BijouBlog

By Josh Eliot

When I realized that the movie Wanted (1980) was celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, I decided it was the perfect choice for my “I just watched” series. I knew I wanted to choose an Al Parker movie this time around, but the fact that my co-blogger Will Seagers (L.A. Tool & Die) also starred in the movie sealed the deal.

Frank Ross was the producer of Wanted, and it was directed by Steve Scott. This movie was somewhat early in Steve Scott’s career, and he would go on to direct many fabulous movies, including my favorite, which I previously blogged about: Screenplay. In my second blog for Bijou - “Frank Ross: The Boss” - I wrote about my time working at the gay adult theater, The Screening Room, in San Francisco, which producer Frank Ross managed. I remember renting Wanted on VHS when I lived in the Castro, because I was so curious to see the scene shot at the Turk Street Bathhouse in their jailhouse set. This was the scene Frank invited me to go to the shooting of, but I had just turned 18 and was a bit too nervous to accept. Director Steve Scott did not disappoint with his fantastic camerawork and storyline loosely based on Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958). In the 1958 version, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis played members of a chain gang who found the opportunity to escape. The men were opposites in every way, similar to the 1980 movie Wanted, where Al Parker plays a gay convict chained to a straight convict (Will Seagers) as they flee across the countryside. In both movies, the men work through their differences and in the end form a deep bond. In Defiant, it was the prejudice of skin color and in Wanted, it was the prejudice of sexual orientation. It should be noted that The Defiant Ones garnered a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama, and two Academy Awards for Screenplay and Cinematography, among others.

In the opening scene of Wanted, Al Parker and Will Seagers are sleeping in their jail cell as an abusive guard, played perfectly by Jack Wrangler, approaches another inmate, played by R.W. Stone. The guard points his rifle towards Stone’s crotch and threatens to blow it to bits if he doesn’t suck him off there and then. R.W. Stone, aka Ray Medina, is the epitome of a hot macho daddy, with a rough and sexy face, that at first glance you would be shocked to imagine him sucking dick. But he does, and with some real gusto. Director Steve Scott knew some hot action when it was in front of his face and ordered the camera to stay on this one shot of Stone working it like nobody’s business. Literally a perfectly shot and executed “suck off” scene. The fact that Stone looks pissed and vengeful after the guard covers his face with a thick load adds to the fantasy. Al and Will witness the whole event and plan their escape for the following day, before the guard can turn his sights towards them.

The next morning, the prisoners are transported to the fields for some hard labor, with some really awesome shots of the chain gang crew in the back of the truck. Once the chain gang is in the rock yard, you really get to appreciate their uniforms, denim forward with “boot-black” style footwear - a very hot look! It doesn’t take long for the abusive guard, Jack Wrangler, to pull convict Sam Benson from the group of men and order him over to a private area for some head. Benson is in on the escape plan and, while surrendering his ass to Wrangler, he is able to use his ass cheeks to hold the guard's penis captive while the chain gang makes a run for it and heads for the hills.

The movie focuses on the chained together pair of Parker and Seagers as they run through the hills and break into a desolate cabin. In the cabin, they run into Duff Paxton, overpower him and tie him up. In the middle of the night, straight boy Seagers wakes up and discovers Parker feeding his fat, phenomenal piece to Paxton while simultaneously sucking Paxton’s piece with a vengeance. Seagers, who also at the time of filming went by the stage name Matt Harper, is pissed off and makes it known to Parker that he is disgusted by his homosexuality. Once back on the run, Seagers breaks the chain that bonded the pair and takes off on his own. Parker eventually finds Seagers lying injured on the trail and frees his leg from a bear trap.

Parker helping out the injured Seagers starts a domino effect of mutual respect. Seagers' curiosity about gay sexuality leads to Parker telling a couple of tales addressing his coming out as a homosexual. Parker tells the story of his first encounter while taking a shower in the Army barracks. Two soldiers, played by Dan Noble and Rob Stevens, have their way with Parker in a shorter than normal scene, mostly shot in close-up, which I personally was on the fence about, strictly because of the way it was shot. Another example Parker shares is his affair with ranch hand and real life lover, Steve Taylor. There is some great coverage here, with Parker’s big nut sack making its way into Taylor’s ass. Of course, no Steve Taylor scene would be complete without him completely nourishing every drop of Parker’s load in this really well shot scene. Will Seagers' acting in this movie is really good, some might say exceptional. He plays the straight guy role to the T, really pulling it off, which is difficult to do. His character allows Al Parker to really fine-tune his role of a gay convict, which again, try to pull that off realistically. Parker’s newly found friendship with Seagers opens the door for Al to do what he does best, seduce. While asleep on a mountainside boulder, Al slowly and meticulously uses his mouth to awaken Will’s dick and make it rock hard. As Will wakes up from his nap and discovers Al Parker rimming his ass, he gives into the pleasure with a slight smile coming across his face, showing the audience that he is enjoying what is happening to him. The movie ends ambiguously. Are they caught? Do they get away? Does it matter? All is right in the world, the straight man gave into his gay side.

I know Frank Ross as the producer of this movie was very excited about it while they were involved with the filming. I have great memories of him sitting with me in the ticket booth at the theater and telling me all about the different specifics of the movie and how things went on the set. I was in film school back then at The San Francisco Art Institute, and the real life stories on the set were so enticing to me. It might have even influenced me to enter the adult film Industry years later. I think everyone involved with this movie was incredibly ambitious to take on this project back in 1980, and it’s a testament to the cast and crew that it came out as authentic and visually stunning as it is.

I cut a special 45th anniversary tribute trailer for Wanted to celebrate its special accomplishment, and as a homage to Frank Ross, who was a wonderful man and a great boss!

Bio of Josh Eliot:

At the age of 25 in 1987, Josh Eliot was hired by Catalina Video by John Travis (Brentwood Video) and Scott Masters (Nova Video). Travis trained Eliot on his style of videography and mentored him on the art of directing. Josh directed his first movie, Runaways, in 1987. By 2009 when Josh parted ways with Catalina Video, he'd produced and directed hundreds of features and won numerous awards for Best Screenplay, Videography, Editing, and Directing. He was entered into the GayVN Hall of fame in 2002. 

Sex Play, which appears to be an early 1970s gay porn “naughty picture book,” features an article by gay porn star Jim Cassidy entitled, “Why Be A Homosexual.” (Cassidy appears in several vintage gay porn flicks - Whatever Turns Ya On, A Deep Compassion, The Light from the Second Story Window, and Chapter 3 - available on DVD at those links and streaming at BijouGayPorn.com.)
 

But the piece needs some immediate context. This picture book's full title is Sex Play: A Marital Guide for the Gay Male, which is most interesting, because of course at that time gays could not get married, but it assumes that there will be gay couples in long-term but not legally recognized relationships: “homosexual marriages.”

And the forward/editorial by a doctor lends the contents of the book, mostly pictures of different sex acts and positions with some explanation about their benefits to a healthy sexual relationship; authority and credibility. For example, the good doctor proclaims, “There must be a basic reason for homosexuality – it's been with us since the beginning of time and at certain plateaus, during the world's existence, was actually approved of and considered highly aesthetic.”

Yes, true, but here's where pre-existent prejudices come to the fore, “A homosexual can be as masculine as any hetero male and sometimes even more so. If a list were published of the inverts in professional sports, every phase of government, teaching, scuba diving – you name it – it would certainly seem unbelievable.”
 

It's quite daring that he mentions gays as teachers, given the false claims that gay guys are pedophiles, but the use of the word invert really shows prejudice. More significantly, in the late 19th and 20th century, invert was equated with homosexuality, an inborn trait; male inverts inclined to traditionally female behaviors and interests, and vice versa.
 

Yet this theory seems to refer more to transgender individuals, looking at it hindsight, but, more significantly in the context of the times, the good doctor feels the need to show that the homosexuals aren't necessarily “nellies” but also that the masculine ones are the ones who hide their true inversion by living in the closet with a male lover. Very much a product of the times, this view: sexual liberation was occurring, but in the long shadow of the closet, a closet which confused often sex with gender.

Thus, perhaps, the question about why one should be a homosexual in the last article of the publication, seems initially to be almost a tautology. This article begins with the usual arguments that no one knows why someone is a homosexual, but one can spot the nelly ones; it's the more macho ones need to stay underground. Cassidy does allow for a “middle” category, “architects, artists, dress designers, hair dressers, and yes, teachers and members of the clergy ...” Yes, anyone can be a homosexual, but are there degrees by which one behaves as one? The author seems to assume that homosexuality most probably equals, to a great extent, sexual inversion.

But, later in the piece, Cassidy makes some valid points about how young men, using the example of his own experiences in the small town of Delaney, are socialized to be around homoerotic situations, like locker rooms, but that these situations involve references to heterosexual behavior, boasting about “conquests,” even though these guys are experimenting with each other sexually in circle jerks and the like.
 

Perhaps referring obliquely to his own experience, he claims that, “once in a while, again more often than you would think, a true homosexual will emerge ...” Or, maybe, the person discovers he is already is one, was born that way, but there's a caginess going on here about the issue, followed, though, by some honest insight about how heteronormative sex/gender roles are constantly pushed on male youth, with emotionally damaging results to a young gay guy.

But, ultimately, Cassidy argues, it's all about “wildly throbbing cocks or hot, pulsating cunts.” Even the guy who feels like he must have sex with a girl, but then finds his true sexual fulfillment in a male relationship, having experienced both, he implies that sexuality exists on a spectrum, with bisexuality as a flexible, not rigid, center, an “and” instead of an “or.”

Thus, the supposedly restrictive social norms of a small town, with its rigid patriarchal gender roles, can actually, even for both sexes (though it's clear that the men who end up the choices, not the women, a serious, even lethal inequality reflective of the time this piece was written), end up transmuting into, as Cassidy claims, a “new generation [that] doesn't believe in merely love for the opposite gender; they are including their own sex for what it's worth, a delightful, sexual experience, although opposite from early training, and professing love for all people.”

Anyone can be gay; anyone can be straight; anyone can be bi. Homo, hetero, invert, whatever. Enjoy! The cause and the end result are the same.