Butt Boy

And Boofing

What makes you turn a movie off? There are traditional reasons, like the performance of a certain actor, or the oppressive visual style, or dialogue that sounds completely phony. But often, subject matter triggers a severe reaction in viewers. It might be typically severe elements, like racism, or uncomfortable sexual concepts, or a topic for which the viewer is entirely unprepared. For those of you with a strong composition, you should be prepared. “Butt Boy” is a movie about a man who puts anything and everything (and EVERYTHING) up his butt.

It’s not a sexual thrill for the wonderfully-named Chip Gutchell when he one day finds out that he is compelled to shove items up his rectum. Slowly, his wife discovers that their son’s Legos are going missing, soap is disappearing, and where has the remote control gone? Soon, everyone is wondering where the family dog has gone. Yes “Butt Boy” is going there, and you’re along for the ride. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

If you stick around, you’ll find that a repentant Chip has joined AA, speaking about his insertion obsession euphemistically so as to not arouse suspicion. Chip is soon paired off with Russel, a unique performance by Tyler Rice. Rice initially seems like a particularly hammy variation on the Tough Cop Married To His Job. He’s not terribly different, on the surface, from all the movie cops we’ve seen in exaggerated cop movies – his temperament is basically, what if Harvey Keitel played Riggs in “Lethal Weapon”? But Rice keeps finding new and unique notes to enliven his hardboiled schtick, creating out of a mood and temperament an insecure man trying and failing to locate his sensitive side. Chip doesn’t love being paired with a cop, and Russel very quickly starts to suspect that Chip is both a lousy sponsor and a man with a deep-seeded secret.

Chip, a listless cubicle drone, is played by Tyler Cornack, the film’s co-writer and director. It’s a minimalist, effectively pathetic turn. Chip is a portrait of an addict, without the Hollywood sensationalism that surrounds such things. Once he becomes consumed with the need for his butt to, um, consume, he loses all interest in the rest of his wife, including his wife and child. Nothing in life feels meaning unless it results in that loss of composure that occurs whenever he’s able to spread his cheeks and absorb objects. And he remains unfulfilled unless he’s able to keep challenging his boundaries, which leads to him attempting to inhale objects up his rectum that, by basic physics, should not be able to fit. Yes, the movie goes there, and goes there more, and goes there more, until there is logistically nowhere else to go.

“Butt Boy” can only inspire laughs of revulsion, given its subject matter, but it is not a joke. Cornack’s unfussy direction has the camera constantly peering around corners as if he’s spying on his own movie. Like all obsessives, Chip gets sloppy enough that you have to wonder if he wants to be caught, and given that Cornack is also behind the camera, there’s something to that. That this movie is in any way coy is perhaps the sharpest joke, and it’s a good one. Rewarding too is the dynamic between Cornack, the introverted, doughy nobody with a deadly secret, and Rice, as the cop who refuses to trust anyone, taking a drag from his cigarette as he massages the hangover from the temples of his forehead. “Butt Boy” is a proudly-dumb provocation, but it’s also shot and edited like a neo-noir, the reckless sicko and the cop on the chase, and the sphincter that divides them. Among all the movies I have seen for this substack, this is the least-forgettable.

Since we’re among friends, we can talk about “boofing”. In society, this is slang for the type of narcotic that can be delivered as a suppository. In prison, it generally refers to the method of carrying contraband from one place to another. My last spot was relatively isolated from society and as such heavily monitored, so anything that illegally arrived within the walls was boofed. That includes the one cell phone I saw in that spot, but generally, boofing was also the method to distribute K2 in the prison. If a guard has to check you for contraband, it will be mandatory for him to ask you to spread your cheeks open. Simply boofing, and being able to carry contraband in that way, probably won't be enough.

In my first prison, the first warden I had was rude, dismissive and paradoxically desperate for attention. But during orientation, he emphasized something we should have all heeded – if you are eating food smuggled out of the cafeteria, it’s very likely it’s been boofed. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but often, one way or another, it’s going between someone’s legs. And because there’s nothing to eat after you leave the cafeteria at 5:30, you’re eating that boofed food, out of a plastic baggie, which sat next to someone’s nether regions. If your cheeks aren’t tough enough to hold on, don’t boof. And if you don’t want to consume boofed food, stay away from prison.

If you really want to see this movie, don’t watch this trailer.