Marco Filiberti wrote, directed and takes the lead in Adored: Diary of a Porn Star, just released on DVD from Wolfe Video www.wolfevideo.com. The movie, in which Filiberti plays a gay Italian superstar of porn named Riki Kandinsky (no simple porn last name like Stryker-Ryker-Idol for this guy), will surely go down in the annals of cinema (gay and straight)as one of the greatest vanity projects of all time. This DVD, which contains a making-of featurette, deleted scenes and an extensive photo gallery, is also the gay guilty pleasure of the year and I’m planning on watching it at least once a week as it seems to me to be the female, narcissistic equivalent of Streisand’s A Star Is Born, sans the mostly lousy musical numbers. Talk about wretched, fabulous excess!
Filiberti’s fantasy creation Riki is not only a blonde Adonis, but he’s hugely endowed, locked and loaded within five seconds, and so financially successful at porn (without hustling on the side)that he lives in a high-tech space-age bachelor pad and wears fab designer clothes. Further, his manner and sense of style speaks of class and elegance, he’s witty, thoughtful, a good friend with a sympathetic ear, and kind to kids and dogs. So beloved is Riki that the announcement of his premature death throws all of Italy into hysterical mourning.
So omnipresent is Filiberti’s ego that Adored should be either insufferable (like Diana Ross in The Wiz)or hilariously camp (like Diana Ross in Mahogany). But I found this unintentional tribute to hedonism oddly endearing. There are camp moments to be sure (those dreadful ‘pop’ tunes, the phony porn shoots and the movie’s silly framing device)but perhaps I’m just a sucker for all things Italian (and the subtitled film is sumptuously photographed)or anything that pays even a bit of homage to La Dolce Vita, which Adored seems to do.
The story follows Riki (Riccardo to his long-estranged family)meeting up with his brother and sister after the titled (but poor)father’s death. Upright Federico has no idea what his brother has been up to since he’s left home and is determined to find out about his mysterious life. So he tags along when Riki returns to Rome and within days has it figured out. He’s shocked at first (and there’s a moment where Riki places his brother’s hand on his erect penis to prove that he can get hard in seconds that almost pushes the film into incest territory).
Soon, however, Federico falls under the spell of Riki’s sophisticated friends, big city life of days on the porn set and nights in the clubs, and the brothers become thick as thieves and Federico is reuniting with his ex-wife. But the ‘old ennui’ subconsciously trails Riki. Though he’s happy to be zipping around the city in his sports car looking for anonymous sex while listening to an aria and thinking to himself, ‘A pretty boy’s body emits the same kind of vibes that I get from Mozart’ he’s got to pay, like all hedonists, for his life of pleasurable excess.
When Riki finally admits that he needs love too, he also realizes with a wistful look that the gargantuan love to match his ego will be impossible for him to find. Naturally, there is only one possible end for such a selfless, delicate-feeling flower with such a great ass. Though we are not privileged to see his suicide (and it seems a gigantic, momentary lapse in Filiberti’s ego), we can imagine how beautiful Riki’s death must have been.
In 1959, at the conclusion of La Dolce Vita when the young queen commented, ‘Maybe one day we’ll all be homosexual…’ it was the ultimate in shock value. The over-the-top hedonism of Adored: Diary of a Porn Star would amend that line to read, ‘Maybe one day we’ll all be … Riki.’ If only it were possible!
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Jamie Foxx enters the Oscar race at a gallop with his mesmerizing impersonation/ performance in Ray, the biopic of the late master of soul and R&B, Ray Charles. At the outset of the movie the blind Charles gets on a bus in the Deep South to go cross country by himself in order to take a job in Oregon as a piano player. But the supremely self-reliant Charles, who has been given his confidence by his tough, loving mother, doesn’t seem to have any concerns until he goes on tour—and that’s to be paid in single dollar bills so he won’t be cheated.
How Charles rises to become one of America’s musical treasures is even more amazing than similar rags-to-riches movies like What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Coal Miner’s Daughter and Sweet Dreams. One of the nicest pleasures of these biopics is that they’re inherently greatest-hits packages for the artist being depicted and Ray doesn’t stint on the music and many of the faux concert and recording sequences are terrifically directed by Taylor Hackford—especially ‘I Got A Woman.’ This was the 1954 breakthrough record where Charles finally found his own voice—a blend of gospel and R&B that was as exciting for him as it was for audiences. Up to that point, we are told, Charles had struggled, sounding too much like Nat King Cole and others. ‘God gave you the gift to sound like anybody—even yourself’ he is told at one point, and his joyous, seemingly spontaneous breakthrough is excitingly shot and performed.
Foxx himself seems to have benefited from that advice, and his performance, a canny blend of impersonation and subtler shadings, is the real deal. It’s also the first time that the actor has managed to erase the memory of his character Wanda for me. I’ve regretted his move away from comedic roles. It’s been almost 15 years since Foxx first broke through via the hideous, hilarious, Wanda character on ‘In Living Color’—a visual cartoon car accident. With Ray, Foxx has finally found a dramatic role that mirrors this freakish, comedic creation. I still want him to do a big screen life story of Wanda from In Living Color, but now I want it just a touch less.