Evan Purchell is a film historian and archivist whose latest film project, Ask Any Buddy, presents excerpted bits from 126 different gay male “adult” films from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The effect is an uncanny journey into a lost world of urban gay culture, depicting a kind of imagninative fantasy of gay life before the AIDS crisis. In this conversation, Evan tells us about the film’s origins as a popular Instagram account, and details some of the stars (both in front of and behind the camera) of this extraordinary moment in the history of cinema, culture, and sexuality.
