Pornonomy: Champagne for Breakfast (1980)

I'm immediately skeptical of adult films that run longer than 90 minutes. Unfortunately, Champagne for Breakfast does nothing to earn it's 102 minutes. Ostensibly, the film's about cosmetic company marketing VP Champagne's (Lesllie Bovee) search for a fulfilling life outside of work; a search that's aided by her new bodyguard/chauffeur Harry (John Leslie). There's a secondary story line concerning Harry's business aspirations and shady dealings with his brother-in-law that's essentially introduced and resolved in less than four minutes of screen time. It's too brief and uninteresting to really get into. The film also has attitudes towards homosexuality that are clumsy at best, outright homophobic at worst.

Champagne for Breakfast raises - and leaves unanswered - a host of questions about character motivation and decision making, but the questions are so low stakes and, again, uninteresting that I wasn't bothered by them, which is a problem. Overall, the film looked good (though there were some amusing oversights concerning reflective surfaces and crew members; see below) and the actors performed well. Acting-wise, that is; the sex scenes were mostly pedestrian and the foursome in the male brothel Champagne patronizes (Bovee, Jonathon Younger, Jon Martin, William Niles) stood out, but for the wrong reason. The "choreography" was clunky, Niles had trouble getting wood, and the climax was anti-climactic: despite Champagne pleading for the men to all come on her at once, it seemed like only Younger complied, and even then possibly to the consternation of Martin, since he was functioning as a human drop cloth, what with Champagne riding him cowgirl at the time.

Let's see how Rimmer justified his Collector's Choice rating:

"Mostly this is a laughing sexvid.... John Leslie and Leslie Bovee are good comedians. By concentrating most of the silly story line on Bovee she becomes a more interesting woman."

I'm going to assume by "laughing" he meant "light" and have no idea what he meant by the "more interesting woman" bit. It's certainly comparing apples to oranges, but in the grand scheme of things, I couldn't possibly rate Champagne for Breakfast lower than Between the Cheeks, but neither could I rate it any higher. So CC100, it is.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

° Harry referring to his blue balls as "the stonies" was pretty amusing.

° In his Rialto Report interview, Jon Martin mentioned that producer/director Chris Warfield was "90% blind" when he produced Hot Lunch (1978; two years before making Champagne). Warfield's also credited (at IMDB) with directing adult films until 1985 (Sounds of Sex) as Billy Thornberg, though IAFD has two different entries for Warfield and Thornberg.

° IMDB also has a long list of acting credits for Chris Warfield, beginning in 1953 and ending in 1995, with a film called Unstrung Heroes, directed by Diane Keaton and starring Andie MacDowell, John Turturro, and Michael Richards. That's a weird resume!

° Like I said above, there were some problems with reflective surfaces. To wit: