An unnamed narrator (Callum Keith Rennie), who as a teenager intended to be the "Michael Jordan of sex" or "Wayne Gretzky with a hard-on",[2] discusses how he met and fell in love with an older man named Frank.

In a 1993 interview, he stated that he felt himself working harder after the diagnosis, finishing films at a more rapid rate because he was uncertain how long he would live.

[3] Having previously focused on films about the body, Hoolboom began dealing heavily with fragmentation, HIV/AIDS, and situations faced by those with the virus; Frank's Cock was his first venture directly addressing the AIDS issue.

[14] Aside from the original footage of Rennie, the short appropriated clips from the Nova episode "The Miracle of Life", the gay pornographic film The Best of Blondes, and the music video for Madonna's 1992 song "Erotica".

[16] Janis Cole, writing for Point of View, described the split-screen effect as supporting the text while "creating an optical treatment purposefully grounded in both dream and reality", as elements show out of sync.

[17] Jack Rusholme, prefacing a retrospective of Hoolboom's works by Experimenta Media Arts, wrote that the split-screen evokes the effects of AIDS, in which "the body [is] broken into dispersed vantages", while the narration serves to "bind with words what this disease will render lifeless and inert".

Cole called it an "extraordinary experimental documentary" that is "as bold as the title implies" and a strong argument for the widespread dissemination of short films.

[20] Karen Tisch, writing in Take One, found that the short built its emotional power "delicately but steadily"; she suggested that its Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) win was well-deserved.

The jury cited Frank's Cock for its "evocative images, ... impeccable writing and mise-en-scène, ... moving depiction of the universal human experiences of love and loss in the age of AIDS, and especially for its success in shaking our preconceptions".

When accepting the award, Hoolboom quipped "Frank's Cock has never seemed so large";[25] Waugh, however, suggests that the title "caused more embarrassment than mirth" when it was read during the citation.

[2] The film influenced Adam Garnet Jones' Secret Weapons (2008), commissioned by the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre in celebration of its fortieth anniversary.

[31] After his success at the TIFF, Hoolboom directed numerous further films, many showing a "fascination with its impermanence"; several, including Letters from Home, dealt explicitly with AIDS.

[32] Rennie, who had also received critical acclaim for his supporting role in Mina Shum's Double Happiness (1994), later became known for playing villains in Hollywood films.