The legendary director Joe Gage, one of the pioneers of gay pornography during the '70s, has at last come out of his self-imposed retirement to make his first film in nearly a quarter of a century. It's called Tulsa County Line, and it promises to be every bit as much a blockbuster as his classics, Kansas City Trucking Co., El Paso Wrecking Corp., L.A. Tool and Die and Heatstroke. He has not lost his touch.
Like all of Gage's masterworks, this new production focuses on the initiation of a young innocent into the world of man-man sex. Tulsa County Line views a day in the life of two park rangers, the seasoned veteran (Jason Branch) and the newbie (Jake Armstrong). As in his earlier films, Gage wraps his production in shots of the lonely landscape and of the highways that take the youth on his journey to sexual discovery. Here, each lap of the trek is announced by an overlay indicating the time of day, and the first of these reads 8:45 a.m. when Branch announces that he needs to hit a public rest stop along the highway. Already a sexual tension is in the air, and the viewer senses in the newcomer an inordinate uneasiness about something as ordinary as a pit stop.
Armstrong waits in the car; Branch ambles inside. He is at the urinal when one of the county linemen (Alex Carrington) saunters in. They eye each other; Branch shows hard but leaves before anything happens. The image of his erection, however, prompts Carrington to a heated beatoff session that is soon shared with a traveling salesman (Chad Donovan). Although they never touch and not a word is spoken, the two definitely connect, performing for each other and flaunting their big dicks - which happen to be two of the biggest in the history of adult films. This classic danger scene of anonymous, public sex simply crackles.
At 11:33, the two rangers drive past a house where a delivery man (Logan Reed) is dropping off a package. The inhabitants of the house (Matt Sizemore and Nino Bacci) have been awaiting the delivery - it is a videocam - and the subsequent scene in which the messenger is slowly seduced into undressing and performing for the camera is a primer in how to bring an archetypal fantasy to life. While host Sizemore videos Reed, Bacci services him orally and bottoms for him. All three spray messy loads. The sequence is greatly enhanced by the sparse dialogue ("You got a problem with a guy telling you you have a nice chest?") and the inventive videography by Hue Wilde.
At 11:57, the two rangers stop to chat with a road worker (Mark Reed) who is on the way to the doctor, and his physical exam with the white-coated physician (Clint Cooper) constitutes the next sex scene. Underneath the agitated shadows of an overhead fan, Reed exhibits a palpable sexual tension, and when Cooper slips into latex gloves for the proctological examination, it is only moments before the patient is sporting a rock-hard erection - and another primal fantasy is brought to life. Cooper's ostensible study of the erection soon segues into a blowjob that both terrifies and delights Reed. And when Cooper casually remarks, "I'm hard, too - want to feel it?," Reed soon is returning the favor. Cooper proves to be a mean face-fucker, but when he shifts to a pile-driving ass-fuck, the sequence soars to a pair of notable ejaculations.
At 1:30 p.m., the car with the two rangers passes a farmhouse inside which a handsome brunet (Duncan Frost) is starting to have Internet sex at his camera-rigged computer with a redheaded stranger (Daddy Joe) he has just met. The sequence reminds us that in the days since Kansas City Trucking Co., modern technology has provided horny men all over the world new ways to have absolutely impersonal sex. The temperature rises when Frost's cousin (Rocky) joins him at the computer and an anonymous helping hand starts to service Daddy Joe on his side of the screen. The two cousins soon go down on each other in this high-tech variation on how to get your rocks off. It is a fascinating study in pure lust without an iota of emotion involved.
At 3:59, the rangers drive past a typical suburban home in which three juicy teenagers (Jeremy Jordan, Derrick Mills and Ethan Richards) are spending the afternoon jacking off and checking each other out. The sexual tension begins to build, but a knock at the door shatters it, and soon the intruder (Chad Johnson), father of a friend of theirs, has joined them, assessed the situation and urged them to proceed by hauling out his own major meat. Within moments, director Gage had made another improbable sex dream absolutely real. Johnson rims and sucks each of the boys and fucks Jordan, who willingly gives up his cherry in a multipositioned, energetically performed, kinetically lensed fuck. And the sequence is perfectly capped by the simultaneous money shots of Mills and Richards, their streams of adolescent spooge crossing like comets high in the air.
At 5:05, Branch pulls into a dilapidated garage, where he tells Armstrong, "I know you've been looking at me. Is this what you want to see?" He pulls out his rockhard erection, works it and encourages the naif (in hypnotically seductive tones) to do the same. The dusty air is thick with sexual tension as they explore each other's cock, and in time, Branch gives the kid a blowjob to remember, then jerks him to a spectacular climax. Armstrong's character is shattered by the experience, dumbstruck, confused and guilty.
When dusk begins to fall, Branch informs his partner that they have to make "one more stop" and pulls up at another suburban home. Inside, a group of superbutch, superhorny men (Carrington, Jack Ryan, Jeremy Tucker, Casey Williams and Sergio Real) are sitting around watching the basketball game. The scene that follows harkens back to the bunkhouse finale of Kansas City Trucking Co. When Armstrong asks, "What is this?" Branch replies, "Anything you want" As each of the men strips and begins to work his erection, Armstrong, almost in a trance, follows suit. Among the highlights: Branch giving Jeremy Tucker a handjob to remember, the addition of the young son of the house (Christian Owens) in his pajamas, Branch and Armstrong (like pigs at a trough) sucking Ryan and Carrington, Armstrong nervously putting on a rubber for his initiation into anal sex, he and Branch taking turns invading Ryan's upended ass and, finally, the two partners in a one-on-one all-oral session while the rest of the group sprays their loads.
As always, Gage's casting of macho, stubble-bearded men and of the prototypical role of the innocent youth (played in his previous films by such stars as Steve Boyd, Will Seagers and Roy Garrett) is right on the mark. The handsome Armstrong, who has too often wandered through his roles seemingly with an eye on the clock and his paycheck, here immerses himself in the role and gives the performance of his life. In the part of his guide (the Richard Locke role), the gifted Jason Branch matches him every step of the way, and both should be in the running for Best Actor when awards time comes around. They work together so well, both sexually and dramatically, that it is difficult to say where one electrifying performance ends and the other begins.
Still rooted in the '70s sensibility that "If it feels good, do it," Gage again gives us a world that is not peopled by self-identified homosexuals so much as by pansexual animals enjoying the pleasures of man-to-man sex. In addition to his sense of characterization, his gift for building sexual tension to almost excruciating limits and his superb visual eye, Gage's greatest asset may well be his belief that (under the right circumstances) any man can be had. For the gay male, the concept is both arousing and comforting. Watching park rangers, linemen, traveling salesmen, delivery men, doctors, road workers and family men have sex with each other encourages us to believe that the straight friends we've always wanted might someday come around. Certainly, this is true throughout Tulsa County Line, which is another major candidate for Picture of the Year.
- Jerry Douglas
