Thanks to reader "Txus" for alerting me to this tease for a new biopic Tom. It's an unusual teaser in that the movie isn't even filming yet and isn't eyeing release plans until 2015. It's a preemie! Are they trying to drum up financial producer's interest (?) because audience interest won't work this far in advance; you can't purchase tickets two years ahead of time.
Still, I will say that the filthy smirk on actor Olli Rahkonen's face seems like a good match for the Man in question. Tom of Finland, for those of you who need a primer on gay history, was once not the name of a clothing line, but an infamous erotic cartoonist. Tom (Touko Laksonnen) was doing his X rated thing when being gay was still criminal pretty much everywhere.
The cheeky sexy teaser and more commentary is after the jump (and not safe for work)
This will probably make me sound like a prude, but I've never been a huge fan of his work (which is not to say I dislike it) because I find outrageously hyper-sexualization of female or male bodies to be weirdly off-putting and rarely as sexy as its intended -- when boobs or dicks are inflated past the laws of physics all I can think of is back pain or how hard it would be to find clothing to wear.
one of his tamer imagesBut back to the movie -- Tom of Finland is actually kind of a great subject character for a biopic. The topic is unique and the subject is controversial. Consider this confusing loaded statement he made about his art as a soldier during World War II:
In my drawings I have no political statements to make, no ideology. I am thinking only about the picture itself. The whole Nazi philosophy, the racism and all that, is hateful to me, but of course I drew them anyway – they had the sexiest uniforms!
How can you pose apolitically when your very existence, and your sexuality, are so politicized?
But anyway... enough with the biopic genre being dominated by rock stars with drug problems or politicians with scandals. There are other types of people in the world who made it go round. BUT a warning to the filmmakers: if this isn't obscene (to many) there is no point in making it. Will the filmmakers have the guts to go the Full Ubiquitous Hyper-Sexualized Monty?