Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce has described himself as the reluctant pornographer. It’s a fitting title, as most of his films, including No Skin Off My Ass, Skin Flick, and Hustler White, mimic the look and feel of gay porn films, but always stop short of becoming hardcore. With the exception of Skin Gang (the hardcore porn edition of Skin Flick), all LaBruce’s films suggest more sexually explicitness than they actually show, and as a result, rather than merely providing images for masturbatory pleasure, Bruce LaBruce’s films urge us to rethink our distinctions between pornography and erotic romance.

Of all LaBruce’s films, Hustler White has the most “mainstream” appeal, mainly because of the casting of Tony Ward as the male hustler Montgomery “Monti” Ward. Best known as the former toy boy of pop star Madonna (he stars in her “Justify My Love” and “Cherish” music videos), Ward is both macho and vulnerable, a dopey and endearing bad boy. In one of the first scenes, we see Monti beat off while being fucked by one of his johns. The scene is cleverly intercut with shots of a landing plane, announcing the arrival of the German writer Jürgen Anger (played by Bruce LaBruce), who has come to Hollywood “for anthropological reasons” – he is doing research for a book on the practice of male hustling on Santa Monica Boulevard. Once Anger encounters Monti, he becomes obsessed with the mysterious hustler and follows him around. The developing relationship between the writer and the hustler constitutes the main plot of the film.

But Hustler White is more than a gay romantic comedy, as the scenes of Monti and Anger’s romance are alternated with compelling scenes of male prostitution. LaBruce co-directed the film with Rick Castro, a photographer well known for his photo documentaries of male hustlers working on Santa Monica Boulevard. Although Hustler White is not a documentary about male hustling, the cast consisting of actual local hustlers and gay porn stars (including Kevin Kramer and Alex Austin starring as “themselves”) provides the film with a sense of realism and honesty. Also, throughout the film, Monti’s voiceover informs Anger, and thus the audience, about the rituals of male hustling in Hollywood, accompanied by drive-by shots of Santa Monica Boulevard, reinforcing the documentary tone of the film.

In addition to being both a romantic comedy and a semi-documentary about male hustling, Hustler White is also a showcase of gay male pornography and sexual deviancy. In one hilarious scene, gay porn star Kevin Kramer auditions for the position of escort boy by letting himself being gangbanged by six hunky men. No penetration or cum shots are shown, but through a rapid montage of close-ups of Kramer and the six gangbangers – focusing on facial expressions and sexual positions rather than frontal nudity – LaBruce succeeds in showing more than just pornographic fucking. In this way, he emphasizes the conventions of gay porn (note how Kramer wears nothing but his white tube socks), how it is constructed shot by shot, instead of merely exposing body parts. The scenes depicting sexual deviancy take Hustler White even a step further, and (for some viewers) perhaps a step too far. An amputeed hustler services his john with his stump; a freaky mortician (convincingly portrayed by controversial performance artist Ron Athey) picks up hustlers from the street to mummify them with duct tape; an old masochist gets off by letting his hustler burn him with cigarettes. These extremes work, because they don’t counteract, but complement the romantic, even romanticized, relationship between Monti and Jürgen Anger. In Hustler White, romance and sexual deviancy go together and reinforce each other.