Bill, the practitioner of a penis enlargement process, is an avatar for an idea, and the idea is that you’re not sad; you just need a bigger dick.

By Kilian Melloy

After documentary filmmaker Daniel Lambroso embedded himself with white supremacist neo-Nazis for his movie White Noise he made his way to the epicenter of another vortex of insecure maleness: The so-called “enhancement” industry that purports to offer penile enlargement.

Lambrosos’s aptly titled new doc MANHOOD notes early on that there’s no way to extend penile length, but what practitioners can do is use fillers to increase penile girth, making the shaft thicker around. Dallas-based practitioner Bill Moore has developed what he calls the PhalloFILL system, a course of injections that can cost thousands but adds circumference to a man’s member. Moore is an interesting study, approaching his clients with clinical confidence and, to judge from the pair of clients Lambroso follows on their journeys with Moore, imparting confidence in turn to those who seek him out.

The two cases Lambroso follows are striking different. Ruben, a religious family man who makes a hobby of standup comedy, insists that his girth-enhancing treatments have made him better able to please his wife. His costly course of injections draws to a close when he and his family encounter financial difficulties that, in turn, lead to marital strain. Nonetheless, Ruben insists that injections to maintain or “tank up” his enhanced girth would be with the investment. (His wife has a different perspective, questioning the cost for something she says was not necessary to begin with.)

Maintenance, as it happens, is a reality with Dr. Moore’s system; he uses a filler that is not permanent, unlike other options like silicone, which can “migrate” into clumps and lumps, resulting in a unwanted penile shape that is, barring surgical intervention, permanent. Such is the aftermath for another young man who comes to Moore: David, a twenty-something OnlyFans content creator, is emotionally shattered after a penile enhancement experience with a Florida provider. Lambroso’s camera follows David as he becomes involved with Moore and his husband, with Moore guiding him to a specialist who can surgically correct the damage.

QulturVultur caught up with Daniel Lambroso to hear about the process of making the movie, its deep connections to his previous work, and how he sought to avoid letting the doc slip into body horror territory.

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QulturVultur: You were embedded with Trump supporting neo-Nazis for your film White Noise, and you say in your director’s statement for MANHOOD that what you found there were insecure men. Did that experience led directly to manhood and the themes addressed in this movie?

Daniel Lambroso: 100% — and I’m always careful not to appear reductive. The point is not that Nazis have small dicks; it’s more that we live in a culture that breeds intense insecurity and loneliness. The first thing I noticed in White Noise was that most of these guys were kind of sad and lost, and this was their first time, for a lot of them, feeling like they’re a part of something. Many of them held real convictions — they are genuinely racist or anti-Semitic — but many of them just wanted to dress in a uniform and be part of a boys’ club.

And here the prognosis is the same. A lot of men worry about having a small penis or whatever, but many of them have this feeling of disaffection, and they see a solution that they feel will make them feel better. Bill, the practitioner, is an avatar for an idea, and the idea is that you’re not sad; you just need a bigger dick. There’s a problem, male insecurity, and he offers a solution that makes him a lot of money and makes him feel good about himself in the process. But I think the deeper emotional layer, that loneliness and disaffection, is certainly transferable between the two projects.

QulturVultur: Bill certainly doesn’t seem to lack confidence. I couldn’t help having a chuckle that he’s got a portrait on his office wall of himself as a king drawing a sword out of a scabbard.

Daniel Lambroso: My heart goes out to him for what he dealt with as a kid. He had a very tough father. He was made fun of for his appearance, and for people suspecting that he was gay. He didn’t come out until the age of 30, and he also had a particularly harrowing experience, which we save for the end of the film, where he reveals that a previous partner called him a “little dick motherfucker,” and that led to a series of cosmetic changes, some of which are in the film. He believes that that [through these cosmetic changes] he has ascended to an Übermensch status, that has like made him this evolved human. But the thing with cosmetic [procedures], and it’s so clear in his story, is it never ends. Now he needs a new nose that’s a little bit tighter, and that needs to be redone, and that’s in the film. Or, his penis needs to be a little bit bigger.

I worked with the New Yorker and The Atlantic for eight or nine years, and I did a few plastic surgery stories, and that was always the case. It’s like someone might appear hyperconfident because they’re in front of the camera, but those doubts will come back. I did this previous film on the Brazilian butt lift, which is a very dangerous surgery, [and] the girl is happy with it, but she says, “Now I need a new pair of tits to match my ass.” That is the culture we live in now. I think Bill’s confidence is a bit of a mirage.

Daniel Lambroso

QulturVultur: You follow two men, Ruben and David, through their experiences with girth enlargement. Why just two?

Daniel Lambroso: I really prioritize deep relationships and picking subjects who are emblematic of different things. When you start to add too many people in a feature, you have all this kind of chorus of men on the table. In White Noise you have three different [subjects], each different intentionally. One is an ideologue, another is a young woman, and the last one is kind of a grifter.

Here, Ruben is emblematic of the manosphere; the ambient noise of his life is the stuff that all these people his age and younger are listening to, Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes. I think Ruben journalistically was the most important.

And David — I believed he would never be comfortable. It took many months to get him comfortable, but his story was just so heartfelt. Not only that he’s queer and it took him a long time, but to go through something so horrible and then to invite a filmmaker to track your recovery takes a lot of courage. I knew from the beginning that if he if he did it, it could inspire other people to come up and speak openly. Some people who are looking for an issue-driven film will be disappointed, but we knew right away that that is what makes the movie special. It’s getting deep with these guys in a way you haven’t seen before.

QulturVultur: The other thing that raised an eyebrow for me is how Dr. Bill and his partner get involved with David. Is there an ethical line there?

Daniel Lambroso: It’s designed to be in that gray area. It’s all a question mark, and it’s tricky for a lot of reasons.

Bill is actually not a doctor, so could he engage in those sorts of relationships? Maybe, but in a medical setting, you’re not supposed to. It is a big question mark for me. It’s a big question mark for the Texas Board of Medicine. It’s a big question mark for a lot of people, and that’s again by design. It’s the conversation you’re supposed to have, and I hope others will weigh in on it because it is it’s designed to be the beginning of that conversation. When David was in it, he was in a much more powerless position. He needed Bill’s support financially, and Bill was guiding him, but he had no one. Now David is in a different place. I’ll leave it to him to talk about Bill. He’s speaking much more openly about that whole relationship.

QulturVultur: Let me get back to Ruben. I was fascinated by how at least twice he outright contradicts his wife, who says that as far as she’s concerned, he’s fine and doesn’t need any enhancement. He tells the camera she doesn’t really mean it, and she loved the enhancement he’s had, and then in his standup routine he says something like, “Guys, when your girlfriend tells you you’re fine and she likes you the way you are, don’t believe her.” What sense do you get for where that’s coming from?

Daniel Lambroso: I think a lot of straight American men are not open with their emotions. Maybe previous generations were different, but a lot of people in my life have never spoken about their insecurity, about their penis size, about their financial state. I think the men who I found have real breakthroughs are the ones who realize that that’s actually a positive thing, having a conversation with someone about your deepest, darkest secret. That’s what kids do, and that’s why they do it, because it bonds you together. That’s what why Bill is actually so good at what he does from the patient care perspective, because he makes these guys feel seen for the first time. I do that with my camera, in a way. I’m not their friend. I’m a journalist. I remind them, but, like, that’s a very special thing. And Ruben, turning it back to your point, does that through comedy. When he’s on stage, that’s his place to vent. It’s his place to feel seen. I would say to him, “What if you just have this conversation with your wife,” and he usually doesn’t. You see in the movie he thinks she wants it, and she never expressed that to me or to him.

QulturVultur: You’ve got this image on the poster showing a moment from the film that feels like a Boogie Nights homage. Was that moment a conscious reference?

Daniel Lambroso: Yeah, it’s definitely a Boogie Nights reference. There are a lot of movies I thought about making the film. I think a lot about Lauren Greenfield, [and her documentary] The Queen of Versailles. If you’ve seen that movie, it’s [about] one of the wealthiest people trying to build a mansion, and the recession hits and he runs out of money. You’re wondering who the good guy is the whole movie, and I love deploying that ethos in my work, and it’s a challenging one. And Errol Morris, who I’ve had the privilege to work with a few times; he [executive produced] one of my movies [Nine & Irena] and is helping me in my next film. I think about [Pedro] Almodóvar a lot — there’s The Skin I Live In, about a plastic surgeon; a lot of his work is about the body. In pitches I would always say [MANHOOD] is not Cronenberg. Even in the sound mix, they had prepared all these syringes for Foley sound, and I told them not to [use it] because people are so grossed out by medical things. We actually tried to de-medicalize the movie as much as we could. I’m sure Cronenberg would be disappointed. It could have been a lot nastier, for sure.

“MANHOOD” plays in theaters starting October 30.