Male Genitalia Uncovered, Literally and Figuratively, in Revealing Documentary

Private Dicks: Men Exposed (1999)
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Starring: Alan Abel, Jonah Falcon
Director: Thom Powers, Meema Spadola

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 55 minutes
Distributor: First Run Features Home Video DVD Extras: Interviews with the directors and with prankster Alan Abel.
 

How do men feel about their genitals? You might learn more than you ever wanted to know about the subject in Private Dicks: Men Exposed, a revealing documentary in which 25 guys representing every age, ethnicity and walk of life not only get naked, but also answer a variety of very personal questions about their penises.

This nude rainbow revue includes a pre-op transsexual (from male to female) with breasts, as well as a post-op transsexual (from female to male) with a member fashioned out of a clitoris. There’s a paraplegic who admits to still having sexual urges although he hasn’t had any feeling below the waist since the age of 17. He admits to being grateful that he lost his virginity three weeks before his car accident, so he at least knows exactly what he’s missing.

Among the others, there’s an attorney, a writer, a masseur, a grad student, a professional prankster, a med student with testicular cancer, and over-endowed African-American porn star, Lex Steele. Directors Thom Powers and Meema Spadola conducted an interview with each of their exhibitionist subjects, asking when they lost their virginity (average between 16 and 17), their size erect (average between 5 and 6 inches), whether they masturbate

(9 out of 10), their favorite slang word (dick, pecker, prick , putz, pud and schlong), whether they’ve ever experienced erectile dysfunction (some yes, some no), and whether they think size matters to women (ditto).

Of course, they need not ask who’s circumcised, but they do inquire about STDs, and get some fairly honest answers about herpes, syphilis and AIDS.

Several of the participants are homosexual, and don't hold back in discussing the gay arts, such as the social etiquette involved in meeting a mate in a public men’s room.

The directors were clever enough to contrast all this graphic present-day content intermittently with some tame file footage from stock Sexual Education films which probably passed as state-of-the-art instruction back in the in Fifties. For these antiseptic interludes are humorous, amusing, and a welcome reminder of how far we’ve come from the days of learning about the birds and the bees in clinical presentations by a nervous nerd in a white lab coat standing in front of a blackboard with a pointer.

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