Backyard Movie

I saw Backyard Movie on a late night Australian TV show devoted to short films ("Eat Carpet") in the early 1990s. It was an astonishing experience because I had never seen such explicit homoerotic content on TV before. I was a 17 year old latent homo, so it was a totally welcomed experience.

Directed by photographer / film-maker Bruce Weber, Backyard Movie blends Super 8 home movie footage, music, on-screen text describing formative sexual experiences of the director, and black and white footage of a gorgeous nude model jumping up and down on a trampoline. It all sounds arty, perhaps pretentious. Weber captured a similar homoerotic surface appeal in the music clip he directed for the Pet Shop Boy, "Being Boring".

I haven't seen Backyard Movie in years so my memory of it has been transformed into a somewhat romantic memory, much like the ones described by Weber in the on-screen text. All I really remember was how the experience was a scopic treat; visual pleasure for a 17 year old, um, latent homo.