Gay Sex in the 70s (2005)

You won't be disappointed!

Such a frustrating disappointment

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie should be retitled: Sex in the 70s In a Part of New York City called Greenwich Village and Chelsea.This movie does little to talk about sex in the 70s except focus on the hypersexual environments of public and private sex spaces in New York City. I doubt that the Manhole bar was symbolic of actual sex in the 70s and that kind of sex is much more prevalent in the film.Don't get me wrong, the time period looks like a blast. And it's rather important to document the scene to which the film refers. But as far as calling this film Sex in the 70s, the title is a bit misleading. Technically it's no Oscar Nominee, but the rawness of it feels appropriate for the subject.Overall, an "eh."

It was almost deja vu for me, watching what lifestyle was like in those heady days of Gay sex in the 70's.The thing about it was that it really happened just like that - not only in NYC but around the world! I lived in Perth, Australia and it was all happening here as well! This is a very good archive of a time in history and valuable in today's world.It was fun to see all the pretty young things in their heyday who are all past middle age, yet knowing that they'd come a long way to get here.I enjoyed it and highly recommend it to anyone who was around at the time.

This movie brought back many memories for me, as I moved to New York in 1979 and lived there until 2004. I was 29 years old in '79, having come out at the tender age of 16 in Kansas City, where I grew up. I considered moving to New York earlier, but now I am sure that I would not have survived if I had. I moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village and in those few short years before AIDS was discovered, I had sex in many of the places featured in the film. For those who may be somewhat critical of this movie or the mores of the era, it is helpful to understand that sexual liberation really began in San Francisco with the straight hippies in the late 1960's, before Stonewall ever happened. Then after Stonewall, gay life and gay sexual liberation just exploded. While I missed much of the nonstop sexual activity of the mid to late 1970's, I certainly enjoyed my fair share of sex in New York during those few short years prior to the early 1980's. The most remarkable events which occurred were only alluded to in a brief comments by Larry Kramer (and others) towards the end of the film. Larry Kramer said that when the gay community began to discover AIDS and act upon it, this was the first time that an afflicted population ever took it upon themselves to demand radical change on the part of the US government and the US medical community. The gay and lesbian communities, particularly in New York and San Francisco which were the epicenters of AIDS, came together remarkably fast and formed several political and community organizations, which ultimately raised huge sums of money and began to bring about real change and awareness of AIDS to the world. In the past 20 years, there have been many books and films which document the relatively brief history of gays and lesbians. Joe Lovett's film has added an important piece to our history.

This film made me aware for the first time in years of what a heavy wall came down with the AIDS epidemic, sowing fear and shame in a community that had only really begun to form. It was a community that revolved around sex, yes, but was starting to celebrate a self awareness for the accomplishments of it's members in virtually every profession- law, literature, government, education, film, art, food, etc. Watching this film took me back before the days that fear inflicted us as much as the disease. It is a nostalgic look at a rare time, but not a thoughtless one. Maybe this film could not have been made earlier than now, when the narrators can look back from a point of middle aged survival and relative stability and remember what a strange and wonderful time it was.