Beefcake

Theatrical Release Date: 1999 10 13 (USA)

UPC: 712267990825

Studio: Strand Home Video

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Nudity, Questionable for Children]

Summary: This portrait of the man who brought nude male flesh into the American mainstream combines present-day interviews, archival footage, and semi-fictionalized dramatization into a cinematic hybrid. Photographer and filmmaker Bob Mizer (Daniel MacIvor) founded the Athletic Model Guild, or AMG, in Los Angeles in 1945, hoping to turn his fascination with the male physique into a successful business that used nude and semi-nude photographs to sell the services of models to painters and the like. When the photos themselves proved more lucrative than the non-existent modeling contracts, Mizer launched Physique Pictorial. The magazine ostensibly offered bodybuilding tips and moral guidance to young men the world over, but in reality its client?le included legions of gay men eager for eye candy. With the help of his mother and business partner, Delilah (Carroll Godsman), Mizer parlayed his magazine, short films, and other work into a palatial residence/studio where young men fresh off the bus from Nowheresville could frolic, crash, and earn a little cash in front of the camera (or on the casting couch). Occasional run-ins with the law and stints in prison couldn't deter Mizer from continuing his photography until his death in the early '90s. His models, contemporaries, and associates included bodybuilding proponent Jack LaLane and future Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro, who are among the many men interviewed by filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald. The writer/director/producer intersperses his dramatic and documentary sequences with plenty of actual AMG and Physique Pictorial images. The film's narrative arc, however, focuses on the fictionalized character of novice model Neil E. O'Hara (Joshua Peace), who serves as a stand-in for the audience as he acclimates himself to Mizer's campy, flesh-filled compound and witnesses the photographer's betrayal by another model, Red (Jack Griffin Mazeika). Beefcake was inspired by F. Valentine Hooven III's book Beefcake: The Muscle Magazines of America, 1950-1970. The scenes of Mizer's trial for pandering were based on transcripts of the real-life Red's courtroom testimony. The character name Neil E. O'Hara, of course, is a joking reference to Neely O'Hara, the ing?nue character from Valley of the Dolls. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Category: Visual Arts [nf]

Awards: Best Original Score – Genie Awards Best Original Score – Genie Awards Best Original Score – Genie Awards Best Song – Genie Awards Best Editing – Genie Awards Best Editing – Genie Awards

Beefcake

Format: DVD

Release Date: 01/23/2001

Runtime: 93 Minutes

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Brian J. Dillard

For his follow-up to the harrowing The Hanging Garden, Canadian director Thom Fitzgerald turns to seemingly gentler subject matter in this combination of real-life documentary and based-on-a-true-story fiction, which transforms the history of the Athletic Model Guild of America into a gently humorous and ultimately melancholy portrait of an earlier age of masculine beauty. The character of Bob Mizer, the photographer who turned his obsession with nubile young male bodies into a cultural phenomenon, will seem instantly familiar to any man, gay or straight, who has ever been led astray by his erotic fixations. The film is frank about the sometimes slippery morals Mizer employed as he lured young men into his studio and sometimes bedroom, yet he ultimately emerges as a sympathetic figure. The genesis of his obsession is depicted early in the film, during the tossed-off, tartly comic moment when a preteen Mizer explains to one of his earliest subjects that the other boy must be the star and he must be the photographer simply because "I'm not handsome." Fitzgerald mimics the joy of Mizer discovering a beautiful new model -- and of readers enjoying his flagship publication, Physique Pictorial -- by filling his film with playfully photographed young male flesh from start to finish. It's hard to think of another non-pornographic movie that features full-frontal nudity from so many dozens of men, let alone one that makes all that nakedness seem so wink-nudge wholesome. Using period-style graphics and narration and a mixture of vintage and staged he-man photos, Fitzgerald keeps the tone light and nostalgic for most of the film; only in the conclusion, which juxtaposes a dramatization of Mizer's trial for running a prostitution ring with the wistful recollections of surviving AMG models, does the writer/director/producer bring out the tragedy and triumph of Mizer's story. The photographer helped revive the use of the male body in high art, paved the way for its commodification in the world of advertising, and helped create the enormous present-day market for gay male pornography. All the while, he remained a marginal figure whose first love -- nude photography -- broke the heart of his second love, his devoted mother, who watched her son imprisoned and ridiculed again and again. Carroll Godsman is terrific as Delilah Mizer, especially in the final scenes, while Daniel MacIvor brings the right tone of tortured aestheticism to the role of her son. Ultimately, though, it's the male body itself -- as personified by hunky actors Joshua Peace, Jack Griffin Mazeika, and countless others -- that emerges as the true star of Fitzgerald's cheeky, touching, and informative film. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Thom Fitzgerald  Director 
Thom Fitzgerald  Producer 
Thom Fitzgerald  Screenwriter 
John Roby  Composer (Music Score) 
Shandi Mitchell  Producer 
Michael Diabo  Composer (Music Score) 
John Wesley Chisholm  Composer (Music Score) 
Thomas Cawood  Actor 
Daniel MacIvor  Actor 
Jaime Robertson  Actor 
Joshua Peace  Actor 
Carroll Godsman  Actor 
Orest E. Ulan  Actor 
Jonathan Torrens  Actor 
Glen Deveau  Actor 
Jack Griffin Mazeika  Actor 
Andrew Hiller  Actor 
Joe Dallesandro  Actor 
Marla McLean  Actor 
Daniel McLaren  Actor 
Joe Leitel  Actor 
Bernard Robichaud  Actor 
Jim Lassiter  Actor 
Russ Warner  Actor 
Marc St. Onge  Actor 
Steven MacLaughlin  Actor 
Jack LaLanne  Actor 
Dave Martin  Actor 
Andy Skith  Actor 
James MacSwain  Actor 
Wayne Stanley  Actor 
Michael Weir  Actor 
Valentine Hooven  Actor 
Marc Le Blanc  Actor 
Lucy DeCoutere  Actor 
Joe Dacey  Actor 
Mark Burt  Actor 
Brian Breau  Actor 
Jane Kansas  Actor 
Dick Sircon  Actor 
Thom Fitzgerald  Actor 
Timothy Phillips  Actor 
Jonathan Langlois-Sadubin  Actor 
Renee Penney  Actor 
Hegan Richards  Actor 
Liz Anderson  Actor 
Sarah Dunsworth  Actor 
Katy Pedersen  Actor 
Mitchell Landzaat  Actor 
Stephen Arnold  Actor 
Wayne Bedwell  Actor 
Reuben Lee Aulds  Actor 
Larry Dunn  Actor 
Bobby Lawrence  Actor 
Dick Schidler  Actor 
Brad Allen  Actor 
Gary Herman  Actor 
Ed James  Actor 
Johnnie Dylan  Actor 
Ed McMakan  Actor 
Dave Gable  Actor 
Paul Jackson  Actor 
Lester Frank  Actor 
Eddie Stevens  Actor 
Dave Stubbs  Actor 
Buddy Love  Actor 
Larry Ahrendt  Actor 
Bob Lawrence  Actor 
Dave Connly  Actor 
Johnny Stacy  Actor 
Boris Demitroff  Actor 
Kenny Aloha  Actor 
Lucky Rand  Actor 
Robert Akron  Actor 
Gerald James  Actor 
Bob Kennedy  Actor 
Terry Caldwell  Actor 
David Jones  Actor 
Jerry Silvey  Actor 
Lenny Schwartz  Actor 
John Manning  Actor 
Ron Thompson  Actor 
Skeeter Block  Actor 
Mitch Hardin  Actor 
Bob Glennon  Actor 
Bob Akers  Actor 
Jim Walsh  Actor 
Bob Shaefer  Actor 
Bob Jackson  Actor 
Dino Ferzanno  Actor 
Eddie O'Malley  Actor 
Blackie Preston  Actor 
Casey Parker  Actor 
Jim Johnson  Actor 
David Mineric  Actor 
Guy Michaels  Actor 

Country: Canada