Gay Video Review	Gay Video Reviews Archive

That Boy
Rating: 4 Stars
Produced, edited, written, and directed by Peter Berlin. Photographed by Ignatio Rutkowski. Starring Peter Berlin, Arron Black, Walter Wright, Rickey Davis, Steven James, Philip Martin, Rock Action, Mars Mukluk, David Venice, Pristine Condition, Bill Bowers, and others.
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Peter Berlin, a.k.a. Armin Burian, was born poor in war-torn Germany in 1942. By the early '70s, he'd made his way to San Francisco where, determined to be noticed, he roamed the streets in self-created hippie-kink couture. The glamorous Euro-fag look he perfected became iconic. Sleek as a calla lily, he attracted Robert Mapplethorpe, who photographed him in 1977. A walking sexual cartoon in crotch-revealing skin-tight pants, he inspired Tom of Finland, who might have had to invent him if he hadn't already invented himself.

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Berlin appeared in only a handful of 8-millimeter porn loops, and two 16-millimeter features: Nights in Black Leather (1972), a collaboration with Richard Abel, and That Boy (1974), a 78-minute underground queer classic of his own devising. This DVD edition of That Boy comes with supplementary footage "from Peter's vault" and a funny, informative commentary track by Berlin and sex-culture critic John Karr.

The film is an erotic meditation on real and imaginative ways of seeing. Berlin calls his character Helmut, but he's playing Peter Berlin. Peering into a shard of mirror, he's Narcissus ready to drown in his own reflection. Strolling down Polk Street, he's barely conscious of the lust-quake he sends through the Cockette/radical-faerie alternative art scene. On Folsom he meets an ethereal young blind man (Arron Black) who interrupts his self-absorption. Narration shifts back and forth between Helmut and the boy. The three principal sex sequences-- campy, borderline soft-core, yet hypnotic-- are fantasies set in a photographer's studio, a gym, and a bar.

A grand-nephew of famed gay fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, Berlin had a gift for composition and an instinctive editorial finesse. He presented himself with such aplomb that his image has staked out a niche in popular culture. In 2001, Owen Wilson paid homage to Berlin in his role as runway model Hansel in Ben Stiller's fashion send-up Zoolander. More recently, Berlin has resurfaced as the subject of Jim Tushinski's That Man: Peter Berlin, a documentary now in circulation.