On March 12 on Vice TV's Sex Before The Internet, sexual stylist Phil Tarley will be interviewed in an episode about legendary gay porn directors. Sex Before The Internet explores a world before Pornhub and Onlyfans, analog-style! Tarley is the only fellow of the American Film Institute ever inducted into the Gay Porn Hall of Fame as producer-director Phil St. John, his nom de porn. "I’ve directed hundreds of men having sex, choreographing them for moving cameras, like a pas deux or pas de trois. " In Below The Belt (1986), starring Chad Douglas, St.John staged the first double penetration ever photographed in gay porn. DP's went on to be adapted into the sexual practice and fantasy life of almost every gay man in America. Double penetration became St. John's leitmotif culminating in his "gay porn Oscar" for Double Delights.
In the early 90s, the times swirled with currents of unique queer cultural and political change. Tarley grabbed his camera and traveled around the country, documenting the queerest subcultures he could find. He used that footage to make, The Year of The Queer, which debuted at the American Film Institute Film Festival in 1992. Tarley is currently editing a feature-length political and cultural documentary of those wild times of earthshaking queer changes in our society. Somewhat of a revolutionary, Tarley/St. John has been an in-your-face- take no prisoners-- street activist his entire life. He's been on the frontlines shooting video, performing in guerilla theater, rioting, protesting, being arrested and jailed in actions with ACTUP, Queer Nation, The Gay Liberation Front, Students For a Democratic Society (SDS), and back in the day, The Cockettes and The Angels of Light, when Tarley was dragged-up and drugged up enough to get on stage.
"For me, politics, sex, travel, and adventure continue to be inseparable. Perhaps the wildest porn-making experience of my life was when I was in Puerto Rico shooting two tropical dick movies back-to-back in the jungles near San Juan. I couldn’t wait to write it up as a story. I feel that now, the times are right to take my “novella” Diary of A Puerto Rican Porno and make it into a feature film. "
March 23 & March 24: New Orleans
Phil Tarley will be reading from his porno diary and from his just-completed autobiography at the Tennessee Williams, Saints, and Sinners Literary Festival at The Hotel Monteleone, in the Royal Dee Room, on March 23 at 10 AM and on March 24 at 1 PM.
Saints and Sinners, a program of the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, features LGBTQ+ writers, publishers, small presses, booksellers, promoters, and other literary professionals creating a community and network for the LGBTQ+ literary world.
Tarley/St. John is available for on-camera, phone, or print interviews. Contact him via email.
