A fluffer, of course, is the lackey who arouses male porn stars in preparation for shooting. That’s the job Sean McGinnis lands after stumbling into the gay-adult-entertainment industry in Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland’s film. Sean (Michael Cunio), an aspiring filmmaker, heads to LA hoping to break into Hollywood, but after a video-store mix-up (instead of Citizen Kane he gets Citizen Cum), he finds himself obsessed with the video’s ripped poster boy, Johnny Rebel (Scott Gurney of Baywatch Hawaii fame). Sean is hired as a cameraman for Johnny’s production company, and pretty soon he’s fluffing his idol and deepening the infatuation.

That’s when things get complicated, because it turns out Sean is a confused bisexual, Johnny’s straight, just doing "gay for pay," and Johnny’s girlfriend, the exotic dancer "Babylon," is pregnant. All the same, this is a tame effort — most of the sex is in the audio track. The movie has the stagy feel of a porn flick, perhaps because Westmoreland directed some award-winning porn as "research" for this film. But by the end it’s hard to tell what’s parodic and what’s just painful, and when the film turns melodramatic, The Fluffer doesn’t rise to the challenge.