Fucking Day: Nude BBQ

In 1994, erotic VHS specialist T-Z Video released a 30 minute tape I'll be done describing as soon as I tell you its name: NUDE BBQ. To a generation who grew up with the Internet, it will look like blurry handshakes between good friends trying on bras. But to the people of the '90s, this was 78 movies worth of nudity in a single spot. And there are still people out there desperate for their pornography to be delivered in the form of NUDE BBQ. It's impossible to find and one of the rarest, most valuable VHS tapes I own. So let's look at the "absolutely sizzling" NUDE BBQ, a "$227.99 value."

It takes a lot of people to put a project like this together. You need someone with a pool, another guy who can point a camcorder at butts, and wait, maybe that could be the same guy. What I'm getting at is this is the work of a single auteur, Bob Scott. I know this because NUDE BBQ opens with a still frame of a naked woman cooking hot dogs and a long list of credits that are all BOB SCOTT.

The film tells the story of three ladies, Karen, Kim, and Barbara, as they have a naked cookout. The screenwriter, BOB SCOTT, really understands women so he opens with a scene of them doing what he imagines they must always be doing when they're alone-- talking about each other's tits.

A wobbly, low quality camera zooms in on each of their chests as they adjust themselves, which isn't as erotic as I'm making it sound. They don't seem to know we're watching and they're pinching at their straps like women in a commercial for a more comfortable underwire. Like truck drivers dealing with bra fungus. Like untrained performers who heard Bob Scott hiss "play with your booooobs," and didn't quite earn their fifty bucks.

Let's talk about the writing for a minute. It's obviously unfair to consider judging this by any standard of art. The box advertises we can "eavesdrop on their gossip," but it'd be crazy to expect anything other than light small talk, right? If one of them said, "It sure is a nice day for a nude barbecue" and the other two nodded and took off their clothes, it would be fine. And yet Bob Scott somehow fucked this up.

I had to watch this opening scene several times. For the hot reasons you're assuming, of course, but also because the Bob Scott screenplay was being drowned out by the Bob Scott music. As far as I can tell, they are saying exactly this, about each other's tits, while they nervously laugh:

"They're so cute!"

"A big!!"

"They don't have to eat like little birds, ha HA!!"

"Why do women do that? Ha ha!"

"A little lower there, huh ha."

I don't know what it means. Maybe they don't. Maybe Bob Scott thought no one would care so long as 'dese sexy broads was naked, but look at how wrong he was. I will be haunted by this exchange until I die. If I showed this to Helen Keller's wet nurse, they would say, "This is the most unusual titty discussion I've ever witnessed. And I know I bring this up a lot, but I was Helen Keller's wet nurse."

Was that exchange in the "screenplay" Bob Scott credited himself with? Or did he hiss at these untrained performers, "talk about your boooooooobs," and then watch them not quite earn work experience and all the hot dogs they could eat.

I think it might have been cut together from a "greatest hits" of unscripted small talk between three awkward, first time sex workers. Maybe Bob Scott decided 90 seconds of raw madness was better than 120 seconds of real dialog if it's the thing standing between the viewer and nipples. I get we're here to watch naked women heat up some hot dogs and this whole scene is only to establish the setting, but Bob could have done that with full sentences. It seems like a deliberate choice to chop this up into an inhuman word salad. It's suspiciously how an artist with a very clear vision might communicate, "I hate it when fucking women talk."

One of the women finally forms a coherent idea when she says, "Before we eat, why don't we get some sun." This is ruined by the other two joking about how being more tan will let them eat more. All three of them have the nervous energy of someone about to get naked on camera for the first time. And Bob Scott has the cinematography skills of a man who shouldn't have been able to trick three women into his father's backyard.

The women spread out and pick a rock for sunbathing. Like iguanas, they bask on them, and like iguanas they seem to have no idea what humans find alluring. We might look at 1994 as a prudish time, but they still had seductive stretching technology. And even assuming these girls came from some kind of Amish community and had never seen any erotic material, any adult woman should know how to rub her own erogenous zones, right? Like if someone hissed, "bask on the hot rock. make it ssssssexxy," you'd sort of know what to do, right?

Kim, Karen, and Barbara don't. They are inventing all new places to paw at themselves. And you know how models sometimes look into the camera? That never happens here. These women frequently looked directly into the sun rather than seductively gaze anywhere near Bob Scott.

It's possible Bob told them they were making a children's video about how bearded dragons warm themselves in a terrarium and this was their attempt to remove all sexuality from nude heat rock basking?

As a writer, photographer, producer, and director, Bob Scott is supernaturally bad. Far worse than should be possible by accident. But it's the music where Bob's lack of talent really shines. The noisy keyboard playing over this footage of human Mongolian beef sounds like a sixth grade music teacher got inspired by her school's first African exchange student. It sounds like the jungle level in a video game about Cheetos.

There were a lot more lingering foot shots in this than I was expecting. And I mean that. I've been doing this a long time, knew exactly what to expect, figured the director was a bit of a foot guy the second I heard someone made something called NUDE BBQ, and I was still shocked by the amount of time he spent panning back and forth across these confused ladies' feet. Here's one of several shots where Bob just dissolved from one pair of feet into another:

Once all the women finally get undressed, and oh, I should have mentioned-- this entire thing is in very, very slow motion, the music changes to a bouncy jazz. It has an improvisational feel to it, mostly because you can hear composer Bob Scott trying different sound effects on his keyboard and occasionally finding one he really likes. "Honk! Oh, that's a fun one! I'll honk along with the beat a few times," his music seemed to be saying. "I want to, pant, put her socks in my mouth," his cinematography seemed to be saying. "A big!!" his screenwriting actually said.

After they've warmed on their rocks for six minutes slowed down to 15, Kim, Karen, and Barbara sunbathe next to each other on towels. It's not NOT hot, but it very much has the feel of unwanted attention. I think this must have been Bob Scott's intent because we are a quarter hour into this and not one of them has looked at the camera yet. This is a leering pervert simulator and part of what makes it hot to Bob is how they don't know we can see them. They keep this same energy when they get fully naked.

These women put on a clinic in clinically removing your underpants. These aren't performers coyly peeling off their panties. These are nudists who don't know they're being watched fussing to get sandy swimsuits off while a consumer-grade camera meant to document family vacations struggles to keep fleshy shapes in focus. For this segment, the film's composer, Bob Scott, hits the "saxophone" button on his keyboard. This makes the background music sound like several very talented farters composing a song together. Never trust a softcore porn composer who thinks the music should get more childish once the vaginas come out.

Now that they're naked, the women climb into the pool together where one of them washes her boobs in a waterfall for 7 or 8 minutes. I don't know if it was her idea or Bob's, but it wasn't a good one. "I disagree," says one of the other ladies who gives her butt a long waterfall shower. "Oh yeah. Now hold really still right there for a weird amount of time," said director and screenwriter Bob Scott.

Again, it's not NOT hot and I don't know what else they would do. It's a little waterfall. What, are you not going to put butts and titties in it? All I'm saying is that there shouldn't be a wrong way to do any of this and somehow Bob Scott found it.

The three women now sit next to each other in the jacuzzi where the brunette has decided her character simply can't deal with the eroticism. She's lost in lust, rubbing herself in almost sarcastic ecstacy. The redhead seems to be taking direction from Bob because she is looking down at her boobs, then everyone else's boobs, then her own again. I think she's supposed to be the audience surrogate? "That's it. Act like I'm not here. Like it's just yous and the girls, staring at each other's knockers like you do," probably directed Bob.

We are now 27:59 into this nude barbecuing video and it's only now, with four minutes left on the tape, that the ladies start up the grill! If you were expecting hard-bodied babes flipping sizzling meat, it's not exactly that. Instead, it cuts immediately to each of the women eating plain hot dogs in slow motion.

None of them know how to do this erotically, but the redhead thinks it might have something to do with mashing as much hot dog in her mouth at once. At the risk of kink shaming, she's wrong.

After seeing the other two go, the blonde thinks she has it figured out. She takes the weiner part of the hot dog and gently sucks it for a moment before biting through it. "Mmmm, penis biiiite," probably hissed Bob. She adds a further element of sexy hot dog eating by sticking her tongue out while the unchewed hot dog slides around near her esophagus. It's one part food fetish and 11 parts suicide attempt. "That's my kind of ratio," thought fully engorged director, Bob Scott.

For dessert, Kim, Barbara, and Karen awkwardly empty a can of whipped cream on a bowl of strawberries and each other, and then, like this article about it, NUDE BBQ just sort of ends.

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