Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88171 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-02-23
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

Amazon.com
This "mocumentary" by Dirk Shafer, an actor-model turned filmmaker, is a witty and articulate blend of fact and fiction surrounding his 1992 reign as Playgirl magazine's Centerfold of the Year. He amusingly blurs the line between fact and satire by mixing badly shot black-and-white scenes with more sleekly produced color interviews and documentary footage. Shafer smartly keeps the fluff to a manageable level by balancing all that facetious humor with a sweetly mysterious undertone. However, this is very much a vanity affair, so expect a high level of self-indulgence as Shafer tells us more about himself than we really care to know. --Rochelle O'Gorman

From The New Yorker
An engaging mock documentary by Dirk Shafer, a gay hunk who passed for straight as Playgirl's 1992 Man of the Year. As the American woman's ideal man, he was booked constantly on TV talk shows-there are funny clips from "The Phil Donahue Show," the "Joan Rivers Show," and several others. The rest of the movie re-creates episodes from the big year (a nude shoot, a date with the winner of a Playgirl contest), keeping condescension at bay with some nice comic spins. The movie falters toward the end, when Shafer portrays a friend's death from AIDS, rather self-servingly, as the wake-up call that convinced him to out himself. But on the whole this lighthearted critique of the closet succeeds by treating absurd situations with a knowing smile. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

COULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY...TOO BAD.
While viewing this, you quickly realize that this should have been a "short" (10-15 minutes MAX!). Instead, you end up with a one dimensional joke that's stretched well over 80 minutes. There are some moments of brilliance and cleverness, but they are few and far between. It's more of a shameless Dirk Shafer promo piece than anything else, probably because his glory days are over and he has to get a real job. From the opening shot, you quickly realize that Dirk is getting old, like the rest of us, and that he looks NOTHING like he does on the cover of the DVD box or in the multitude of Playgirl pictures that are shown throughout the film. His choice of characterizations is quite irritating: the gay activists are shown as bitter queens whose lives won't be complete until they "out" him; and for being so in love with his own boyfriend, there are very few moments of genuine caring between them. As one reviewer mentioned, the AIDS sideplot is pathetic and really doesn't belong in this story. Must every gay-themed movie have someone dying of AIDS? Don't people die from car crashes anymore? Or gunshot wounds?

The DVD itself is sorely lacking. There are NO extras whatsoever except for a trailer of the film and a scene access feature (they call it "interactive menus"...ha!). No commentary, no interviews, not even subtitles for the hearing-impared! The picture is full-frame; no widescreen is available. This is obviously another rush job on the part of Fox-Lorber. Avoid it.

A one trick pony, but a fun ride
Cliche-riddled? Yes. Superficial? Mostly. Narcissistic self-indulgence on the part of director/star Dirk Shafer? Most definitely! But in this age of "Judge Judy" and "reality tv," this type of "mocumentary" is an interesting genre to follow. What is truth? What is distortion to serve a dramatic end? These are the kinds of questions that come to mind when I watch MAN OF THE YEAR. When the subject is the teller these distinctions become fuzzier and fuzzier. Clearly the tv clips from the Donahue show when the Playgirl "man of the year" fails a "best buns" contest was authentic. The nightclub stripper who became Shafer's stalker and the therapist who diagnosed Shafer as a "passive-agressive latent exhibitionist" are clearly fictional. The best female friend posing as his on-air girlfriend falls in the gray area somewhere between the two.

Recent films that fall into this category that I enjoyed (but also felt frustrated with) are: THE LARAMIE PROJECT, BEST IN SHOW, the hilarious THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE, and THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (though this last one is usually considered a documentary, Tammy Faye's full-blown participation in its making pushed it beyond the realm of objective reportage, something you expect from a documentary). These are the film equivalents of Capote's IN COLD BLOOD and Mailer's ARMIES OF THE NIGHT. History posing as fiction or fiction posing as history? What I like about this genre is that they seem, in a very post-modernist way, to blithly accept that these distinctions are either irrelevant or cannot be made with any assurance.

The problem for many viewers is likely to come when the film touches upon "serious" issues, like homophobia (including internalized homophobia), the practice of "outing" public figures, and AIDS. The death of Shafer's friend from AIDS (clearly a fictionalized component of this film)is treated with the same light touch as the "best buns" contest. This is quite disconcerting and feels like an insult to people who suffer from this frightful disease and to people who really have lost friends to AIDS. My sense, however, is that life is made up of these kinds of jarring juxtapositions of tragedy and shallowness. Blocking out one reality to more fully experience the other seems arbitrary and artificial. This realization does not lessen the oddness I felt watching MAN OF THE YEAR, but it does help me to accept it.

Overall, I felt the production values were good...as was the acting (catch Robert Goulet as Shafer's father). It's worth a rental if you don't want to cough up the full purchase price.

Drowning in the Shallow End
This movie is dunderheaded, offensive, and hot in about equal measure. Shafer is obviously a dazzling physical specimen, and no doubt that accounts for a lot of the interest in this film, as well as the intrigue of his sham heterosexual heartthrob status. However, an intrinsic drawback of this mockumentary genre is that the joke wears thin pretty fast, and we soon feel compelled to groan at the same stale, straightfaced antics. And when Shafer makes the egregious error of using a friend's illness from AIDS (in a particularly lame performance by the actor in the movie here) to lend some poignancy to his slender theme, one may feel compelled to throw something at the screen. The obvious self-satisfaction of these laidback, self-consciously hip types, laughing down their noses at the rubes who bought Shafer's ruse, grates. Shafer seems unaware what a sick joke his feeble movie has become. His obvious self-absorption and lack of acting ability doesn't help things either. One performance does transcend the generally flaccid narcissism and cheap theatrics: the woman who portrays Shafer's mother has a scene where she gets to suggest some of the pain of a mother who realizes what her gay son has had to go through. For a moment, we are lifted out of the sleaze of vanity and lame satire and elevated to the poignance of true human suffering.