Mormon Flicks

While visiting Nome in Vancouver, I realized that three movies I like all relate the Mormon experience with sexuality. At the time I jotted down the name of the three movies for Nome and promptly forgot about the list.

However it crossed my mind again and I thought I would list the three Mormon flicks, and it them all together into one (neat) little package. I’m not really certain why Mormonism and sexuality is so interesting to me, but it is—for I realized that not only had I seen these three Mormon related films, whilst in New York City last February I went to see a stage production about a Mormon guy dealing with sexuality issues.

The play, Confessions of a Mormon Boy, was moving. A one man show, the play related the experience of the hero discovering that he was gay and his sexual escapades in The City, where he worked as an escort and overdid the drugs, all while remaining a good father to his children.

However, it makes for a poor segue into the first film that I want to mention, Orgazmo. Orgazmo is a brilliant film by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. In the film our hero is a Mormon missionary in LA who wants to marry his sweetheart at the temple in Salt Lake City. However he lacks the funds to pay for a marriage in the temple and is worried about making ends meet. By chance he and his partner ring the doorbell at a mansion where a pornographic film is being filmed. Our hero is quickly persuaded to be the star of the film.

In the film there are clearly two bad influences: The Mormon Church and the Pornographic filmmaker. The hero is victimized by both—selling his body to pay for the wedding, and tricked into doing more by the filmmaker. Unfortunately the film is, generally speaking, overlooked by people despite being a well put together story.

The theme of Mormon missionaries continued in Latter Days, a sweet romantic film featuring a group of Mormon Missionaries in LA who live in an apartment complex across from a gay slut who bets his coworkers that he can bed one of the missionaries for $50. Ultimately successful, the gay slut falls in love and the missionary is sent home and excommunicated. The story is surprisingly captivating. I once recommended that a friend track down the film and watch it and upon doing so, the friend ended up buying himself a copy of the film and its soundtrack.

The Mormon Church comes off quite poorly in the film—excommunicating a missionary because of a kiss—a kiss that did not even involve tongue. Meanwhile the gay slut redeems himself by volunteering for an AIDS charity and helping his roommate become a pop star. This is a film worth tracking down and watching as it is a story about hope and love.

The last film in this sequence is eXposed, a documentary about the filming of a gay pornographic film, Buckleroos. The subject of the documentary ultimately won quite a few Gay Adult Video News (“Gay-VN”) awards. Unfortunately I’ve never seen the actual porno, but in the documentary (which I borrowed from one of my “hetero” friends in Bloomington), we got a pretty good sense of what was actually in the porno. There were some pretty interesting (and disturbing) interviews with the porn’s actors, including one where a guy reveals that when he was 14, all the men in his family stood around comparing cocks and he had the largest one.

The Mormon portion of the film was a three-way where one of the two male leads in the film helped two Mormon missionaries come to terms with their inner-gayness. In the documentary we do not see the explicit three-way scene, but we see enough. I almost ran down to College Books (the adult bookstore in Bloomington) to buy/rent the film immediately, but I restrained myself. My restraint was admirable, especially considering that the three-way won the Gay-VN award for best three-way of the year.

I have no idea why I find the Mormon missionary theme so interesting and enchanting—my encounters with the movies came well after my brother’s Mormon boyfriend entered and exited my life (and for the record, discussion of my brother and his Mormon boyfriend is beyond the scope of what I’m willing to write about).

For those of you interested in the subject I suggest that you check out Orgazmo and Latter Days. eXposed is for a bit more (un)refined audience.