Director/writer/producer: Bruce La Bruce – Diary by: Steve Westren

1991: Notorious avant-garde ‘post queer’ fag filmmaker Bruce La Bruce writes directs and stars in his first feature, No Skin Off My Ass, a style-obsessed pornish punk take of a hairdresser’s desire for his skinhead boyfriend. The film is shot in silent Super 8, then blown up to 16mm and post-dubbed with financing of about $12,000 from German producer and distributor Jurgen Bruning.

During editing, La Bruce decides that the making of No Skin Off My Ass would make a great tale in itself. A script is written, but La Bruce claims to have no recollection. ‘I guess it was like automatic writing.’

Late 1991: Because of the explicit sexual nature of the sequel, La Bruce doesn’t even think of approaching the usual funding bodies. Bruning receives some money from the Berlin Film Fund.

Spring 1992: With the cash infusion from Bruning, Super 8 and a Half, a savvy, caustic and hard-core faux documentary of the demise of a legendary porn artist, begins shooting in sync sound 16mm. The cast includes such luminaries as Amy Nitrate, Vaginal Creme Davis, Dirty Pillows (aka Stacy Friedrich), Richard Kern, Mike2 (playing Johnny Eczema) and a cameo by Kids In The Hall actor Scott Thompson. The script is rarely consulted.

Two weeks later: The money runs out. The film sits in a lab for three months. Thompson finally offers La Bruce some money with which to rescue the footage. All other money sources dry up for six months. La Bruce bides his time writing for ‘#&@!’ (Exclaim) magazine and appearing as frequent drag cohost of the Manhattan cable cult hit show, Glennda and Friends, as well as acting in Rick Castro’s video epic, Three Faces of Women. He also makes money in a variety of other inventive ways. Friend Donna Lypchuck says, ‘I won’t tell you what they are, but I won’t let him kiss me anymoreÉ’

Fall 1992: More money finally arrives. In the meantime, the dop has had a nervous breakdown, ‘Your usual dop nervous breakdown.’ Shooting resumes with new dop Donna Mobbs and continues for six weeks. Most scenes take place in La Bruce’s studio loft, with occasional guerilla incursions into local donut shops ‘waving rubber gunsÉ.’ Although the acting is largely improvisational, La Bruce reports that it stays remarkably true to the original script.

In the midst of shooting, La Bruce has trouble finding a video house to transfer some of the explicit film footage. He has to prove that he is a ‘legitimate artist’ and not a run-of-the-mill pornographer.

At the close of shooting, the money is once again all gone.

August 1993: u.s. distributor Strand Releasing antes up completion money. Working half days, it takes editors Manse James and Robert Kennedy four months to cut. There are scads of lab problems. La Bruce ruefully admits he broke the golden rule, ‘Never try to save money on the neg cut.’ The first reel is out-of-sync and it takes two weeks and several different technicians to try to solve the problem, ‘It was like a Kafka novelÉ’

February 1994: Posting begins, with an April 1 deadline – Pleasure Dome has rescheduled a sneak preview at the Metro Theater, Toronto’s last remaining porno house that still shows film.

March 30, 1994: Reel three falls apart.

April 1, 1994: The film somehow stays together for two sold-out showings at the Metro. There’s a mob scene and people have to be turned away at the door.

May 1994: The film plays the San Francisco Gay Film Festival and receives a very good review in the staid weekly Variety, although it says it feels the film is a bit too long. La Bruce shrugs, ‘It’s supposed to be too long. It’s kind of like a Warhol thing. I was going for that experimental feeling of boredomÉbut I discovered it’s hard to simulate boredom without being boring.’

July 1994: Super 8 and a Half, which La Bruce describes as a feature narrative that’s sexually explicit with no production values, is accepted into the Toronto International Film Festival, and is submitted to as many ‘straight’ film festivals as possible. So far Edinburgh and Rotterdam have accepted.

October/November 1994: The film opens theatrically in New York and Los Angeles. The final tally of the budgetÉabout $40,000.