German Gay Porn Icon Jürgen Brüning Discusses His Work With Bruce LaBruce

One of the pioneers of the gay porn movement, Jürgen Brüning, recently sat down for an interview with Adam Baran from The Sword. The link to the full interview is below, and it's a fantastic read.

Of particular interest is their discussion about his work with Canadian artist and director Bruce LaBruce. Together they made some of the most incendiary films of all time from Hustler White to The Raspberry Reich, which may not have exactly fit the mold of gay porn, but definitely smashed just about every taboo standing in their way.

Like in Hustler White there is a little bit of sex they aren’t shot like real porn sex scenes. I had to persuade my partner Jorg who was really opposed to it. During the shooting there was a lot of fighting between Bruce and Jorg, because Bruce was not interested in shooting sex, and so there was fighting. That happened also with The Raspberry Reich. With Hustler White, different countries wanted to cut certain things to make it past the censors, and of course Bruce and me said we’re not cutting anything, and then we said okay, we’ll make a really artistic version how Bruce and I want it.

There's plenty of other great stories in the full interview, including some anecdotes about his early days in gay porn and how he pushed boundaries with his very first feature length film.

We changed the script a bit, we shot a four minute sequence that wasn’t in the script, and when the editor from TV saw the finished film she said we couldn’t have it in there. It was a scene where a woman was throwing a naked man through a roof and we played the German national anthem, and she said no that’s not possible we cannot show it on German television. I said “What are you talking about? There were so many people killed in the name of the German national anthem?” Finally it passed. But I always had problems with my films because of sexuality from the beginning.

Check out the full interview over at The Sword