Long before films like Love, Simon and Call Me By Your Name became common fare at the multiplex, the only places gay men could see their lives and lusts depicted on screen with any degree of honesty was at their local all-male adult cinema. From coming out stories to romances, melodramas to camp comedies, the hundreds of films churned out by the gay adult film industry throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s were a driving force behind the spread of gay culture and constitute a largely forgotten cinematic document of the era — films that were often shot in actual queer spaces, starred the people who frequented them, and then played back in movie theaters that doubled as safe communal spaces for members of the community.

Ask Any Buddy is a feature-length video companion to the Artforum ‘Best of 2018’ Instagram feed of the same name. The piece uses fragments from 126 theatrical feature films spanning the years 1968-1986 to create a kaleidoscopic day in the life snapshot of urban gay culture in the era — or at least how it looked in the movies.

From casual tearoom cruising to actual police raids, Ask Any Buddy uses rare footage shot at dozens of real bathhouses, bars, movie theaters, pride parades and legendary hotspots like New York’s West Side Piers to explore both the sex film genre’s unique blend of fantasy and reality and its role in documenting a subculture that was just starting to come into visibility in the years immediately following the Stonewall Riots. Nearly half of the films excerpted in Ask Any Buddy were personally digitized just for their inclusion here.

Ask Any Buddy was created by Elizabeth Purchell, a film historian whose work on the subject has led to collaborations with Dark Entries Records, Dirty Looks, and Vinegar Syndrome. He is currently conducting research for an upcoming book on the history of the gay adult film industry.

Quotes:

"A clever, funny, and sexy phantasmagoric tribute to a bygone era. Seeing this thoroughly scavenged collection of moving images presents how these settings, men, and, yes, 'plot' became foundational for a kind of gay liberation that has been for far too long taken for granted and maligned. Does for cock and balls what Christian Marclay did for clocks." – Caden Mark Gardner, The Quietus

"With her documentary Ask Any Buddy, Elizabeth Purchell has created the ultimate photo album, full of snapshots of what gay culture looked like in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.” – Juan Barquin, Hyperallergic