Man-Mountains of the 1980s

The sensitive, androgynous New Man fell into disfavor during the conservative 1980s.  Instead we got man-mountains, masses of post-bodybuilder pecs and abs with steely eyes and gritted teeth who grunted when they spoke at all, and strutted through the plot with their shirts off (no shirt were big enough, anyway), carrying an Uzi in one hand and a hand grenade in the other, usually with a naked lady clinging to their leg like Conan in the 1970s, or Steve Reeves in the 1950s.

At first they weren't terribly popular at the box office.  The #1 movie of 1986 in the United States was Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Big Then, after slogging through Hoosiers, Pretty in Pink, The Hitcher, and Jean de Florette, you finally hit Cobra (with man-mountain Sylvester Stallone) at #63 and  Delta Force (Chuck Norris) #77.

But by 1988, Die Hard (with man-mountain Bruce Willis), was #1, and then there was Bloodsport (Jean Claude Van Damme, left), Red Heat (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Above the Law (Stephen Seagal), Missing in Action 3 (Chuck Norris), Mercenary Fighters (Reb Brown), World Gone Wild (Michael Pare), and Rambo III (Sylvester Stallone).

The titles were all about the same, two words suggesting hand-to-hand combat: Instant Justice, Hard Knox, Strike Commando, American Ninja (1,2,3,4,5), Kickboxer (1,2,3,4,), Bloodsport, Death Warrant, Forced Vengeance.  

The plots were all about the same:  the man-mountain, a good, patriotic white guy, travels deep into a jungle country occupied by amoral, barbaric Asians or Hispanics to:  a) rescue a prisoner of war, former boss, buddy, or brother; b) keep drugs from hurting kids; c) get revenge on a warlord who killed his wife or girlfriend.

He gets captured and tortured by a female or gay-coded male villain (the humiliation!), and escapes.  He then uses his martial arts training to take out the entire enemy army with his bare hands. (Left: Michael Pare in Deadly Heroes).

Oh, and he meets with a woman from the enemy country, usually a freedom fighter. They have s*x -- usually after he's been beaten or tortured.  She's always n*de, and always on top.  They fall in love.

Racist, imperialist, sexist, heterosexist, homophobic, horribly violent.  The list of negatives goes on and on.  So why would gay teenagers watch? (Or actually fast-forward the VHS tape to the good scenes).  (Left: Tom Skerritt in Opposing Force)

More after the break

Adam Devine's Hot/Hung Photos, Part 1: Forehead presses, party poopers, divine d*cks, and Kermit the Frog

 

This is a collection of hot or humorous photos of Adam Devine.  I've already posted almost all of his n*de shots available, but not to worry, there are photos of other guys.

Link to the photos of other guys

1. The "I lost my swimsuit in the ocean" excuse is getting old, buddy.

2. Adam's physique has been compared to Schwarzenegger's.  Not favorably, just compared.

3.  "I know he's not much to look at, but he makes me laugh." Girl, you’re looking in the wrong place .

.

4. Oh, for...three years of Kelvin/Keefe forehead presses, and now this!  Just kiss him, and save us all a lot of aggravation!

5. In The Out-Laws, Adam plays a hapless bank manager who butts heads with rival manager Dean Winters, here giving an Oz nude salute.

6. Adam's new commode, for turning bathroom time into fun time. It looks nice and all, but how do you poop?

More Adam after the break

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Nude photos of Trench, Mr. Freeze, The Terminator, Conan, and an Austrian fitness model

Link to the nude photos

Arnold needs no last name.  He almost single-handedly took bodybuilding out the realm of  Muscle Beach physical culturists and Italian sword-and-sandal movies and created the genre of Man-Mountains. His superlative physique and distinctive Austrian growl have been parodied innumerable times, on Saturday Night Live, on Seinfeld, on Tiny Toon Adventures).    It's hard to leave a room temporarily without being tempted to use his signature line from The Terminator, "I'll be back," or Terminator 2, "Come with me if you want to live."

Already a Mr. Universe and nearly a Mr. Olympia, the 21 year old Mr. Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in 1968 with his best friend Franco Columbu, to become an actor.  He posed for a lot of fitness magazines, including the gay-coded Tomorrow's Man.  In the 1970s he was the subject of more conventional semi-nude paintings by Jamie Wyeth.  In the 1980s, photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

I had a friend in the 1980s whose bathroom featured what looked very much like a nude photo of Arnold, clipped from a fitness magazine.  It's not the black and white flexing photo that's available everywhere; this one was in color, and showed Arnold standing on a hillside.

His first starring role was in Hercules in New York (1969), which nobody saw.  His accent was so bad that his lines were dubbed.

He starred in Stay Hungry (1976), about a young man, drawn into the world of bodybuilding, and in The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980), asMansfield's muscular husband, Mickey Hargitay.

More Arnold after the break

Joe Weider: My Bodybuilder Boss

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I landed a job as a "contributing editor" for Muscle and Fitness.  It was actually a part-time job fact-checking and proofreading articles, but it looks good on my resume.  Besides, I got to hang out with the sort of guys who work for muscle magazines, and meet bodybuilding legends like Lou Ferrigno (not to mention Ivo, the Bulgarian bodybuilder who was insanely jealous of Michael J. Fox).

  And I met publisher Joe Weider, the father of modern bodybuilding.  He was rather gruff.

Born in 1919, Joe Weider grew up when the epitome of male beauty, as far as Hollywood was concerned,  was sophisticated and skinny, like Cary Grant.  Bodybuilders were usually assumed gay, and muscle magazines were published primarily for gay men (would you really buy this magazine for muscle-building tips?).

Although Joe began his career publishing Your Physique (later Muscle and Fitness) for a similar audience, he wanted to make bodybuilding "respectable," by which he meant heterosexual, and so he began a life-long crusade to re-brand the muscleman as an object of female desire.

In spite of his homophobia, Joe Weider was instrumental in bringing bodybuilding into the mainstream.  He published many fitness magazines (one edited by the Grandfather of Bodybuilding, Earle E. Liederman), and books (plus some other titles, including softcore hetero porn), and invented nutritional supplements like Tiger's Milk.   

His self-help pamphlets, covering everything from bodybuilding to nutrition to confidence building to how to be heterosexual (a "he-man," left), were advertised everywhere, even in comic books.

He founded the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness, which emphasized symmetry, grace, and beauty rather than the weight-lifting ability of the AAU (Amateur Athletic Association).  He mentored a generation of young bodybuilders of the new "body beautiful" school, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bob Paris.  

When Bob came out in 1989, Joe was reputedly furious that a gay person had sneaked into the ranks of his beautiful heterosexual bodybuilders. I wonder what he thought about gay employees.

Joe Weider died on March 23rd, 2013, at the age of 93.

"Terminator: Dark Fate": Lesbian Triangle, 5 Missed Beefcake Opportunities, and Arnold

 The Terminator series (how many have there been so far?) is about machines taking over the world in the near future, trying to kill all humans, and sending a bot back in time to kill the mother of the person who will eventually thwart their plans.  Timelines change, the future is changed, evil cyborgs become good, and it all starts over again.  This time, it's Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).  Well, maybe we'll see Arnold naked.  

Scene 1: A teen couple, Miguel (Daniel Ibanez) and Maria, are kissing under a bridge.  Suddenly a blob opens up in the sky, and a naked lady falls to the ground.  They rush to help her.  

Ugh!  Naked lady!  But Miguel is cute.  Maybe he'll be her ally, and we'll get some beefcake

The police arrive, think they are abducting her, and attack.  She revives and kill s them-- naked lady fight.  Then she co-opts Miguel's clothes.  

And Miguel and Maria vanish from the story!  Boo!

Scene 2:  A cute domestic scene, with grown-up brother and sister Diego (Diego Ramos) and Dani (Natalia Reyes) , Dad who makes breakfast, and cute dog.  Whoah, Diego has his shirt off for about five minutes.   Six-pack abs! Things are looking up!

They go to work at a factory, where they discover that Diego's job has been taken over by a robot.  Foreshadowing!

Meanwhile another blob opens up, and a naked man falls out.  Things are really looking up!  He knocks on Dani's door and talks to her father.

Scene 3: The naked man, now clothed, turns out to be a cyborg named Rev 9 (Gabriel Luna, below).  He goes to the factory and starts killing people.  Naked Lady (Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis) fights him, while explaining that he has come from the future to kill Dani.  

Dani, Diego, and Grace flee through the streets of Mexico City...

Hey, Mexico City.  There will be interesting location shots for a change! 

And out into the desert, which could be anywhere.  Boo!

Diego is killed, and vanishes from the story.  Double boo!

Scene 4: Dani and Grace hook up with an elderly but still kick-ass Sarah Connor.  I like her call-backs: "Come with me if you...don't want to die"; "I'll be back."  

 For the last 20 years, she has been getting occasional transmissions telling her where and when a terminator will appear, so she can kill it.  Now she's ready to help them by killing the Rev 9.  

Three women together.  I'll bet Grace and Dani fall in love. Or Dani and Sarah.  Or Sarah and Grace.  Or all three.

Scene 5: Grace needs some kind of medicine, so they raid a pharmacy.  The pharmacy tech offers to help, and carries Grace outside.  Hey, he's cute.  Maybe he'll join them, and....

he vanishes from the story.  Boo!

Scene 6: They decide to go to the source of  Sarah's messages, in Laredo, Texas..  Across the border.

You realize that all of Mexico is not "across the border," right?  It's 600 miles from Mexico City to Laredo.

Coincidentally, Dani's uncle is a coyote, illegally transporting people across the border.  He's a bit crotchety, but there's a cute guy sitting on the couch, reading a magazine.  Maybe he will...

He accompanies them to the border without saying anything or getting a face shot.  They are all captured by the ICE.  Sarah breaks them out -- well, Dani and Grace, anyway.  She leaves the guy to his fate.  Hey, he was helping you, and you abandoned him!  Boo!

Scene 6: They reach the source of the transmission -- a cabin in the Laredo forests, occupied by Arnold! The original terminator, a thousand years old but still buffed, retired, going by the name Carl.  He has started a family with a single mom (their relationship is not sexual, he specifies).

Arnold!  Things are looking up!

Plus his adopted son Mateo (Manuel Pacific) is cute.  Maybe he'll join them....

Nope, he vanishes from the story.  Boo!

Scene 7: Carl helps them destroy the Rev 9.  Grace dies.  I guess she and Dani won't become lovers.  Which is probably a good thing, because:

Spoiler alert!

Scene 8: Fast-forward to the future.  Sarah and Dani are living together, in what I assume is a romantic relationship, and Grace is their daughter!  

That must be why they missed so many beefcake opportunities.  What lesbian wants to look at hot guys?  Bring on the kick-ass babes!

Apparently they are not a canonical lesbian couple because the producers are homophobes or cowards, or both.  But the lesbian community has latched onto them anyway. 

The Top 10 Bodybuilders of "Bigger"

When I first moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I worked for Joe Weider's Muscle and Fitness. 

It wasn't as much fun as it sounds.  This was the era when bodybuilding was trying to rid itself of its homoerotic image, so the articles were often heterosexist, and male bodybuilders were invariably photographed with women draped around their biceps.

Weider was staunchly homophobic -- no fags in his organization!  Or if any sneaked in, they would be instantly fired.

So I haven't been all that anxious to see Bigger (2018), a historical drama about the bodybuilding empire that Ben and Joe Weider built, concentrating on the 1970s.

Especially when the blurb says they "Inspired female empowerment, championed diversity, and started a movement that changed the world of bodybuilding in America."  They were the opposite of diverse.

And it got a rating of 20% on Rotten Tomatoes.

According the Roger Ebert reviews, the movie toned down the homophobia: No bodybuilders or fans were gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.  And pushes up the anti-Semitic prejudice that Joe had to face as he introduced bodybuilding to the world.

 But I was curious to see what modern actors would be channeling bodybuilding greats:

1. Tyler Hoechlin as Joe Weider (top photo).

2. Aneurin Barnard as Ben Weider (second photo).

3.. Colton Haynes as Jack LaLane, who had a tv show aimed at fitness for women, and disparaged gays every chance he got.

4. Calum Van Moger as Arnold, who became the face and physique of bodybuilding for the masses, and later became the governor of California.  He isn't particularly homophobic, although he famously stated that "gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."

5. Billy Reilich as Reg Park, a 9-time Mr. Universe and peplum Hercules.

6. Arash Rahbar as Frank Zane, a 3-time Mr. Olympia and renowned fitness author.

7. Jared Motyl as peplum great Steve Reeves ("If you want something visual that's not too abysmal, we could take in an old Steve Reeves movie.")

8. Sergio Oliva Jr. as Cuban bodybuilder Sergio Oliva.

9. Stan DeLongeaux as Claude Regine.  I never heard of him, but who cares?

10.  That's it for the historic bodybuilders in the cast.  I couldn't help noticing that the black, gay, and deaf bodybuilders were conspciuously absent.  So much for diversity.

Just to get an even number, here's Steve Cook, who plays "California Beach Model."

Helmut Riedmeier, German Bodybuilder with Something Extra

Helmut Riedmeier was born in Munich on May 14th, 1944, during World War II, and took up bodybuilding as a teenager.

He won the Junior Mr. Germany award in 1964 and Mr. Germany and Mr. Europe in 1965.

In 1966 he came in second place in Mr. Europe, losing to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He began posing for physique magazines as a teenager.  After he moved to London in 1968, he did some nude porn-style shoots for Basil Clavering of Hussar Studios.  The surviving photos make good use of his "something extra."

No sex scenes have survived, if any existed, but there is some homoerotic buddy-bonding.

Although Helmut never achieved the worldwide fame of Arnold Schwarzeneggar or Franco Columbu, he maintained a strong competitive presence during the 1970s and 1980s, placing in Mr. Europe 5 times and Mr. Universe twice.

Meanwhile, according to one website, he had a nightclub act, performing nude as "White Heat."

I haven't been able to find out much about his later life, but in 2001 he won the International British Master Championship, and in 2006 he competed in the German Master Championships, at the age of 62.









He's retired, living in Munich, and still buffed at age 73.

There are nude photos on Tales of West Hollywood.

Franco Columbu: Arnold's Other Half

Sardinian-born Franco Columbu is a long-time work-out buddy and friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In 1968, they came to American together.  Joe Weider, my first boss in L.A., paid for their shared apartment while they were struggling.

But soon Arnold commenced a movie career, and he introduced Franco into some of the first movies to bring bodybuilding to a mainstream audience: Stay Hungry (1976), Pumping Iron (1977), and The Hustler of Muscle Beach (1980), which wasn't about that kind of hustler.

Their closeness elicited the usual gay rumors, which neither seemed to mind.

When Arnold became a star, he continued to help out his pal, giving him screen time in Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator (1984), and Running Man (1987).

In the 1990s Franco, still in top shape, produced a series of man-mountain actioners set in Sardinia: Desperate Crimes (1993), Taken Alive (1995), Doublecross on Costa's Island (1997).

Like most movies in the man-mountain genre, there was usually a girl, but the buddy-bonding took precedence.  Beretta's Island (1994) was about a retired Interpol agent trying to find out who murdered his friend.

Ancient Warriors (2003) paired Franco with Daniel Baldwin as special agent buddies eliciting supernatural assistance to defeat a crime lord in Sardinia.

In 2011 Franco starred in the Italian movie  La terra dei sogni (Dreamland), about boxer Frank Graziani (Franco), who mentors the young James De Cristoforo (Ivano De Cristoforo).  I haven't seen it, but according to the Italian synopsis, there are "stunning scenes" in which the relationship between the two becomes "vivid and full of emotions."

Sounds good.

Gary Daniels: Man-Mountain with Gay Subtexts

During the brawny Old West of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was squaring off against the Evil Empire and Jerry Falwell was squaring off against the gays, we needed lots of man-mountains:

Buffed shirtless guys who could storm through the jungles of Southeast Asia to rescue kidnapped buddies,  get revenge on murdered wives or girlfriends, or take out entire enemy armies with their bare hands.

Unfortunately, after the first hundred buffed guys with martial arts training hit Hollywood, the market became highly competitive, and besides, 25-year old kickboxer Gary Daniels was British, unlikely to be cast in a movie promoting American Exceptionalism.

So he went to the Philippines instead.  After a buddy-bonding Indiana Jones rip-off, The Secret of King Mahis Island (1988), he was cast as a man-mountain who ignores his wife and gets nude with his buddy prior to taking out the evil Vietnamese army in Final Reprisal (1988).  Some rather explicit gay subtexts.

By the 1990s, Gary had managed to break into American film, playing kickboxer managers, villains, and opponents in the Big Match, fighting to rescue his kidnapped brother (in American Streetfighter), fighting to rescue his buddy (in Firepower), fighting to get revenge on his brother (Hawk's Vengeance).

Gary's characters had little time for women: the target audience of heterosexual male teenagers wanted to see muscles, fights, and explosions, and couldn't care less about a fade-out kiss.  The result was a lot of gay subtexts.

During the 2000s, as Gary got older, he began playing more fully-clothed roles, as attorneys, detectives, and military officers who oversee the punching and kicking, but don't indulge personally.  His most memorable recent role is The Expendables (2010), in which a group of aging man-mountains is hired to take out a Latin American dictator.

Two of them, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li, reveal that they are a gay couple in The Expendables 2 (2012).  Or maybe they're just joking.  Either way, they're acknowledging the homoerotics behind the man-mountain genre.

The Lost Boys: Cory Haim's Bubble Bath

The Lost Boys (1987) was directed by Joel Schumacher, who is gay, and starred teen idol Corey Haim, who was widely rumored to be gay at the time. The plot, about high schooler Sam Emerson (Corey) discovering that his older brother  Michael (Jason Patric) has been seduced by androgynous vampire David (Kiefer Sutherland), is overloaded with homoromantic same-sex bonds: Sam and and Michael, Michael and David, Sam and the vampire-hunting teen Frog (played by Corey's real-life best friend, Corey Feldman).


There are endless beefcake scenes and vows of same-sex commitment, but only one act of heterosexual intercourse, with Michael's body on display and the woman's hidden from view, instead of the usual scenes of a nude woman atop a fully-clothed man. Surely even the most oblivious heterosexual can find such blatant slippages and subtexts!

But not one of the nearly 200 user reviews on the Internet Movie Database or nearly 500 fans who posted to a Lost Boys message board noticed the beefcake, the lack of attention to girls, or the many homoromantic bonds.

 One fan did ask “Is Sam gay?” and as evidence, pointed out that:
1. He has a poster of contemporary heartthrob Rob Lowe on his bedroom wall
2. He wears a “Born to Shop” T-shirt
3. He takes bubble baths
4. He has a pet dog.
5. He sings an old novelty song with the line “I’m a lonely girl, ain’t got a man.”
That is, he uses gender-transgressive behavior (like owning a dog?) as proof.



But even those broadly-drawn gender-transgressions are lost on most fans. One stated, “I’ve seen that movie probably somewhere around fifty times, and never once stopped to think that [Sam] was supposed to be gay.”  They never stop to think that any fictional character is gay, unless he is Wearing a Sign.

 Fans commenting on the "Is Sam gay?" post enthusiastically pointed out that Sam was not Wearing a Sign, so he must necessarily be taken as heterosexual.

About the beefcake poster: “It was his grandfather’s idea, to give him a manly role model! It has nothing to do with being gay!” (Would Grandpa really consider androgynous prettyboy Rob Lowe a better candidate for displaying machismo than contemporary man-mountains like Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris?)

 About the “Born to Shop” t-shirt: “It was the fashion in 1987! It has nothing to do with being gay!”

Or they bring up the  myth that only adults are gay: "He’s fifteen years old, too young to be gay!”

Or the myth of the Discovery of Girls: “He hasn’t begun to notice girls yet, it doesn’t mean he’s gay!”

Anything they can think of that helps them keep on believing that the world of fiction belongs to heterosexuals only.

See also: Tad Hilgenbrink, Corey Haim for the 2000s.; and Clarence: Gay Characters on Kids' TV.

N.C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth: 3 Generations of Gay Art

N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), who incorporated male nudes into many of his children's book illustrations, was very conflicted about same-sex desire.

His youngest son Andrew (1917-2009), one of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, not so much.

Andrew is best known for Christina's World (1948), which depicts a young woman lying on a vast field, looking at a farmhouse in the distance, condemned by the isolation and misery of rural life (a theme similar to American Gothic, by gay regionalist Grant Wood).

He was a devotee of female beauty.  One of his favorite models was "Helga," a German woman who lived near the Wyeth farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  But later in life, he occasionally devoted himself to the homoerotics of everyday life.

The Clearing (1979) depicts a similar rural world, but not with isolation and misery: a muscular, tanned, naked man, his long hair blowing in the wind, stands with arms akimbo, inviting us to join him.

Man and the Moon (1990) shows the nude backside of a muscular motorcyclist.

Andrew's son Jamie (born in 1946) is completely nonchalant about gay identity.  Although he has followed in his father's footsteps as a regionalist, depicting landscapes, houses, and farm animals, he has also painted nude and semi-nude beefcake icons such as artist Andy Warhol, bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger  (top photo) and dancer Rudolph Nureyev.

As well as a series of paintings of the wild men and boys of Monhegan Island, Maine, especially the teenage Orca Bates.

When he was researching a portrait of the late President in 1967, Jamie found himself returning again and again to John F. Kennedy's life-long friend Lem Billings.  He finally drew a man who was gay, or who at least understood the beauty of same-sex desire: "under the surface of the paint is a portrait of Lem Billings."