We take a break from porn today to recommend Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (now in theatres in the US; In Italy this coming February): achingly beautiful. Breathtaking.

But also to take a step back and reflect on the sad state of porn these days. You’ll find more erotic tension –and infinitely more meaningful– in “Call Me By Your Name” than in most porn schlock out there (formulaic scenes, reality crap, bareback hydraulics, silly parodies and offensive gimmicks). What happened to the art form –and the filmmakers– that once explored the human condition? That once knew how to build characters’ arcs and to shape our sexual psyche? What is porn today, what it used to be and what should it be?  Time to re-discover the pioneers: Tom DeSimone, Steve Scott, the early Joe Gage… Time to say no to piracy and the cancer of  ‘corporate’ porn (you all know whom and what I mean)

Below yesterday night’s screening in Hollywood, with director Luca Guadagnino and young Timothee Chalamet