101 Rent Boys.

101 Rent Boys

* Directed by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey * Cinemax, debuting August 28, with encore showings thereafter

Like dependable johns, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato paid 50 bucks apiece--on-camera--to 101 male hustlers for the pleasure of their oral tales. "I thought I was gonna have to come here and have sex or something," says one hustler, laughing. "Instead, I'm just here exposing myself on television. I don't know what's worse."

For many of the guys interviewed for this documentary, sex comes easy, but social intercourse and personal introspection are hard. Only one quarter are by their chosen the rest are anonymous, just thrown in for rapid-fire, sordid bites meant to prick up our ears and or the impressive counting-to-101 montage at the beginning of the 80-minute show.

The hustlers--mostly street workers--range from the young and good-looking to the, well, not-so-young or good-looking, and they span different races, backgrounds, sexual orientations, addictions, and reasons for getting into prostitution. There's a "cowboy hustler," a bondage-and-domination "master," and even a former "gangbanger." A dozen or so get a few minutes to but most interviews have been chopped up and reassembled into categories, including "The First Trick," "Turnons," "Turn-offs," "Watersports," and "Drugs." The film ends with "Alone," for which each hustler is given solo time to say whatever he wants. (One trick skips this confessional opportunity in lieu of giving a limber demonstration of the three positions for autofellatio--an activity that should have earned the warning PERFORMED BY A PROFESSIONAL SEX WORKER: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.)

While the tongue-in-cheek title spoofs Disney's 101 Dalmatians, the hustlers don't describe their johns as Cruella de Vil-ish bad guys--no matter how outlandish their sexual predilections may be. Instead, the villains in these guys' lives are the variety of evils that have brought them to prostitution: childhood molestation, parental rejection, or just the simple daily burden of survival. Still, a few actually proclaim sex work as their personal nirvana.

Though the film more than holds our interest, it feels as if the more comprehensive look that Barbato and Bailey's interviews might have uncovered was traded for a quick-paced, cable-friendly featurette. But ambitious viewers can do their own research: Check out the accompanying Web site for complete interview transcripts with a few of the subjects--including number 77 (favors fat clients), 70 (obsessed with his own hair), 90 (has his own dungeon), and 54 (compares hustling to "public relations," no pun intended). The site also includes hustler Lex Kyler's occasionally comical "Diary of a Rent Boy."

The individual stories in 101 Rent Boys are tragic, sad, graphic, outrageous, entertaining, and even funny--and still recount only a tiny fraction of the stories behind the hustling marketplace found on and around Los Angeles's Santa Monica Boulevard.

Marcus has contributed to Frontiers Newsmagazine and indie-WIRED.