‘Unhung Hero’ Takes A Long, Hard Look At Dicks

When Patrick Moote’s girlfriend rejected his marriage proposal, telling him his penis was too small, the actor and comedian went into a tailspin. Every dude’s worst fear had just been confirmed. He was ill-equipped, packing light in the pants. His dick was too damn tiny.

After picking himself up and dusting himself off, he decided it was time to take a long, hard look at his manhood. He assembled a group of friends, got a camera, and set out to answer the question of whether size truly matters.

Moote pumped, popped pills, and learned the dirty secrets behind the multi-billion dollar male enhancement industry. He witnessed gory fat-grafting surgeries in Korea, tied weights to his dong in Taiwan, and dabbled in esoteric masturbation techniques.

The resulting documentary, Unhung Hero, takes an honest look below the belt. At the end of it all, Moote’s member wasn’t any bigger, but he’d learned something more valuable: whatever your insecurity happens to be, it will only defeat you if you let it.

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Junkee: Hey man, what’s happening? What’s going on for you tonight?
Patrick Moote: I’m actually going on a dinner date with the girl that I’ve been seeing.

Aww, that’s awesome.
I’m feeling very grown-up and civilised. I can’t be talking about my penis all the time!

In Unhung Hero, you really let it all hang out, so to speak, and spoke about your insecurities as a guy with a small dick. Now that the film is out, are dating and other social interactions trickier for you?
Not so much. I mean, I get recognised a bit, but the thing is, I’ve done a lot of commercials here in the States, so if I get recognised it’s often because of that. But in terms of my close friends and family, the people who know me best, nothing has really changed. Nobody was that surprised to hear I was making a movie about my penis. I’ve always been a bit of a wild card in general.

On the flip side of that, have you won any admirers?
Lately, there have been a lot of middle-aged women and gay men eyeballing me at the gym, slowly working their way up to me and asking, “Hey, are you the penis guy?” I just have to roll my eyes and laugh and go, “Yup, that was me, I did that!” I honestly don’t mind the attention. I think what it does is start an important conversation.

What conversation were you hoping to start?
It goes beyond just penis size — it’s to do with being open and honest about your insecurities, talking about them instead of hiding from them or getting defensive. If somebody approaches me and says “Hey, it’s the penis guy!”, I wouldn’t get mad, I’d say “Yeah, it’s me, gather around and let me tell you a tale.”

As a culture, we make a lot of dick jokes, but we don’t necessarily talk about penises in any meaningful way…
I think that’s why people are so confused about the idea of size and if it matters. Anything penis-related is taboo; we don’t talk about it. Couple that with the fact that a lot of people’s main exposure to the idea of sex, of penises and vaginas, is through porn, and that gives you a very unrealistic idea of what it all is. If you’re sitting around with the guys and the subject of dicks comes up, it’s like someone’s pointing a gun at you — you’re like “Yeah dude, I totally have a big one…” when in your head, you’re like “I have no idea where I stand.”

In the early parts of the film, you do a lot of man on the street-style interviews where you tell people about your small dick. Why put yourself through that brutal awkwardness?
Look, it was awful. We did man on the street interviews for hours, and I hated them, but we got some of the most unbelievably amazing and honest opinions from people. There would be days where people would run away screaming, where they’d be too mean or too nice, and I’d look at Brian Spitz [the director] and just say “Can we be done with this for the day?” The next minute, inevitably, we’d get something priceless. We got a woman in Korea who ran screaming when we first approached her, who then came back and told us all about how her husband has a small penis and she loves him and is fine with that.

Did anyone really surprise you?
We met an African-American family in Seattle — a mother and father in their early 60s maybe, and kids in their mid-to-early 20s. The husband and wife opened up about how penis size doesn’t matter, about how relationships are all about honesty and trust and communication, and as soon as they were finished, their daughter laughed and said “Sorry guys, I like a big old dick.” Right after that, the son pipes up — he’s gay and he says “Me too.” It was an amazing and weird conversation, and pretty telling. About half the time, people said size doesn’t matter, and the other half said they prefer big ones. The man on the street stuff was brutal and embarrassing, but people opened up in ways I never thought they would.

Your family were in the film as well, and you spoke to them about your penis. I imagine that’s a pretty delicate subject to raise with them?
It’s so funny, when we pulled up to my parents’ house, my mum came out and was incredibly relieved to see us. I asked her what was going on and she said she was happy, because when I told her I was making a film about my penis, she assumed I’d pull up with a Handycam and two guys I’d met on Craigslist who were chronic masturbators. She didn’t know what I was bringing to the house, and she was relieved I was making a real movie and not being a weirdo.

You tried a lot of penis enlargement techniques throughout the film, like pumping it to hanging weights on it in Taiwan. By the end of the process, was your dick black and blue?
It was very… sad and frustrated. It was not pleased with me. Honestly, I think that doing all of those things at once overloaded it a bit. There was one doctor who told me that when you mess with your penis too much, you can have a rebound effect where it actually snaps back. I didn’t experience that, but I did have a very temperamental penis. There was a period when I was using a lot of pumps, when it started to get very worn out, and I realised I was overdoing it. You only need to use a penis pump for a month before you realise it’s not doing shit. People will tell you that your penis is a muscle but it’s not, and it’s stupid to think you can make it bigger with exercise. It’s a very specific piece of fleshy tissue that fills with blood for the purposes of an erection, and that’s it.

You were contemplating getting a surgical procedure in Korea where they would put fat in your penis to make it bigger…
Yeah, I thought about that.

I have to tell you, I’m very relieved you didn’t go through with it. A surgeon friend once told me about one of those surgeries that went wrong, where the fat in the guy’s penis went necrotic, which means the top half his dick essentially died.
Woah! I was considering that one. From what I heard and read, it sounded like a legitimate option. I have to say, though, if you’re ever considering surgery, do not watch it first. I saw this Korean doctor basically pulling a guy’s dick apart to put the fat in, and I was like, ‘There’s no fucking way you’re doing that to me.’ I’ve since heard that even if the surgery actually works, your body reabsorbs the fat so it’s not even worth it. There’s not supposed to be stomach fat inside your penis.

People go to horrifying lengths to make their penises bigger. In New Guinea, you found a guy who offered to inject palm oil into your dick to enlarge it. Was that as horrifying as it seemed?
Yeah, I mean, that’s a thing people do, but there was no way I was going through with it. Leaving aside the potential for diseases and the fact that it would have been painful, there’s the same problem that your body absorbs it. I heard that there are some guys who get it done 10 times a year, which is nuts. Their dicks are like bike tyres going flat and getting pumped up again.

The film touches on the penis enlargement industry, and I was surprised to discover how big it is — five billion dollars annually, I think you said?
Yeah, and that was a few years ago. The numbers have gotten bigger since then. It’s pervasive — here in America, there are constant commercials for male enhancement products. You’ll see a guy walking around with a huge smile, his wife is smiling, his dog is smiling, and he’s looking like the man. I looked into the penis pill industry and discovered that a lot of it’s a huge sham. A lot of the pills they sell people are just vessel dilators, and they won’t give you a bigger penis — at most, they’ll just give you more obnoxious and unpredictable erections. They market these pills by saying they’ll make your penis larger.

And I suppose that works, because the guys who take them are probably too timid to speak up about it?
Exactly, no guy’s going to stand up and say “This doesn’t work!’ They’re going to silently order the pills, see for themselves, and waste their time. The industry takes advantage of people’s insecurities, it thrives on them. The only way to disarm that system is to start talking about it, to openly say “I’ve got a small penis, I tried the pills and they don’t work for shit.”

People’s insecurities are big business, clearly.
There’s a thriving industry for every one of our insecurities, whether it’s your weight, the size of your breasts, your hair, your penis size, social anxiety… There’s an industry for each one, and it’s fucking booming. You have to embrace and accept the things that make you different. That sounds lame, but it’s something I learned over the course of making this movie.

I guess that the biggest turning point in the film and in your journey was when you realised that actually, things like surgery and penis pumps weren’t going to do you any good, and you just had to learn to accept yourself.
That’s definitely true. It’s more difficult to try and change the things about yourself that are weirdly specific to you than it is to embrace them and move on with your life. There’s really nothing more attractive than confidence. I mean, look at Notorious B.I.G. — that guy was 350 pounds, but he was running around with some of the hottest chicks in the world, because he owned it, because he was Biggie. The biggest damage you can do to yourself is to let your insecurity run the show.

It’s interesting how insecurity lies at the root of a lot of comedy. Have you always been the type of guy to use jokes to cover up for things like a small dick?
When I was in second or third grade, there was a kid on the bus that I rode who called me ‘Makeup Boy’, because I looked like a little girl when I was a kid — I had rosy red cheeks, long eyelashes. It drove me crazy when this kid called me that, because I looked in the mirror and knew I looked a bit like a little girl, but I just decided to own it. One morning at home, I put on a wig and some lipstick and I got on the bus and pretended to be a girl, then I sat next to this kid and gave him shit for the entire bus ride, saying “Oh hi, I’m Makeup Boy, I’m pretty!” I embraced it so hard that he was really embarrassed, and he never called me Makeup Boy again. I took away his arsenal and he had nothing left to break me down with after that.

Just finally, I find it interesting that you chose not to actually show off the goods in the film. Did you want to leave the mystery intact?
The few people who’ve seen it since then have said “Oh my god, it’s not THAT small!” I’m like, “Oh great, that’s a compliment…”. I appreciate the attempts to make me feel better.

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Unhung Hero is out internationally on iTunes today.

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Alasdair Duncan is an author and freelance writer who has had work published in Crikey, The Drum, The Brag, Beat, Rip It Up, The Music Network, Rave Magazine, AXN Cult and Star Observer.