Unlike other, explicitly gay fodder, Pumping Iron enjoyed considerable box office success and critical acclaim upon its U.S. Olympia, a bodybuilding competition hosted by the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB). No, it’s a different kind of fare: 1977’s Pumping Iron, a documentary that follows, among others, the professional and strictly heterosexual bodybuilders Franco Columbu and Arnold Schwarzenegger as they prepare to battle for the top spot at the 1975 Mr. As closely as it apes it, the film in question is not gay porn, the men depicted not porn performers-or, at least, the film is not intended to be pornographic. If I fast forward twenty minutes or so, these buxom, oil-slicked men will be caught in medias res, grinning ecstatically as they embrace. He turns a little, revealing the vast slopes of his smooth, muscled chest to the camera. Viewed from behind, he peels off the top half of his dark blue tracksuit to uncover the sculpted ridges of his back. He gazes at the reclining figure and slowly undresses-the video is getting racy now. At the foot of the bed stands another man. In it, one man-handsome and extremely muscular, with bronzed, hairless skin-lies splayed on a hotel bed.
