In interviews, Warhol famously stated that “five beautiful boys” performed the act in the film. If you were gay and metropolitan in the ’60s, you would have likely known that Warhol “went to your church,” so to speak. Gidal notes that the audience was completely silent, curious, and respectful. Instead, Warhol shows us a handsome man getting his dick sucked: his head lolls around, he stares in the the distance as one does when given to pleasure, and finally he smokes a cigarette. You never see cock, or any of the act itself. Shown as an opener to a weekly art house film in New York City, Warhol’s black and white film is 36 minutes of a camera framing the face of a man receiving a blow job, presumably beneath the frame. In his book Andy Warhol: Blow Job, Peter Gidal writes about seeing the film in theaters as a college freshman.
