 Boy in the Sand – Casey Donovan: All-American Sex Star (1998)
It can't be all that easy to pen a credible biography of a porn star,
as the researchable resources are quite a bit more limited than with,
say, your typical Victorian writer. You can't really get too carried
away with arguing for the relative importance of someone who made their
name sucking dick on film as you can, say, someone who made their name
sucking dick in the Oval Office (I'm talking to YOU, Mary Todd
Lincoln!). Roger Edmonson's biography of Cal Culver aka Casey Donovan
manages to, er, straddle the line between personal history and social
commentary with a good measure of success. At times it indulges in some
inflated prose, but ultimately that seems like a good match to Culver's
inflated existence, which in many ways was about making a whole career out of one fluke success. Culver's story is not too different from
that of Jerry Mathers in that respect, except I'd reckon that Mathers has
participated in far less fisting.
I was not familiar with the persona of Casey Donovan or the
person of Cal Culver before encountering this book, but I am always
intrigued by porn star biographies, probably because there are so few, and I'm confused as to what the potential market for them is. Biographies of gay porn stars
seem to have more of a built-in social context than straight porn star
biographies, of which I have perhaps only seen one or two. Boy in the
Sand is a good deal weightier than you'd expect from the subject matter,
and is frighteningly well-researched, even though nearly everyone quoted in
the book prefers to remain anonymous with respect to their relationships
with Culver. At some points I was questioning the validity of Edmonson's
scholarship, wondering how this guy tracked down so many people who
worked with Culver at one point in time and/or paid him for sex. But
then it seemed even more unbelievable that the author would bother
lying … in any case, the book features a thorough account of each
phase of Culver's life. Not all of it is interesting, but the parts of
it that are, are pretty damn fascinating.
Culver was a promising stage actor and successful model who found
his greatest success under the nom de porn "Casey Donovan," his
breakthrough appearance being in the 1971 film Boys in the Sand, one of
the first gay porn films to portray gay sex as beautiful and erotic
rather than as a dirty secret. Edmonson places the
events of Culver's life and career in the proper social and historical
context, connecting the success of Casey Donovan to the young gay
liberation movement and the birth of gay porn as we know and love it
today. The interesting thing about Culver is that he seems to have had
the potential to be a big crossover star, a "gay-liberated Robert
Redford," if his forays into porn had not been so well-known. For
awhile, Culver was able to keep two careers going – one as Cal and one as
Casey, until ultimately it was only possible to sustain the one that
brought him the most notoriety. The author takes a hugely reverent tone
that sometimes gets in the way of real objectivity, but he does allow
that Culver's genuine acting ability was about as stiff as the wild
boners he loved to suck off (I'm self-declaring that Simile of
the Year). His real potential as a serious actor may well have burned out even without the porn (God knows mine has). What Culver seems to have
possessed more than anything was absolute charisma and an ability to
connect with everyone he met. And it seems that more often than not, he expressed
that connection sexually.
The real thrust of the book (I won't add any more of my
award-winning similes) comes from the chronicle of Culver's attempts to
catapult himself toward real stardom. He seems to have been genuinely
grounded but not without a degree of delusion about his actual
"celebrity." Certainly he was a fringe character at best against the
tapestry of 70s pop culture, and while he remains a legendary figure in
the annals of gay porn, he's hardly a household name (well, I did see his
name used in a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle … no, wait, it was
in Manshots Magazine Special Edition: Puzzles and Brain Teasers). But the story
of his fame is inexorably intwined with the gay chic 70s, and touches
down in New York City sex clubs, Fire Island, Key West, Hollywood, and
countless places across the globe where Cal/Casey was able to parlay his
charm into work … usually in the form of hustling.
The sheer amount of sex Culver experienced throughout his life is
staggering to old fashioned prudes like me who NEVER fist on the first
date. The unfortunate consequence of Culver's extremely sexual life was
his death from AIDS in 1987 – Edmonson deals with this sensitively, and
does not use hindsight to judge Cal's choices or inject any portentious
doom into the book. Culver's struggle with AIDS remained a struggle of
total denial up to the very end, the most ironic possible denouement for a
man who made his greatest life successes out of surface beauty and the
ecstatic pursuit of pleasure. This book is recommended for anyone
interested in gay culture, particulaly the gay liberation era, and
especially the 70s porn scene. It certainly offers more insight with
less ham-fisted irony than something like Boogie Nights, not that I
especially disliked that film, but this book is simply more focused and
serious-minded. Edmonson's style often borders on masturbatory – not in
terms of being gratuitous so much as conveying the sense that the author
is extremely turned on by his subject. Which is actually a pretty great
approach, now that I think about it. It'd be great to read a biography
of, say, Tsar Nicholas II, with the biographer constantly going on about
how well-defined the Tsar's muscles were, or how impressive his gorgeous, oiled
cock was.
Review by Dan Slabber |