mope
/mōp/
verb
1. to be dejected and apathetic.
noun
1. a person given to prolonged spells of low spirits.
2. a bottom-tier porn performer willing to do the dirtiest, most depraved work in the business.
Everyone is going to know their names.
Mope is a 2019 biographical tragic comedy about the brief (2007-2010), bizarre careers of Stephen "Steve Driver" Clancy Hill and Herbert "Tom Dong" Hin Wong as they attempted to break out from the lowest entry-level rank of pornographic actor, the titular "mopes", into famous and lucrative starring roles with their own production company in LA. Enjoying an impressive fandom-gained knowledge of the industry (and in Tom's case, web development and other technical skills) but suffering from amateur performing skills and mediocre endowment, they struggle to make any kind of break. They manage to land roles as mope actors who also have to do disgusting clean up and prep tasks (like washing away bodily fluids) in a fetish-oriented studio known as Ultima Entertainment, at first having to do demeaning and painful work including Groin Attack and cuckoldry kinks. In return they are poorly paid, sharing the same rate as one ordinary mope would "enjoy", and take room and board at the studio, as offered by owner/director Eric Long.
They do eventually get to perform a limited number of scenes they've dreamed about with female stars, Tom's technical acumen helps prevent Ultima from going under, and they get aspirations above their stations. Steve suffers from a delusion that they can be the best actors in the industry, who women masturbate to and men envy, and hopes that either other studios can give them a chance or that his adoptive father may bankroll their own startup company, Driver Dong Films. Tom on the other hand remains more pessimistically realistic, acknowledging their poor talents and feeling that they should enjoy their lowly careers while gradually saving for the larger goal. After a series of setbacks and revelations, their hopes and dreams get shattered in a decaying friendship and a horrific conclusion to their short time in the industry.
It's fair to say that most audience members will find this film leans a lot more into shock/disturbing elements of drama rather than comedy, given the subject matter. It's not for the weak of heart or stomach. Take fair warning.
Tropes shown in this work:
- Adaptational Name Change: Eric Jover becomes Eric Long.
- Addled Addict: Tampa is a meth addict who ends up sharing Steve's room. He intends to curate her into a marquee talent for his startup, and presumably help her clean up in the process. But as a desperate last bid attempt to stay at Ultima, he offers her services to them and they end up using her for a very unpleasant anal gangbang scene. Her inability to relax and act for the camera is disquieting, and the fact that she has to request anti-depressant and pain relief medication (but can only get another beer from the cheapskate Eric) casts another seedy light onto this part of porn industry.
- Ambiguously Bi: Steve eventually describes Tom as "much more than a best friend, (but) a life partner!" (albeit this could be interpreted merely as his poor social skills causing him to describe a business partner in such a fashion). Later, shortly before his demise, he has a fantasy about a girl he and Tom can "be monogamous with", as he had wished for earlier. Now, of course in the porn industry sexual partners and work colleagues heavily overlap, and people will promiscuously share their partners both on and off camera. But it does seem suspect that Steve specifically fantasises about one individual girl he'll share with Tom.
- Armored Closet Bi: If it is in fact true, this colours his retaliatory punch against Rocket (who accuses him of being gay amongst other insults) as over-compensating.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Inverted: Steve brings Tom, Tampa (someone he thinks is his girlfriend, but basically really just trying to break into the industry herself) and his adoptive parents to an incredibly awkward meal where he pitches the startup to his father and causes everyone significant humiliation.
- Asian and Nerdy: Part of what helps Tom successfully get a foothold with the studio is his ability to revamp it's web-facing side and hence improve the financials, even despite Steve's poor reputation, and in fact Tom's prowess is part of why Steve is allowed to stay with the company as long as he does.
- Bad Boss: Joyce is shown, despite a few mild sympathetic qualities, as a scumbag who has his introductory mopes in absolutely terrible working/living conditions, pays them both half of what he'd pay another mope (that's just $40 per scene, each, despite Tom also doing web design for them which is usually an incredibly lucrative field of work), has according to Chris's account subjected some of the more experienced mopes to unpleasant gay fetish scenes too and comes alarmingly close to, if not crossing right over, the line of rape when shooting Tampa, even performing in the scene himself.
- Based on a True Story: Mostly aligns with established facts about the case, but online porn databases and search engines show no hits for a "Rocket Carbone", suggesting that at least his name was changed for the movie.
- Black and Nerdy: Unlike Tom, Steve doesn't have any technical skills which can help prop up his mediocre prowess as a performer. However, he still has nerdy traits like a diehard fan level of knowledge about porn movies and an odd attempt at a signature aspect as a performer in his "monster gloves". It gradually becomes apparent that these traits are not mere tells of a nerd, but rather evident of an obsessive, unbalanced and delusional mind.
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: Realistically, subverted in Steve's case. This makes his other failings as a performer only all too apparent.
- Cult: Ultima is basically shown as a version of one, with Eric creepily describing the staff as "family", the staff accept terrible working conditions, and even within the morally lax standards of the porn industry, the company wallows in sleaze and grotesqueness. For example, Eric talks about how he and Tom will be screwing girls together, with their penises touching, and that will teach Tom the meaning of "brotherhood". Albeit, it is considerably easier to leave this cult than most examples.
- Dark and Troubled Past: It comes to light that Steve reacted to a problem with grade marking in university by pulling an unloaded gun on the staff member who he felt had wronged him and is clearly a shameful disappointment for his parents, who adopted him.
- Driven to Suicide: When the SWAT team interrupts Steve's final delusional rant, it seems like he may take his life by one of three ways: Suicide by Cop (by recklessly brandishing the katana at them), seppuku with said blade, or by leaping off the cliff edge at West Hills where they've cornered him. It ends up being the latter, with Steve seeing no future for himself after the deaths of his dream and his best friend.
- Exploitation Film: Essentially this, even though the opening cards assert "Out of respect for the deceased, every effort has been made to adhere to the facts".
- Fan Disservice: One of the most fundamental aspects of the movie, showing in no uncertain terms how unglamorous work in the porn industry can be, especially on the very lowest notch of the totem pole. For example, rather than being surrounded by harems of beautiful women, Tom and Steve are more often than not forced to stand in close proximity to other sleazy, unattractive and frequently overweight mennote , with barely one female in sight when this is happening.
- Giftedly Bad: Both Tom (mitigated by his technical skills) but especially Steve. From director comments, to female (and male) talent reactions, to poor feedback from other people they force their work upon, they are at best very mediocre performers in the art of sex, and certainly don't have what it takes to be the next Lexington Steele. They can even be poor at random fetish work, e.g. by breaking the fourth wall when the camera is on them. A particularly damning occurrence: Steve prematurely ejaculates inside an actress during pre-scene still photography, making her force Eric into paying a "kill fee". In the words of Rocket:
"Did you guys think this was your big fucking break? Do you know how I know you're a mope? Because you don't know you're a fucking mope!"
- Green-Eyed Monster: It soon becomes apparent that this is perhaps an even bigger indication of Steve's sickness than his delusions of grandeur (and they are intimately linked, at that). He envies the various performers who have struck big, the companies who are able to thrive while his startup never gets off the ground, and even his fellow Ultima mopes who are able to better connect and vibe with the female talent. Devastatingly, he is forced to play cuckold in a scene while the woman he was angling to use as his startup's first starlet is passed around his superiors, including most disturbingly his good friend and work partner Tom.
- Groin Attack: For their first Ultima scene, the pair think they are stumbling upon an attractive Asian actress who's fallen asleep at high school, with some foot fetish appeal, and they can unzip their pants and look forward to some fun when she wakes up. So far so good. But they come to a horrible realisation that their tryout is to endure her kicking them in the nuts as hard as she can, because this in itself is a fetish. Later, they also have to take women actually biting their genitals.
- Happiness in Minimum Wage: Minimum wage in a legal sense doesn't really seem to apply to mope paygrades, but by the standards of even those, Tom and Steve definitely suffer poor wages but are content for the time being to work with them.
- I Just Want to Be Special: This is what drives Steve. Tom also has shades of this, but is content to play the long game.
- Innocent Bigot: Rocket Carbone thinks he's using harmless stereotypes to enhance the comedic value of his new movie, but it pisses off Tom and Steve quite a bit.
- Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Steve falls afoul of this, mistaking the Chinese (but Anglophone) Tom for a Japanese fluent in that language. However, he apologises and makes clear that he loves Asians and their cultures.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Steve's instability leads him to have an obsession with a prop samurai sword (which he sharpens past regulatory standards). It's shown as fun and quirky (if a little carelessly on his part) at first, but at the end of the film it's an implement of murder. One source states that Hill had been fascinated with martial arts and Asian culture from a young age, because he had to defend himself due to a traumatic upbringing in Washington DC where (as a kid who had moved there due to his parents separating) he was bullied due to having light skin and speaking clean, standard English.
- Performance Anxiety: Steve can get it up, but he finds it hard to ejaculate for a bukkake scene until Tom whispers a pep talk into his ear. This is how they meet.
- Porn Stash: Eric complains that all Steve uses the laptop for is to watch more porn, as opposed to say, learning how to edit the product. The real life Clancy Hill spent his house arrest sentence maxing out many credit cards (and never paying them off) to buy tons of DVDs and downloadable scenes, feeding his unhealthy obsession with the industry.
- Race Lift: Eric Jover was a young, reasonably good looking Asian man at the time of the real life events. In this film, Eric Long is a balding, middle aged, bespectacled, not very good looking white man.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Steve, with his delusions about how far they can go in the industry, is red, but the down-to-Earth Tom is blue.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When push comes to shove and Chris is ordered to finally evict Steve from Ultima, Steve snaps and using the katana, grievously injures Chris, then kills Tom (who was trying to talk Steve down) and tries to track down Eric to run him over before speeding off and disappearing until the police track him down several days later. The LAPD stated that the real life Driver wanted to indiscriminately hurt as many people as possible as he crashed and burned.
- Selective Obliviousness: Having killed his best friend, wounded others, burned his last bridge in the industry and become a fugitive, Steve appears very muted in his car but calls Tom, of course going straight to voicemail, and while apologetic to Tom, seems to think he may still be alive and that Eric could forgive him, so they could still fulfil their dreams of being stars.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Steve thinks they are the best porn stars who ever lived, just waiting to catch a break, and at times he manages to get Tom thinking like this too.
- Eric Joyce also has shades of this. It's no wonder why his extreme material isn't carried by most porn stores, but he considers himself an artist. Rocket Carbone is a big name, but still, only within the porn industry.
- Stylistic Suck: In universe, not only Steve's very amateur picture portfolio and self-produced video collection, but also Ultima's output. The directors frequently talks over the auditory action, and film from angles which don't really show off the penetration which fans have come to expect. No wonder their content is so niche. In Steve's case, this isn't intentional; he genuinely thinks he has what it takes.
- Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Played with. Steve, perhaps due to having such a transient lifestyle, is said to smell very badly and often skip showers. Also, inside his car it's an absolute pigsty. However, despite being naive and over-eager, he isn't shown to be a bad person initially. Played straight when information about his Dark and Troubled Past comes to light, and he falls from whatever small amount of grace he's built up as the movie progresses.
- Waiting for a Break: Here, the day job is mope (which has basically the one solitary benefit of occasionally being able to have sex with women, versus so many downsides) and the break is top tier male pornstar/producer.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: The disturbed Steve desperately wants approval from his father despite his divisive choice of career (and at that, not even being good at it in the slightest).
