The game of tracking an auteur's muse takes on distinct dimensions when considering the work of Gregg Araki. While Woody and Quentin toy with their awkwardly assured creative types and amazonian blondes, Araki projects his own lust objects onto the screen: slinky, omnisexual brunette males whose fiery post-adolescent hormones are compounded by the burdensome weight of the universe. It's hard to think of another queer filmmaker who remains so exuberantly adherent to his own muse pattern, at least in terms of allowing his presumed pinup fantasies to dictate his lead casting.

It's a pattern he didn't fall into until after his breakout third feature, The Living End (1992), whose Craig Gilmore and Mike Dytri were more beefcake Jason Priestleys, of sorts. But 1993 saw the arrival of Totally F***ed Up, and thus the rise of James Duval, the black-haired, angst-ridden anti-twink whom Araki's camera would follow through the paranoid peaks and camp valleys of the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy. Duval would lead to Jonathan Schaech, the Doom Generation (1995) and Splendor (1999) star whose musculature would slightly tweak the formula, and Schaech would give way to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the hustler of Mysterious Skin (2004) whose dark features and beanpole build embodied the Araki ideal. Continue Reading »