Halsted Plays Himself

by William E. Jones

Fred Halsted's L.A. Plays Itself (1972) was gay porn's first masterpiece: a sexually explicit, autobiographical, experimental film whose New York screening left even Salvador Dalí repeatedly muttering "new information for me." Halsted, a self-taught filmmaker, shot the film over a period of three years in a now-vanished Los Angeles, a city at once rural and sleazy. Although his cultural notoriety at one point equaled that of Kenneth Anger or Jack Smith, Halsted's star waned in the 1980s with the emergence of a more commercial gay-porn industry. After the death from AIDS of his long-time partner, lover, spouse (and tormentor) Joey Yale in 1986, Halsted committed suicide in 1989. In Halsted Plays Himself, acclaimed artist and filmmaker William E. Jones documents his quest to capture the elusive public and private personas of Halsted—to zero in on an identity riddled with contradictions. Jones assembles a narrative of a long-gone gay lifestyle and an extinct Hollywood underground, when independent films were still possible, and the boundary between experimental and pornographic was not yet established. The book also depicts what sexual liberation looked like at a volatile point in time—and what it looked like when it collapsed.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Biography

216 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2011

About the author

William E. Jones is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. He has published the following books: Is It Really So Strange? (2006), Tearoom (2008), Heliogabalus (2009), Selections from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (2009), Killed: Rejected Images of the Farm Security Administration (2010), Halsted Plays Himself (2011), Between Artists: Thom Andersen and William E. Jones (2013), and Imitation of Christ, a catalogue for the exhibition he curated at UCLA Hammer Museum in 2013. Recent books include Flesh and the Cosmos (2014) and True Homosexual Experiences: Boyd McDonald and Straight to Hell (2016). His first novel, I'm Open to Anything, was published in early 2019. Jones's writing has also appeared in periodicals such as Animal Shelter, Area Sneaks, Artforum, Bidoun, Butt, Frieze, Little Joe, Mousse, and The White Review.

Reviews

[Lars Meijer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een waanzinnige biografie en bloemlezing over en van Fred Halsted, de Amerikaanse homo-pornoregisseur die leer, BDSM en fisting voor het eerst introduceerde in zijn films. Het boek geeft een goede schets van een filmsubcultuur waarin ik weinig thuis ben. Ik ben erg nieuwsgierig geworden naar zijn debuutfilm, L.A. Plays Itself, die ga ik zeker proberen te kopen.

*4.5

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

The name of Fred Halsted will ring a bell for very few readers, and those few will be as incredulous as I was to discover a slick Semiotext(e) monograph dedicated to his obscure, obscene ouevre – mostly hardcore homosexual art films from the 70s and early 80s. Like Justin Spring in his extraordinary Secret Historian, the filmmaker William E. Jones has salvaged a forgotten outré artist from the refuse heap of history.

Way back when, Halsted was infamous for LA Plays Itself (1972), an almost incoherent experimental film that starts with a naturist's sunny ramble through the Malibu hills and ends with a lad getting fist-fucked in a warehouse – a trajectory (comically recounted by Jones) that posed peculiar problems for the MoMA curator presenting the film at an early screening for museum patrons. Halsted's following films featured further S/M rhapsodies, as did his few pieces of one-handed fiction.

For me the fascination isn't with the work itself (which I never found appealing), but with Jones's resurrection of the milieu in which Halsted lived and died. The gay subculture of the 70s and early 80s was a wild weird wonderland, an exuberant Dionysian underworld coexisting with a sometimes strident utopian politics. Jones enriches his book with some pulpy Halsted interviews (by Mikhail Francis Itkin, aka Saint Mikhail of California; and Rosa von Praunheim) that are alternately hilarious and hair-raising. The book is also exceptionally well-illustrated, although not SFW unless you work in a porn store.

"So Fred, how does it feel not to be the most beautiful person in the room anymore?"

Halsted's biography is itself a grim fairy tale – a damaged, handsome young man who recreates himself as a hardcore icon. As Jones sums it up: "Fred came from nothing, and whatever he learned, whatever he owned, he acquired himself through guile and exploit. Without supportive parents, sufficient money or education, Fred had little choice. His looks were what he had to work with... That Fred was able to achieve the success he did qualifies as a triumph." It's also a lacerating love story. Halsted found his soulmate in a young buff blond boy named Joey Yale, who in turn destroyed his soul. In its seedy desperate permutations, Halsted's story is spectacular - a Faustus for fist-fuckers.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of William E. Jones' books, especially the one's that focus on underground homosexual culture. His current biography of Boyd McDonald is incredible. I never heard of Fred Halsted till I picked up on this book. I know nothing of gay porn film or its world. So Jones is very much the driver taking one on a tour of the underworld, and it's a fascinating landscape - especially when one lives walking distance to one of Halsted's sex clubs, which sadly, doesn't exist anymore. "Halsted Plays Himself" focuses on Fred Halsted's porn films, his life running a sex club, his literature, which by the way is great, especially his essay on all the Los Angeles gay bars, and what to expect from each one. And it also includes tons of film stills, photo shoots, and porn ads from that era of the 1970s. Jones knows how to expose and educate a subculture that is extremely important now that things have (slightly) changed or moved to the social right. Obviously, an important book on gay history, but it is also a must for anyone who is interested in Los Angeles social history as well the culture that was produced in this fine city. Great book.

[Ruz El · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

Having purchased the "LA PLAYS ITSELF" Blu-ray set, it was safe to say that seeing Fred Halsted's iconic gay porn films and the extra context in the supplements really got me interested in knowing more about the man himself. This book was the pretty near perfect answer. Which isn't saying you'll learn everything about Halsted. The man created his own mythos, and left the world with little firm answers. Jones does a remarkable job of taking what is available and presenting a life that rings true. Halsted had complicated views and everything about him seemed at odds with his true self - whatever that may be. This book does a great job of contextualizing his public image with what can be known of his private life, and it does so in a wonderful package featuring great artwork and a sampling of surviving interviews and articles by Fred himself. I loved it, and it will be one I come back to.

[Blair Hoyle]

Halsted Plays Himself is a fascinating read and a great companion piece to the recent Blu-ray release of Fred Halsted's films. Like most biographies about filmmakers involved in the world of adult cinema, it's very depressing, but a nonetheless compelling story about an enigmatic individual that remains a mystery to this day.

[Bill Arning · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brilliant evocation of a moment in queer cultural history that younger folks most likely don’t know and should- the very thought of MoMA showing and collecting a gay sexually explicit films in today’s puritanical and erotophobic climate is heartening and heartbreaking in equal measure

[Leaving_Marx · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doukhobors background and some of the seedy photos were wild and gave an interesting glimpse into the gay bdsm landscape in LA at the time.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably not for everyone--but if you're drawn to the true-life story of a gay porn director whose works are in the permanent film collection of the Museum of Modern Art (fisting and all!) then I highly recommend it ;-) Fred Halsted's life can't have been an easy one to research, and the results here are sketchy at best, but it makes for memorable reading nonetheless. Part hustler, part auteur, alcoholic sado-masochist bar-owning hunk magazine-publishing writer, director, actor and forward-thinking queer, Halsted's career flourished during a brief window of time in which gay erotic films weren't quite yet ghetto-ized and flirted dangerously closely to mainstream acceptance. Post-sexual-revolution and pre-plague, Halsted's L.A. must have been a seamy, messy place to live but like many eras that have passed, it looks a funky shade of rosy to this reader. Author Jones has delivered a gorgeous coffee-table style book, that captures the vibe of the culture(s) in which Halsted lived and worked, supplemented by Halsted's own writings (erotic and editorial), dialogue from his films, and unattributed "blind items" from anonymous interviewees who claim to have known Halsted intimately.

My favorite quote from the text, in reaction to the writings of George Will, conservative columnist and Reagan-apologist: "as if losing friends, lovers and an entire social network wasn't enough, men who pioneered sexual liberation in America had to endure the self-righteous contempt of jealous prudes." Indeed!

I loved it.

[willowdog]

I really wanted to like this book. (I'll admit I fell in love with this handsome, porn auteur whose movies were shown at MCA in the 70's) Unfortunately, the narrative was completely disjointed--i.e. biography, social essay, film history on one page. In an effort to be authenthic, he relies on what he readily admits to being unreliable sources (Many interviews are anonymous or with pseudonyms.) The primary source materials are good as they include published interviews, reviews of his movies, and Halsted's own writing and drawings published in Drummer or his magazine Package. The book is also well illustrated with photoes from Halsted's life and stills from his movies. (I can remember this magazine--I think it was the first porn magazine I ever bought!) I vote no on this

[The Art Book Review · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Halsted’s best known for his first and most artistic effort, L.A. Plays Itself, which in its opening scene, a sylvan gay sex idyll gets interrupted by a bulldozer clearing away nature for a subdivision."

--Justin Izbinski on "Halsted Plays Himself" from Semiotext(e)
Read the full review here: http://theartbookreview.org/2013/01/0...

[my name is corey irl · Rating 4 out of 5]

cool .