Watching Boys in the Sand

Last night I watched the legendary 1971 feature length gay porn film Boys in the Sand with a running commentary by the director Wakefield Poole. I had never seen the film. I first became aware of it in the early ‘80s when HBO aired a documentary on homosexuality. Given the heavy-handed tone of the documentary, you might have thought gays were an alien species secretly living in our midst. One of the gay men featured had a copy of Boys in the Sand, and the doc showed a brief clip of Casey Donovan running nude out of the water. After all these years, I finally understand the context.

Poole’s goal was to display gay sex as something beautiful and natural. Even though Poole was an amateur filmmaker, and the film has low production value, I think he succeeded wonderfully. The Fire Island locations were gorgeous, and the actors were stunning and enthusiastic. According to Poole, he used a handheld camera, which allowed him to move around the actors. So he merely set up the scenes and allowed the actors to do what they wanted to do with one another with minimal direction from him. The result was it didn’t feel like you were watching a scripted film when the sex was taking place. It was as if you were there in the bushes spying on these guys.