Sword and Sandal

In this tell-all memoir, a man looks back nostalgically at his career as a bodybuilder and a movie actor. Gino D'Agostino is just another young man from a working-class Italian-American family in New Jersey, when he develops a lifelong interest in weight training and physical culture. Inevitably, other men are attracted to Gino's muscles. But no one is more surprised than the young bodybuilder when he is invited to travel to Rome to play a supporting role in a typical Italian "sword and sandal" movie. Transformed by the studio into its new discovery, "Gene Dagaust," Gino goes on to star in other "gladiator" movies, as well as "spaghetti westerns." Along the way, he has many adventures, in and out of the bedroom. And he loses his heart to a bisexual married man. In the movies, there's usually a happy ending. But can the same be said about real life?