On 5/5/05, frank scott <frank at marin.cc.ca.us> wrote:
> but how many here would like their daughters to become professional
> cocksuckers?
When Frances Farmer, the lefty Hollywood star of the 30's (she dated Clifford Odets) was arrested for public drunkenness,, at the counter when asked to give her profession said, "Cocksucker."
Tellulah Bankhead, when she starred with gay Tab Hunter in some off-Broadway show in the late 50's or so, when asked by reporters if Tab was homosexual said, "How should I know?! He never sucked my cock!"
To fs query, opinions on the movie, "Hardcore, " w/ George C. Scott on the porn industry. http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/Reviews/E-H/hardcore.html The Film
As a common theme throughout his work (TAXI DRIVER {1976, writer}, ROLLING THUNDER {1977, writer}, BLUE COLLAR {1978, writer/director}, HARDCORE {1979, writer/director}, LIGHT SLEEPER {1992, writer, director}), Filmmaker Paul Schrader has continued to focus on human behavior and morality as seen through the eyes of the socio-path, the underdog and the emotionally crippled.
HARDCORE is Schrader's fourth venture into this mind of the dysfunctional hero, considered least likely to stand up against dark forces that overshadow his morals, his life, and in the case of HARDCORE, his family. He is at times so mentally unstable that his stance is dictated by total psychosis; yet, in Schrader's films, no one who isn't implicated in some heinous criminal act is ever mortally threatened by this unstable character. (With TAXI DRIVER however, the exception to the rule - the anti-hero nearly becomes the deranged madman he often condemns.)
Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott), successful Midwestern businessman, devout Calvinist, and father to teenage daughter Kristin, receives news that Kristin disappeared while on a religious group trip to California. He discovers through the help of a private detective that his daughter has been involved in hardcore pornography, and sets out to find her. It is on his quest that we see the contrasting worlds that clearly define Jake Van Dorn's God fearing homeland and the urban chaos of Los Angeles, and the conflicts that raises Jake's consciousness and temper, to say the least.
HARDCORE does resemble Schrader's recent film, AUTOFOCUS, in which both characters perpetuate mental instability when exposed to the pornography world. In Schrader's unconventional hero, there is the resultant that brings to light unequivocal human strength (emotional and physical) that rectifies a conflict that, under normal circumstances, may never happen. In Van Dorn's case, it takes a repressed secret to blow apart his complacency as he knows it, and through his unstoppable, one-man crusade to find his daughter, he gains wider perspective on the human condition. In the other Schrader films, a much more violent outcome takes place, and the psychological ramifications are deeper, more complex.
HARDCORE is effective in conveying the underbelly of the porn business; partly in fact due to the time it was made (1979), where the look of porn was in its "rawest" state. America in the seventies still had a look all its own, before the "retrospective age" that developed in the eighties. As with seventies films in general, porn filmmaking was at its most creative state, as well as having its first large, financial peak - it is this period that still pulls rank as its visual representation.
-- Michael Pugliese