Leather Narcissus. 1967. USA. Directed by Avery Willard. 28 min. 16mm. Silent
Girls Can’t Help It. 1986. USA. Directed by Uzi Parnes. 10 min. Digital
Truck It. 1973. USA. Directed by Fred Halsted. 45 min. Digital
Program run time: 83 min
Renaissance man Avery Willard follows aggressive narcissism in the queer community to its logical conclusion in Leather Narcissus, in which a head-to-toe-clad leatherman parades around New York and becomes trapped in a Times Square bazaar with a particularly seductive motorbike and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The leatherman then emulates his namesake Greek myth by shagging himself, thanks to Willard’s glorious optical-printing trickery. In Girls Can’t Help It!, from Uzi Parnes’s “Maneater Trilogy,” a male voyeur suffers emasculating consequences when he intrudes on an encounter between two streetwise women. Elizabeth Purchell discovered Fred Halsted’s *Truck It*—long thought to be lost—and fragmentarily resurrected it via 8mm reduction loops and a VHS rip. The plot, if one could call it that, focuses on a randy trucker who cruises the streets of LA, which is always the most important character in any Halsted film. Included upon the release of MoMA’s restorations of L.A. Plays Itself, The Sex Garage, and Sextool, Truck It is a missing link in the reconstruction of Halsted’s oeuvre, from his genre-defying early porn work to his later career, which included Package magazine, the Silver Lake sex club mononymously known as Halsted’s, and its filmic offspring (also believed to be lost) A Night at Halsted’s.