DVD Review - Getting Go, the Go Doc Project

Tanner Cohen (front) and Matthew Camp (back)
film their relationship in "Getting Go, the Go Doc Project"

Cory Krueckeberg was a writer-producer on the independent, movie musical Were the World Mine, which played at numerous gay film festivals. It starred Tanner Cohen, a great young actor capable of Broadway showtunes and Shakespeare recitations, so when Krueckeberg wanted to put together this scrappy, two-character production, Cohen was the most likely candidate to take it on.

Cohen plays a college student and poli-sci major in New York City nicknamed "Doc." He is obsessed with a go-go boy nicknamed "Go," played by Matthew Camp. A go-go boy is typically a young and very good-looking guy who dances in nothing but underwear in a gay bar or nightclub. Typically, he's on a stage or on top of a box in order to attract customers or make tips himself. Doc drunkenly sends Go an email asking to shoot a documentary about him, even though Doc is not a filmmaker.

The movie follows the next three weeks, as Doc tries to make a documentary about Go, leading to Doc graduating from college and going back to Iowa. What's interesting about this movie though is that it reminded me of two recent films. The first is Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), a documentary where fiction masquerades as fact or else it's a blurring of the two.

Matthew Camp is acting here. He's playing a character named "Go," who is the subject of this faux documentary, but the character might actually be based on Camp's real-life. The tour through Go's apartment might be a tour of Camp's actual apartment, an artist's den for painting and fashion. There is a moment that's analogous to the moment where Banksy, a radical artist who is the subject of Exit Through the Gift Shop, takes control of the movie and turns it around on the man with the camera. That moment is nearly replicated here when Camp turns things around on Cohen.

Krueckeberg's movie also reminded me of Unfaithful (Infidèles) by Claude Pérès. Unfaithful is another scrappy, two-character production where the man with the camera, Pérès, has sex with his subject, namely German actor Marcel Schulutt. The scene where the camera is set-up to stand unmanned while pointed at the bedroom, as filmmaker and subject fornicate like porn stars is mirrored in both movies.

No crew is present. It's just filmmaker and subject shooting themselves. There are moments of interviews, but the movie at first feels like found footage. Except, the found footage is digital video clips recorded by iPhones, Skype conversations, computer screen captures and PhotoShop sessions. Given a credit at the end, I'm led to believe that Krueckeberg wasn't even on set or he was able to distance himself, so that his two actors were his camera operators, much like the subjects in The War Tapes (2006).

Unlike Unfaithful, which is just about lust and desire, Krueckeberg's film is a more interesting analysis or dissection of gay culture, as it exists against the mainstream culture. It's also a great intersection of sex and art. At the center of the argument is the struggle of assimilation versus separatism. It's juxtaposed between two, almost polar opposites. Doc is a bit of a recluse. He's not anti-social but he's a bit reserved. He's virginal. He has a blog with YouTube videos of himself, but it's always from the safety of his room. He probably doesn't do the bar scene a lot.

Go is the reverse. Yet, what's lovely about Go is that he is not what one might expect. Being a go-go boy might bring certain expectations of who he is, but actually getting to know him is such a sweet surprise. Go has a great, well-sculpted, muscular form, but when asked what's the favorite part of his body, he says his brain.

Go is young but he's very smart. He's a true artist who patterns himself or draws inspiration from Andy Warhol. He and Doc even get into a great debate over Warhol's work. Krueckeberg is then able to put that work in a modern context for modern audiences, or at least younger audiences 50 years removed from Warhol's heyday in the 1960's. Krueckeberg clearly directs and edits sequences or montages that mimic some of Warhol's iconic short films, but in a way that provides insight into them.

It's after watching the movie that one discovers the debate about Warhol, the divisive interpretations from Doc and Go, might both be true at once. Instead of assimilation versus separatism, as either or, it might just be a hybrid of the two. We see remakes of Warhol's Eat, Sleep and Kiss, and there's a love and a beauty that is radically mundane.

Five Stars out of Five.
Not Rated but contains full-frontal, male nudity and gay sex.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 32 mins.