BOY CULTURE

★★★

FROM FILM TO MINI-SERIES

MARDI GRAS FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW
By Chris dos Santos
18th February 2022

Sex work is often only discussed on a legal level, but rarely do we get an insight into those who work in the industry. The 2007 film 'Boy Culture', based on the novel of the same name, dove into the world of a gay male escort. Now, years later, X is back - in series form.

'Boy Culture' follows X (Derek Magyar, TV's 'NCIS' and 'Days of Our Lives') who lives with his ex-boyfriend, Andrew (Darryl Stephens, TV's 'Noah's Arc'). Getting back onto the escort scene, he gets help from Chayce (Jason Caceres, Disney+'s 'Pam & Tommy' , Netflix's 'Insatiable'), a successful and much younger escort-for-hire who pimps out X and helps to bring him into the digital age.

'BOY CULTURE' TRAILER

The series takes the form of six 10- to 15-minute episodes, each following X with a different client while also interjecting X's personal life.

As someone who has never seen the film, this series does a good job of not alienating those who haven't. Being a series, it's extremely engaging with its bite-size episodes, and each having different walks of life as its focus. It made for a lot of interesting conversations from race to age and lesbians.

It would work best watching the episodes individually when you have 10 minutes to kill as opposed to watching the six episodes as one continuous feature.

The series was crowdfunded back in 2018 by fans, and you can tell that it's a little bit lower budget - and as it's being packaged as a film, it does further cheapen its impact. It would work best watching the episodes individually when you have 10 minutes to kill as opposed to watching the six episodes as one continuous feature.

'Boy Culture' continues from its 2007 film and updates it in the modern age, with its mini-episodes offering up a lot of great conversation starters. Still, when packaged as a film, it doesn't hold the same impact as its six episodes, making it engaging to watch as a time-killer.

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