Yankee go home
AN AMERICAN IN PRAGUE
USA, 1997
Director: George Duroy
Stars: Chance, Johan Paulik, Karl Tenner, Gerard Kilian, Sergei Grigoriev
Available on DVD - order here
An American In Prague, a tacky mockumentary often promoted as one of the best selling gay porn films of all time, was a great disappointment for me. In the movie, headline star Chance is miscast as a well-hung American boy who flies to Prague to audition for Bel Ami boss George Duroy. Chance would be miscast in anything. He isn’t particularly attractive and comes across as a completely obnoxious gay ghetto twink-whore and so he can’t carry off the role of likeable, cum-filled frat boy let loose on the Continent. Also, the film’s Slavic performers -despite their Statue Of David physiques - have all the sexual charge of a stale glass of Pilsner.
Johan Paulik acts as Chance’s host and tour guide, but of course we see little of stunning Prague beyond a few generic backdrop shots and instead are trawled through one automata-acted sex scene after the other. Paulik takes Chance to a Prague swimming pool, where well-built Czech guys apparently cruise each other for sex. Paulik’s heavily-accented voiceover narration is meant to be sexy but it bores us to death with cheesy statements such as his observation that regular neighbourhood eventsare as “reliable as my morning erection” and so on. One of his neighbours likes to bring guys back to the apartment block and fuck them on the stairs. “He’s an exhibitionist, I’m a voyeur - we make for perfect neighbours” say Paulik, with a rock-chewing monotone broken English that makes Martina Navratilova sound like Glenda Jackson.
Later, Chance is treated to some low-rent Prague gay nightlife, which looks even more wretched and shit-boring than its well-financed Western counterpart.
If the actors of An American In Prague looked like well-fed, sporty freshmen who played a bit of rugby, wore dirty socks and ate what their mothers cooked for them, then the film may have worked. But they don’t. The problem with the guys here - especially Chance - is that they look like teen runaways who’ve been vacuumed up by porn producers or pimps and shoved into a porn flick after they’ve been processed through the gym and the solarium. They look too battle-hardened f
or their age, and too gay, and their mechanically over-polished performances and hungry-for-porn-stardom camera charisma ruins any potential frat-boy effect.
The two-disc collector’s edition copy I watched contains many telling moments. Chance, performing some “outakes” with Ion Davidov snappily asks the director, “what do you need, so I can finish, so I can leave”. It’s meant, I guess, to be bratty-sexy but all I see is a streetwise hustler type who knows the ropes a little too well and who’s jaded way before his time. Amateur porn, such as that of Sean Cody, with its tangible air of sporty guys cheerily whacking off for a handful of hundreds, is far hotter.
If I bumped into a guy like Chance while I was backpacking across Europe, I’d steer a wide berth around him and his nine inch cock as he looks and acts like he’s fallen off the caboose of a gay porn travelling circus. Facially, he looks like Clair Danes, and his slick gay subculture acrobatics are a complete turn off. The scene where he performs a gyrating strip-tease for Paulik made me and my viewing partner laugh out loud. For contrast, look to the enduring popularity of earthy Lukas Ridgeston, the chunky stunner who plays it for all it’s worth on camera, but somehow always looks like he’d be happiest fixing his car on a hot sunny day.
Crucially, the sex is lame. Hairless, pneumatic bodies and rhythmic pumping of cocks into mouths or buttholes produces an almost animatronic effect, especially with the blank stares and vacant looks on offer by all and sundry.
This could be a motto for the whole film, which was too over-produced, self-referential and deliberate to work for me. A porn star needs to have more than just a big dick. Big dicks aren’t that uncommon, after all, and if they’re topped with a not especially hot face or body, and a total turn-off personality, then the whole effect is discounted.
The grainy charms of Chance:
This is one of the worse reviews ever. It reads like some bitchy diatribe written by someone who is trying to prove that he is a critic/writer. This review is written as if this movie just came out yesterday, while failing to acknowledge or perhaps even recognize just how significant this movie was back in 1997. Comparing a late 90’s porn flick to the contemporary internet-based Sean Cody is, well, dumb. And who the hell needs to read anything from yet another self-loathing fag who seems to be turned off by overt gayness, but finds the “…tangible air of straight guys” to be “far hotter.” Pathetic.
Mark, I just love your prose…:) it does make me want to see the film though, cause your text is so insightful.
John: Thanks for your feedback. I guess the best way to counter someone’s “bitchy diatribe” is to fire off one of your own!
Hi there Mark, I totally agree with your review of An American in Prague. Chance comes across to me as a “two bit hustler” on his way OUT. In one scene where before the actual filming Marty Stevens (camera) walks into his room to wake him to get ready for the shoot Chance gives him a nasty look. I could go on.
Belami is a quality company and stars like the early work of Martin Valko and more recently Tim Hamilon can do no wrong. Among my favorite Belami’s are George Duroy’s -Greek Hoilday.
I have to agree 100% with John. Nicely put.
Yeh I made the mistake in buying that flick when it first came out. And while I think Chance is somewhat hot given his defined pretty body, nice cock, and a hot ass that never gets used, this flick flopped. Chance needed to bottom. But time ran out and his image which was only in the middle as hot porn boys go, is long gone.
Agreed! Long have I argued that Chance is revolting. There’s a reason that he was never used again. There is the one seen with the boy go-go dancer that is well done. That boy’s butt is magnificent and the scene moves along well. But Chance is a clod. There is no reason for his arrogant disdaining aloofness. He is a poor example of “An American in Prague.”
I have this to say. I bought the film when it first came out, and even though I personally did like chance he is not the reason i bought the film. I have and still do love Bel Ami because of the models they pick. Do i think it was the best movie ever…no. Do i think it was as bad as Mark…no
and to me mark sounds like someone who is bitter and jealous of chance for some reason. to attack the man verbally they way he did seems personal. like chance rejected him and this was his way of getting back at him
@Dante: Nah, just thought he was unsexy and acted like an unlikeable little cunt.