Jerry Douglas interviews TCR for Manshots Magazine

For nearly a quarter of a century, Christopher Rage and I have been friends. During those twenty-five years, his appearance has changed many times. On the day of this interview, he is wearing jeans and a sweat shirt. His head is close-shaven, and his face bears the characteristic stubble so familiar to his viewers.

He has recently moved into a new apartment in a newly renovated building in the heart of Greenwich Village, and it is here that we sit on a gray Saturday afternoon to take a trip down memory lane. The decor of his home reflects his preference for minimalism that is so often evidenced in his films. There are few pieces of furniture, and except for banks of video equipment and several framed black and white photographs, the place is devoid of mementoes and other personal touches.

Manshots: You have been more accessible than most of the directors in this genre, and have given many interviews to the press over the years — so let's see if we can find some new things to talk about. Actually, because of our long friendship, I know more about you than I do about most of the men I interview. For example, I know that you were born in 1948.

Rage: Yeah, we know each other so well that we won't have to cover a lot of the shit. (Laughs) Yes, I was born October 14, 1948 in Oklahoma City. My father is from a farm in western Massachusetts, my mother is a DAR.

Manshots: How would you describe your family?

Rage: (Instantly) Great. Sweet. Normal.

Manshots: How did you end up where you are — the uncrowned King of Sleaze?

Rage: I don't know, and they don't. (Roars with laughter) I think I was the Martian laid at their doorstep. There are four of us kids. I'm the oldest. They tolerate me in a very sweet way.

Manshots: Let's talk a little about your sexual awakening.

Rage: That's what -I'm writing about right now. About my sex life till I was seventeen. The first guy I had sex with -- actually, it was a three-way with these two boys who lived next door. We were all of three or four, and we used to go out behind the garage and diddle. Sexuality is something that starts about that age. There's nothing unusual about that. But my aggressive pursuit of it was the unusual thing. We were doing that "pull-down-your-pants" stuff — simple stuff — obviously no intercourse. I was always the one who was pushing to get out there and get naked or touch-feel. At the beginning, it didn't matter who it was. By eight it was boys.

Manshots: Do you remember your first orgasm?

Rage: Yes. There was an overnight party across the street. There were about ten of us in the living room — I was ten — and there was plenty of diddling going on. There was this older kid — twelve, thirteen, who hung out with younger kids, so he could be boss. We had the lights off, and we were moving closer and closer under the blankets. The line was: "You can do anything to me you want to," which meant "Suck my dick." (Laughs)I used that line in a movie later on. Anyway, all of a sudden, I had this incredible pain — we were jacking off or sucking, and I said, "Stop!" He asked, "What's wrong?" And he made me go to the bathroom, and there was this goop all over me. Yeah… I remember it well.

Manshots: When did you put the word homosexual to your activities?

Rage: When I was thirteen or so. The older kids in the neighborhood had taken the boy next door up to a roof and "depantsed" him. Well, I thought it was the sexiest thing I'd ever heard of, and all I could think about was: "If only they had done it to me."

Manshots: How did your parents learn of your sexuality?

Rage: They didn't. I was such a sneak. I told them when I was thirty-five.

Manshots: Why then?

Rage: I didn't want to make that dreaded two-part phone call — "I'm gay and I have AIDS." I left home when I was seventeen, and I talk to my parents once a week, but I've been home for Christmas only once in the last twenty-five years. Anyway, they were on both extensions and I told them I was gay. My mother said, "Why are you telling us this now?" And I said, "Because there's this disease going around, so I don't have to make the double phone call. I'm fine. I'm healthy." At that point, I hadn't been diagnosed. The next day my sister called and asked what I'd told them. I said, "I told them I was gay, and they both said they knew." She said, "But they've never talked about it." They had never discussed it, which is strange. My father is so very, very uncomfortable with it.

Manshots: After you left home, where did you go?

Rage: To college. Georgetown. Washington.

Manshots: What was your sex life like there?

Rage: Exceedingly active. Look, I was walking the streets in Oklahoma City when I was eleven. (Pause) it's very hard to get laid when you're eleven. By that time I'd been fucked and sucked, but I'd never fucked anybody. I was fifteen before I fucked anyone. I was in the debate club and I needed to do research at the library in downtown Oklahoma City. The first night I was there, I had to go pee. I went into the bathroom. Whew! (Roars with laughter) There were all these men there with their dicks out. Well, I was stunned. It was like a fantasy come true. The next week, I don't think I even bothered to take a book off the shelf. And this older man -- as best I can remember, he was probably in his early twenties -- was standing at the urinal. I go out of the bathroom and pretty soon we're standing on a street corner, and he starts talking to me. He says, "I wish we had a place to go." And I say, "Me, too." I didn't know what he was talking about, but I knew it was sex. He says, "I live at the Y. Do you want to come back?" So we went back over to the Y. Well, he had some pornography — underground literature, typewritten, single-spaced — about a mother and a father and a sister and a brother. I was so hot! I'd never seen this stuff before. Well, after he took a shower, he said, "You can take your clothes off now." So I did. I was embarrassed — I'd never been naked-to-naked, even though I'd done lots of games. And the first thing he did was kiss me. I'll never forget thinking, "You've got a live one here." He rimmed me, he fucked me, sucked the cum out of my ass, and blew me. It was the first time I came in someone's mouth. I found out later that my parents knew I wasn't going to the library — they knew something was going on — they didn't know what, hut they didn't stop it. Amazing! I was student body president, I was National Honor Society, I was National Merit, I was Scroll, I was in debate, I was Thespian, top ten per cent — you name it, I did it. I never got in trouble. What I was good at was not getting caught. Then we moved from Oklahoma City to Alexandria, Louisiana. We went from a town of half a million to forty thousand. And it took me a year of searching to find somebody to have sex with. Then I found some tearooms.

Manshots: Tell us about the college years.

Rage: My family's Catholic, but I never went to a Catholic school. Still, I chose Georgetown. Somehow or another, I talked my parents into letting me go a couple of days early before orientation began. My mother said, "That's fine. I think you should stay at the Y." Well, by the time I moved onto the campus three or four days later, I knew where to cruise. This was 1966.

Manshots: Why did you choose Georgetown?

Rage: I didn't want to be an embarrassment to my family. I wanted to get out, so I could do what I wanted. So I was gay from day one at Georgetown, which was a little adventurous for '66. The first semester I didn't have time for studies —almost flunked out.

Manshots: After graduation, you came to New York.

Rage: I'd joined Equity during my junior year.

Manshots: So you came to New York to be an actor?

Rage: I guess — as far as I planned anything. I started auditioning.

Manshots: And all your energies were aimed into the theatre, as opposed to film?

Rage: Never cared much for movies. Still don't. I don't like to sit in a crowded dark room with a hunch of strangers. I watch TV. I love TV. But acting is an impossible career, so I started writing porn, which was an accident, just as shooting my first video in 1980-81 was an accident.

Manshots: How did you get into writing?

Rage: It's the old story: "Oh, I can do that." Everybody has said that. My first porn book was straight! (laughs) And I'd never slept with a woman! But I wrote straight porn, because I figured it would sell better. I didn't know anybody in the business, but I saw an ad in the Village Voice: "We Buy Porn Manuscripts." I submitted the book and they bought it. Eight-hundred-and-fifty-fucking-dollars. That's a lot of fucking money for someone who was paying seventy-five bucks rent. A lot of fucking money. But the way I got away with straight pornography was that I wrote it from the woman's point of view.

Manshots: Flow many of these little stroke books did you write?

Rage: Twenty-six. The fastest I ever did it was two books in three days. I'm a fast typist.

Manshots: What name did you use?

Rage: Tray Christopher. My real name is Frederick Mongue. And I spent my whole life spelling my name for people. Now, I'm Freddie the Third. So I was Freddie until we moved to Alexandria. I was Fred in Louisiana. When I went away to college, I introduced myself as Tray. When I joined Equity, I changed my name to Tray Christopher.

Manshots: Any particular reason?

Rage: No, I just wanted to get rid of Mongue. I have no idea where the Christopher came from.

Manshots: How did you get from Tray Christopher to Christopher Rage?

Rage: I tricked with a kid in Central Park who invited me to come to the premiere of his porn movie. Two or three nights later we went to Arch Brown's apartment — Arch was doing a cast screening of his new film, and the kid was in it. I got very excited about this. And I talked to Arch afterwards and asked, "How much does this cost, roughly, to do?" I'm a natural producer type. And he gave me some figures. Well, at the time I was supplementing my writing by walking the street two or three nights a week — twenty-five bucks a throw, thirty if I was lucky. Well, I thought I could raise three or four thousand, but the deal fell through. So Arch said, "Would you like to be in one?" I said, "Sure. Who wouldn't?" So we shot two or three days. My first porno. One and Two and... Arch was one of the first above-ground underground filmmakers — he and J. Brian and Bruce King. Arch started making loops in '68 for a place on Fourteenth Street. At this point they were still showing slides of men in posing straps at the Eros Theatre, but there would he an occasional loop thrown in. So this was all when it was really starting to happen.

Manshots: Do you remember your first day on the set?

Rage: The first day! Arch shot a scene a day. He tended away from the pretty boy stuff, although at the time I tended more toward that category. He was sort of what Joe Gage became, and I took over that tradition. From Arch to Joe to me — which is the sort of seamy, nitty-gritty, leather, dark alleys, and that sort of thing. But what Arch really taught me was how to put together a movie fast. We would get together in the afternoon and shoot what would end up being ten minutes of the movie. It would probably take two hours, and he'd shoot 5:1.

Manshots: It was about this time that you went to work for Jack Deveau's Hand in Hand Films.

Rage: Arch introduced me to Jack, who had just made Lefthanded. One day, my partner didn't show up for a shoot, and Jack said, "Do you want to go back to my place?" And we sat in his sun-drenched penthouse and had the best time, talking — Jack and I never had sex — and we got along famously from the first instant. When he found out I wrote dirty books, he said he was looking for someone to write a screenplay — something I'd never done but was willing to try. So he ended up hiring me to do publicity and write Drive. Jack was negotiating with some drag queen to play the role of Arachne in it, and when that didn't work out, we were all sitting around one night at probably four in the morning, and Jack's boyfriend Bobby turns to me and says, "You're so evil —you should play the part."

Manshots: Did you respond immediately with "I'll do it!"?

Rage: Of eourse. I never thought about it.

Manshots: Had you ever been in drag before?

Rage: No. Nor since. Well, I'd been in theatre for years, so it was just another costume, another make-up, another wig. Manshots: Tell us about the evolution of Drive.

Rage: It was a year. It took a year. The character I was playing was a combination of Marlene Dietrich and Ellen Greene, whom I managed for awhile.

Manshots: And you were also doing publicity and promotion for Hand in Hand Films.

Rage: The company was making a fortune because they were running the theatre where Devil in Miss Jones was playing. And I was working as liaison to the advertising agency, and eventually there was less and less to do, and Jack had found another script writer, so I went to work for the advertising agency. I wrote copy, did art direction.

Manshots: How much did you know about filmmaking by this point?

Rage: Nothing. Didn't know a thing. I had never been behind a lens. I had no idea about lights. 9 knew what a camera was, but I had never picked up a camera at that point. A friend of mine knew something about photography and gave me the basic lessons. Loaned me his 35mm camera, and I picked it up real fast. It turned out, I have some small ability with a camera. Three years later, Arch Brown needed a still photographer on a movie he was making. So I shot stills, and that's how I started shooting stills for movies. That's when I learned the technical part of lighting and camera work. I still had not picked up a movie camera.

Manshots: When did that happen?

Rage: I was still working at the advertising agency, and in 1980 the first VHS video cameras came out, and one of the bosses at the agency bought two of them. And he offered to let me borrow one. At this point I had opened the Show Palace at Forty-Second and Eighth. New York's first hardcore gay sex shows. Stand on the stage and fuck — which is just what they did — they fucked, sucked, jerked off. This was the real thing. And I thought, "This is such a waste. I've got all these boys and this video camera. We should be shooting this." No one was shooting videotape yet. So I shot three movies and found a way to edit them, which was very hard to do in '80-'81. But I just kept pushing, till I had three movies: Superstars I and II and Solojerk.

Manshots: Let's talk about Solojerk.

Rage: Well, I had very definite ideas about what made a sex scene work. They had to be real — our old word again: real.

Manshots: Do you remember the first day you shot the first footage for your first film?

Rage: I just started shooting. The good thing about working on video was I could roll it back to be sure I got the picture. With film, you don't know till it comes hack from the lab, and by then it's too late.

Manshots: Let's talk about Scott Taylor, who is perhaps the most interesting cast member in Solojerk.

Rage: He called me. He was in New York. Scott is an aggressive self-promoter. I think most of the people that are successful in this business are. Well, I was worried I was going to blow the shoot. (Knocks wood) Which hasn't happened to this day. But I figured if I was going to blow a shoot, it was better to blow a one-person shoot — less money. And also there was the worry about the performer getting it up, and with solos that rarely happens. I was living in Hoboken at the time and shooting in my apartment out there. This is how glamorous it was — Casey Donovan and Scorpio and I would meet at Port Authority Bus Terminal and get on a bus to Hoboken and head for my apartment, which was a third-floor walk-up. They would take off their clothes and have sex, and I would video it. And the same thing happened with Scott. He told me that he could blow himself, but he'd hurt his back the week before we were shooting, and all he could do was lick the tip. Barely. But what Scott could do was work a camera. I told him, "I know what you've heard about 'don't look at the camera' —hut that's not the way I'm going to shoot today.– It was all so unpremediatated. I was just taking the picture I wanted to see. And Scott worked that camera. All my favorite performers do.

Manshots: There was no one else there during the shooting of the sequences for Solojerk?

Rage: I prefer it. To this day, I work that way if I can. I've never had more than two assistants — no, three. Street Kids was such an elaborate production. I needed help, hut I had no more help around than I had to have.

Manshots: You've used Scott Taylor several times since then.

Rage: Scott and I have loosened up with each other. He came to understand that I was as funky as he was. The things he's into! Slitting his dick and stuff like that, which is how he can put his thumb in his peehole. He wanted me to shoot it (when the slit was made), hut I said, "Scott, I just can't do it." An operation is not interesting, as far as I'm concerned.

Manshots: How do you choose a performer for one of your films?

Rage: I can tell before they take off their clothes. I know the minute I meet them. They ooze sex.

Manshots: Have you ever been wrong? Disappointed?

Rage: Have I ever used a performer that I wished I hadn't? Yeah.

Manshots: These first three videos you did, were they successful?

Rage: No. I made 'em, the advertising agency packaged 'em. Nobody was shooting or distributing video yet. We packaged them, boxed them, shrink-wrapped them, advertised them in The Advocate, and sold maybe twenty of each title. Now about this time, Joe Gage was working on a deal with HIS Video to bring out his own line: Gagetapes. And he was looking for other product. So he said if I could edit the three tapes into one, we've got a deal. And that became Best of the Superstars. We got, I think, $10,000 for that tape, and we took it and turned around and made Orgy.

Manshots: More than solos that time.

Rage: Yeah. I thought I could do a one-night shoot, and we went to a studio, with a three-camera set-up. I walked into the editing booth and did an on-line edit (as the action was being shot). We didn't start till after eleven, and I walked out of there at three or four in the morning with an edited film. No, that's not entirely true — I added some exteriors later. The money from that I used to shoot Street Kids.

Manshots: It's one of your most important films.

Rage: An accident. (Pause) I'll give you my best recollection of how it happened. I had the title — that's what I come up with first. Forever, I've done that. I never work with a script. Nowadays it would be hard to use a title with the word "kids" in it, but the youngest "kid" in Street Kids was nineteen. Essentially, what I was trying to do was make another movie in a night, like Orgy. But I was getting more elaborate. I'd written a song. I've always liked the Faustian idea — the idea of selling one's soul. The dark side and all that. I wrote and recorded the song, and knew that I was going to play the Devil, and I'd get a bunch of kids together. I didn't know much more than that about what the movie would be.

Manshots: Where did you shoot it?

Rage: I was still running the Show Palace, and I had the kids available, but I didn't have a location. I was desperate, and finally we found a loft on Fourteenth Street. Three of the boys brought other boys with them, and by that point I knew I was going to do interviews. The mistake was that I had the monitor outside the room, so that the boys could watch it, and they got slicker as the evening went on, and their hustling fees escalated. So the first one got $30 and the last one was up to $1,000. One kid had brought coke that day, and so it was a little limp around there — whacky but limp. I had to have an additional shoot to cover the sex.

Manshots: One of the most interesting figures in Street Kids is Colin Topar.

Rage: He was a jailbird who'd done a porn movie before. It would be hard for me to pick the sexiest performer who's ever been in my films, hut he would certainly be in the top few. A genuine street kid, smart, probably been in jail two or three times by that point. And, I believe is as we speak in jail someplace in Pennsylvania.

Manshots: How do you make sex happen in front of the camera?

Rage: I don't. I just run the camera. I never tell them what to do. I just let it happen.

Manshots: What if it doesn't?

Rage: It's never not happened. Because I have no predetermined anything. I just say, "Come on, guys, do something." And they do. And I shoot what they do and edit it down. I never tell them what to do. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever. Now, if I'm going to shoot a water sports scene, a scat scene, some specific thing, they know that coming in, and I've hired people specifically to do that.

Manshots: Do you consciously pair a top with a bottom, or do you just assume it will happen?

Rage: That's complicated. Ideally, I do. I never expect it to work, because I've come to the opinion that the whole world is bottoms. There aren't any tops. There's no such thing. The only thing there are are tops waiting to be bottoms. Ideally, they'll fuck each other. The thing you won't find very much of in my movies is anybody consistently playing one role.

Manshots: When someone comes to you for an interview, what sort of questions do you ask?

Rage: "What do you like to do?" ... "Have you ever made a movie?" ... "Take off your clothes." And I watch. How they take off their clothes. Dead giveaway.

Manshots: Elaborate.

Rage: If there's any hesitation. If they seem reluctant. (Pause) If they start with their shoes, it's a good sign, 'cause that means they're gonna take off their socks and pants. If they have an erection while doing that, it's a great sign. I never ask anyone to get an erection, but generally speaking, 1 can tell you before they get half their clothes off whether I'm interested in them or not.

Manshots: Tell us about Steven Bishop, who appeared in Tramps. Where did you find him?

Rage: An open call. He walked in. And he had a look. The kind of person who'd never be in a porno movie. Probably straight. He was the boy next door. He was shy and a pig at the same time. There was nothing he wouldn't do. But you had to get him to do it.

Manshots: Another performer you used frequently was Jesse Fairweather.

Rage: He would do anything.

Manshots: I never sensed that onscreen.

Rage: In my movies, you see him do catheters, water sports, rubbers, fucking, sucking — remember that tarantula that crawled across him in Wildside? I find people who can abandon themselves in a way that most of us can only do maybe five times in our life. Peak experiences. They reach a level that most of us wish we could reach. It's when you stop thinking. It's happened to me. I've never caught me on tape that way, but I've caught other people on tape that way, occasionally.

Manshots: Tell us about Toilets.

Rage: It was my first movie with my new boyfriend. I'd fallen in love and wanted to document ...not our sex lives, but the way I was feeling. It was probably the last tape I made freely without worrying about AIDS. At the beginning of Toilets is an Edgar Allan Poe poem, about "a dream within a dream." And that's the idea — a dream tape.

Manshots: Your penchant for munch and your impulse toward domesticity seem highly contradictory.

Rage: All I've ever wanted is a boyfriend.

Manshots: One person?

Rage: Yeah…

Manshots: What's kept you from having that?

Rage: If I knew that, I'd probably have it. I've had four major — (Pause) They tend to last four years, they tend to be anything but the ideal domestic relationship, they tend to be teenage-like — the stupidity of the relationships, the lack of maturity.

Manshots: On both parts?

Rage: Probably. I tend to search out crazy people. I would say that all four were people who were unbalanced. Now, I am a functionally unbalanced person. They were not functional. (Pause) If I had my druthers, I'd have a monogamous relationship.

Manshots: This does not sound like Christopher Rage.

Rage: This would not preclude watching others do it. I don't need to do it… and generally prefer not to.

Manshots: Then why have you appeared in so many of your films?

Rage: It keeps me interested in the movie. It's a way of staying involved. It makes it personal. These are personal statements, you know.

Manshots: Do you have a need to perform before the camera?

Rage: It's how I understand the movie that I'm making. I need to be involved. But to have someone see my dick? No.

Manshots: That brings us to one of your most amazing projects — Fucked Up.

Rage: Casey Donovan was an extraordinary human being. He was a grand old sex machine. He was a drug addict toward the end. And he had no interest in moderation. He lived at full-tilt till two weeks before he died -- and I got it on tape. But it's not pretty — it's not how people want to remember him.

Manshots: How did Fucked Up come about?

Rage: Casey called me. He had somebody — this fuckbuddy, and he said they looked somewhat alike. They wanted to document their sex life by making a movie called Brothers or Cousins or Stepbrothers, something like that. I asked how much they wanted, and the figure they named seemed like an extravagant amount. Finally, I put the money together and it was set up for one afternoon at 1:30 -- the other guy had to be at work at five. They arrived, they both looked great, and I started shooting immediately. They would go off in a corner, and I assumed they were using drugs.

Manshots: Were they already on drugs when they arrived?

Rage: If they were, it was not detectable. But it didn't surprise me, though, when they started — it was part of their game. Over the next couple of hours, Casey especially was wiped to the point where I stopped the shoot thirty-five or forty minutes earlier than I had to.

Manshots: Why?

Rage: It was too gross. I couldn't believe I was going to be able to put out a movie with someone behaving like this. I was appalled at Casey's behavior. He turned into the most greedy, uncaring pig. It was all me, me, me. After the other actor left, Casey went up to take a shower. When he came back, he wanted to fuck with me, with anybody. I gave him his money and he said he was going to the baths. I told him that was too much money to take to the baths. He tried to have sex with me again. I threw him out. Later, when I went in to edit the footage, I said, "There's nothing here." But I had to release it, because I'd spent all this money. And I started to edit. After the first three cuts, I realized what I had. This was an evil, black documentary on drug abuse. However, it was stunning. The thing I never did in selling the movie was say that it was sexy. And it isn't. Not a sexy movie — but really stunning.

Manshots: What kind of feedback have you gotten on it?

Rage: Nothing but raves -- except from Casey's friends. They think it's my fault. Casey's friends were divided into two groups — the ones who knew he was that way and the ones who didn't. What people don't want to acknowledge is that it was a very accurate picture of Casey. It was Casey. (Laughs) And yet Casey loved that movie. I will never be able to create something that macabre again. Don't know that I'd care to. I can't watch it. But I do think it is amazing.

Manshots: One of your more recent stars is Frank Vickers.

Rage: Frank had made movies for Colt many years ago. He is an extraordinary man. Very complicated. He was born the day after I was. I keep saying, "Frank, this is what you're going to look like tomorrow." He is a bisexual sex freak who had been offered numerous opportunities at making other films after Colt — but I made him an offer he couldn't refuse. I made him a partner. The only time I've ever done that. The funny thing is I don't find him sexy.

Manshots: Neither do I. But I see his sexual appeal.

Rage: Yeah, well, that's how we make our living. It's like the joke in Tramps. Denton Crane says to me, "Does everyone who appears in your movies have to sleep with you?" And I say, "Of course." Not true. It's a joke. I don't sleep with everybody in my movies, for God's sake.

Manshots: Then came My Masters.

Rage: My best movie. I was happy with every scene. I love that movie. I think it is a wonderful dream piece.

Manshots: What's it about?

Rage: Sixty minutes. (Sniggers)

Manshots: Too easy.

Rage: It's about everything. It's about letting go. And in that movie, Scott Taylor plays me. He was willing to show a different part of himself. There's no plot, no storyline. It's the way I felt. It was the culmination. It was pretty much the end of my movie-making. I'd done it. I'd finally put all the pieces together that I wanted to put together.

Manshots: How about Master Hyde?

Rage: It's the story of a cocaine addiction. (Pause) It was a descent into obsession. Master Hyde is a documentation of the lowest point in my life.

Manshots: Why did you want to record your addiction?

Rage: I had to. All of my tapes are what I am doing at the time. They are real reflections of my own personal life.

Manshots: How did you get into coke and how did you get out of it?

Rage: I had never been interested in coke. I'd done it, God knows -- you snort a little coke and you feel better and get a hard-on. And then I met someone with whom I fell in love, and he had been shooting drugs since he was sixteen. He'd say, "Let's try this." Well, I'll try anything once. Only it wasn't once, and over the course of two years or so, he became irrelevant to my use of cocaine. I was never an everyday user… the worst I ever was was once a week, but I was doing enormous amounts in my thirty-six hours of coke addiction a week. Enormous, staggering, death-defying amounts. It became the highlight of my life. The relationship didn't stand a chance.

Manshots: How did you get out of it?

Rage: I went away to the country and spent a lot of time by myself. Rut to this day, if you walk in here with a hypodermic and cocaine, I would have a lot of trouble turning it down. I don't know if I could turn it down. And that's what Hyde was — this bleak descent into hopelessness. It is Eric Ryan's worst performance on film — he fills in for me in that movie.

Manshots: What are you going to do next?

Rage: I don't do this just to put out another production. I want to re-invent sex every time I make a movie — and I haven't had sex in over a year. For a while, I was happy just making movies after I was diagnosed. There was no illness. There has been no illness to this day, and that's almost two years. I've been on AZT for over a year now, with nothing more than a low T-cell count. I've never had anything, but my skin is sensitive.

Manshots: How did your diagnosis affect your movies?

Rage: I quit making them after I went on AZT. I quit having sex. I didn't want to have sex. I felt dirty.

Manshots: Were you surprised that you tested positive?

Rage: Nope.

Manshots: What was your response?

Rage: "I can't have sex." I had been having safe-for-my-partners sex for two years before that. As soon as I understood what AIDS was and how to get it, I assumed I had it. It is a psychological nightmare to be HIV positive. Now I don't plan for two years. A year. I plan for a year. I went to a mountain and lived alone on a farm to figure things out. For the first time in my life, I'm not particularly interested in having a lover. I think it would be great, but I'm not looking for it. I've got to fix myself first. I'm not ready to be with somebody. Maybe I'm not capable of it. I certainly have been spectacularly unsuccessful. I'm just beginning to be ready to be with my friends again. I'm not going to embarrass them. I'm not nuts, I'm not on drugs, I'm not talking incessantly about my own death. I've just become a human being again.

Manshots: What's this going to do to your filmmaking?

Rage: Might well end it.

Manshots: Are you tired of filmmaking?

Rage: I don't have anything left to say. I've always had something to say. That's pretentious, perhaps, but I've always had something to say when I made a movie. I was always up to something. I wanted to corrupt society one way or another by saying, "Try this look at this… did you ever consider this? … C'mon, don't you want to see this… aren't you amazed that people do this? … maybe you don't want to do it yourself, but wouldn't you like to sec it?" That's the whole point of my movies.*

THE VIDEOS OF
CHRISTOPHER RAGE
Solojerk (1981) PDA
Sleaze (1982) PDA
Best of the Superstars (1982) PDA
Street Kids (1983) PDA
Orgy (1983) PDA
They All Came (1984) DA
Naked City Lights (1984) DA
Wildside (1984) PDA
Rough Idea (1984) RA
I Need it Bad (1984) PDA
Outrage (1984) PDA
Raunch (1984) PDA
Tramps (1985) PDA
Toilets (1985) PDA
Manholes (1985) PDA
Raunch 2 (1986) PDA
Fucked Up (1986) DA
Colored Boys (1986) P
Frank Vickers Solo (1986) RD
My Masters (1986) PDA
Frank Vickers II: Worship (1987) PD
Forty Plus (1987) PA
Bad Ass (1987) PD
The Shaft (1987) PDA
Master Hyde (1988) PDA
While I Was Shooting Stars (1988) PDA
Slaves (1988) RDA
Kiss It (1989) RDA
Three Little Pigs (1989) RDA
Frank Vickers III: Man After Man (1989) PD
Hidden Camera (1989) PDA
Queer: The Movie (1990) PDA
Dickey-Lickey (1990) PDA
Sex Junkies (1991) PDA
P=Producer D=Director A=Actor

In addition to the above tapes, Christopher Rage has also created a series of ten "Custom Tapes" for private distribution

OTHER ACTING APPEARANCES
One and Two and (1971)
Leather Bond (1972)
Drive (1974)
Him (1975)
Le Voyeur (1982)