It’s here!  We’re happy to splash a little seamen your way in the new Story Film Classics: New Recruit trailer.  Check it out, or right-click and download it to your iPhone/iPod HERE.  Get our RSS feed HERE, so you don’t miss these things anymore!

More Details at the AMG Store about Story Film Classics: New Recruit

From the time WWII ended in 1945 (coincidentally the same year Bob Mizer founded AMG) California’s coast played host to some of the sexiest, surliest veterans of foreign wars ever to have defended our fine country. Many of these boys in uniform returned to the US, but never ventured home, choosing instead to plant their roots on the sunny shores of the Pacific.

These were the men who occupied the pages of Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial. Sailors, soldiers and, yes, Marines were mainstays of American beefcake, providing early gay photography with that surly, straight edge that had boys from Birmingham to Brooklyn begging for more. Most of these boys never hit it big, but their fifteen minutes of fame live on in AMG’s latest DVD release, Story Film Classics: New Recruit.

In this collection of 20 digitally remastered films from the King of Beefcake, you’ll get AMG’s favorite military men at their very best. Angry Sailors, Sassy Seamen and even hot Nazis – if you love a man in uniform, you’ll blow your lid for New Recruit. Straight, tattooed, and just barely clothed, there’s no substitute for these real-life military men. And no one, except maybe their enemies shot them better than Bob Mizer.

In New Recruit you’ll find your favorite bodies of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, including beefcake icon John Tristram and bad boy Larry Lamb, in classic military loops like “Jailor’s Delight,” “Nazi and the Paratrooper”, and “Navy Depot.”

Order your copy of New Recruit from the AMG store today, and receive 30% off the suggested retail price.

Where it was once a reflection of a lively industry, filled with work from a slew of international contributors, Physique Pictorial had become a one-man show. Gone were the lascivious illustrations from the likes of George Quaintance and Tom of Finland, the playful photos of Bruce Bellas and Walter Kundizcs. In there place were more of PP’s signature crowded layouts, jammed full of pictures, prices and order numbers, model stats and Bob Mizer’s paranoid ramblings. This was an entirely new beast – a reflection of the booming need for self-satisfaction sweeping the nation as the “Me Generation” came of age. This was the Bob Mizer Show.

With a massive internal library of photographs, videos and films, Mr. Mizer no longer needed to look outside the AMG compound for content. PP now served as a glorified portfolio for the prolific photographer. In its pages were the sleek beefcake images that made him famous, alongside his foray into video, which consisted of unedited streaming footage of his photo sessions, focusing on one or more themes –Anal Erotic , Best Size, Bondage and/or Spanking. The lack of outside content, however, wasn’t really about ego, at all. In a lot of ways it was a sign of the times. Many of Mizer’s contemporaries had fallen out of favor, disappeared from the photography game or just ceased to be relevant. Others suffered a far worse fate – death, largely from AIDS.

It could be said, then, that the Physique Pictorial of the 1980s was the last bastion of beefcake.

Continue reading ‘Physique Pictorial in The 1980s’

When I first saw Bob Mizer’s late period color work, it looked to me like the work of an outsider – someone who created great art unintentionally, foolishly stumbling upon something truly provocative. It was so unpolished, so ridiculous, and at times so bizarre that the notion seemed perfectly logical – this stuff came from the bowels of some unstructured lunatic mind.

His black and white photographs from the 1940s and 1950s begged to tell another story. Bob was an ambitious young photographer, whose work was so sharp and cutting edge that it became the gold standard of a new genre. His magazine, Physique Pictorial, was the first of its kind, connecting men all over the world to some sense of community. It’s no easy feat to build an empire on a stack of photographs, but Bob made it happen, and he couldn’t have done it by accident.

So what was Bob’s motivation in the end?

I sat down with one of his closest friends and contemporaries, David Hurles, a few years back, as part of a larger oral history project. It was my intention to get to know the man behind the camera. During our hour-long interview at a Sizzler on Hollywood Blvd, David painted a picture of a meticulous and intentional artist, with a twisted sense of humor perhaps, but certainly no fool.

Below is a short excerpt from that interview. Continue reading ‘The Real Bob Mizer – An Interview with David Hurles’

This stud from St. Louis is possibly the most decorated model in Physique Pictorial history. In our extensive experience with Bob Mizer’s groundbreaking publication, never have we found a man with such a complicated collection of subjective character analysis symbols. The text accompanying his appearance in the April 1973 edition of PP reads as such:

“ANTHONY J WILSON at age 20 5′10 160 lbs of St Louis, MO. French Indian. USMC Vietnam vet. Birthdate Jan. 14. Weighttrains: MP 200, CJ 300.”

A Midwest vet with an exhibitionist streak, Mr. Wilson is apparently also “Gay and Proud,” slightly unstable, and a fan of the nose candy. He lifts weights and can apparently “clean and jerk” 300 lbs. We’re not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds an awful lot like what we did in the shower this morning. A break down of his best and worst traits follows.

A. Gay and Proud
B. Sick, Fanatic, Pathological, and/or Religious
C. On Dope

Compiled from an autobiographical account of the photographer’s life appearing in Reed Massingill’s book, CHAMPION.

“Have you gentlemen picked up any of these models to prove your contention that these guys have erections?”

It’s a question that would change Walter Kundzicz’s life forever. Presented to police and post office representatives regarding a set of images that were at the heart of an obscenity trial against the photographer, the question seemed to hold the future of male nudity in the balance. The photos in question, taken by Mr. Kundzicz, featured nearly naked models, cocks cleverly sheathed in translucent fabric, apparently sporting fully engorged members.

When the cops and postal flunkies responded to the judge’s inquiry in the negative, he promptly through out the case, pointing out that if they hadn’t seen the goods, they had no way of knowing what was wood and what wasn’t.

The decision was an unusual triumph for Kundzicz, and gay artists all over the United States.

Continue reading ‘What a CHAMPION – An Abridged Introduction to Walter Kundzicz’

Zombies of Mass Destruction featuring Tijuana Bandit

Zombies of Mass Destruction is a film that attempts to be in equal parts a horror movie, a low to middle brow farce and a scathing satire of red state America.  And Athletic Model Guild has a cameo!

Film "aged" for cameo role in ZMD.

While hiding out from the zombie brain-crunchers in a red-neck church, a minister discovers that Lance and Tom are gay, and forcefully subjects them to undergo aversion therapy, which means tying them to a chair and making them watch vintage 50’s beefcake loops, as an IV hook-up makes them nauseous.  They are forced to watch Tijuana Bandit starring Ed Manning as the Bandit and Dale Hall and Jim Jones, which we happily supplied to the director.  They took our pristine footage which you can see HERE, and aged it back to the 1950s, to look like an antique loop.

Tijuana Bandit

Check out the trailer after the jump.  It’s available on Netflix as well.

Continue reading ‘Beefcake Zombies of Mass Destruction’

Porn, cocaine and disco – these mainstays of the 1970s had America horny, hyper and ready to dance. And while they may have collectively peaked nearly 40 years ago, their influence is still evident today. Take Lady Gaga for example, or, well, Lady Gaga. Point is, the 1970s were an influential age. Hell, even Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial was drawn in by the disco beat.

In the 1970s, AMG models dressed in tight fitting jeans, wore blow outs, and proudly sported their Johnsons, sans cock sheath. Some models rocked coke nails while at least one went so far as to name himself after his drug of choice – Bobby “Cocaine” Gordon.

It’s been said that when the 80s rolled around, our fine nation woke up with one massive hangover, so let’s salute the 10-year party that came before.

Herewith are our favorite Physique Pictorial covers from the Golden Age of Disco – the 1970s. Continue reading ‘Physique Pictorial, The Disco Years’

From our April 15 press release just posted at XBiz.com

AMG Classics & AMG Brasil go mobile!

SAN FRANCISCO — All-male studio Athletic Model Guild launches two mobile sites as part of a partnership with Barcelona-based Spankmo mobile.

AMG Classic Mobile, m.AthleticModelGuild, and AMG Brasil Mobile, m.AMGBrasil, are formatted for mobile devices including iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others.

Each feature the same content as their corresponding sites AMGClassics and AMGBrasil. Both mobile sites, just like the original sites, will be updated regularly.

“Now you can watch your favorite AMG models from anywhere in the world, without sacrificing quality. It’s really a beautiful thing,” AMG President Dennis Bell said. “We’ve worked really hard to make sure that our studio remains on the cutting edge of technological innovations and the mobile platform is no different.”

“We’re really excited to bring AMG to mobile,” Spankmo co-founder Alan Westenbroek said. “The AMG Classics are such a key part of American cultural history, it is an honor to be involved in bringing them to a new technology and a new audience, along with the great new generation of AMG Brasil.”

Continue reading ‘AMG Launches 2 Mobile Sites With Spankmo’

The 1960s brought on the rise of the quaalude, the creation of the key party and the discovery of those precocious Brits, the Beatles. For those beefcake rags that survived the conservatively cold 1950s, it was a time of great change and even greater success. Having fought for decades to see the front end of the male body realized in print, these arbiters of change won some monumental battles in the courtroom that made posing pouch modesty a thing of the past. Some argue that this was the beginning of the end for Bob Mizer the artist, but in all reality full-frontal nudity marked the beginning of something far more magnificent for the grandfather of gay porn – a period of total freedom and unparalleled creativity.

Herewith our favorite Physique Pictorial covers from the Swinging ’60s. Continue reading ‘Physique Pictorial in the Swinging ’60s’