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Frank's Cock

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Frank's Cock is a 1993 short film by Mike Hoolboom.

Synopsis

An unnamed narrator (Callum Keith Rennie), who as a teenager intended to be the "Michael Jordan of sex" or "Wayne Gretzky with a hard-on", discusses how he met and fell in love with an older man named Frank, whom he met at a group sex session. The two began an older brother-younger brother fantasy and move in together.

Frank is a voracious lover who will, at times, invite the narrator for whole-day sex sessions. However, he is also a tender lover, teaching his partner how to fly a box kite and cooking for him. As their ten-year anniversary approaches, Frank is diagnosed with AIDS, leaving the narrator stunned.

Production

The Canadian director Mike Hoolboom was diagnosed with HIV in 1989, after going to donate blood. Previously focused on films about the body, his works began dealing heavily with HIV/AIDS and situations faced by those with the virus. He eventually joined the People With AIDS (PWA) movement in Toronto.

At PWA, Hoolboom befriended a man named Joey whose partner was dying of AIDS. Upon Joey's suggestion, Hoolboom began work on a script for "a real movie" that portrayed an AIDS patient as one full of love and not one which showed the patient's friends abandoning him. Joey was unwilling to appear in the film, but Rennie - at that time a relative unknown - agreed to provide the monologue. Hoolboom was pleased with the results, writing that Rennie presented the monologue "he'd been living this story all along."

The film was shot in colour 16 mm film using optical sound. The majority of the technical work, including direction, cinematography, and editing, was handled by Hoolboom, while Alex Mackenzie produced.

Style

Frank's Cock divides the screen into quadrants, with the majority of the film focusing on the upper-right corner of the screen. In this panel, Rennie's character gives a one person monologue, which is sometimes illustrated by images in other panels: the lower-right panel flashes scenes of hardcore gay pornography, the upper-left shows scenes representing mankind's creation, while the lower-left flashes excerpts from popular art; this includes excerpts from Madonna's 1992 song "Erotica". Janis Cole, writing for POV magazine, describes the effect as supporting the text while "creating an optical treatment purposefully grounded in both dream and reality".

Reception

Cole calls Frank's Cock an "extraordinary experimental documentary" that is "as bold as the title implies" and a strong proponent for the widespread dissemination of short films.

Frank's Cock won several awards at film festivals, both in Canada and abroad. At the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival it won Best Canadian Film. That year it won an award at the Locarno International Film Festival in Locarno, Switzerland.

References

Footnotes

  1. TIFF, Mike Hoolboom.
  2. Lacey 1998, Portrait of the Filmmaker.
  3. ^ Hoolboom, Frank's Cock.
  4. ^ Cole 2003/2004, From Frank's Cock.
  5. Hoolboom, Credits.
  6. ^ TIFF, Frank's Cock.

Bibliography

External links