Hold Me While I'm Naked

The Creeping Crimson

A short film by George Kuchar.

Arizona Byways

A cactus-strewn desert becomes the backdrop for this series of filmic stopovers. Great natural beauty clashes with manufactured outdoorsmanship, as a tired body and sluggish mind seek the oblivion of hotel hospitality in an arid region of artistic aspirations. The viewer is introduced to a world of prickly plants and satin-skinned succubi who prowl the alleys of western decay to staple their fig leaflets on the vertical shafts that poke unsheathed at the virgin skies of southern Arizona. The sheaths are administered, and the population prepares for cinematic coupling in a city park earmarked for culture. Enter the masculine caves that spilled forth their glittering guts onto a surface world as desperate for gems as it was for water. Witness this natural spectacle all packaged and delivered in the form of a vacation video, and marvel at the mavens of movie-making as they bombard the public with a cacophony of celluloid under the moonlit, desert sky.

Gastronomic Getaway

Writes Kuchar, "The magnificent Mono Lake becomes the centerpiece for this car trip through Yosemite National Park and the splendors of roadside pastry. Majestic mineral deposits rise from the salt laden waters as the bloated and bulimic revel in nature's nutrients."

Going Nowhere

Writes Kuchar: "It was my 50th birthday this year (1992) and my friend's birthday, so I explored our position in time and dusty place with a prognostication on future inertia." In this chapter of his ongoing Video-8 diary, Kuchar's birthday becomes an occasion to ponder mortality, dust, agoraphobia and relationships. Documenting the hilarious yet ultimately melancholy dramas of the everyday within the claustrophobic confines of his apartment, Kuchar may be going nowhere, but, as he notes, "at least we're going nowhere together."

Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore

A high schooler from suburbia gets in touch with her sexuality while working at a dingy movie theater in the city.

Screamplay

A talented writer, Edgar Allen, arrives in Hollywood with big dreams but is quickly pulled into a world of madness and depravity. A detective investigating a series of murders discovers that they are similar to the murders that occur in the new script by Edgar. Who will survive and what parts will be left for them?

Club Vatican

Kuchar’s childhood was heavily shaped by Catholic sexual repression and guilt. Movies acted as an escape from day-to-day life, a parallel reality that reveled in sin and sensation. Teaching at the libertine San Francisco Art Institute from 1971–2011, Kuchar made numerous hot-blooded, Z-grade “classroom pictures” with his students. Several, including Club Vatican, Motel Capri and Evangelust, act as lascivious collective exorcisms of religious hypocrisy and sexual repression. Club Vatican is one of the most visually sumptuous of Kuchar’s classroom pictures, and was recently restored by the Harvard Film Archive (alongside other of Kuchar’s pedagogical free-for-alls). The frame is packed with visual stimulation and the film unfolds as a series of writhing tableaux depicting clergy and sinners alike in perverse Catholic rites. Kuchar called it “a meditation on religious upheaval via mental strife.” Starring Courtney Love!

Sparkle's Tavern

Siblings hide their ownership of a bordello from their mother. When she is visited by a man who shares the joys of sexual enlightenment with her, her entire world is turned upside down.

Sins of the Fleshapoids

One million years in the future, the human survivors of a nuclear war are served by robots called "fleshapoids." One day, fleshapoid Xar runs wild, kills its mistress and seeks its mate, a servant of wicked Prince Gianbeno.

Taboo: The Single and the LP

"Abner L. Fuqua clears his throat and I get mad and stand close to trains or cut my eyebrow off. Dorothy is Abner's wife. Abner can slap hard, like blue magic." - graffiti

Every Dog Has Its Day

After getting fired from his teaching job and dumped by his girlfriend, Jack, a painter, embarks on a soul searching road trip with his dog, Scout. However, bad weather and bumps in the road quickly cause more problems than he can handle. An impulsive decision to take from a bag full of unknown pills leads him on a drug-fueled journey with no destination in sight, and he soon finds himself making both friends and foes along the way.

Bongwater

David is an artist and a pothead. He's fallen in love with the beautiful and sexy Serena, and things are going simply splendidly until poor David's house burns down. Serena doesn't need the bad vibes, so she splits the scene and runs off to New York with rocker and junkie Tommy. Lonely David finally turns to the sweet, sweet comfort of marijuana and his strange menagerie of friends to forget about his lost home and love

Wieners and Buns Musical

A musical about an unhappy couple and the man that stands between them. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

Nudes: A Sketchbook

"Curt McDowell's NUDES (A Sketchbook) is a paean to the filmmaker's closest friends: a series of portraits (beginning with one of George Kuchar) based on stylized, often graphically sexual interpretations of his or her personality. The portraits also, at times, represent Curt's own sexual interests as he projects them onto the lives of others. My favorites are 'Barbara', a Pre-Raphaelite vision of woman and 'Ainslie', a musical spoof on glamour. The filmmaker's point of view ranges from compulsively erotic to light-hearted and self-debunking. A broad reading of the term 'romantic' would probably best describe the spectrum of extreme, even outrageous, possibilities which Curt embraces in this sketchbook/film." - Karen Cooper, Film Forum

Maggots and Men

A utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history's first cast of over 100 transgender actors, paints a portrait of formerly pro-Soviet sailors at the Kronstadt naval garrison who rebelled against the perceived failures of the new Bolshevik state.

Cinemaville

George Kuchar takes his Japanese student on a trip to Los Angeles and meets with his entertainment industry friends including Buck Henry, Christopher Coppola, and Jeffrey Schwarz.