Toby Ross Get A Life vs I Live For Sex

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Toby Ross Get A Life vs I Live For Sex

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I'm not sure WHAT Toby Ross was shooting for with Get A Life. The movie comes across (to me) as being very campy and dismissable and yet, the commentary on the DVD suggests that Toby Ross et. al intended that the movie be taken seriously.

Toby Ross has done hardcore gay movies, and done them very well. So, the "no sex no nudity" in "Get A Life" had to have been an intentional pursuant of some "point", some point unknown to me. Ross mentions John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus on the commentary of the movies.

There is no explicit sex in "Get A Life". There is barely any nudity in the video. "Get A Life" makes the mistake of presenting up front this very attractive actor (Michael Gonring), but he is more or less a running tease in the movie because he is never naked (there is a shot of his butt while he is shirtless at a gloryhole).


Get A Life
"Get a Life" presents this older dumpy-looking gay guy as the main character unhappily trolling the video booths of a porn store. He meets a very attractive straight guy (Gonring) who is "into trolls" and who is doing the "video booth thingy" while he is in Chicago on vacation for the summer.

The "plot" of "Get A Life" revolves around dumpy-looking gay guy trying to find that "perfect guy", a perfect guy who would, in his view, be straight but gay just for him.

As I said, "Get A Life" comes off being very campy and dismissable. What makes it even harder for me to like "Get A Life" is that I happen to have a Toby Ross video ("I Live For Sex") that essentially explored the "same ground" (video booths and trolling for sex) as "Get A Life". "I Live For Sex" is a hardcore gay video wherein the attractive guys actually get naked and engage in gay sex.


I Live For Sex
I will say that Toby Ross has been very good or very lucky at getting good music for his work. A lot of "gay themed movies' end up using the same stupid music because they don't have the budget to license good music.

I guess "Get A Life" could play well in "mixed company" as casual light-hearted "background fare" to one of those little Cocktail Party thingies that tired-ass White People put on. There are some memorable little jokes in "Get A Life":

1. Two of the characters drive up to a gas station and ask the attendant to "check the oil". The attendant is surprised to see that there is a "gay come on line" engraved on the "oil dip stick". Toby Ross says on the commentary that he knows someone who actually had his oil dip stick engraved with some x-rated gay come on line and that the guy would drive into gas stations and ask hot attendants to "check his oil".

2. An old troll in the movie keeps going on and on about how he "invented the glory hole" and how he could have collected "royalties" every time one was used if he had registered the idea with a patent.

3. The movie presents a rather funny exaggerated look at Porn Store Zombies. Most of the movie takes place in the video booth / peep show area of a porn store. It seems Porn Store Zombies are UNIVERSAL, a short film out of Argentina presented trolls hanging out in backrooms the same as they are shown in American videos (the stud, the old troll, the virgin, the straight married guy, the bleached out tude queen etc.).

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