The Performance by Pat Rocco

The Performance

A short by Pat Rocco

1968

'THE PERFORMANCE.................a sex act not easily forgotten.....

The Performance was a 1968 short film written and directed by filmmaker Pat Rocco.  Rocco began his career after moving to California at the age of 11.  Given it was the sixties, Rocco came out early at the age of 13, and soon began his journey to create gay themed films and art.  By 16, he had his own radio show, and soon was appearing on television shows in the late 40's and early 50's.  By the late 50's, he stepped behind the camera, photographing and filming the nude male form.

'My film career began at Bizarre Bazaar, the first head shop in Hollywood. The so-called head shop sold posters and other paraphernalia. We served a thing called LSD coffee. We sold the underground newspapers. We showed midnight movies. Midnight every night we’d show a movie in the back of – half of it was head shop and half of it was like a little coffee shop, and we had a projector and we just showed movies at night, and people would jam in there and sometimes watch through the windows in the front. It was a popular place, and I enjoyed running it and hiring people to be part of it, and all of that, and made a lot of friends there. '

 Bill Voldemar (l) Shawn Zee (r)

The Performance was one of dozens of short and long form films Rocco made during the 60's and 70's.  The film featured model and actors Shawn Zee and Bill Voldemar.  Although most of Rocco's films were only seen in small gay movie houses, The Performance was applauded by some of Los Angeles' to critics of gay cinema.  

These images are promotional shots taken during the making of the film.  Many of the images were later sold for commercial use.  Because there were not many images of a black male model with white male model, several were used for book covers, often for books themed on race and adult male relationships.  The image used as the top of this post is one book cover graced by the beauty of Shawn and Lee.

THE PERFORMANCE is a surrealistic bombshell with overtones of reversed racial symbols and plays like a dream ballet. A Disturbing picture on so many planes.

Sam Winston, The Los Angeles Advocate

Rocco has a genuine talent. His best film is the strangely disturbing The Performance. This pas-de-deux for two figures, one black, one white, builds an ambiguous sense of desire and dread through its movements of camera, of actors and by editing. It is not merely a sex of skin film, but a poesie which bursts the bounds of it's conventions. The Performance is too good to be relegated to just the male nudie houses.  

Richard Whitehall, Film Critic, The Los Angeles OPEN CITY