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"The images are merciless and provocative... and the film is to be considered even more precious and scandalous, considering that this is not fiction but reality, taped on video and transferred onto film."
"It's more incisive, surprising and unsparing ... it's stronger stuff than 'Boogie Nights'"
"Jochen Hick's entertaining look at the gay sex industry...."
"Among the most eagerly awaited films for festival-goers this years is "Sex/Life in L.A.", which looks at the world of porn stars, hustlers, and nude models. The film concludes with a bathtub scene featuring model Tony Ward, a former Madonna boy toy and the star fo Bruce LaBruce's "Hustler White". It's a hot ticket: At this point, scalpers are your only hope for admission. While not all films here can claim similar popularity..."
"The film explores the very ends of its own logic between distance and voyeurism in the scene, where Tony Ward masturbates in the bath tub. An unpassionate und uncomfortable moment, where exhibition and the hate of exposing oneself doesn't lead any further."
"Santa Monica Boulevard seems like a promenade of shattered dreams in Jochen Hicks beautiful, silent and sometimes haunting film."
"Extremely well photographed and edited. ... Hicks view doesn't bore, it's entertaining and even exciting and suspenseful, thanks to his merciless approach on his portrayals of interviewees."
"SEX/LIFE IN L.A. is a beautiful, intelligent and exciting film!"
"Maybe also Karl Marx would have liked (the) film: Jochen Hicks 'SEX/LIFE IN L.A." since this presentation of sex as a merchandise makes the best dialectic attempt fail. What is the value of a trade and what the instrinsic value when the hot pornostar like to have sex, sex, and sex: 'If I would have a lot of money, I would have sex all the time!'"
"Outfest '98 is especially strong on documentaries. Jochen Hick's SEX/LIFE IN L.A. documents incisively the lives of several goodlooking men who came to Hollywood to seek their fortune and for the most part to become porn stars, prostitutes or both. Some of these men, at least for now, seem resilient and detached enough to survive and even prosper; others have been waylaid by drugs and despair. Featured are supermodel Tony Ward, who had his 15 minutes of fame partnered with Madonna in her banned-on-MTV music video "Justify My Love", starred in Bruce La Bruces 'Hustler White' and is struggling to make it as an actor and performance artist Ron Athey."
"Also visually a titbid!"
"A very close up and personal look at tinsel town casualties, featuring interviews with and footage of Tony Ward (in that famous bath tub scene), Ron Athey, Rick Castro, Matt Bradshaw, John Garwood, Kevin Kramer and Cole Tucker. This documentary reveals the effects of the exploitation of male sexuality in a town where an abundance of buff flesh is exhibited, exploited, consumed and discarded indiscriminately.".
"Welcome to L.A.! ... SEX/LIFE IN L.A. delivers exactly what it promises: a triple x-rated look at life and sex on the edge as lived by the guys who make the movies."
"... this documentary - a sort of TO LIVE AND SCREW IN L.A. - is a well-edited montage of interviews with ponr stars like Matt Bradshaw and Kevin Kramer; model and Madonna's ex Tony Ward; soem Santa Monica Blvd. street hustlers; and performance artist Ron Athey, whose meat hook through the genitals routine plays like an XXX-rated version of Fox's' Guinness World Records'. The personalities fuel the film, like the former porn star recovering from drug and sex addiction, and the hustler who is from a place so far removed from L.A., that he doesn't know how to use gas pumps with the black fume filters. The film also works when it captures moments of intimacy, like Kramer waiting for a response to his phone personal ad, and an vulnerable Ward jerking off int the bathtub..."
"Gay icon Tony Ward, Madonna's sometime boyfriend, comes across rather well. He looks boyishly good (he credits the Material Girl for getting him off drugs) and, while maintaining that he's only a tiny bit Gay, treats us to a bathtub jackoff. ..."
"...Hick's most articulate subjects are Cole Tucker, a butch colorfully tattooed, HIV-positive porno performer who exposes some surprising tarde secrets, and Madonna survivor Tony Ward, who offers some sensible observations about fame before jacking off to climax in a bathtub. SEX/LIFE IN L.A. doesn't cheat on the naughty bits...."
"Working Boys - A constant up and down: 'Sex/Life in L.A.'"
"...everybody tell their strategies of survival in a world which is only based on the worth of the body."
"Shadows go down on Santa Monica Boulevard like in a 'film noir'."
"Der Regisseur, einer der wenigen glaubwürdigen Chronisten schwuler Lebenswelten ... (zeigt) eindringlich und voller Anteilnahme (...), wie das fetischistische Verhältnis zum eigenen Körper und die unverhohlene Begeisterung über das eigene Abbild in Hochglanzmagazine und Pornofilmen die Männer in einer Welt aus Ausbeutung und Demütigung gefangenhält."
"Fucked, celebrated, fired; in his new documentary 'Sex/Life in L.A.' Jochen Hick portrays nine sex-professionals in the mekka of Gay porn. An exciting kind of striptease of souls."
"...In contrary to Bruce la Bruce ... Hick delivers a 'real' documentary. Also Hicks film bewilders, but not only from scenes which are arranged, but from the inner emptininess and desert of the American capitalistic society, which reaches here with all power into persons sexuality..."
"Intelligent and erotic, but never pushy or voyeuristic, Hick has created suspenseful portrays of Gay sex-gods..."
"Einer der stärksten Beiträge von Outfest´98!"
**** (4 Stars)!" "... But nobody will have seen them like in the film of the Hamburg director Jochen Hick. (...) A totally different view on glittering Hollywood! Merciless and provocative!"
" (...) Ganz anders filmt Jochen Hick, Dokumentarist und Menschenfreund. Er analysiert auch in seinem neuesten Film keine objektiven Befunde; er befasst sich auch nicht mit einem vorgefundenen Thema. Aber er besitzt die seltene Gabe zuhören zu können. Die neun jungen Männer, die er in SEX/LIFE IN L.A. zu Wort kommen lässt, behalten ihre SubjektivitŠt. Hick tastet ihre Integrität nicht an. Mit seiner Kamera begleitet er die, die mit ihrem Körper arbeiten, während der Arbeit, Im privaten, zu Haus. (...) Die Stadt Los Angeles formt sich in Hicks Film zu einem eigenen Körper: zu einem gefrässigen, vampyrischen Stadt-Subjekt. ..."
"...all are very attractive (...) ...But they feel, that beauty alone won't be enough for a ticket into the film business - making their dream become a nightmare..."
"The Hamburger Jochen Hick explores the 'Boogie Nights' of the present."
"Jochen Hick (...) lets the audience be astounded and makes them understand. Aids in this documentary is not dutifully discussed, it is shown as that part of the life, which the illness means to the Gay culture."
Jochen Hick's sexually explicit and skin-deep German documentary about the American gay-porn industry, featuring Tony War, Madonna's sidekick in her 'Justify My Love' video. (...)"
"'Dreams and desires'...nobody ends up as an object of aesthetic studies in this film."
"Jochen Hick succeded to create an extraordinary film,which differs from Boogie Nights with ist 70ies touch and melo-flair - shows L.A.'s industry of Gay images without any make-up."
" (...) It honors Hicks film, that he doesn't comprehend the scene as something exotic, but that he shows its normality and leaves it up to the audience to evaluate those different ways of life..."; Germanys Catholic Film Service
"They might have lost WWII, but this hasn't kept the resourceful Germans from exposing the bare butt of America's entertainment industry - PORN!"
"German Jochen Hick traveled to Tinseltown to study men whose careers revolve around their bodies. (...) this is a well-edited and relatively unbiased glimpse at the world of sex work. It peels away any shred of glamour to reveal a grim, matter-of-fact atmosphere. In one scene, a fantastically humorless Kevin Kramer packs a briefcase full of lube and condoms in preparation for an 'escort' job - heading off to work just like any other office drone. More likable is porn star Matt Bradshaw, whose down-to-earth niceness sets him apart from self-obsessed L.A. robots. Interesting...."
"In addition, SIFF (Seattle Int. Film Fest) planners have scheduled an impressive array of documentary films. (...) Also featured in this series is the U.S. premiere of 'SEX/LIFE IN L.A.', a study of the male pron industry in Los Angeles." |
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