lisa Vandever had run a very well organized and well attended showcase that, in addition to receiving quite a bit of press attention, should cause more than a few eyebrows to be raised and cocktail glasses to be dropped.
I also decided that, next time I get a flu shot or other vaccination, I’m going to make sure a female medical person is on hand to give me a big hug.
