Fred Halsted

Not to be confused with Fred Halstead.
Fred Halsted
Born
Fred Charles Halsted

(1941-07-17)July 17, 1941
Long Beach, California, U.S.
DiedMay 9, 1989(1989-05-09) (aged 47)
Dana Point, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Gay pornographic film director, actor, escort, publisher, sex club owner

Fred Charles Halsted (July 20, 1941 – May 9, 1989) was an American gay pornographic film director, actor, escort, publisher, and sex club owner. His films Sex Garage and L.A. Plays Itself are the only gay pornographic movies in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, where they were screened before a capacity audience on April 23, 1974.[1][2] A screening of L.A. Plays Itself was sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on February 28, 2013,[3] and another took place on December 16, 2011, at the Los Angeles art gallery Human Resources.[4] His films have also been shown the Netherlands Film Museum and in competition at The Deauville Film Festival.[5]

"Halsted more or less created the world of gay sexual art and experimentation. He then watched it, and himself, be destroyed by AIDS, a sanitizing of gay sexual tastes and the power of addiction."[6]

Halsted was a sex radical. He believed that the erotic is transgressive and sacramental, that it is inherently violent and involves acts of violation. "Sex is not 'coming,' that is superficial sex," he once explained. "Mine is personal cinema. I don't fuck to get my rocks off. In the best scenes I've ever had, I haven't come. I am not interesting in coming. … I am interested in getting my head off, my emotions off."[7]

  1. ^ "Sound Recordings of Museum-Related Events in The Museum of Modern Art" Archived 2015-01-10 at the Wayback Machine, consulted 11/21/1974.
  2. ^ William E. Jones, Halsted Plays Himself, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e) (distributed by The MIT Press), 2011, ISBN 9781584351078, pp. 13 & 55. An interview of Jones in which the book is referred to may be found at Bradford Nordeel, "William E. Jones on Finished", Slant Magazine, February 22, 2011, http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/william-e-jones-on-finished Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved July 20, 2015.
  3. ^ [1] Archived 2015-01-06 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 11/21/2014.
  4. ^ Megal Sallabedra, L.A. Weekly, December 16, 2011, "Fred Halsted's Experimental Porn L.A. Plays Itself: Even Dalí Thought It Was Freaky" Archived 2015-01-04 at the Wayback Machine, consulted 1/6/2015.
  5. ^ Statement on the box cover of Pieces of Eight, reproduced in Jones, p. 102.
  6. ^ Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality, Beacon Press, 2004, ISBN 080707957X, p. 58.
  7. ^ Jeffrey Escoffier, review of William A. Jones, Halsted Plays Himself, Lambdaliterary, December 18, 2011, http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/12/18/halsted-plays-himself-by-william-e-jones/#sthash.6IgzHTxu.dpuf Archived 2015-01-21 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 1/20/2015.