| Classic Film Bijou Remastered to Help Finance Wakefield Poole Documentary |
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Contact: Jim Tushinski FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- March 26, 2010 Classic Film Bijou Remastered to Help Finance Wakefield Poole Documentary Gorilla Factory Productions, the GayVN Award winning production company that released Peter Berlin’s classic films on DVD, has completely remastered Wakefield Poole’s influential 1972 film Bijou. The company is offering a limited edition DVD as a thank you gift for anyone making a tax deductible donation of $50 or more to help complete Dirty Poole, a documentary-in-progress about Poole’s life and career. The remastered DVD of Bijou is not available anywhere else and lets viewers see the film on video for the first time as it would have looked on its initial release. "When I started working on Dirty Poole,” the documentary’s director and producer Jim Tushinski said, “I was dismayed to find out that all available versions of Bijou and Poole’s breakthrough film Boys in the Sand were created using defective negatives. The results are muddy, with blacks taking on a green glow, making it impossible to see this visually breathtaking film as it looked when it bowled over audiences in 1972. Working with Wakefield Poole, Anthology Film Archives in New York, and Monaco Labs in San Francisco, I supervised a meticulous scene-by-scene color correction and created a brand new digital master. The results are astounding." Wakefield Poole is widely acknowledged as “the godfather of gay porn.” His 1971 film Boys in the Sand made a star out of actor Casey Donovan and was the first explicit gay film to be advertised in the New York Times and be reviewed by Variety. The enormous worldwide success of Boys in the Sand> and Poole’s next film Bijou, made Poole a gay household name. Poole was also one of the first gay porn filmmakers to put his own name on his films, usually above the title, which could have resulted in prosecution and jail time in the 1970s. Bijou centers on a straight construction worker who finds a strange ticket to a secret club named Bijou, where sexual fantasies are made realities. The film uses bold, theatrical lighting and other-worldly set pieces to give the viewer the sense that this straight man is going down a gay rabbit hole and into a Wonderland of erotic male desire. When star Bill Harrison revealed his penis for the first time in the film, audiences at the time gasped and wondered if it was a special effect. Harrison became an instant gay celebrity and Bijou rode the wave of early 1970s porno chic to become an enormous crossover success. "Bijou is unique and not like any other porn film ever made," Tushinski said. "It’s been compared to the work of David Lynch in its innovative visual style and strange logic, but the extended orgy that takes up almost half of the film is still as hot as anything made today. It's so important that this breakthrough film, which helped create the modern gay porn industry, be seen in all its trippy, 1970s glory." Due to a DVD contract already in place for Bijou, the remastered version cannot be sold commercially. Instead, Poole has given his permission to use the film as a way to help Tushinski raise funds to complete the documentary Dirty Poole. Tushinski, who directed and produced That Man: Peter Berlin with co-producer Lawrence Helman, is also remastering a number of Poole’s other films, including Boys in the Sand (1971), the controversial uncut version of Moving (1974), and the rarely seen Wakefield Poole's Bible(1973), in conjunction with the Dirty Poole project. All donations to Dirty Poole are tax deductible to the full extent of the law thanks to the fiscal sponsorship of the San Francisco Film Society, a 501 ( c ) (3) non-profit organization. For details on how to donate and receive the limited edition remastered DVD of Bijou, visit www.dirtypoole.com. The Web site also contains a demonstration of the difference between the uncorrected version of Bijou and the remastered version. |