It is the archetypal American Dream: poor European immigrant gets a scholarship to USC Film School, learns his craft, and becomes the world's greatest director of adult cinema. Our new film The Auteur (premiering at this month's Tribeca Film Festival) is a sweet romantic comedy about this very man, this veritable Scorsese of porn. The acclaimed creator of Dyke Club and Five Easy Nieces, Arturo Domingo is an anomaly in his field: control freak, old-school boy wonder, aesthetic genius. I wrote the part of Arturo for my dear friend, the brilliant actor Melik Malkasian, who has been the lead in all of my movies. One of the main reasons I make pictures is to put Melik in them, and as always he took the part very seriously: gained forty pounds, learned Italian, and was totally cool with going full-frontal (for a scene in which Arturo visits a hippie commune and plays naked hacky-sack).
On the subject of nudity, making this movie was-- if anything-- an opportunity to put a lot of good old-fashioned bare skin on screen, the male member not excluded. My intrepid producers, Byrd McDonald and Amber Geiger, were over the moon about making a comedy in which both men and women would be given equal naked-time. Everyone knows that dangling penises are hilarious, and we think it's high time for more of them. Byrd and I in particular lament for the early `70's, to the cinema of Paul Morrissey and John Waters, where a wiener was often just casually part of the landscape.
The Auteur was designed to be seen with a large audience, and we are grateful to Tribeca for accepting this outrageous homemade film from Portland, Oregon, featuring no recognizable 'name' actors (ok, Ron Jeremy is in it for a second) and giving us a proper big-city premiere. The movie is intended to make people laugh, cry, and possibly be very offended. It is my hope that The Auteur will do all of these things to many people, in equal doses-- especially during the climactic Full Metal Jackoff scene, my proudest moment of all.
The Auteur will have it's world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25th.
Screenings:
Friday, April 25th, 10:45PM
AMC Village VII Theater 4
Saturday, April 26th, 11:59PM
AMC Village VII Theater 3
Monday, April 28th, 10:00PM
AMC Village VII Theater 2
Thursday, May 1st, 9:00PM
AMC 19th St. East Theater 2
Friday, May 2nd, 12:15AM
Village East Cinema 6