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Fred Halsted, The Sex Garage, 16mm on DVD, 1972
William E. Jones, Finished, 16mm, 1997
William E. Jones has crafted a remarkable art career around pornography. Emerging in the mid-90s on the indie scene with the documentary Massillon, Jones’ second feature, Finished follows the filmmaker’s obsession with Quebecois porn star, Alan Lambert. Finished is as much about a viewer’s heated voyeurism as it is an account of the troubled actor - who committed public suicide in a misguided act of political defiance. After the film’s release, Jones took to working with historic porn footage, organizing massive archives for various collectors and institutions.
He emerged with a new subject: Fred Halsted, a 70s porntrepreneur who opened Halstead’s, a stand-and-fuck bar in Silverlake, ran the magazine Package, and directed experimental sex films like LA Plays Itself, A Night At Halstead’s and the short, The Sex Garage. Dirty Looks brings together these obsessions.