L.A. Plays Itself/Boys in the Sand

A Queer Film Classic on two groundbreaking gay arthouse porn films from 1972, both examples of the growing liberalization of social attitudes toward sex and homosexuality in post-Stonewall America. Where Fred Halsted's "Boys in the Sand" is a frothy romp at a gay beach resort community, Wakefield Poole's "L.A. Plays Itself" is a dark treatise on violence and urban squalor. Both films represent particular, polarizing moments in the early history of the gay movement. Cindy Patton is a longtime activist and scholar. She is currently professor of sociology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.