Short Takes: ‘Addicted’ (2014) ★★

Not to be confused with Addickted (click at your own risk), because this adaptation of Zane’s 1998 book is for the ladies and therefore above such crudeness. The dick is merely implied.

And lead character, Zoe Reynard (Sharon Leal) is all about the dick, though, as she explains to her therapist Dr. Marcella (Tasha Smith, acting like an Oprah-bot), she has a very fulfilling life, with a loving (and very hot!) husband, two beautiful children, and she owns her own successful business merchandising artworks of up-and-coming artists. Plus, all her employees love her! Her assistant Shane complements Zoe’s fashion sense the moment she walks in the door, and her best friend/…um, I’m going to say vice president, Brina (Emayatzy Corinealdi), is so devoted to her job that she dismisses the very idea of Zoe paying her more to do it. There’s no sex and I’m already getting a semi just thinking about this woman’s life.

But Addicted wastes little time getting to the sex, showing Zoe and that hunky husband of hers, Jason (Boris Kodjoe) enjoying some hot R-rated boning less than 10 minutes in. After they come, Zoe reaches beneath the sheet for Jason’s sticky dong, asking if he’s ready for round three(!), only to be disappointed when Jason drifts off to sleep. (Lady, give him a chance to recuperate from round two; you two aren’t 18 anymore.) Then, just like that, Zoe deems her sex life boring and goes to her home office to get off to Internet porn, which she evidently does frequently as she keeps a vibrator in a desk drawer. Lord help her if her children or her mother—who lives with them to take care of the kids and give her daughter “hmm-hmm” looks—goes hunting for a pen.

That all changes when she meets famed (but never photographed) artist Quinton Canosa (William Levy) at Atlanta’s High Museum. Quinton understandably sets her girlie parts a-tingle, so it’s no surprise that she readily fucks him. Well, “readily” might be overstating it, as Zoe does try to push Quinton away, telling him that what they’re doing is not right, a protest he quickly silences by going down on her.

But Quinton is not enough. Zoe hits the clubs, hooking up with the dangerously sexy Corey (hey, it’s Tyson Beckford from Chocolate City) in a suspiciously vacant (and clean) restroom and sneaking out to join him at artfully lit sex parties. Zoe is so hooked on cock that she begins to neglect her family and her business. She knows she needs to quit both these guys, but she’s too busy getting rocks off to worry about hitting rock bottom.

Though it’s not the trash treasure I hoped for, I kind of enjoyed this one. The acting is fair, though Levy often comes off as smarmy rather than seductive, and director Bille Woodruff at least knows his audience, meaning Leal’s body is decoratively covered while her male co-stars’ are frequently exposed (no full frontal, but a fair amount of man-ass). It was also fun to see familiar Atlanta locations on screen (I loved that the now-shuttered Radial Café, very much a casual dining spot, is presented as a restaurant so exclusive it requires strict punctuality for reservations). What stops the movie from being satisfying trash is its uneven Lifetime-y script. Sometimes it’s the fun type of Lifetime movie, but too often it’s just bland, and its portrayal of sex addiction way too sanitized. There’s sex addiction, where otherwise respectable people pull trains with hobos on their lunch hour and sneak off after putting the kids to bed to go writhe naked in urinal troughs, and then there’s “sex addiction,” an affliction (primarily male) celebrities diagnose themselves with when they’ve been caught cheating. Zoe’s problem falls squarely in the second category, and no amount of last-minute daytime TV psychodrivel can convince the audience otherwise. 

(Not-So-)Short Takes: ‘Mea Culpa’ (2024) ★ 1/2

It’s as bad as you thought it would be.

With his latest Netflix venture, Mea Culpa, Tyler Perry tries his hand at writing and directing an erotic thriller with predictable results.

Kelly Rowland stars as Mea (oh, for fuck’s sake...), a very successful Chicago attorney with a very stressful homelife. Her husband Kal (Sean Sagar), a recovering addict, lost his job and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to find a new one—a fact he’s keeping secret from his overbearing mother Azalia (Kerry O’Malley, who might as well be wearing a mustache so she can twirl it) and his smug older brother Ray (Sean’s real-life brother, Nick Sagar), neither of whom approve of Kal’s marriage to Mea. Mea grudgingly keeps her mouth shut about Kal’s past drug problem and current unemployment because Mom’s got cancer and only has so much time left, but playing nice is increasingly hard to do. “Don’t worry, son, your second wife will be on time,” Azalia says when Mea shows up late to her birthday dinner (Perry’s writing is as subtle as ever). Mea shoots her a look that makes it clear she just wishes the bitch would die already. The topper of this shit sundae is Kal might also be cheating on her.

Enter Zayair Malloy (Travante Rhodes, a long way down from Moonlight), a famous painter charged with murdering his girlfriend. He wants Mea to represent him, but she’s hesitant. Her punchable brother-in-law, who also happens to be the assistant D.A., is prosecuting the case. But when Kal, Azalia and Ray forbid her to accept the accused murderer as a client, Mea all but volunteers to represent Zayair pro bono. BTW, if you think there’s a potential conflict of interest in her taking the case, Perry is ahead of you, including a scene in which Mea and Ray consult a judge who acknowledges the conflict exists before deciding he’ll just sit back and see what happens.

The newly plot-armored Mea then gets down to the business of building a defense for her client, but it’s an uphill battle. Zayair not only appears guilty as hell, but he also appears more interested in boning his attorney than staying out of prison. Their meetings go thusly: Zayair mumbles some sexually suggestive lines, Mea swoons temporarily before coming to her senses and repeating lawyer-ish lines familiar to anyone who’s watched an episode or two of a TV legal drama (“It’s important you tell me everything you know.”) This goes on for almost a full hour.

Eventually, Mea caves and fucks her client, and from there Mea Culpa goes from boring to stupid, then fucking ridiculous. 

I’ve only seen one other Tyler Perry movie, Temptation (or Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor), which was bad, but in a fun way. However, it was fucking Oppenheimer next to Mea Culpa, the plot of which suggests Perry tried to retrofit one of his past soapy dramas with a thriller plotline. That might have worked if Perry prioritized quality at least half as much as he does quantity.

Mea Culpa isn’t without its enjoyably silly moments, such as when a conversation between Zayair and Mea is interrupted by a naked woman with a speech impediment/accent (I couldn’t tell which), with Zayair then leading the naked woman a few steps away so she can blow him in full view of his attorney (it makes no more sense in context). There's also a scene where Mea follows Zayair to a sex party that's happening in the back of the parking garage of his building. Is that always going on? Do tenants pay extra for that? To his credit, Perry doesn’t shy away from including a few hard-R sex scenes, but they do little to offset the movie’s leaden pacing. The batshit ending might jolt audiences awake, however, forcing them to rewind to figure out how any of it makes sense. That is if they cared, which they likely won’t.

Rowland and RonRaceo Lee, as a smartass P.I., give competent performances, while O’Malley, Nick Sagar and Angela Robinson, as a gallery owner and Zayair’s former lover, act like they’re in a Tyler Perry movie. Worst actor award goes to Rhodes, who mumbles all his lines in a bored monotone (nice body, though). However, even if this thing starred Kerry Washington and Michael B. Jordan it’s doubtful that they could overcome Perry’s indifference to pacing, character, composition, lighting (in Mea Culpa it’s either too bright or too dark, but seldom just right), editing, and believability, not to mention his problematic messaging (i.e., married career women are selfish bitches). The real mystery at the heart of Mea Culpa is how a filmmaker who has written and directed over sixty films and TV series has only gotten worse at his craft.

The Bombs of Barbra

Among the many problems critics cited with the 1976 remake of A Star is Born—and they cited a bunch of them at the time—was the preposterousness of Barbra Streisand’s Lite FM pop winning over hard rock audience (mitigating factor: the rocker in question was played by country singer Kris Kristofferson). To Barbra’s fans, however, this makes perfect sense. How could anyone not be won over by one of the most talented women of our time? Her fans were sold—I certainly was—and so A Star is Born became another one of Barbra’s many hit films and another fuck you to her critics.

But Barbra’s fans didn’t line up for everything she did. Though most of Barbra’s films were successful—her track record is pretty impressive—she did have a few bombs. So, while Barbra’s successes are being celebrated in the wake of her recently published door stopper of a memoir My Name is Barbra (also a hit), I thought I’d revisit her few failures, which is far easier—and faster—than reviewing that autobiography. (Nine-hundred and ninety-two pages? Oh, fuck no.) 

I’m going to bypass Hello, Dolly!, which, similar to Cleopatra, was both a box office hit (No. 5 on the list of top grossing movies for 1969) and a financial disappointment (i.e., it cost too goddamn much to make), though 20th Century Fox, as it did with Cleopatra, eventually recouped its investment. Instead, I’m jumping to Barbra’s first real flop, UP THE SANDBOX.

Margaret joins the other moms in Central Park.

Up the Sandbox just might be the closest Barbra ever got to making a small arthouse film. In this 1972 adaptation of Anne Roiphe’s 1970 novel, Barbra plays Margaret, a young New York housewife, married to a college professor (David Selby) who regularly escapes her stifling existence through vivid fantasies. Sometimes the fantasies are dark (joining a group of activists to blow up the Statue of Liberty), but most are played for laughs (Margaret pushing her nagging mother’s face into a birthday cake; increasing her breast size at will during a college faculty party).

Margaret's mother (Jane Hoffman) fights back.

Fidel Castro (Jocobo Morales) has a secret.

It's not a perfect film. The feminist messaging is a little too on-the-nose, some of the humor hasn’t aged well (“Oh, my god, you’re a fag.”), and its conclusion isn’t entirely satisfying, but I still count Up the Sandbox among my favorite Barbra Streisand films. It’s certainly one of Barbra’s best performances. One of Barbra’s stumbling blocks as an actress, especially in more dramatic roles, is she can’t let us forget she’s Barbra Streisand, so her performances are always bigger than the character she’s playing. She also tends to be too self-conscious, unable to pick up a glass of water without making sure she’s showing off her manicure (as any Barbra fan knows, Babs just loves showing off her nails on camera). It’s like director Irvin Kershner (the same one who directed this little sci-fi gem) told her to do what she usually does, just 10-15% less of it—and for once she trusted the director. As a result, she gives one of her most relaxed, natural performances.

Margaret prepares to blow up the Statue of Liberty, a scene
Barbra says likely would not be included were the film made today.

Margaret journeys to Africa with musicologist Dr. Beineke 
(Paul Benedict), but the natives are less than welcoming.

Too bad not a whole lot of people saw it. Reportedly audiences at the time were put off by how the fantasies were introduced. Instead of doing the standard harps and swirling dissolves to announce fantasy sequences, Kershner lets them happen organically, as if they are part of Margaret’s reality. It’s usually pretty easy to tell when a scene has segued into fantasy, but apparently this confused 1972 audiences, which hurt word of mouth. (Christopher Nolan would have had a very different career trajectory if he started making films in the early 1970s.)

Paul (David Selby) and Margaret get real.

The movie’s box office was further hurt by the fact that it is difficult to categorize. In the movie’s DVD commentary, Barbra describes the movie as “a drama with some laughs”—so, a dramedy. But the movie was marketed as a straight-up comedy, with a painting of Barbra, pregnant and looking startled, tied to a giant baby bottle. I like the poster, but it’s selling a wacky comedy like What’s Up, Doc?, released earlier the same year, not “a drama with some laughs.” The trailer didn’t help matters. As we’ll soon see, this won’t be the last time mis-marketing helped tank one of Barbra’s movies.

Did it deserve to bomb? No. It’s definitely worth seeking out if you’re a Streisand fan. Even if you’re not, you might still want to check it out as it’s not a typical Streisand film. It’s available for streaming. Those who prefer physical media will have to be content with a DVD, but if you go that route avoid Barbra’s commentary track, which adds little beyond proving she’s as self-absorbed as her detractors say she is.

‘A Little, European Kind of Film’

If there was any justice in the world, the next movie on this list would be 1979’s The Main Event, which I think is Barbra’s worst movie (for her co-star, the late Ryan O’Neal, worst was yet to come), but, no, The Main Event made money. Instead, Barbra’s second bomb detonated in 1981 with the release of the non-com ALL NIGHT LONG.

George Dupler (Gene Hackman) and Chery (you know who)
enjoy dinner at sunset.

All Night Long was originally meant to be a modest little comedy about George Dupler, a middle-aged exec for a drugstore chain who, after reacting violently to being passed over for a promotion, gets demoted to night manager of one of the company’s 24-hour stores. George then begins having an affair with the wife of his fourth cousin, Cheryl, who is also having an affair with George’s son Freddie (got all that?). Gene Hackman was cast as George, and Lisa Eichorn as Cheryl. It was the American debut of Belgian director Jean-Claude Tramont.

Gene Hackman wonders what the fuck happened
to his movie.

Unfortunately for the movie, Tramont was married to ’70s superagent Sue Mengers. Mengers represented Hackman, but her biggest client was Barbra Streisand. Mengers had wanted Barbra in the role of Cheryl from the beginning, but Barbra, then busily trying to get Yentl off the ground, passed. This didn’t stop Mengers, who began badmouthing Eichorn’s performance the moment she saw the early rushes (other people connected to the film said Eichorn was fine). Mengers’ behind the scenes fuckery is detailed fully in Brian Kellow’s biography of Mengers, Can I Go Now? (or you could just read an excerpt here), but the TL;DR version is that Mengers got Barbra to reconsider with a very persuasive $4 million payday, got Eichorn fired, and transformed her husband’s low-stakes project into A Barbra Streisand Film.

Loni Anderson says she was considered for the role Cheryl but was
beat out by Barbra. However, the one source I found that even mentions
Anderson in connection with this movie reports she was considered after 
Barbra initially turned the part down, meaning she lost the role to Lisa Eichorn.
Either way, she dodged a bullet (only to catch a much bigger bullet).

The 2004 DVD cover is closer
to the tone of the movie, but still
misses the mark. Also, did they
give Barbra a Photoshop nose job?

Except, All Night Long wasn’t A Barbra Streisand Film; Barbra was a co-star in a Gene Hackman film (All Night Long was the first time she got second billing). That didn’t stop Universal’s publicity department from making Barbra the focus of its marketing. “She’s got a way with men, and she’s getting away with it… All Night Long,” reads the poster’s tagline. Muddying the waters further is the accompanying art featuring Barbra sliding down a fireman’s pole with her skirt flying up à la Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, with Hackman, Dennis Quaid (as Freddie) and Kevin Dobson (as Cheryl’s hot-headed fireman husband Bobby) waiting below to catch her. A rollicking sex farce starring Barbra Streisand? This movie looks fun!

All Night Long is not a rollicking sex farce. It’s not that fun, or that funny. “It was really a little, European kind of film,” is how Barbra described it in Can I Go Now? She said she “felt totally betrayed” by the movie’s misleading ad campaign. Audiences also felt betrayed, and the movie quickly sank at the box office, making just under $4.5 million against its $15 million budget.

Dennis Quaid might actually be stoned in this scene.

All Night Long isn’t that funny, but it isn’t unwatchable, either. I’d describe it as a neutered Middle-Age Crazy or a second-rate Starting Over. It’s a direct-to-video movie before those were a thing. Barbra, wearing a Rona Barrett wig and push-up bras, manages to pull off the role of ditzy suburban cougar Cheryl, and it’s fun to see her play against type. Unfortunately, Cheryl isn’t a character so much as she is a collection of quirky behaviors: she rides a scooter; she has a love of the color lavender so obsessive that even her cigarettes are that color; she meticulously picks the raisins out of a cinnamon raisin Danish because she read somewhere you shouldn’t eat fruit and carbs together. In fact, most of the laughs Cheryl gets hinge on the fact that she’s played by Barbra Streisand, such as a scene in which Cheryl, composing a country song on an electric organ, proves to be a lousy singer, which got the movie’s biggest laugh when I saw it in the theater (I’m old, y’all!) Would this scene have worked if Lisa Eichorn was in the role of Cheryl? Probably, but the laughs likely wouldn’t have been as loud.

These alternate poster designs I whipped up aren’t masterpieces of 
graphic design, but they better convey the tone of All Night Long than
what Universal came up with. I made Gene Hackman's character the
focus, while Barbra is featured but not emphasized. The lazier design
on the right also makes it clear that Barbra is not the main character,
though I’m sure anyone presenting such a design in 1981 would be fired
on the spot. Sue Mengers and Barbra might even have the designer killed.

But most of the characters in All Night Long are underwritten, reduced to types rather than fully realized people, with only Hackman’s George getting fleshed out to any degree. In fact, the whole movie plays out like they were working from screenwriter W.D. Richter’s first draft. In addition to underdeveloped characters, there’s a satirical undercurrent about suburban malaise and the so-called American Dream that's never fully realized, either because Richter’s script never quite articulated it or Tramont never quite grasped it. In the end, All Night Long didn’t need Barbra to save it, it just needed rewrites.

Did it deserve to bomb? Yes, if only as an expensive middle finger to Mengers, who should’ve minded her own fucking business. (Mengers got an even bigger middle finger when Barbra dropped her as her agent shortly after. As for Tramont, he died in 1996 with only one other American directing credit, the TV movie As Summers Die.) I don’t dislike the movie—it’s way more watchable than The Main Event—but it’s hardly essential viewing. 

Cheryl enjoys one of her lavender-tinted cigs while Diane Ladd,
as George’s wife Helen, seethes beneath her horrible granny helmet.

The Stars of Funny Girl and Pineapple Express,
Together at Last

Though Sue Mengers is the villain of the All Night Long debacle, she was reportedly one of the few people in Barbra’s life who could get away with calling the superstar out on her bullshit. And so, decades later, when the two women were again on speaking terms, it was Mengers who told Barbra to stop waffling and just accept the offer to star in THE GUILT TRIP, directed by Anne Fletcher.

“What do you mean you’re not holding?”

Seth Rogen is just as surprised as
you are that he is in a PG-13 movie.

The Guilt Trip was Barbra’s first starring role since 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces, which she also directed (can’t forget that detail!), and, to date, her last movie. Yet upon The Guilt Trip’s December 2012 release Barbra's return to the big screen was met only with mixed reviews and polite applause. That said, I’m stretching the premise by counting it as one of Barbra’s bombs. The Guilt Trip wasn’t a hit, but it did eventually make back its $40 million budget. It “underperformed” rather than flopped.

Barbra plays Joyce, a widowed mother who dotes on her adult son, Andy (Seth Rogen), a chemist and struggling entrepreneur. Though Andy finds Joyce’s attention stifling, he does worry about her being alone and invites her to join him on a cross-country drive from New Jersey to California, with him making stops at various retail chains along the way to pitch his environmentally friendly cleaning product, ScieoClean. Andy also has an ulterior motive: learning that Joyce's first love now lives in San Francisco, he plans a surprise reunion.

Andy begins to regret inviting his mother along for the ride.

The opening fifteen minutes of The Guilt Trip suggest it’s going to be little more than a 90-minute Jewish mother joke, but the movie has a bit more to it than that. Joyce is annoying but well meaning; Andy finds her overbearing and wishes she’d just shut the fuck up and give him some space—except when he needs her. Naturally, their relationship is tested, but by the time they reach the west coast their bond is stronger than ever. 

Joyce picks up a hitchhiker.

Barbra was perfectly cast as Joyce (she got a Worst Actress Razzie nomination for this movie, but like a lot of Razzie nominations, I suspect it was more than a little disingenuous, being more about taking Babs down a peg than it was about her actual performance). The wild card was Rogen, who in the early 2010s was known more for raucous/raunchy R-rated comedies like Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. Would people buy him in a role where he never once takes a bong hit or makes a crude sex joke? (This PG-13 movie’s one allotted f-bomb goes to Barbra.) Rogen’s persona at the time had me thinking that Bette Midler would be a more believable movie parent for him, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well he and Barbra play off each other. They’re actually believable as mother and son. If only they were funnier.

Andy and Joyce celebrate her competitive gluttony victory. On the far
right is Brett Cullum as Ben, a cowboy who is apparently into older
women who like to eat.

It's not that The Guilt Trip is devoid of laughs, it’s just that Dan Fogelman’s script is more sentimental than funny (the story is based on a real-life road trip he had taken with his mother). Most of the humor stems from Andy’s sarcastic asides to Joyce’s babbling. Where this trip veers off course is when Fogelman shoves in goofy contrivances, like when Joyce and Andy are stranded in the parking lot of a Tennessee titty bar and Joyce excitedly runs for the club’s front door because she misreads “topless” as “tapas.” Then there’s the scene in which Joyce participates in a Texas steakhouse’s eating challenge, which seems to be banking on audiences finding the sight of Barbra woofing down over three pounds of beef side-splitting. Hmmm, maybe it would’ve been better if Joyce lost a karaoke contest instead? There are also some lines that just haven’t aged well since the movie’s release, as when Joyce calls Andy her “little Donald Trump.” Oy!

All in all, The Guilt Trip is the kind of movie that would be described as cute. I remember thinking it was merely OK when I first saw it, ranking it as better than All Night Long but not as funny as For Pete’s Sake, or even Meet the Fockers. I had a higher opinion of the movie after a recent rewatch. The overall sweetness of the story resonated more the second time around, possibly because I’d lost my mother a few years ago and was more receptive to the sentimentality. I also laughed more than I remember doing on my first viewing. I still consider it one of Barbra’s lesser films, but it’s a little better than I initially gave it credit for.

Fashion forward: a track-suited Joyce adjusts Andy’s rumpled jacket.

Did it deserve to bomb underperform?: No, but it’s not surprising that it did. This thing was never going to make Marvel money (though, as I write this, Madame Web is making Guilt Trip money), however Paramount could’ve picked a better release date (Mother’s Day weekend, anyone?) The days when people flocked to see a Barbra Streisand movie had long since passed (even I, who saw All Night Long on its opening weekend, waited until The Guilt Trip was streaming), and younger audiences likely only knew Barbra as Roz Focker or a South Park punchline. Rogen’s fans at the time probably just wondered what the fuck he was doing in a PG-13 movie. But ultimately, the movie simply wasn’t funny enough to make people pay $8 U.S. to see it, especially in 2012’s economy.

Barbra has said she likely won’t make another movie, which isn’t surprising. She’s in her eighties, after all, though I wouldn't be surprised if she took one final, low effort/big payday film role before she dies (Book Club IV: The Wizening). So, for a career spanning more than six decades, the fact that she’s only had three box office misfires is a remarkable record. However, she’s also not been the most prolific actor, having made only 19 films, eight of those between 1981 and 2012. She hasn’t taken a lot of chances, either, sticking to musicals, comedies (romantic or otherwise) and romantic dramas. That may be great for a studio’s bottom line and Barbra's asking price, but I feel like she would have had a more interesting career if she had accepted some of the roles she turned down. In many cases, I’m glad she said no (King Kong, Poltergeist, The Exorcist 😮), but there are other film roles I wish she had taken. Would The Eyes of Laura Mars, Bagdad Cafe, or Misery (holy shit, really?) possibly have ended up on this list if she had accepted the offers to star in them? Highly likely, but, goddamn, how fun would those movies have been if they had been Barbra Streisand movies? No disrespect to Kathy Bates—she totally owned the part of Annie Wilkes and deserved her Oscar® for it—but I would very much want to see an alternate version of Misery with Barbra in that role. 

‘A Good Gay Item’

I remember when I first saw a copy of an International Male catalog. It was in the mid-1980s, when I was a senior in high school. My mother, a librarian, found a copy in the library’s catalog bin and brought it home. Most of the family—save my dad, who has no interest in fashion and dresses accordingly—flipped through the catalog, making fun of the clothes, though no one made fun of them more loudly than me. Yet inside I couldn’t wait to get the catalog alone, in the privacy of my room, so I could fully appreciate its contents.

But it wasn’t meant to be. After we all had a laugh at International Male’s expense, my mother promptly tucked the catalog back into her tote bag and returned it to the library the next morning. It was a good decade before I came out, but in retrospect it was clear that even then she had her suspicions. Her allowing only a limited, supervised viewing of that International Male catalog confirmed it. She also inadvertently elevated it from a mere clothing catalog to pornography in my mind.

The 2022 documentary ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY isn’t perfect, but it perfectly encapsulates the clothing brand’s importance to, in the words of the late David Rakoff, “a certain kind of boy,” specifically those who came of age between the latter days of disco and the height of grunge.

Directors Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed, with narrator Matt Bomer’s help, give us a (mostly) breezy tour of International Male’s founding, subsequent success and slow decline, as well as commentary on IM’s cultural impact, which means of course Carson Kressley and Simon Doonan are on hand to give their two cents, with an un-needed assist from stylist and “influencer”🙄 William Graper, to appeal to the kids, I guess. It’s like an episode of VH-1: Behind the Music, except instead of the pressures of recording a new hit single and touring relentlessly while battling drug addition, it’s about the pressures of selling Buns™  underwear and trying to look butch while modeling gold lamé thongs. Call it Behind the Baskets.

Fitness wear or fetish wear? The California Splits shorts allow for easy access when you go to Probe, while the handles of the digital jump rope could easily double as butt plugs. And exactly who was wearing that jock strap pendant on the lower right page? No straight (or gay) man that I know.

Luckily, Darling and Reed were able to get on-camera interviews with IM founder Gene Burkard before his death in December 2020. After a stint in the Air Force during the Korean war, Burkard took a job as a European sales rep for a liquor distributor selling exclusively to American military bases. The job afforded Burkhard, who was gay, an opportunity to not only experience the queer bars of Europe, but European culture as well (“I was always on the prowl,” he says, adding wryly: “learning, of course.”) Though the documentary makes special mention of the fact that men’s underwear design was becoming more daring in 1960s Europe, it was an item spotted in the display window of a medical supply store in London that inspired Burkard.

From left: Gene Burkard in the Air Force in the 1950s; on an appearance on the game show
What’s My Line? in 1974; and being interviewed for All Man: The International Male Story.

“There was this strange garment there. It was called a suspensory,” Burkard recalls. “I said, ‘You know, this would make a good gay item.’ So, I went and bought one.”

It wasn’t until Burkhard returned to the U.S. in the early 1970s, settling in San Diego, Calif., that a lightbulb went off. After reading How to Make $1,000,000 in Mail Order, he designed, with the help of a pattern maker, the product that would ultimately lead to the creation of International Male: the Jock Sock.

From medical garment to sexy underwear to fashion (?) empire: the Jock Sock.

As described by IM’s former Senior Art Director Dennis Mori, the Jock Sock “is a waist band with a cup in front that hooks around your balls.” Or, as a friend of mine described it: a bag for your balls. The initial advertising for the item was restricted to publications like The Advocate (“They’d take any ad,” Burkard says), but Burkard wanted to expand his reach, so he borrowed money from a friend to place an ad in Playboy. That’s when, Burkard says, all hell broke loose. “We had so many orders, and I had one guy helping me, and he was stoned half the time.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. The recent sexual revolution had relaxed attitudes, and Playgirl was sexualizing men for women’s enjoyment (sure). Burkard decided he wanted to launch a clothing company that would, ironically, butch up how it presented men’s sexy fashions, and its catalog would be like a magazine. And so, International Male was born.

The cover and inside pages of an early issue—possibly the debut issue—of the International
Male catalog.

‘PG-13 Porn’ vs. ‘a Fag Magazine’

As portrayed by All Man, International Male, with a staff of predominantly gay men and a few straight women, was a fun, if disorganized, place to work. None of the former employees have any dirt to dish on Gene, and it’s inspiring to hear how this group of people, almost all learning on the job, were able to create such a successful company—so successful that it opened brick and mortar stores in San Diego and West Hollywood. The clientele was predominantly, but not exclusively, gay. Even superstars Cher and Barbra Streisand shopped there (that tracks).

Another one of International Male's signature items, Buns™ underwear.

Yet the patronage divas wanting something sexy for their boyfriends did little to earn International Male much respect. The IM catalog was alternately dismissed as selling sex or, per one former employee, a “fag magazine.” Yet Burkard saw it as neither. The catalog was for all men. As for sex: “You never saw the words ‘hot’ or ‘sexy.’ I didn’t want that emphasis on sex.”

But sex was certainly on the minds of many of us who got the catalog. “The day the International Male catalog would come was on par with the Sears Christmas catalog coming when you were a kid,” says writer, comedian and one-time Daily Show correspondent Frank DeCaro. “You were going to be transported into this gay fantasy. And then you were going to spank one out.”

The Undergear section (later spun off into a separate catalog) was likely a highlight for many
a horny homosexual. This section here is notable for featuring an Asian model.

Scissor Sisters’ lead singer Jake Shears details his baffling IM jack-off ritual of tearing off tiny bits of toilet paper to cover up the models’ crotches to better imagine them naked. Not judging, but this extra work seems unnecessary, given that one of the appealing aspects of the IM catalog was the models’ bulging crotches, often with the outlines of their junk plainly visible. Well, whatever works for you, Jake. (Also, the strappy bodysuit Jake wears in Scissor Sisters’ “Any Which Way” video looks like it was inspired by one of IM’s creations, if not purchased directly from the company itself.)

Actor Parvesh Cheena recalls the catalog just showing up in the mail one day. “I never signed up for it. I was never that bold. I was never, like, ‘Please, send me PG-13 porn.’”

As, um, inspiring as the models could be, few of the people featured in the documentary were taking style cues from the International Male catalog. Says actor Drew Doerge: “I’d feel ridiculous wearing this stuff, but there’s something really sexy about a model who doesn’t feel ridiculous wearing it.”

To be fair, Dalmatian print boxers with matching robe aren’t the silliest of
International Male’s fashions.

Except, they did. Frequent IM model Brian Buzzini (who also posed for Playgirl) describes IM clothing as “clothes you had to be paid to wear.” Another former model, Robert Goold, says models would often try to trade assigned outfits and describes trying to affect a masculine pose while wearing them as “a professional challenge.” And those smiles on the models’ faces? That was laughter over the silly outfits they were asked to wear. Even the people putting the catalog together express astonishment that people were buying what IM is selling.

Brian Buzzini, then and now, looking just as good.

AIDS, Selling Out and the Puffy Shirt

International Male’s success continued from the hedonistic ’70s into the 1980s, when Miami Vice and MTV dominated pop culture, and people were getting into shape, and paradoxically, cocaine. The ’80s also saw the emergence of HIV and AIDS, and its impact on IM was substantial. The frothy tone of All Man turns bleak as it includes a slide show of all the staff members the company lost to the virus. I counted at least 16 who died. And as the death toll from AIDS increased, so did homophobia, making it more difficult to market IM to straight men.

It was during this time that Burkard, no longer finding the business he started fun, sold the company to Hanover Direct for $25 million. (The specific year of the sale was 1987, something I had to Google as All Man isn’t big on providing specific dates.) The sale to Hanover made IM employees nervous, with good reason. “There was a terrible day in the office where they fired almost everybody,” former art director Maureen Dalton-Wolf recalls.

“One day I was walking past the vice president’s door, and one of the people from Hanover was there,” says Mori. “I heard this gentleman say, ‘So, what are we going to do about the gay problem?’” Mori says he confronted them, asking, “What do you mean, ‘the gay problem?’” Unfortunately, the VP and the Hanover rep’s response is not shared on camera, though it’s clear Mori wasn’t with the company much longer.

IM’s new creative director Peter Karoll brought in a straight photographer and support crew for the catalog shoots to put the models, who were mostly straight, at ease. “There was a big gay crew who worked there, and it made me uncomfortable—it made me uncomfortable for the models.”

David Knight says he was one of two openly gay models when he worked for International Male. Goddamn, do these guys not age like normal people?

I’ll admit I found Karoll’s concern for the straight dudes’ comfort a punchable offense, especially in an age when “Don’t Say Gay” laws are a thing. My gay rage was tempered a bit when the documentary points out that Karoll employed more diverse models (including, per Wikipedia, Shemar Moore). 

Dennis Mori admits that in the six years he was art director for International Male, he only
  used two Black models. The reason: clothes modeled by POC supposedly didn’t sell as well.

As the 1990s progressed, IM faced a more competitive marketplace. The cheesiness of IM’s colorful prints, Baroque designs and synthetic fabrics was amplified when compared to Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Klein’s more sophisticated designs and artful marketing. Not helping was the Seinfeld episode, “The Puffy Shirt” (sold as “The Ultimate Poet’s Shirt” in the IM catalog), and the 2001 male modeling spoof Zoolander. Having entered the mainstream, IM was now a laughingstock. And yet, as All Man makes plain, so many of us (i.e., gay Boomers and Gen X’ers, with possibly a few older queer Millennials) still have a certain nostalgia for the days when we got a new edition of the catalog. Yeah, we laughed at the clothes, but the bodies that filled them we took very seriously. It wasn’t just PG-13 porn, it was starter porn.

These days, of course, kids have the Internet, so they don't need to bother imagining what treasures are stuffed in an Aussie Rower or what they’d do with the guy modeling the Brawn Bikini. They certainly can’t imagine ordering clothing from a printed catalog that arrives in the mail (what is mail?) It’s a fact that International Male, like so many retailers in the early days of the Internet, was slow to realize, and had to play catch-up when it finally started selling online. Today, the only remnant of the company is online, at undergear.com. The clothes are still cheesy (or just plain hideous), but its PG-13 porn days are clearly far behind it. 

Consider UnderGear when deciding what to wear to your next sex party: the Male Power Hose Thong, the Wicked Web Thong, or the Male Power Mesh Thong. Incidentally, these photos show more dick than you’ll see in All Man, yet the documentary does include full-frontal footage of a nude woman, as well as several pictorials from Playboy, presumably so all the straight guys watching (it’s a possibility!) don’t get too uncomfortable.

Throw it Back on the ‘Gaystack’

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