My verdict on the so-called 'Jimi Hendrix Sex Tape,' in case you're interested

Hendrix by Pennebaker, Jimi Plays Monterey, The Criterion Collection

Short version, in case you're not interested in the squalid details:

Boy, that guy is so not Jimi Hendrix that it's almost funny.

Long version with squalid details after the jump.

So, no, I did not go out and buy VIvid Video's Jimi Hendrix: The Sex Tape, because, believe it or not, there are some things I actually won't do. Nor did I acquire it via promotional channels. No, I happened to view the thing more or less by accident.

An aspiring actor/moviemaker buddy of mine works at what was one of the very first DVD stores to open on Times Square, a joint that's turned somewhat more peep-showish over the years and is probably gonna fall to the wrecking ball some time this summer, and yesterday afternoon I popped in to say hello just as a colleague of his was cuing up the disc for viewing on the TV directly opposite the counter, between the New Release and Blu-Ray display cases. "What is this, a documentary?" said colleague complained, as a montage of shots of undressed hippies at public be-ins and whatnot flashed by. "I'm sure it is," I said. "They're providing welcome, much needed context for the spectacle that follows." I moved over to the Blu-Ray display case. "Damn," I'm thinking, "I can't believe these guys got Butch Cassidy and Master and Commander before I did..."

"Who are these women?" my buddy asked as famed ex-groupie Pamela DesBarres and aptly-named-plaster-caster-of-rock-star-penises Cynthia Plaster Caster turned up to give testimonials on the authenticity of what we were about to see. Being old, I was able to explain, and I also expressed my regret that two onetime icons of free love and let-it-all-hang-out were now reduced to shilling for pornographers. Was it inevitable, I wondered. Strange days...

"Is there a problem?" a Lou-Gossett-Jr.-looking dude standing at the counter asked my friend's colleague. This guy thought the fellow was staring daggers at him when in fact he was just, well, ignoring him—looking over his shoulder at the TV. Things got a little tense for a minute. It got sorted out, Lou Gossett Jr. got shown where the martial art DVD display case was, and there was unhindered viewing in the land.

Then, the main event, a short 8mm film—what they used to call a "loop" in the business—follows. With the harsh overlighting lypical of such product, we see two white women and a young black man in a nondescript bedroom. Right off the bat the lighting's a problem—hippies never liked things too bright. Electric Ladyland, my friends, is a place with a lot of gauzy curtains and candlelight.

But never mind, the point is, the minute I saw the guy—who is first portrayed lying on his back—it was an automatic that's-not-him moment. The fellow looked like a Hendrix impersonator, and a bad one at that. The face was doughier than Hendrix's—zero definition around the chin. I understand that some observers are trying to sell the very " African"nostrils shared by Hendrix and the performer in this film as the definitive point of correspondence. To which I can only say, "Can you spell racist?"

Then the angle and position changed, and the putative Hendrix is depicted, um, going south. Hence, a rear and a right-side profile view of his head. "He'd never knot his headband so flimsily!" I exclaimed, and I meant it. He never would. Also, the hair's all wrong. Also, in addition to being unconvinced, I was starting to get a little grossed out.

A lot of other things don't parse, too. The '60s weren't the Oughts or even the '90s, when making a sex tape is/was as easy as pressing record on a little electronic box. This is something for which a camera was set up and lighting arranged. The cutting is in camera, the camera goes from tripod to handheld. The thing has all the earmarks of, well, an 8mm loop to be viewed in a peepshow as opposed to a private memento. And... hmmm, how to say this without sounding sexist or looks-ist, guess there's no way...if I were Jimi Hendrix looking to create a private memento of a sexual encounter, this would not have been the sexual encounter I would have opted for.

But the kicker for me was just how lifeless and inert, how much of a dud, the guy in the film is. In the New York Times report on the tape, Hendrix biographer Charles Cross, who also doesn't believe it's Hendrix, says he thinks the man in the film is on drugs or heavily intoxicated. The guy looks out of it, that's for sure. And there's the rub: even at his shyest, or when kind of out of it, Hendrix oozed charisma. The combination of cockiness, wit, aggression and sweetness practically jumps off the screen in something like D.A. Pennebaker's footage of the Experience at the Monterey Pop festival.

The man couldn't help it. And the poor man in the so-called "Hendrix Sex Tape" hasn't got it.

Comments

[Dave Kehr]

At first I was mystified when I started reading about the "Marilyn Monroe sex tape" in the papers, wondering how clever ol' Marilyn had managed to get her hands on home video equipment decades before it was invented, and now I'm mystified by the references to the "Jimi Hendrix sex tape," which is clearly identified as an 8-millimeter film, as Glenn so pertinently notes. Have we just abandoned this distinction? It used to be a pretty useful one . . .

[Dan]

I think it's more pornographers aren't noted for their mastery of the English language or taste of subtle distinctions. :-)