A Pillion in New York

I always illustrate my Pillion posts with a picture of Alexander Skarsgård so let's shake it up and go with his co-star and leading man Harry Melling today, because we've come to be enormous fans of his over the past few years. Not just the biggun, our beloved Please Baby Please (which is the obvious forerunner to Pillion given that they're both about mousy dudes finding love and lust through leather daddies), but also an extremely underrated turn in The Devil All the Time -- not a perfect movie but he was amazing in it. Really any time Harry shows up we're enthused to watch his riveting face and so Pillion's been on our GIMME THAT FUCKING THING NOW list since it premiered at Cannes -- okay technically well before Cannes because I am On This Sorta Shit and posted about this movie getting made a full year before it premiered at Cannes. Anyway my great wish for NYFF came true -- today they announced that Pillion is indeed in the line-up for next month's fest, huzzah! It's part of their Spotlight Section which also includes the Springsteen biopic with Jeremy Allen White that I mentioned yesterday, along with fresh reveals -- two movies from Richard Linklater, a five-part docuseries about Martin Scorsese, the new one from Paolo Sorrentino and Daniel Day-Lewis' triumphant (one assumes) return to acting in his son's first film. Check the whole list at FLC's site. Let the countdown until Pillion commence!

Skarsgård & Leather

It's wild that this outfit only dropped yesterday given how many more headline-grabbing outfits Alexander Skarsgård has been photographed in at Cannes since the above one, but the Gay BDSM Biker movie called Pillion that he stars in opposite Please Baby Please sub Harry Melling premiered at the fest then and this outfit did its job -- everybody around the globe stopped dead in their tracks and gawked. I posted several more on Bluesky so check 'em here -- slightly more important that Alex doing Tom of Finland drag though (slightly) is the fact that word of mouth on the movie itself out of the fest is very good! (And very hot too!) So I'm just gonna need this movie sooner rather than months from now. Do you hear me, A24? (And also I expect a positively pervy collection of Pillion-themed swag for sale in your shop as well!) Anyway while making France his bitch Alex has made out with Pedro Pascal and worn thigh-high leather boots and spangled pants as well, but I gotta admit the short-shorts he's been rocking today have been pretty top too! (See more here.) He' might single-handedly rescue 2025 from the shit-heap y'all. May the Pillion press tour save us!

Peter Hujar's Day is Coming

It's turning out to be a very gay day today and I wouldn't have it any other way -- I just shared the news that the leather love story Pillion is screening at NYFF and I believe that the closested cop drama Plainclothes (which I reviewed right here) is supposed to get a trailer at some point today. But first we've got the poster and the trailer for Ira Sachs' new movie Peter Hujar's Day, which stars Ben Whishaw as the titular gay photographer alongside Rebecca Hall as Hujar's good friend, journalist Linda Rosenkrantz. The two spent a day talking on the record in 1974 and this film documents that day and conversation. Couldn't be more excited -- it hits theaters on November 7th! Watch:

6 Off My Head: A 2025 Peek Ahead

Inspired by the Bugonia teaser I just shared (along with the fact that it's Paul Thomas Anderson's birthday today which reminded me he has a new movie out in several weeks) I decided to go ahead and make a list of the movies left to be released in 2025 that I'm most looking forward to. I did this (as with everything I do here) mostly for myself because I've been bad about keeping an eye on what's ahead -- I can be very much in the moment; planning ahead's not my strongest suit! So I will myself probably be referring back to this list often. But perhaps this will help you along the same lines! That'd be nice! So sans further ado I give you...

My Top 6 Anticipated Movies of 2025

Bugonia (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) -- Oct 24th 

(more here)

One Battle After Another (dir. PT Anderson) -- Sept 26th

The History of Sound (dir. Oliver Hermanus) -- Sept 12th 

(more here)

After the Hunt (dir. Luca Guadagnino) -- Oct 10th 

(more here)

Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier) -- Nov 7th

Pillion (dir. Harry Lighton) -- TBD

(more here)

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(Sidenote: There is no word on Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex and any kind of release date for it yet, otherwise it would very much be listed above.) 

(Sidenote #2 - literally five minutes after I posted this list it was announced that Neon has bought Park Chan-wook's new movie No Other Choice for release and it's premiering at Venice so add that one too!)

Runners-up: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (dir. Rian Johnson), Marty Supreme (dir. Josh Safdie), Hamnet (dir. Chloé Zhao), A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (dir. Kogonada), It Was Just an Accident (dir. Jafar Panahi), The Roses (dir. Jay Roach), Avatar: Fire & Ash (dir. James Cameron), Together (dir. Michael Shanks)...

... Weapons (dir. Zach Cregger),  Jay Kelly (dir. Noah Baumbach), Caught Stealing (dir. Darren Aronofsky), Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo Del Toro), The Mastermind (dir. Kelly Reichardt), Highest 2 Lowest (dir. Spike Lee), A House of Dynamite (dir. Kathryn Bigelow), Die My Love (dir. Lynne Ramsay), The Running Man (dir. Edgar Wright)

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What movies are y'all most looking forward to?

Yes Sir Skarsgård

Raise your hand if you'd want to be Alexander Skarsgard's submissive little slave boy. And excuse me while I peel myself off of the wall from the sheer force of all of your hands flying violently into the air at once. Anyway that's the plot of an actual movie that is being made -- titled Pillion, Alexander will play, and I quote, "the impossibly handsome leader of a community of kinky, queer bikers." And that's not all -- the movie will co-star the terrific Harry Melling, last seen being dommed by queer biker gang member Karl Glusman in Please Baby Please...

... Harry! My man! I am sensing a theme!  But I guess if you're gonna get type-cast I think getting type-cast as the sub to a steady stream of hot actors in leather and denim is probably the way to go. The Way. Anyway the movie is from first-time feature director Harry Lighton, who's previously made some award-winning short films. It's set to shoot in London this summer. Let's hope we see a lot of this one filming on the streets -- I need to see Alexander done up in queer-coded biker gear as soon as possible. 

Pic of the Day

Ugh I'm annoyed -- just saw that Pillion, the movie I first told you about EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO TODAY (weird) that stars Alexander Skarsgard as a queer biker who keeps Harry Melling (so great in Please Baby Please, working with weirdly similar themes) as a happily submissive sex toy, is playing at Cannes later this month. Boo! Boo I says. Anyway that's the first image seen above (click to embiggen) -- I'm glad they're letting them both be hot. You never know. And yes I know Harry Melling isn't to everybody's taste, but I found his erotic journey toward Karl Glusman's chaps in PBP extremely stimulating, so I've myself a crush I don't see going anywhere soon. Especially if he keeps making movies like this...

Quote of the Day

"There’s definitely a raunchier version of this movie … what you’ve seen is the family friendly version… there’s also the Alexander Skarsgard cut.”

I've tried to avoid reviews and/or the specifics of what nudity and gay sex we should expect from Pillion -- the Gay BDSM Biker Movie starring Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling that just premiered at Cannes -- because the movie will surely get re-cut some before anyone not in France sees it. And sure enough that's also mentioned in this piece at Variety (thx Mac) talking to the actors and director Harry Lighton. Like, Lighton says he's currently working on "de-shining" some ejaculation right now for the MPAA lol. And that he edited out an erection aimed straight at the camera out of the cut before it even screened at Cannes. Anyway we can all mourn what's been lost unto the dust-bins of erotic cinematic history while still appreciating the fact that Alexander Skarsgard calls the raunchier cut of the movie "The Alexander Skarsgard Cut." Does this mean there was more of his body on display? Or does it mean that the kink being cut is a better representation of him as a person? Either way, I know what I'll be thinking about for the rest of today...

Pics of the Day

A pair of new photos from Pillion, the forthcoming gay biker "romance" starring Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling, have been dug up by some internet sleuths today (via) -- not the finest quality just yet (you can no doubt clock the blackened edges fading out in the corners) but since we're obsessed with this movie we'll post them until we do have better copies! I'm seeing this in two and a half weeks for NYFF so if we can just make it until then all will be okay. But lord knows every day is a goddamned struggle in 2025 so I'm not taking anything for granted...