Bruce la Bruce directing a film playing a hustler, with a romance, and the porn industry background, I wasn't expecting a quality film but still one that could be sexy, interesting, and kind of fun. Unfortunately it was neither sexy or fun. I agree that the acting is seriously lacking but what I think this film needed most was some touches of humor. Hustler White takes itself too seriously and this more than anything undermines its success.

A campy crime/love story intersects with random vignettes from the lives of various hustlers on Santa Monica boulevard. The protagonist, a pretty and altogether amoral dumbster hustler, robs a hippy trick and steals his car, running over and maiming a skinhead in the process. A prissy writer comes to the city and becomes obsessed with the same hustler. They get together, talk about the history of hustling on the boulevard and end up snogging on the beach (after a near fatal jacuzzi accident & miraculous resurrection). The surrounding vignettes are more outré, with a singing cowboy saddling and riding a young stud, s&m mortician snuffing out an amputee and a white twink "raped" by half a dozen hung black men. All in a day's work seems to be the moral.

A postmodern plunge into some pretty disconnected lives, with references to Warhol, Baby Jane and Sunset Boulevard thrown in for good measure.

It's fairly obvious that the man who pretends to be a director Bruce La Bruce ought to stick to doing strictly porn. His pretensions to art wouldn't be taken seriously in a Film 101 class at NYU.

Performing for porn and acting are two entirely different skills and our director seems not to notice the difference or care. His performance as the effeminate writer is no homage to Truman Capote. If Truman were alive he'd sue.

In fact if the sisters of the late Eigil Vesti are alive I hope they sue this man. Naming one of your characters with the same name of the victim of a sensational gay homicide is not my idea of satire.

Back in my working days at the New York State Crime Victims Board, I got into the Norwegian Consulate to do the paperwork intake for a claim filed by one of the two sisters of Eigil Vesti. Eigil was a young and naive Norwegian kid who was picked up and killed for somebody's idea of kicks. Before his body was discovered with a black leather mask on his head, his picture was all over the Greenwich Village and Chelsea areas of Manhattan as a missing person for about three weeks.

I really fail to see the humor in using the name of the victim of one of the many GLBT homicide cases I did a claim for. He was a beloved younger brother to those two women from Norway whose first visit to the USA was to bring back his body for burial in their country. Having dealt with Eigil Vesti's family, I see no humor in defaming his memory in this disgusting manner.

The film was bad enough as it was, using Eigil Vesti's name was way beyond bad taste, it's despicable.