Director – Robert Nathan, Screenplay – Lukas Kendall & Robert Nathan, Producer – Jim Wynorski, Photography – Clay Westervelt, Visual Effects – Inkogneato EFX. Production Company – Vineyard Haven LLC.
Don McManus (Mike), Jay Paulson (Dave), Betsy Rue (Ashley Saint), Chris Wylde (Kris), Catherine Annette (Casey), Lanny Joon (Nico), Lee Kholafi (Josh), Cllint Brink (Devin), Deborah Zoe (Suzanne)
Mike runs several porn websites, including Lucky Bastard based around the gimmick where a fan is selected to have sex on camera with a porn star and fulfill their fantasy. Mike persuades Ashley Saint, one of his most popular performers, to appear in one of the Lucky Bastard videos. From the applicants, they select the likeable seeming Dave. However, as soon as he arrives in Los Angeles, Dave proves clueless about what he is meant to do and irritates Ashley. As the entire shoot goes sideways due to Dave’s naivety and premature ejaculation problems, Dave’s resentment over his handling builds to a snapping point.
Lucky Bastard has been the sole directorial outing so far for Robert Nathan, mostly known as a producer on tv’s Law and Order (1990- ). The film is produced by low-budget director Jim Wynorski, who has made a good deal of softcore material.
The film ran into immediate problems when it was due to be released. It was slapped with an NC17 rating by the MPAA whereupon the producers found they were shut out of just about every type of distribution. The producers have a detailed account of what happened here in an article at Film School Graduates. However, in 2023, Lucky Bastard found a new audience after being rereleased on Amazon Prime.
I was intrigued to see just what it took to earn an NC-17 rating. There is plentiful nudity – mostly from Betsy Rue, although surprisingly coyly, all male appendages have been digitally blurred out. This is neither here nor there – the film doesn’t go to an extreme in this regard – we never see penetration shots or anything below the waist, for instance. More so, what one suspect the MPAA reacted to was the fairly out there opening scene with Betsy Rue walking on the filming of a rape video where she reacts to seeing a girl being sexually assaulted and insists on dragging her off before she herself is grabbed and attacked, only for a pullback to reveal that this is a set-up for an actual porn shoot for a rape video where all parties were consenting and being paid. It’s a fairly out there opening and you suspect that without this scene Lucky Bastard might have passed through unscathed.
I liked the sense of the way that the film plays with the Found Footage format. That said, noting here is quite as ingenious as American Porn Star Killer (2007), a different type of film centered around the making of a porn film. This was also in the Found Footage format and pushed an envelope in a major way ie. the audience was made to participate in watching a porn film at the same time as knowing the girl participant was to be killed. Lucky Bastard has more traditional camera set-ups and with actors clearly playing roles.
Certainly, all of the actors carve out interesting roles and give solid performances. In particular, Don McManus’s Mike is a character that is a selfish, manipulative jerk but also one of the most likeable characters in the film. Equally Jay Paulson’s Dave is not a psycho, he’s just an ordinary guy who doesn’t get the artifice of the porn world – calling the girl by her real name, asking her on a date – and it is saddening to see the way he is constantly dismissed, handed patronising excuses until everything reaches a snapping point. That the film is well constructed and the characters and their world believably put together makes the climactic snapping point grim and all the more believable.
Trailer here