Montgomery "Monti" Ward, a male hustler in Los Angeles, is found dead in a hot tub. In a voiceover, Monti narrates the events that led to this fate.
Sometime earlier, Monti steals the wallet of one of his tricks, and in his haste fleeing the scene commits a hit and run that cripples a fellow hustler named Eigil. Monti's bloodied tank top is recovered by Jürgen Anger, a writer conducting research for a book on gay prostitution and pornography.
Jürgen becomes infatuated with Monti, and pursues him across the city. His pursuit is interspersed with the stories of various other hustlers, johns, and pornographers in the city, including a coroner with a mummification fetish and a white hustler hired to participate in an all-black gang bang.
Monti ultimately agrees to act as Jürgen's guide, and takes him to various locations in Hollywood's gay cruising and hustling scenes. They end up at Jürgen's apartment, where Monti slips on a bar of soap and knocks his head against the side of his hot tub. Believing that Monti is dead, Jürgen brings him to the beach to dump his body in the ocean, but Monti wakes up. The two kiss and run hand-in-hand down the beach.
Castro says he had been chronicling the lives of male street hustlers along Santa Monica Boulevard since the late 1980s, and he shared that footage with LaBruce, telling him of his plans for a documentary called Hustler White. The title came from the hustlers preference for white jeans, which Castro recalled was; "because white made their baskets look bigger when illuminated by car headlights."[2] Castro said the script is derived from his experiences while filming the hustlers, and the majority of the sex in the movie is unsimulated.[2]
Castro cast real male hustlers and models he had previously worked with, including Ward.[1][3] They also used the hustlers' homes, and other cast members' including Ron Athey's house in Silver Lake Hills, as location spots for filming.[1] Portions of the film appear in the music video for "Misogyny" a track by Canadian rock band Rusty which appeared on MuchMusic and Musique Plus in the 1990s.[4][5]
Reception
Time Out observed "there are no women, no drugs, and no AIDS-consciousness in this sideways spin on the rituals of meeting cute, and it's on the level of mid 1970s John Waters, delighting more in shock value than technical accomplishment."[6] In her review for The Austin Chronicle, Marjorie Baumgarten wrote, "LaBruce seems to be trying for more of a streetwise, Andy Warhol type aesthetic, than any type of pornographic pay-off." She concludes the film "layers its seamy walk on the wild side with a vivid portrait of a day in the life."[7]
Daniel Mangin wrote in The Advocate that the film consists of a "series of kinkily comic setups wrapped around a flimsy variation on the Sunset Boulevard theme; it has plenty of wacky moments and a hallucinogenic swirl of pop-culture references, but only in a few vignettes does the payoff truly match the buildup."[8] José Arroyo of Sight and Sound says the film "has a very loose structure, somewhat similar to Slacker, which makes the story really a collection of episodes which happen in the same milieu but don't neccesarily connect." He also notes that the film "has scenes that some may find shocking, but as each episode has a different protagonist, these scenes are neither judgemental nor immoral."[9]
In his review for the Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert opined that it is a "humorous day-in-the-life movie about a community of male prostitutes and porn actors and this is a Bruce LaBruce spectacular: lots of camp film references, nonstop carefree (though sometimes painful) sexual encounters, profuse narrative looseness and plenty of underground, insider, outrageous, post-punk, post-queer attitude."[10] Barry Walters wrote in the San Francisco Examiner, "LaBruce takes a giant step forward in terms of plot development and cinematography." He also singled out Tony Ward, saying; "he's perfect to play a hustler named Montgomery Ward, and his chiseled physique and blank expression suits Santa Monica Boulevard just fine."[11]
Film critic Stephen Holden quipped that "there are those who will not want to miss Hustler White for its scene in which a male prostitute removes his prosthetic leg extension to service a client who has been shown devouring a publication called Amputee Times. There are many, many more who will want to make sure to miss it." Overall, he concludes that "it is not a pornographic film, strictly speaking, and any movie that conveys this much detailed information on the geography and social terrain of Santa Monica Boulevard must have some redeeming social value."[12]
↑ Arroyo, José (September 1996). "Hustler White". Sight and Sound. Vol.6, no.9. p.46.
↑ Gilbert, Matthew (October 11, 1996). "Boys' life in LA in `Hustler White'". Boston Globe. p.D10.
↑ Walters, Barry (October 4, 1996). "Good sleaze is hard to find, but LaBruce delivers Hustler White's director fills gap between art, porn". San Francisco Examiner. p.C8.
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