Appendix (Notes on Cafe Flesh)

1.Porn & Art in the 1980s || 2.Style || 3.Gender Differences || Appendix || Copyright

Screenshot Descriptions ||Film Production Notes || Postscript: A Personal Note || Rediscovering Stephen Sayadian

Screenshot Descriptions

  1. Final Tableaux. Lana (Michelle Bauer) awaits Johnny Rico while a random woman under a hair dryer reads a magazine.

  2. Questioning Angel. The Enforcer uncovers the truth about Angel to the astonishment of the others at the cafe.

  3. Oilman Tableaux. A catatonic secretary slowly types a memo while her boss is having sex.

  4. Nicky (Paul McGibboney) and Lana (Michelle Bauer) after the show. Scattered light (fallout?) from the post-nuclear world rain upon their bodies in the bedroom.

  5. A Sea of Faces. Sex Negatives in the Audience while they watch the show.

  6. "Leaving So Soon, Friend?" The movie's final line spoken by Mr. Joy (Paul Berthell) while a stunned Nicky is dragged out of the cafe.

  7. Skull in the Cage. Max Melodramatic (Andy Nichols) reciting his soliloquy in the middle of the Military Lesbian tableaux.

  8. Taunting Nicky. After Lana leaves Nicky to perform onstage, Max slaps and taunts a stunned Nicky.

  9. Raphael and La Fornarina (1813). Painting by Ingres.

  10. Raphael and the Fornarina. IV: With the Pope Pulling Back the Curtain (1969). Picasso. Copyrighted by the Museu Picasso website (link) It appears here in reduced resolution for the purpose of illustrating a historical, theoretical or aesthetic argument; that is considered by media scholars to consider fair use under USA copyright law. (Read more).

  11. Lana Struggling with Secret Longings. Lana's secret self-caresses as viewed through a window from within the empty cafe.

  12. Final Tableaux with Angel (Marie Sharp). Licking her lips onstage while looking up at the mysterious Johnny Rico.

  13. Procession Onstage. A transformed Lana is ushered forward by a line of animated Sex Negatives.

  14. Tempted by a Positive. Lana talks to a Sex Positive in military uniform before going onstage.

  15. Neggies & Possies Together. This is the only time in the movie where Sex Negatives and the performing Sex Positives are included together in the same shot.

The author personally made all the screenshots from the 1999 Cafe Flesh DVD which was produced by VCA Platinum/VCA Classics DVD. Read more.

Film Production Aspects

About a decade ago I discovered a wonderfully thoughtful and thorough essay, "Sound and performance in Stephen Sayadian's: Night Dreams and Cafe Flesh," by Jacob Smith which was published in Velvet Light Trap in 2007. In addition to Cafe Flesh, the essay discusses the earlier Nightdreams movie (and its sequels) made by the same trio. Also, the essay describes how Cafe Flesh later became a midnight cult movie at indie and college movie theatres.

Smith ended up tracking down Sayadian, Jerry Stahl and the cinematographer Frank Delia and interviewing them about the production of all their movies. Before making porn movies, all three of them had been working with Hustler magazine to make satirical photoshoots and ads. The essay also talks at length about the Nightdreams adult movie which the trio made prior to Cafe Flesh.

This essay is worth reading in its entirety—especially for its discussion of narrative and sound and aesthetics. Let me share Smith's description of the cultural milieu in which these movies were made:

Stahl, Sayadian, and Delia had moved with Hustler to L.A., where the latter two men opened an art design studio. They continued to work on a contract basis with Hustler but also began making posters and one-sheets for Hollywood films such as The Fog (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), and Escape from New York (1981). Their studio was located in downtown L.A. in the Cherokee Building, which also provided practice space for local punk rock bands such as the Germs and Wall of Voodoo and office space for Brendan Mullen, the owner of L.A.’s premier punk rock club, The Masque. This overlap with the L.A. punk scene was to have an influence on Sayadian’s subsequent film work: “There was a subgenre of punk that sort of crossed into the movies I was making and that had more to do with geography than anything else” (personal interview, 21 August 2005).

This geographical influence on Sayadian’s work suggests a connection to what Joan Hawkins describes as a “late twentieth-century avant-garde” that emerged in the 1980s when artists and filmmakers began moving “downtown”—to the East Village in Manhattan, the warehouse district in Chicago, and the South Market area (SOMA) in San Francisco. These depressed areas had yet to be gentrified and provided cheap studio space for artists, filmmakers, and musicians (Hawkins 223). Hawkins argues that diverse “downtown” artists and filmmakers such as David Lynch, Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Larry Fessenden, Todd Haynes, Kathy Acker, and Tom Palazzolo were united by a “common urban lifestyle” and “roots in the punk underground” as well as “a shared commitment to formal and narrative experimentation, a view of the human body as a site of social and political struggle, an interest in radical identity politics and a mistrust of institutionalized mechanisms of wealth and power” (223). Importantly, many of these downtown filmmakers borrowed heavily from “low” cultural forms such as “erotic thrillers, horror, sci-fi and porn” (Hawkins 224). The films made by Sayadian, Stahl, and Delia in the early 1980s fit the general outlines of the “downtown” avant-garde. However, where many downtown filmmakers were incorporating aspects of pornography into avant-garde film, Sayadian made the opposite move, bringing techniques associated with art films to his first adult feature: Night Dreams (1981).

Postscript: A Personal Note

I wrote this in 1993-4 when I was 27 or so. I had always intended to publish it somewhere, but lived and worked in Europe for several years, then had no time to revise it upon my return (when I was busy working in the high tech sector). I had started writing stories for the Existential Smut project during the 1990s and especially the 2000s. At some point it probably occurred to me that this essay would fit in with the story project—though it remained a low priority.

Frankly it was a joy to rewatch the DVD when revising this essay in 2024. The image quality of the DVD probably was pretty low when it was originally released in 1999. But on my 55 inch TV in 2024, the faces and sets still look spectacular, and so do the camera movement and costumes, and yes even the acting. I wish the screen captures made from the DVD could adequately convey the compositional beauty and flow of the scenes. Everything still looks fresh and beautiful.

Rediscovering Stephen Sayadian

As I put final touches on this essay in fall 2024, I read that Sayadian and film restorer Daniel Bird would be releasing a 4K/Blu Ray restoration of this movie in early 2025 at the Mondo Macabro website. (Bird had previously restored Sayadian's later movie, Dr. Caligari.) This essay already says 99% of what I want to say about this movie, but I expect to post a review of the 4K/blu ray edition on my website after I watch it. On the same day I learned about the upcoming restoration, I heard Episode 203 of the Director's Club podcast (August 15, 2022) where three diehard Sayadian fans went on for three hours about Sayadian's film work including Cafe Flesh. After decades of never hearing anyone praise or even mention Cafe Flesh, it is awesome to hear writers Heather Drain, Justine Smith and Daniel Bird express such enthusiasm and insight about it.

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