brontez purnell

Occupation: Film director, writer, musician, and dancer

Location: Oakland, California, United States

The Sex in My Business: My episodic three-volume semi-porn series, 100 Boyfriends Mixtape (2016–2023), is intertwined with sex. The first volume is a semi-autobiographical punk rock-style NSFW gay mixtape. The second volume is about an HIV-positive black gay man haunted by the ghosts of 100 former lovers. The third volume, subtitled Fuck Boy Anthem/How I Spent My Summer Vacation is a fusion of poetry, music, dance, song, soundscape, time-lapse, and, of course, man-on-man sex.

How I Got Here: As a young adult in the aughts, I was working at a bathhouse, doing naked, artistic, stage performances, and publishing a zine called Fag School. We all satisfy our youthful curiosities about sex in different ways. For me, I’ve always chosen art. In 2012, I starred in the seminal indie art porn mumblecore feature film I Want Your Love, and I’ve written for shows such as the newer Queer as Folk (2022) and American Gigolo (2022). I’ve also penned a number of novels including Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger (2015), Since I Laid My Burden Down (2017), and 100 Boyfriends (2021), all of which deal heavily with sex and sexuality. The question of “how I got here” doesn’t really make sense in my case because I’ve always been involved in the business of sex.

A Typical Day: The beauty of working on so many projects in so many realms is that I’m always doing something new. It could be screenwriting, novel writing, or article writing. I could be directing a demi-porn, a short film, or a music video. I could be working on music, or dancing as part of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. Or I could be acting, or performing, or emailing, or doing an interview. There is no typical day for me.

The Best Part: My work, across a variety of mediums, gives me a sense of purpose. And, being the divine procrastinator that I am only prolongs that sense of purpose!

The Worst Part: The worst part is the business end, and dealing with the tedious gatekeepers of the media world. I beg you to sympathize with me over how many times I’ve sat in rooms with the squarest beancounters in the world and have had to defend my entire life to a room full of executives without an artistic bone in their bodies — beancounters who sadly hold the keys to funding, studio support, distribution deals, and the like. Being peppered with bizarre and speculatively unanswerable questions about why the characters in your script are even friends to begin with, and knowing that the “wrong” answer could cause the project’s financial backing to dry up is endlessly depressing.

These folks could get ahold of the most airtight script in the world — something daring, new, and exciting, a blockbuster in the making — but some junior executive team has to find a problem with it because it’s their job to find problems. And if they can’t find any flaws, they’re literally out of a job. I get it, by all means, protect your paycheck. But this bureaucratization of entertainment is holding back what could be a new golden age of cinema.

What Society Thinks: You can only trust the moral compass of any given society about 50% of the time, that's my rule. That said, society thinks a lot of things — I may not be loved, but I’m content in the fact that my work explains enough about who I am and what I’m about that I can feel understood, respected, and as far as the haters go, to be left the fuck alone.

When I’m Not at Work: I don't really enjoy "not working." I know it's unhealthy to have that attitude, but I have a hard time locating myself when I'm not in the flow and motion of work. Every time I stop to relax, my inner monologue becomes deafeningly loud.

For more about Brontez, check out his Instagram.

Published Jul 1, 2024