American Stud

Dana Vespoli's movie for Wicked Pictures "American Stud", an unsuccessful, self-indulgent porn-parody of the old Richard Gere hit "American Gigolo", follows in her series of anti-Mainstream Hollywood themed features and vignettes, but adds an unconvincing (dare I say insincere?) cautionary tale about the life of a sex worker in Tinsel Town. It's a dreary exercise.

I was going to follow the misleading IMDb decision to treat most if not all recent story-oriented porn as "TV series" or TV segments, but it's just a made-for-video movie chopped into four parts for website and streaming purposes.

In Part 1, the Wicked website subscriber is treated to an all-sex segment, opening with overworked Seth (he acts in and/or directs nearly every Wicked release lately, a practice from studio honcho Axel Braun that has already followed the law of diminishing returns in a big way) getting a hand-job from some unknown hands, and after a montage of NonSex highlights from future scenes, we're treated to a no-dialogue sex scene of Seth with Aiden Ashley. No forward progress on the movie proper at all.

Part 2 makes up for this with plenty of exposition. Cam Damage appears as Seth's old friend and fellow prostitute (Cam says to him: "You're a fu*cking gigolo, Adrian" to make it obvious), informing him of going straight to make a profession in crypto currency (a pretty dumb idea). Seth's sullen, a posture he maintains throughout the movie, stuck in his lucrative but demeanng lifestyle.

Director Vespoli gives him a snazzy sports car but errs miserably in not having a lavish wardrobe for our Gere-imitating hero, missing out on the original Paul Schrader movie's most distinctive element. We find out that his girlfriend played by Ashley is married to the most powerful man in Hollywood, a producer played by Evan Stone. Once again, the wardrobe department malfunctions, as Stone puts on a shirt and tie so ill-fitting even Harvey Weinstein wouldn't be caught dead wearing them to court. On the other hand, Harvey is name-dropped in the script so Evan's playing a crypto-Weinstein character, pardon my mixing metaphors.

Low point comes in Part 2 when Seth is earning his keep for sleazy client Ramon Nomar by having a rough sex threesome with Nomar and his girl Maya Woulfe, with Ramon choking her and both humping her in a scene directed as a turnoff rather than a turn-on.

For Part 3, Ms. Vespoli shows up on screen as Seth's boss, handing out pay packets to him and Cam for their sex work. Stone, meanwhile, has casting couch action at the beautiful "Immoral Proposal" mansion with a starlet named Coco played by, who else?, Coco Lovelock. She role-plays for the part of Emily in his big new movie, and delivers fake fountains of squirt when not rimming Evan (director Vespoli just loves anal-play in her work), but cornily doesn't get hired for the role.

Part 4 combines melodrama with plenty of cryptic nonsense, as Evan becomes violent and threatening with wife Ashley, while Cam and Seth are blindfolded and driven somewhere to have a threesome with Jessie Saint, while a large Black dude wearing a white mask sits stolidly watching them. Surprise ending is sloppily directed, though its negative connotations for Seth are obvious. Only successful element of the movie is to introduce androgynous non-binary actor Cam Damage to a wider Adult Cinema audience.

The new Wicked Pictures, with its bringing bareback sex to the label like back in the '90s, and its preposterous Seth Gamble all-the-time gimmick, is a far cry from the company's porno leadership way back when. Having watched hundreds of Vespoli videos (thanks to iMDb's handy "How many have you seen?" feature I stand at having watched 283 or 54% of her total output over the years), it's a shame she only hooked up with Wicked AFTER the demise of the original Adult Cinema purveyor and its fame as a source of quality Couples entertainment. It should be renamed Gamble Video, as in "you take a gamble watching".