No Closets Necessary: “Seven Minutes In Heaven 3”

"I really like to be smacked around," says Drew Deveaux in Courtney Trouble's clothing-optional queer houseparty "Seven Minutes in Heaven 3." "But I also like to smack back."

Seven Minutes in Heaven 3: Fuck Yeah!

Studio: Real Queer Productions/Good Vibrations
Director: Courtney Trouble
Starring: Drew Deveaux, Rusty Nails, Casey Grey, Chastity Boner, Red Jackhammer, Cyd Loverboy, Sealu Sideshow

Review by: Gram Ponante

One of the many spontaneous and heartwarming moments captured in this daylong Spin the Bottle session is when Deveaux and a personage named Cyd Loverboy team up. Both have been taking control of their respective partners throughout the movie, but now Fate has placed them together. They clash like great white birds with interesting haircuts and, in an instance of pure inspiration, Deveaux repeatedly slaps Loverboy with some underpants.

As in her two previous "Heaven"ly outings (though her cast is already out), Trouble's m.o. in this one involves inviting to a San Francisco playspace an array of try-curious free-thinkers with varying body types to see what they get up to.

And, since we are in San Francisco, some have an agenda. Others, like the delightful Chastity Boner, are more casual.

"I'm looking forward to being a human Fuckburger today," she says.

Confessional gonzo movies like this one remind the viewer what a debt porn owes to reality television. MTV's "The Real World" has always been vaguely pornographic, so it's interesting to watch that roving, rotating film stock style applied to porn.

But, unlike "The Real World," "Heaven" hasn't been tweaked and edited to within an inch of its life, and we see real people under the tattoos and piercings; people we'd actually like to meet but for their underpants-slapping. They tell each other what they want (and what they don't want), and then go about delivering it.

As with any porn, I liked some of these bodies-and what the performers did with them-better than others. But I respected that neither the performers nor the format of the movie played favorites. For this reason, things I wouldn't normally have found sexy became so simply because everyone seemed to be having such a great time.

There are plenty of scenes in this movie that will appeal to a straight porn audience. Director Trouble told me recently that she didn't want to err so much on the Bay Area sexual paradigm that she excluded body types more familiar to "commercial" porn fans.

"But those shouldn't be the only things people see," she said.

What this and other queer porn movies do is suggest that the right attitude needs to be taken into account as a sexual turn-on, and I think that's great. Even if attitude doesn't work every time, it's way more believable than the straight porn trope of the Pizza Guy.

· Good Vibes (goodvibes.com)
· Buy "Seven Minutes in Heaven 3" (goodvibes.com)