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The Making of a Male Model: “Right Down the Throat of the Camera!”

Sometimes campy, obscure TV movies turn out to be terrifyingly prophetic.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this Aaron Spelling production until now, but feel I’ve been trapped inside it most of my adult life. (As Joan Collins, of course.)

The gravelly-voiced, hairy-chested but ravishingly pretty cowpoke-turned-male-model star of the film Jon-Erik Hexum died in his prime the following year in a bizarre on-set accident with a prop gun loaded with a single blank round. A bored Hexum was apparently playing Russian Roulette with it between takes, not realising that blanks can be lethal at very close range. This seems symbolic somehow, but I can’t quite decode it.

The Making of a Male Model also put me in mind of this 80s male model who made a comeback a while ago.

Tip: Natty Soltesz

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7 thoughts on “The Making of a Male Model: “Right Down the Throat of the Camera!””

  1. HH: Both. JC is clearly here a corrupting, Mephistophelean influence. Her character, and some of her arguments, reminds me of Myra Breckinridge and Lord Henry Wooton (without the aphorisms).

  2. Simmo, I’m having a little trouble seeing you in the Joan Collins role.

    Are you referring to your mission with Steve Zeeland, rescuing midwestern lads from the tedium of shore leave with a crash course in metrosexuality? (or sexuality, period?)

    Or, in a more general sense, do you refer to another mission: teaching men that they can be watched and desired, and like it?

    You may have tossed it off as an aside, but the comment piqued my curiosity.

    You may have tossed it off as an aside, but the comment piqued my curiosity.

  3. Mark G: If I *was* playing the Joan Collins part in that movie I would hope that I would have delivered that line – and all the other faggy ones the script is replete with – with a little more *conviction” than Ms Collins does.

  4. I used to watch his TV show ‘Cover Up’, Holding Out For a Hero by Bonnie Tyler was the theme tune.
    Jon was such a beautiful man. I think he played a secret agent posing as a model. I remember that the poor lad died on the set of that show not a film as it was a big deal to me at the time. I may give the show a look on youtube.

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