Do Butts Get Enough Screen Time? Ass-kin' for a Friend

Towards the end of summer in 1989, when most people were flocking to the cinema to see Tim Burton's Batman, one director had other ideas about what people really wanted to see in movies. Enter porn filmmaker John Stagliano, the butt appreciators saviour and a thorn in the back side of those with a AAA (Anti Ass Agenda). His film The Adventures of Buttman is credited with kickstarting anal fetishism, which seems absurd that it took pornographers, oh, about 20 years to really acknowledge the art of the ass. Personally, I find it utterly disgusting and even offensive that fine honies were walking around in this business for years and not getting the recognition they deserve. In fact, I'm under the belief that any woman who was working in the industry between the '70s and '80s who considers themselves to have an elite posterior is more than entitled to chase down their directors and ask for some extra money. Underpaid. Undervalued. Underseen. In the words of Depeche Mode, "I Feel You".

Of course, this does not mean that Stagliano was the first to ever show a bare butt on screen. However, his attention to it and the way he did that genuinely expanded the language of pornography. This is what deems him worthy of study in Jacob Kelly's porn history class. In Buttman, he plays the central character, a freelance cameraman obsessed with, you guessed it, women's behinds. Several scenes feature him being invited to shoot people dancing at '80s parties, which reek of cocaine. Every dude is sporting a moustache and every female looks like they've just stepped off the beach. Bikinis, swim shorts, the lot. I'm sat here watching this as we head towards winter thinking, "Damn I really need to expand my summer wardrobe". Deviations in to fashion choices aside, there's some bold framing at play here. Although tasked only with shooting dancing, our pervy cameraman gets carried away and shows us why he's got a nickname like 'Buttman'.

Noticeably the angle he achieves in these shots to accentuate asses demonstrate real talent. One for the ages bringing cinephiles and ass appreciators together to celebrate a moment. Each time the women catch on to this violation, they react as you would expect and the males present at the party have to step in, taking the devious cameraman to one side and being like, "Buttman! Be cool man. We told you to film their faces". Tickled me every time because it was literally the '80s equivalent of "Buttman you're scaring the hoes!".

For those perhaps a little concerned at this point, let me be clear, these are not 'real' situations and are only made to appear that way as part of the faux documentary style. If you read last weeks issue about Jamie Gillis and you're paying attention, you may recognise this as Gonzo pornography. Pat on the back if you did. Since, this was also released in 1989 like On the Prowl, there's a strong argument to be made that John Stagliano is one of the founding fathers of the genre.

Truthfully, Stagliano might have a fair case to say he created the movement. Unfortunately, the internet is not a reliable source when it comes to the already scarce information on pornography and scholarly articles on its history are limited (most likely why I like writing about it). However, according to a few sites online, The Adventures of Buttman was released September 1st 1989 and On the Prowl December 31st 1989. In interviews, Stagliano has admitted to his title cashing in on the popularity of Batman, released June 22nd 1989, so those dates could well line up at least for his film. Also, if Gillis really did release his film on that particular date, I would like to take this moment to say, "Thank you for the birthday gift".

Since Gillis is actually in the opening scene of Buttman, perhaps they can both share the title of the movements originator. My guess is they were just on the same page and their output around the time is based on various discourse over the direction of pornography engaged in by the pair of them. This leads me in to that incredible and authentically arty opening of Buttman. No explanation is given as to who any of the characters are and due to the lack of exposition we're left to figure out the motives of the characters. The set-up is this, Gillis is out cruising and comes across a streetwalker. They end up moving towards a nearby alley. Out of nowhere, a beefed up angry man appears looking for confrontation with Gillis. Unexpectedly in a move that's sure to be approved of by the feminists, the prostitute is the one who knocks out angry beefed up man. Deciding not to stick around, these two left standing flee the area in search of a place to 'make it'. Much of the sex involves some rather bizarre activities, which hadn't been done before such as shoving dollar bills up the female stars buttocks. I hope everyone reading this gave Queen Liz a proper burial by inserting fivers up their sexual partners arse.

After the money shot, something even more unusual occurs. The cameraman pans over to the mirror, revealing himself in the reflection and begins talking. Despite this being a hell of a lot more common now, this would have been very revolutionary in its day. Even watching it now, I was a little caught off guard by the fourth wall break. Reminded me of Sion Sono's Antiporno in the way layers can be added or stripped away when it comes to spectatorship and different levels of reality. Without ruining it, One Cut for the Dead is another film which plays with this concept. These examples given are much more recent films and yet they still have a head ache inducing trippy effect. In a more literary sense, JG Ballard's writes something similar to the Buttman scene in Cocaine Nights

In Cocaine Nights, a rape is filmed by a character who then momentarily films themselves in the mirror afterwards, drawing the narrators attention to the fact it was filmed. Such a fact should be obvious but sometimes we forget this detail in our relationship with the camera. Unconsciously, we associate the camera with the eye and disregard the presence of a cameraman. Often, the technique is used to open movies, suddenly the footage will pause catching the viewers off guard. See for example, Michael Haneke's Cache. Occasionally, I find his work a little too self-congratulatory, seeking only to arouse the bourgeois but he is very interested in getting right in the middle of that wall between film and viewer. Funny Games is fully aware of audience responses to violence and so opts to challenge these expectations. Furthermore, Benny's Video is literally a kid filming his own violent acts with a handheld camera. Only the other day, I was hearing Mark Kermode discussing his love of David Cronenberg and how watching that man's films is like watching through a car window with that cold detached atmosphere.

Apologies, that was quite the detour, my point was that it doesn't matter how many times you see techniques involving the awareness of alternatives planes and fields of vision, it still manages to shock. Whenever a set of rules are established to have them broken before you is so unnerving and disorienting. Elicits pure anxiety as you become accustomed to unconscious processes in a Godardian manner. Stagliano made an excellent point about how first acts in movies are always wasted, highlighting the fact you can get away with more because by the second and third acts everyone knows the characters. Therefore, you should use the first act to catch your audience off guard before things settle down and the opportunity is lost. Weirdly, this is a point I've always on some level agreed with but been unable to fully understand or intellectualise. Why is it I have to come all the way out to pornography to learn such lessons?

In the last issue, I am aware that I may have focused too heavily on discussing the POV and the audience over the cameraman/director. When in reality, Gonzo porno by its nature should be about the latter. Yet, I do not regret my actions as that is what the effect of Gillis's set-up was. In this regard, Stagliano's film could be closer to true Gonzo filmmaking. Possibly, this stronger grasp of the concept may come from the fact he studied journalism for a while. As discussed earlier though his approach definitely puts you in to the head of the sleazy cameraman more. In Gillis's film, the camera is more of an extension of your own eye. Moreover, in On the Prowl we never saw the cameraman but here he is a proper character even if we don't always see him in the frame. Consequently, Gillis constructs a viewer's fantasy whilst Stagliano's serves a document of the cameraman's perspective. In a sense, you could call the latter auteur filmmaking in the way it presents that.

Won't even lie, I am thoroughly excited at the prospect of following more of Buttman's rogue adventures with later entries in the series. Another distinctive characteristic of Stagliano's is having Buttman present in the scene, creating essentially a 'talking camera' and allowing the other characters to speak directly in to the camera. That interaction, which was completely new, added a personal element to porn. You cannot underestimate those who go crazy for that viewer engagement being addressed directly. This whole virtual giving instructions and telling the viewer what to do is very popular today and was definitely inspired by this. Nowadays, you can literally pay for personalised videos and a porn star to even say your name in to the camera. So, impossible to deny that there's a huge crowd for that.

Cinematically, I'm more interested in how he achieves this with his camerawork and how he came to possess such knowledge. Looking at his career, you will see that he is no stranger to porn. He came of age during the sexual revolution of the 1960s. By the 1970s, he was writing erotic fiction for a small newspaper and doing some softcore modelling on the side. Wasn't long before this turned in to 8mm loops. For those unfamiliar, these were popular before feature lengths became massive. You would pay to enter a peep show, stare into the box and these 8mm reels would be playing on a loop, hence the name. Eventually, Stagliano moved away from this arena to explore his interest in dancing. Magic Mike shit you know. Since, the club he worked at already had a dancer named John, the MC took to calling him, "Evil John". Concurrently, when this was happening, he was dating a woman with a stage name of 'Angel'. Why do I mention this? Later he would combine the two for the name of his company. To this day, Evil Angel is one of the biggest companies in porn still operating.

In 1983, Stagliano moves back to pornography directing his own feature, Bouncing Buns (what else would it be called with this man) for $8,000. Clearly this man's focus has always been the arse since day one. If Russ Meyer is the most talented and qualified individual to ever shoot boobies, Stagliano could be equivalent for ass kino.

This comes back to my point about him being a potential auteur, his subject of choice has always been the buns. Other than this the dude loves his dancing. Apparently, he went on to explore this further in his highly acclaimed 2002 effort The Fashionistas. This 280 minute epic is meant to be his magnum opus and well respected for weaving big stars, the vital sex and even his own interests. There's a cast here that even non-porn followers will even be familiar with.

Belladona has a small role in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (big pornhead him you can just tell). Rocco Siffredi is a regular collaborator with New French Extremity director Catherine Breillat (Romance, Anatomy of Hell ) and finally rom-com fans may know Manuel Ferrara from Don Jon (the Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie). Bless Stagliano though he pumped $500,000 into The Fashionistas, his largest budget to date to delve into his dancing hobby. He didn't even care if it failed, the man just loved dancing. Luckily, so did the porn crowd and it was so successful it tripled its budget.

Back to the camerawork on Buttman, by 1989 he had about 6 years worth of experience under his belt and was under the impression he knew what the fuck he was doing. This would prove essential to the task he would undertake in.

Historically, there is a lot of relevance in what he was doing too. Remember, this was the videotape era, meaning new cameras offering the opportunity for increased movement and longer shooting. The style of Gonzo allows for longer takes as well making it exactly the right time for its introduction in to filmmaking. Gonzo is heavily about the unedited experience of an event, which would have been way more difficult shooting on film.

Regardless, don't go thinking this shit was easy just cause of some improved technology. Ejaculation on demand and chemistry doesn't just go away with new cameras. May look like pleasure on screen but in reality its closer to a production line process. Therefore, merely having the literal tools to shoot Gonzo isn't everything. Thankfully, Stagliano had some real skills as a camera operator. So good in fact that he knows when to pretend he doesn't for this film as part of the faux-documentary aesthetic. Anything prior to the sex is shot deliberately amateurish but anything during delivers the goods. A true pro.

There's one moment in the film that illustrates where they were at with the film technology speaking. Stagliano hooks up the camera to a television so the participators can see them on screen instantaneously as they're fucking. You can tell this must have been pretty novel because the people involved see themselves on screen and midpenetration start screaming "No way!!!". Their infantile excitement at this now primitive technology will elicit some laughter in you as it very much did myself. These two people involved in the scene are unquestionably the funniest two porn actors I have ever seen in the history of porn. In pure postmodernist metatextual fashion, they sit back chinning beers, smoking biffs and discussing the cinematic works of Alfred Hitchcock whilst engaged in a threesome.

The Hitchcock commentary being relevant here as they debate whether the directorial cameo commonly deployed by old Alfred is similar to Stagliano's Gonzo filmmaking concept. On top of this, what's even funnier is that in the faux-documentary storyline this horny trio have kidnapped Buttman and forced him to make this sex tape for them. Every so often they'll start mocking him and shouting at the camera things like, "Oi, Hitchcock, film this!", as they prepare to engage in various sexual positions.

Plenty of comedy is involved in every situation because the basic set-up is designed so that Buttman is always the 'Butt of the joke'. He seeks to exploit women and always ends up on the losing side when the tables turn and becomes the humiliated victim himself. Exactly how they get away with this brand of ridiculous satire.

Prior to his victimisation by this trio, Buttman is wondering round a park at night. This hasn't been pointed out but this content is years ahead of its time. There's a popular style of filmmaking today as I'm sure you're aware with Be My Cat and the Creep series where psychopaths and serial killers meander their local towns with a camera, going about their daily activities (the more banal the better) and chatting utter shite. These tend to be the blackest of comedies, highlighting the eccentricities of the subject and their widely differing from society's views. Earliest example that comes to mind is Man Bites Dog with a killer who loathes modern architecture. The Adventures of Buttman predates this by about 3 years. Buttman's favourite topic? The moon. Watch as he rambles on incoherently about the presence of the grey orb in the sky. This is another genre in need of a name, may I suggest, 'V-log Horror'.

Moving on to a more established genre, the scene whilst not overtly belonging to found footage horror demonstrates some of that genres characteristics. "What was that?", repeats Buttman as he investigates the darkness and even blows up the footage later at home. He reexamines it, zooming on places to observe closer. We've all seen that scene before. Cannibal Holocaust is usually accepted as the first found footage film back in 1980. Having said this, it does not follow the more traditional format of the genre. Therefore, The McPherson Tape is regarded as not popularising the genre but being one of the first to embody a lot of the common features seen today. This was also released in 1989 on January 1st. Is it possible Stagliano was influenced by this? More likely he saw the technique used in Blade Runner but let's give him some credit, this stuff wasn't so regularly adopted until the late '90s and early 2000s.

It may be apparent that I haven't yet acknowledged many criticisms of Gonzo pornography. Last issue, I touched on blocking but another is plot. Gonzo porno detractors will place emphasis on how it leaves no room for substance due to the fact it's all sex scenes. Undeniably, there is more sex and less traditional storytelling. However, I would like to think in these last two pieces of writings, I have proved that it is doing something and evidently advancing the vocabulary of erotica in film, all while having more sex scenes in there. That's something to praise right?

In terms of economy, Gonzo is a tool which removes slack and promotes greater efficiency. Buttman's style brings the cameraman's intentions to the forefront and expresses the thoughts of the actors through the fourth wall breaking interactions. Fair enough if you want to say that will only lead to cheap and lazy filmmaking because of the lack of subtlety and visual storytelling being taken away. I don't necessarily disagree with you, a lot of this needs to take place in the mind and not be verbalised. Understand though that it is a tool (that can be well used) and most importantly, in 1989 it was new. Finding a way to offer the viewer new experiences, whilst not only maintaining a good ratio but increasing the sex is beyond impressive. As a result, Gonzo filmmaking becomes both artistically and commercially the way to go for porn in 1989.

How I've ignored the commercial aspects thus far, I am unsure. One of my greatest weaknesses in life is my inability to see financial opportunities in particular situations, even in porn to some extent. Generally, the thought just doesn't occur to me and hinders all my endeavours because the simple fact is you need money to sustain passion projects. However even a fool like me can see the money benefits in this style of filmmaking.

Production costs come right down in this arena. Due to the desire to be raw and realistic, you can cut out many typical roles. Starting with the lighting guys. Who needs them when natural lighting is preferred here. Stars? Not really necessary as part of the storylines incorporate the notion of finding unknowns of the street. Editors? These guys can take a walk too because most of its filmed long takes anyway. Don't have to be an editing wiz to put just a couple of clips together. Forking out for sets is unnecessary too because that would only destroy the authentic look. Equipment wise? No need for tracks just a good pair of hands to hold the camera and move around cleanly. Think Sorkin except this time it's 'fucking and talking'.

Doesn't take a genius to work out why Gonzo became THE genre of the '90s porn scene. It is not often producers can save money and meet audience demand. You can literally see the money bags lighting up in these guys eyes like James Woods when he first discovers Videodrome "Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! And almost no production costs...I think it's what's next!", he blurts out at his colleagues.

Everything I have read about Gonzo porno indicates that at some point in the '90s this genre becomes increasingly disturbing and focuses on the POV. People like Max Hardcore arrive with Bizarro Sleaze directors Gregory Dark and Rob Black to really challenge the boundaries of extremity. Taking porn away from its more wholesome and innocent origins (if it could ever be deemed to have had such). Is this a natural part of evolution with audiences demanding greater violence and shock or does this belong to deeper Y2K fears in society? A reaction to the potential apocalypse and an anything goes attitude. Can these films still be considered productive fantasies? Is there a place for morality in fantasy? Or do some of these films go too far and stray dangerously close to snuff? I intend to ride out this train of madness and find some answers.

Bonus Points:

-Ass appreciation

-The 'Talking Camera'

-Buttman scaring the hoes

-Cool lack of exposition in the opening scene and a clever reveal

-Use of available technology

-The two dudes in the threesome just casually discussing Alfred Hitchcock midpenetration

-V-log horror and found footage elements

Overall Score: 4/5