Artist/ writer/ gay-porn director Phil St. John will be the guest on next Thursday's edition of World of Wonder's call-in show, Ring My Bell.
Broadcast live, worldwide on the Internet at RingMyBell.tv, the show features an eclectic mix of guest stars each day at 11 a.m. Pacific Time.
Previous guests have been Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), porn star Brad Benton, Warhol star Holly Woodlawn, gay filmmaker Gregg Araki, glass-eating performance artist Lenora Claire, and Salute Your Shorts star, Donkeylips.
St. John, who sees gay porn as "a parallel cultural phenomenon to mainstream filmmaking that documents the gay culture of our times," started making porn loops for Times Square peep shows in the 1970s.
In the '80s he made such classic features as Getting It. In the '90s, with Skateboard Sliders, he pioneered a new porn genre, and shocked the porn world when he made South Beach Heat, the gay-porn version of the murder of Gianni Versace by Andrew Cunanen.
Under his real name, Phil Tarley, he has written for many journals and magazines and is finishing a book about his travel adventures. His films and documentaries, including Queer Lifestyles and AIDS activism features, have been widely shown at festivals, museums, and on PBS, and are in the permanent archives of the New York Public Library. His fine-art large photography can be seen at PhilTarley.com.
World of Wonder Productions was created by film school buds Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato in the late 1980s. Champions of the misunderstood, the two have grown their company on the idea that "today's marginal is tomorrow's mainstream." Under the WOW moniker, they co-directed and -produced a broad range of documentary films, such as Party Monster and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which often feature controversial subjects and challenge the traditional documentary approach.
The WOW manifesto, published on WorldofWonder.net, states, in part, "We pride ourselves on being champions of the eccentric, the bizarre, the kooky, the outlandish, the subversive, the outcast, and all things that exist on the fringe of society."
Among the 33 beliefs listed after the manifesto are: "We believe that imagination is second only to good looks... We believe that children should be named after consumer products... We believe in the sixteenth minute... We believe that you should never, ever turn off your TV."
The dial-in number for Ring My Bell is 323-603-6312. Phil St. John will be taking calls and answering questions on Thursday, July 6, at 11:00 a.m.
