Johannas "Knickerbocker" Desselsen

From Plastic Tub

1950-1999.

Flamboyant Dutch immigrant who lived all his American life in Des Moines, Iowa, making weird 16mm films which are highly sought after today. Gay to the teeth, camp, known to dress in drag, cruise for rough trade among farmhands and generally terrorize his stern parents, "Yoyo" was soon out on his own. He dropped out of high school and went to New York City at the age of 16, living it up for about six months. This was his only sojourn away from Iowa. When he returned to shake his heroin addiction he turned towards film and the corn country he knew and loved so well. Notoriuosly, libertine, yest highly disciplined, he was a study in contradictions. He could be puritannical about his habits and the advice he gave to the young gay men who heeded it, but he himself was given to extravagant orgies. Alas, like many gay men of his era he succumbed to AIDS at the age of 49. He would be forgotten today if not for the help of Stimes Addisson, who had befriended Yoyo in 1975, when he passed through Des Moines to visit an old family friend who'd emigrated from Ohio.

Addisson stayed in contact, encouraged his film activity, lent him the 500 dollars necessary to make A Fistful of Nothin' (1977). His parent surprised in death by leaving him the family property and a decent inheritance which he used to pay Addisson back and finance his second film, I Shot John (1979).

Over the next two decades he was a reclusive filmmaker, working in 8, 16 and 35 mm, as well as video, pixelvision and some early digital.

He was an inspring man cut down by AIDS, the result of his prodigious sexual appetite and careless ways.

Known Works

A Fistful of Nothin'

I Shot John

Tokyo Blows

Pink Assholes Brown Assholes

Totem Animal of the Disappearing Man

Read My Rectum

Shit, Piss & Stink

My Left Nut