Harvey Keitel has done it. Ewan McGregor has done it at least four times. Now all red-blooded American males can drop their trousers for the cameras.
Introducing Guys Gone Wild, an all-male version of the Girls Gone Wild video series, which promises ``the hottest, wildest, most beautiful real co-eds,'' stripping for the cameras during spring break and doing things they'd never do back home."
Girls Gone Wild has been around about seven years and every person who's been involved with it on many different levels has been asked once or multiple times, "What about a Guys Gone Wild?'' said Bill Horn, spokesman for Mantra Entertainment, which produces the videos that features young women exposing themselves to the camera.
PHOTO: AP
``It was about seeing something different for a different audience,'' Horn said last week. ``We took the mirror image of what we had been doing with Girls Gone Wild."
Starting next week, three titles will be available on DVD and video through a Web site and by telephone: Guys Gone Wild, Guys Gone Wild: Spring Break and Guys Gone Wild: Frat Boys.
The stars are young, good-looking guys who aren't shy about taking it all off and letting it all hang out. They gyrate like strippers, do push-ups and, in one memorable scene, bounce up and down on their hotel room beds while tossing a football back and forth.
So who exactly would shell out US$19.99 to see this?
``Based on the reactions I've gotten, college-age girls, maybe older,'' Horn said. ``I think it's going to be a big gag gift, bachelorette kind of gift.''
(A recent screening for a group of friends -- male and female -- elicited squeals of appalled laughter, followed by embarrassed fascination, followed quickly by boredom and shutting off the VCR.)
But Horn also expects the videos will appeal to gay men. ``There's a certain amount of gay women who purchase Girls Gone Wild," he said.
The big difference between the male and female versions, though, is the absence of kissing. Much of the allure of the Girls Gone Wild series, with titles such as Girls Who Like Girls' and `Mardi Gras Co-eds, is the fantasy it dangles before its viewers -- the possibility that the wholesome girl next door could, on a drunken spring break whim, tear off her T-shirt and make out with one of her sorority sisters.
``Let's face it -- there's a double standard when it comes to guy-on-guy as opposed to girl-on-girl,'' Horn said. ``It's sexy to see two girls making out. It's not considered sexy to see two guys making out. That's just the reality and we were there to capture the reality.''
Misty Nicole, a 24-year-old aspiring actress, did just that as a member of the all-female Guys Gone Wild production crew. At sunny destinations including Cancun, Mexico, and South Padre Island, Texas, Nicole scoured the parties and sweet-talked the guys into appearing in front of her video camera.
``I look for cute guys,'' she said Thursday. ``I go up to them and I go, `Hey, you're cute. How crazy and wild are you?' They'd be like, `I'm pretty wild.' Then their friends would come over and they'd see the camera, they'd see the shirt and they'd go, `Oh, my God, you're with `Girls Gone Wild!'''
From there, getting them to take off their shirts and yell ``Guys Gone Wild'' is pretty easy, she said -- but about half the time, it requires a little coaxing to get them to go further.
``Some of them, they just need reassurance,'' she said. ``They just gotta talk to you a minute.''
Another occupational hazard: being hit on constantly.
``Sometimes they get out of control,'' Nicole said. ``Sometimes they try to get my camera and pull me into the shot. I have to deal with about five or 10 minutes of, `What are you going to do for me? I'll show you mine if you show me yours.'''
A bodyguard always came along to protect the female crew, she said.
When a male production team went to a vacation spot to shoot footage for Girls Gone Wild, a second female crew would go along to grab video of guys, Horn said.
``If there's going to be a good party there for Girls Gone Wild, odds are it's going to be a good party for Guys Gone Wild,as well,'' he said.
But sometimes, Nicole found, there's a hangover of regret once the party's over.
``There are a few people who come up to me the next day or later that night and say, `You know what? I'd really prefer that you not use that. My dad is the governor of blah-blah-blah.' Or `I'm planning on going into politics.' Or `I'm going into the army,''' she said. ``I lost some really good footage, but I can't do that to them."
Every now and then, it’s nice to just point somewhere on a map and head out with no plan. In Taiwan, where convenience reigns, food options are plentiful and people are generally friendly and helpful, this type of trip is that much easier to pull off. One day last November, a spur-of-the-moment day hike in the hills of Chiayi County turned into a surprisingly memorable experience that impressed on me once again how fortunate we all are to call this island home. The scenery I walked through that day — a mix of forest and farms reaching up into the clouds
With one week left until election day, the drama is high in the race for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair. The race is still potentially wide open between the three frontrunners. The most accurate poll is done by Apollo Survey & Research Co (艾普羅民調公司), which was conducted a week and a half ago with two-thirds of the respondents party members, who are the only ones eligible to vote. For details on the candidates, check the Oct. 4 edition of this column, “A look at the KMT chair candidates” on page 12. The popular frontrunner was 56-year-old Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文)
“How China Threatens to Force Taiwan Into a Total Blackout” screamed a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) headline last week, yet another of the endless clickbait examples of the energy threat via blockade that doesn’t exist. Since the headline is recycled, I will recycle the rebuttal: once industrial power demand collapses (there’s a blockade so trade is gone, remember?) “a handful of shops and factories could run for months on coal and renewables, as Ko Yun-ling (柯昀伶) and Chao Chia-wei (趙家緯) pointed out in a piece at Taiwan Insight earlier this year.” Sadly, the existence of these facts will not stop the
Oct. 13 to Oct. 19 When ordered to resign from her teaching position in June 1928 due to her husband’s anti-colonial activities, Lin Shih-hao (林氏好) refused to back down. The next day, she still showed up at Tainan Second Preschool, where she was warned that she would be fired if she didn’t comply. Lin continued to ignore the orders and was eventually let go without severance — even losing her pay for that month. Rather than despairing, she found a non-government job and even joined her husband Lu Ping-ting’s (盧丙丁) non-violent resistance and labor rights movements. When the government’s 1931 crackdown