Vault Classics

I'm a Porn Star follows the lives of guys in the neighborhood who are likely a lot more famous than you - at least on the Internet. There are an estimated 370 million pornographic websites on-line. Porn is now a thirteen BILLION dollar business. So who's doing all this moonlighting? Turns out -- probably some people you know.

Richard Fontaine and Bob Mizer started the current exploration of the male nude in film and photography. The two shared ideas props and models and reinvented some of the sexual icons that we all still recognise today. The gladiator the sailor, the cowboy… Starting with posing-straps and graduating to nudes their "art studies" enlisted the talents of up-and-coming actors and bodybuilders. This film recalls that era.

AMG auteur Richard Fontaine started making short, silent posing-pouch snapshot films in the mid-1950s and moved on to sound titles like In the Days of Greek Gods (1958) and Muscles from Outer Space (1962), which featured narratives as well as nudity. Fontaine's films are among the first gay-campaigning documents in American cinema--he often managed to include references to the lowly status of the homosexual. His first feature-length erotic film, In Love Again (1969), is more like propaganda than porn. (from: http://www.glbtq.com/arts/film,3.html)

Ten years after winning a world title in bodybuilding in Russia and becoming a star of said discipline in Mexico, Antonio Osta (43) leads a life of austerity in the Uruguayan rural town where he grew up. He resides there with his son Juanjo (17), a sensitive teenager who keeps him company and confronts him openly. Suffering from acute kidney disease which keeps him from competing professionally, Antonio is stuck in limbo, halfway between his glorious past and the impossibility of being who he once was. However, he is unwilling to give up his lifestyle, even if it kills him. In an attempt to reinvent himself, and seeking a better future for his son, Antonio plans a comeback to the Mexico bodybuilding scene, where he may relive his glory days.

Mario (Thiago Cazado) is in debt. To pay the bills, he displays the body on a famous porn site.