Before they wrote the sweet meditation on gentrification that is Quinceañera, filmmakers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland created something quite different: a sleazy meditation on narcissism and the porn industry. Called The Fluffer and released in 2001, this movie traces the hopeless odyssey of young Sean McGinnis, a confused cameraman who becomes obsessed with Johnny Rebel, a rough stud described breathlessly on the DVD jacket as "a chiseled Adonis and the biggest star in gay porn."
Mr. Rebel is indeed handsome (and chiseled), but this handsome gay porn star is having some issues—he's a speed freak and, more damaging to his career, he's having trouble keeping it up. Enter Sean (Michael Cunio), whose plump lips, budding homosexuality, and eagerness to please make him perfect for a supporting offscreen role helping Mr. Rebel (Scott Gurney) maintain his hard-on. In one early scene, Sean successfully elicits an amazing orgasm from a listless and distracted Mr. Rebel. The biggest star in gay porn is clearly fading, but a fluffer has been born.
Unfortunately for the young fluffer, Rebel is straight. Or, as they say in the industry, "gay for pay." Why, then, is Rebel so turned on by the attentions of Sean's lips? Sean, for one, would certainly like to know. This question propels much of the rest of the movie, but unfortunately for us, the viewers, we already know the answer. It has been presented, not so subtly, via an excerpt from Ovid's Metamorphoses that flashes onscreen at the beginning of the film (as a porn-music loop plays in the background): "Both boys and girls looked to him to make love, and yet that handsome feeling of proud Narcissus had little feeling for either boys or girls."
Ah, so sad. A naive young man is about to be hurt by the aloofness and self-absorption of a modern-day Narcissus. Where have we heard this before? Oh, perhaps in every gay coming-of-age movie ever made.
The twist in The Fluffer is that here the unattainable, self-absorbed love interest is a straight man acting in gay porn. But it's not much of a twist, and certainly not enough to sustain a viewer's attention, even over a mercifully brief 95 minutes.
If The Fluffer is worth watching, it is for just two things:
The first is a memorable line delivered by a porn producer who is trying to explain to cameraman Sean that he needs to focus on capturing pumping action and money shots rather than on conjuring arty mise en scène to convey a sense of intimacy. "Look kid," the producer says. "We're not talking about sex. This is pornography."
The only other reason is to watch The Fluffer is to give you hope that the terrible gay filmmakers of today may become the redeemed gay filmmakers of tomorrow. With Quinceañera, Glatzer and Westmoreland once again have an interesting subject, but this time, they manage to make the movie interesting, too.
