College Boys Live (2009)

As Good As It Gets

A Major Disappointment

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This film won the Emerging Talent Award at Outfest in 2009. It is a very up-close look at a "voyeur site", a web cam house, that is occupied by 6 young gay guys in Orlando, Florida. The site is called "College Boys Live", it is all real, it's a pure doc. You get to know the guys who choose to move into the web cam house and what has led them there.If you are a fan of sub-culture documentaries, especially about the sex biz, this one is definitely for you. It gives you full access to how sites like this work, and it's not at all what you'd expect. The group of "boys" form a kind of dis-functional, but often hilarious family...A group of survivors from hard-scrabble lives, these guys seem straight out of Oliver Twist, but in thongs.The Brit who runs the house and a stalker viewer are fascinating characters...not to mention the Home Owners Association law-suite that is trying to kick them from the neighborhood. You can't write this stuff, only in America... this is like John Waters does 'Waiting for Guffman' al la Jersey Shore....enjoy...!

Saw this at a small film festival showing (in Sydney) recently, and it really surprised me. The title and subject matter made me think it'd be on the cheap and salacious side. But in fact there's not much here in the way of gratuitous sex or nudity. Instead, it's a frank picture of a group of young gay men running a site showing constant streaming pics from the many cameras in their home - and then really delving into their lives. I think the folks who directed & edited this film did a great job, bringing the human stories out. The doco was shot over an extended period of time, and what it ends up showing is a very clear picture of why the various guys chose to agree to be a part of the unusual set-up, and then following what comes next. Bickering about money, or boyfriends - drunken fights and love spats and problems with the neighbours - stories from these kid's past, some of whom have had a rough time of it. Like any good reality show, you'll end up sympathising with or getting annoyed at certain personalities, the wild ones the quiet ones and the odd ones, wondering what will happen next with each kid. And the interesting side of it is - is that watching a doco like this, or watching Big Brother or The Real World, or watching 'reality porn' - all have a related voyeuristic appeal. People are attracted to watching other people's lives, and sometimes to being watched (though the financial incentive may be the main factor for most of the guys here), and it can be quite liberating for people who would otherwise feel isolated (the way a gay kid in a small town might feel), but we all have different limits about when things have gone too far. At times it's funny and dramatic and sad, and it's fairly unusual to see a film depicting a bunch of young gay guys so genuinely, letting them speak for themselves. They allow themselves to be filmed (for their website, and for this doco) in a way most of us would hate, but the rest of their lives are full of human drama the same as any of us. Recommended!