“People can laugh at me and say, ‘Oh he’s just putting his dick up on the internet and getting off on it.’ If that’s what they want to think, that’s what they want to think.” I’m talking on the phone with David Pevsner, an LA-based actor, writer and performer best-known for writing some of the songs in the hit 1998 Off-Broadway musical Naked Boys Singing!, which was later turned into a feature film. Over the past year, the subjects of Pevsner’s songs for that show, which explore shame about the male body and the desire to be a porn star, have taken on a new meaning. A little over a year ago, Pevsner launched his own Tumblr called Shameless, an erotic photo site featuring nearly 15 years worth of pictures of the 56-year-old actor in varying states of undress and arousal.

Initially, he was worried about what would happen and how people would react to his body in our youth-obsessed gay culture. “There’s a couple of gossip sites that people have shown me, where the comments range from “That’s hot to see an older guy in good shape” to “Grandpa put it away, you’re fugly.” I’ve seen it all. If you put yourself out there, you have to be ready for the good and the bad,” he explains. But his followers are vocal and enthusiastic, both daddies like himself, and daddy-chasers from younger generations. One of his followers even started a “Fuck Yeah” fan site devoted to his images. I spoke with David about the effect his new porn pursuits have had on his career, coffee-table erotica, and whether he’s planning on moving from photography into porn films anytime soon.

Adam: How are things in LA?

David Pevsner: I’m sitting outside and we’re having nice sunny weather. That’s one thing I don’t miss about New York.

Photo by Tom Bianchi

How long did you live in New York?

I lived there for 16 years. I’ve been here about 16 years also.

Before you messaged me about Shameless, I only knew one side of you, which is that you wrote some of the songs for the musical Naked Boys Singing.

Right. I wrote three of the songs for that, and I had a couple of one-man shows that I did. I’ve written for various novelty things, and I’ve also done a lot of things as an actor.

Would you call them — character or extra parts?

Well on TV shows I’ve mostly played doctors and lawyers. The guy who comes in and either gives the good news or the bad news on shows like Modern Family or Grey’s Anatomy. Little supporting roles on TV. My bigger roles have come in independent films and on the web.

The independent films are mostly gay films?

Yeah. I played Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge and Marley. Role/Play. Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean. Those are the things that really give me a chance to dig in.

When did you start taking sexually explicit photos of yourself?

It started when I was on the national tour of Fiddler on the Roof. It was a tour that came to Broadway in 1989, I think. Maybe 1990. I was on the beach in Fire Island and I ran into Tom Bianchi, who was there with a friend of mine. I had met Tom the year before when I was visiting LA. He approached me and said he wanted to shoot me, but at the time I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t really want to do it. My low self-esteem was talking. A year later I ran into him on the beach and I was like, “I know you,” and he said, “Yeah we chatted in LA.” My friend said, “David, if you’re ever going to get nudes shot, this is the guy to do it. So we did a shoot on Fire Island and that ended up in his first book. Then I did another shoot for him a couple of years later and that was really it. I shot for a couple of other guys in New York but nothing that I was too excited about at the time. But then when I moved to LA in 1998, I started to go to some of the erotic art fairs and I would see people like Jay Jorgensen and he was probably the first LA photographer to shoot me.

Where would these photos get shown?

They would get shown in a gallery or one time I was in a calendar. But they weren’t all over the place.

It’s sort of like this weird subculture of porn that’s not quite porn, like coffee-table erotica books and calendars and things that are sold in gay book shops that men of a certain type buy. They’re somehow more acceptable because they’re presented as art.

Right. Leaning more towards art. I try to ride the fine line between art and porn, but one man’s art is another man’s porn. Just showing your cock to people sometimes is porn. I can’t be responsible for that kind of thinking. Whenever I work with somebody, I try to find something that has a point of view to it, that isn’t just spread your legs and show me what you got. I try to find something that tells a little more of a story and that’s more collaborative between me and the photographer.

Why did you decide to start putting them up on Tumblr?

I did a bunch of shoots with people and they weren’t really seeing the light of day, just a shot here or there. Finally I thought with Tumblr I could do it. I had all these pictures, but they weren’t seeing the light of day because I was holding my cards close. There was a bit of shame involved. I worried about my career, would it hurt it to put them out there. Most of them were shot after I was 40 years old. But then I thought, no, I’m tired of being shameful about sexuality and my body and the ageism that’s out there. I thought, I can actually make a little statement here about putting them out. That’s how Shameless started.

That was about a year ago, right?

A little over a year. I put them out little by little. If I had been putting them out little by little over the years, it wouldn’t seem like that much. I tried to put some things out every few days or weeks, and I tried to put something out that had the mindset that I wanted to put out there.

Which is what?

Partly, feel good about your bodies. There’s so much shame and coyness. America, as we know, treats sexuality and physicality in a whole other way than they do overseas. I grew up shy and filled with shame and avoided the locker room in gym class because it scared the crap out of me because I had to take showers. I wrote a song about that that wound up in Naked Boys Singing. That came from a very truthful place of the fear and shame I felt about showing my body. Also, guys my age, we lived through the eighties and that was a very difficult time, sex was a very scary thing. The remnants of that don’t go away that easily. On top of that, being a guy of a certain age, and everybody in the media is in their twenties and looking hot – I’m an average guy and I take care of myself, so I thought, why not celebrate that too?

So you just up and pulled the trigger one day?

Yeah, I was just like, just do it, you’re too fuckin’ old, nobody cares anymore. Is it gonna kill my career? I don’t know. My joke is that I have enough dirt to kill twelve careers, so really I believe that if you own it, it can’t hurt you. It’s all speculative as to what it’s going to do to me. All I know is that the positive feedback I’ve gotten from people has been great. I think it’s kind of fun. I’m not gonna lie, there’s definitely a narcissistic part of it that I enjoy. Plus, doing photoshoots over a long time has kept me in shape. The more I do, the more I want to see how far the photographer wants to go with it and push the envelope and try different things. It’s kind of performance art for me.

If it was ten years earlier you could still get into porn magazines for daddies and things like that.

Right. The good thing about Tumblr is that I’m a bit of a control freak, so I can control these images. I can’t control where they go once they get blogged and reblogged, but I can put up the image that I want to put up. It is a form of art for me. People can laugh at me and say, “Oh he’s just putting his dick up on the internet and getting off on it.” If that’s what they want to think, that’s what they want to think. I can’t really address it.

But you said there’s been a pretty great response?

Yeah. I get a lot of emails and comments on my Tumblr blog, people saying exactly what I wanted them to say. “I’m kind of inspired by this. I always had such shame about my body and maybe I need to rethink that.” Or “I’m an older guy and I see you putting yourself out there and I’m tired of being afraid of putting on a bathing suit and going to the beach. Who cares anymore?” There’s a couple of gossip sites that people have shown me, where the comments range from “That’s hot to see an older guy in good shape” to “Grandpa put it away, you’re fugly.” I’ve seen it all. If you put yourself out there, you have to be ready for the good and the bad. I’m an average guy, but I feel like I have something to say when I’m in front of the camera.

You see a lot more older guy porn out there in the world now, on Xtube and places like that. I feel like there are probably a lot more guys like you who are just doing that now. 

Yeah. We have had so many years of feeling crappy about ourselves and our sexuality, that when the Internet makes it so easy to express it, people are doing that now. I’m all for it. I can’t say it’s all something I want to watch, just like there are people who probably don’t want to look at my pictures and think my expiration date was ten years ago. But I get a lot of nice comments and it’s not just “Hey, what are you doing Saturday night?” It’s been good.

“Up…Against the Wall” by Aaron Jay Young

So if someone came and said we want you to be in daddy porn or older-guy porn, would that be something you would do?

Well, you know one of the first songs I ever wrote was a song called “Perky Little Porn Star” which is about a Jewish guy from Skokie, Illinois who does porn. I’ll be honest and say, ever since I could watch porn there was a part of me that wanted to do it. But there was also a part of me that wanted a mainstream career. I figured, that’s probably not a good idea. Now, I’ve had a few offers, and I’m not gonna say never. I wrote a film that has a really strong penetrative sexuality to it, and that’s something I want to do first if I can. It’s not just a porn film. Something like Shortbus is really interesting to me, because it uses sexuality to tell the story and it’s not coy about it and it really gets into that. I love that. That’s what I’m really interested in. If I’m going to do it, I would do it in the hands of someone like that. It would have to be the right thing and it wouldn’t just be to fuck in front of the camera.

Somebody created a Tumblr homage to you, I saw. 

Yeah there’s a fan site called Fuck Yeah David Pevsner. I don’t know who it is. But it’s fine. It’s very nice that somebody took my pics and wanted to their own thing with them. I take it as a very positive thing. I like it when people mention the things that I’ve done. Nothing is more important to me than my work as an actor and writer. But this aspect of me has always been a part of me. I chose to put it out up front.

Some of the photos I quite like, that are just simply you in front of the camera. But I don’t like the ones where you’re done up in costumes or body paint or things like that.

I buy that. Just like there’s the whole art-porn thing, there’s some things that appeal to me and some don’t. When I work with people there are sometimes when I say, let’s do it and others when I say absolutely not. “We are not using that picture.” Or I say, I see what you see in the picture, let’s put it out there. Some of them get blogged a bunch of times and some of them don’t. You want people to love everything you do but that’s not going to happen. Sometimes the ones that you think are marginal become the really popular ones. You go, oh well, I didn’t see that coming.

What’s your most popular picture?

There’s one that came out a couple of months ago that got re-blogged really fast called “The Gentlemen” by this artist Johnny Thornton. He sent it to me and said, “This is a really good picture and you need to use it.” I put it out there and it really got wildfire reblogging. When I first started, I didn’t have as many followers, but now I have lots more and things go a little faster.

You said earlier that you have enough dirt to end twelve careers. Can we dig some of it up here?

I have a new show coming out, a one-man musical that I wrote. I don’t want to go into the details because there’s a mystery going into the theater that I want people to discover while they’re there. The show is called Musical Comedy Whore. I’m going to leave it at that.

Is it about your affairs with various people on Broadway? Were you a literal whore?

Um, if we could just leave it at, the title is more than you think, when the show comes again, I’ll talk more about it. But I really want to leave it at that. The show talks about my sexual exploits, and the pictures and that kind of thing. A lot of mainstream actors aren’t willing to go there, and I totally understand that. But need to express myself has trumped my desire to — I don’t know. I don’t want to hold back anymore.

David Pevsner in Tom Bianchi’s “All American” 1990

I mean, that’s admirable, but in terms of your status, you’re not exactly a mainstream actor. You don’t have as much to lose.

Right, I know that. I’m not trying to say I am. But the thing is, I’ve stuck my toe everywhere, Broadway, off-Broadway, TV. Even though I haven’t played a lead on Modern Family, I’ve played recognizable doctors on TV, but I’m also on two webseries right now. I was in 300: Rise of an Empire in a small role. I think I have one of the most schiz-y career of anyone I know. I’m not trying to say I’m a star by any stretch. But I have a place. I have a place in smaller independent stuff, and that’s the stuff I like more than anything.

Has anyone on the TV shows you do ever mentioned they saw your Tumblr?

No. That’s the thing, I don’t know who has seen these of my friends. Sometimes I’ll get a random Faceook message and somebody will say they saw my Tumblr. Or a random email. I don’t know. This is one of those situations where I just put them out and don’t think about the results. Is it foolish or narcissistic or delusional? I don’t know. It’s something that I felt like was backlogged in my computer and I felt like doing it. And it’s been pretty great. It fulfills a lot of what I wanted to say all my life about these issues. I don’t want people to get the sense that I’m so full of myself that I put my pictures on the Internet. That’s not what it’s about for me.

In what ways did you feel shame in your sexuality besides growing up during the height of AIDS? Did people make you feel shame about your body?

Yeah. Growing up I didn’t want to be seen in a bathing suit because my sisters would make fun of me. Gym class they made fun of me because I was a skinny guy. Also growing up in Chicago, nobody talked about sexuality and I would have to look in the back of After Dark magazine to satisfy my desire to look at men who turned me on. It was very secretive and quiet and done in shadows. Once you get into college everything is a little easier, but the germ of that shame takes a while to go away. When I started working out that helped, I had more pride in my body, but that was a band aid because I looked better but I still had that fear to take my shirt off. I don’t have fear anymore.

Well you do have a little fear which is to tell me any good printable dirt.

That will come in the next interview.

You think you’re getting a second interview with me if you don’t give me any good dirt?

What kind of dirt do you want?

You said you had enough to end 12 careers? I want a good, juicy, dirt-filled story.

You know what, I think I’ll have to wait until to the show comes out.

Alright.

It’s not enough that I’m naked all over the Internet?

Not really, I talk to people every week who are. I just wanted some good dirt. You also said you were an open book.

That’s true I did say that. I just don’t want to ruin the effect of the show. There’s just one element I want to hold close until the show comes out.

Alright, until then, David. Thanks for talking to me!

“The Leather Edge” by Jeff Compasso

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

During this holiday week, when most of the world’s gay porn stars and directors are on vacation with their two boyfriends, or home with their families who supposedly support everything they do and even watch their porn, I was forced to do what so many other bloggers and columnists before have done before me: make a top ten list of my favorite columns of the year.

Seriously though, this year has been a real blast. I’ve gotten to talk to some of my porn idols, met newcomers and established industry folk both clueless and remarkably wise, and spotlighted porn-adjacent artists making fascinating new work. I really have to thank The Sword for giving me the chance to do this, my editor J.W. Waxner-Herman, all my readers and especially, the commenters, even the negative ones (oh wait, they’re the only kind). I’ve looked through my columns from February to December, and picked out my personal favorites and the ones that made a big impact. If you missed any of these, now’s the time to take a trip down memory lane. Did I pick your favorite? Be sure to let me know in the comments section, below. And have a happy new year, kids! I’ll be home, watching porn, of course.

THE TOP TEN

10. John Gutierrez, Ruff Haus zine creator and certifiable nut

“John: I forgot what the question was.

Adam: I’m not sure it would help to reiterate it.”

When I interview someone, I  always aim to reveal more about the background and the character of the person I’m interviewing. Hopefully by doing so, my interviews can serve as a tool for understanding why people – in the case of this particular column, porn stars, directors, and artists – behave the way they do and make the art that they make. Usually, most of my subjects are very eager to talk about themselves, and explain their choices, which is why my discussion with zine creator John Gutierrez was so strange and compelling to read. Throughout our conversation, Gutierrez (whose bizarro gay porn spoof slash “Village Voice for go-go boys” zine Ruff Haus is my favorite queer zine of the year) proved himself to be either completely, hilariously deranged or terrific at playing that type of character. Among the things Gutierrez claimed during the interview: 1. He is desperate to turn his zine into the kind of publication that gets strewn about in the street like trash, 2. He hopes to be invited to secret parties populated with escorts and underage kids thrown by corporations like Nestle and Coca-Cola, and 3. If he makes a lot of money from selling his publications, he would probably use the money to dress underage high-schoolers in fabulous clothes and pay them to stand outside for 24 hours. Attempts at clarifying his out-there statements led me down further rabbit holes until, at one point, I started to look around for hidden cameras, figuring I must be on some kind of gay prank reality show. But whether it was all a put-on or the god’s honest truth, Gutierrez’s interview was a bizarrely fascinating and frequently hilarious change of pace.

9. Cyd St. Vincent, FTM porn star and Bonus Hole Boys founder

“I think the beauty of queer sex is you don’t just have to say, “This is the only type of body that I’m attracted to.” You can be attracted to multiple types of bodies and have different types of experiences. Most people are happier when they allow themselves that room, and it’s like also true within gay male circles, [there are] people who say, “I’m only gonna have sex with twinks or gay muscle bears.” They miss out on people who don’t fit that narrow physical image of all they’re into. Bodies matter but also other things matter.”

Without a doubt, my conversation with FTM porn site Bonus Hole Boys’ founder Cyd St. Vincent proved to be the most controversial — and most commented on — piece I published all year. Trans-hating commenters insisted that St. Vincent and his co-stars were not men, that the sex they were having qualified as straight or bi sex because some of the boys used their front holes as well as their backs, while other commenters seemed unable to look at a vagina without screaming and crying like they did when Will and Grace got cancelled. Others argued back at the haters, insisting that trans men are real men, that the sex they have is most definitely queer, and that, as St. Vincent noted in the quote I posted above, there are different strokes for different folks. I, of course, agreed with the latter bunch, being a New York liberal fag who believes that sexuality is fluid and has enjoyed sex with transmen in the past despite defining myself as gay. Yet, beyond politics, I found St. Vincent a pretty inspiring figure for trying to take the ground broken by Buck Angel and continue to expand and redefine it. And though St. Vincent couldn’t resist fighting back against the commenters, he did it hilariously: “To all the men worried I’m trying to steal their precious man seed with my transgender riteousness (sic) – it’s cool girl, I’m not gonna sit on your face and smother your face with my pussy till you agree that trans men are men… Its just porn, and if you’re not into it you can not watch it, it’s gonna be ok.” Hear that? It’s gonna be okay, everyone.

8. Levi Karter, Cockyboys’ reigning twink superstar

“Adam: What’s been the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you on set? 

Levi: I farted in Pierre Fitch’s face. We were posing for a picture and I was upside down and flexing everything and then it happened. My legs were on his hands and I was spread eagle with my ass facing his face. Also Bravo Delta did the SpongeBob laugh during a scene and I couldn’t get off afterwards. He sabotaged me. But other than that things are pretty chill.”

Is Levi Karter the anti-Johnny Rapid? One of the porn industry’s most popular twink performers, Karter’s got a beautiful body, delicious cock, and pliable ass that doesn’t yet resemble the Grand Canyon, even though he’s the regular recipient of huge cocks belonging to guys like Connor Maguire. He also doesn’t require a shit-ton of editing to make his scenes look good. In our conversation, the lovable Levi revealed his desire to stay in porn for life, his determination to study and become a director with the help of his mentor and boss Jake Jaxson, and his disinterest in becoming an escort, unlike many of his colleagues. In the fall, Karter’s self-made porn version of Tarnation, Fuck Yeah Levi Karter, was screened for audiences at the Berlin Porn Film Festival, where audiences flipped for him. (A sequel may be on the way…I’m told) With the departure of Cockyboys’ two biggest stars, Jake Bass and Max Ryder (aka George Alvin), Levi and his new co-star and bestie Liam Riley are poised to take their place. I’m only glad I got to talk to him before he went really, really big.

7. Ashley Ryder, Legendary UK porn actor and director, fisting maniac, live sex show star, proud slut and porn activist

“I don’t believe in the six-hour douching. I think it’s pointless. Especially if you’re only taking 11 inches of cock, which is the maximum people will ever take, you literally just need to do a simple douche of the first little bit. Also you’re inside someone’s ass. Shit happens babes. Don’t freak out if you pull out and there’s a little bit of corn on the end of your cock. It’s like, bad stuff happens. Wipe it off and keep going. Why is everyone so squeamish? I mean, yeah if you pull out and shit goes on the walls and everywhere, then yeah, that’s a problem.”

During my Kate Bush-motivated pilgrimage to London this past September, I got the chance to sit down with the mad (in the best way possible) Ashley Ryder, a legendary performer who began as a cock hungry porn twink before turning into boundary-pushing director who practices what he preaches, regularly hunting for fists, enormous cocks, and other large objects to shove up his hole. During our nearly two-hour interview, Ryder took me through his traffic cone routine at Soho’s The Box, showed me a picture of his rosebud, and explained what “dirty love nuggets” are. It was the kind of interview I like the best, filed with filthy sex stories told by an unabashed slut with no sense of guilt over his work in porn. It also continued long after our interview, as we spent the remainder of the day hanging out on Old Compton Street, swapping stories and porn gossip. But beyond the filth, Ryder’s interview is special because of the insight it offers into the UK gay porn scene and the way censorship laws there make the kind of work Ryder and others do a real challenge. When I asked Ryder if he would consider decamping to the US to make his life easier, he insisted he’d prefer to stay in the UK and campaign for fisting to become legal. With the latest batch of censorship laws making that look unlikely, it’ll definitely be interesting to see what choices Ryder makes in 2015. Here’s hoping he at least comes to visit, if only so we can finally see the Rocco Steele episode of Fisted By The Stars Ryder promised us.

6. Allen Silver, America’s most popular daddy porn star and Joe Gage muse

“I just love playing with dad-boy energy. One of the things that I love about his movies is they have this kind of – they’re not literal and they are at the same time. It’s almost a comedy in some ways, what’s going on in them. But you can’t act like you’re in a comedy. You take the whole thing seriously, and yet these situations are so fantastical. These guys are just constantly throwing themselves at Dad. His boy wants him to fuck him. It’s fantasy. I look at it as fantasy and that kind of power play that most of us have fantasized about.”

Though I’ve known Allen Silver for several years, and we’ve even slept together (horn-tooting accomplished), it wasn’t until he and I sat down for our interview that I really felt like I got to know the man behind the porn persona. Silver’s story is one of those remarkable only-in-San-Francisco type tales that fascinates me. He went from a terrified, closeted gay man growing up in the shadow of AIDS to a specialized sex worker focusing on “sacred intimacy”, helping often traumatized individuals begin to explore their sexual sides. He then took things one step further, with the help of directors like Joe Gage, and became an atypical porn star – a dirty daddy with a tender core. In doing so, he became both an object of lust to the younger daddy-obsessed generation, and an object of inspiration to older men like him who might mistakenly think their sexual days are over. In films like Chainsaw he flirted with incest themes, and in the Dad series, he took things much, much further, earning even more fans, and a considerable amount of controversy which carried over to his scene with James Darling for Bonus Hole Boys. Watching him in action on the set of Joe Gage’s American Bukkake a few months earlier, I was amazed at how much more he seems to be enjoying his work than the average porn star. As he told me after that shoot was finished, “There was a moment when we were getting ready, and I’m in the back looking around waiting for my cue, and I was like, I’m the luckiest fag in the world. It was a blast.”

5. Bjarne Melgaard, visionary gay artist or meth-crazed lunatic, depending on how you see it

“I like role play. Before when I lived in Berlin I used to be really into sex with weapons, like hunting knives and guns. I would cut up my boyfriends chest with a hunting knife, and he would scarify me, or I would be into bloodsports. That would be a big thing for me. But I was not into S&M gear, I wanted to use household gear. That you don’t go in the porn star and buy chains, but tie someone up with two socks. I raped my boyfriend once with a bronze sculpture I made. It was really long and it had a thing at the end.”

My conversation with Norwegian art provocateur Bjarne Melgaard will go down in Sword history as our first article to ever get mentioned on New York Magazine’s famous Approval Matrix, under “Highbrow and Despicable” no less. What led me to talk to Melgaard was his entry in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, a hilariously perverse room in which disturbing porn and violent images clashed on sculpted sofas and projected wall decorations while a soap operatic art porn spoof starring Dale Cooper played on a screen in the corner. Yet the conversation between Melgaard and I quickly turned away from his artwork to a series of bizarre and shocking assertions, including the disturbing revelation that he raped his ex-boyfriend with a sculpture while high on meth. At that tense moment, I was faced with a difficult choice. Should I have – as some of my friends later insisted – stopped the interview and walked out of the room? Or was I right in my decision to continue the conversation, state my disgust at it, and let readers have a glimpse into the true character of one of the world’s most famous artists? I’m still trying to figure the answer out myself.

4. Jose Ramos, Porn Projectionist from the heyday of 42nd Street

“He remembers a few times when friends would walk by the theater and see him smoking under photos of buff nude men, and quickly walk past, trying not to make eye contact. “Like you know, they didn’t want to acknowledge me. I’d be like, bro I’m just working here, what is your problem? And even if I was, what was your problem?” he says.”

I swore all year that I would do more essay format articles, but things kept winding up working better in interview format. Jose Ramos was a different story. A schoolteacher by day, porn projectionist at both gay and straight Times Square porn theaters by night, Ramos’ story demanded to be written as a short piece. (I cribbed the style from Josh Friedman’s amazing, now hard-to-find book Tales Of Times Square, full disclosure). Ramos is the type of character I simply love to talk to, someone who lived through the good old bad days of New York City and the smut industry, before everything became a digital mini-mall. It’s his recollections of the nuts and bolts of the theaters, their designs and the activities he spotted there, that make this a must-read for anyone seeking insight into porn before VHS. PS. Ramos loved the article, but felt that the gifs of people fucking on the side were “too distracting.”

 
3. Wakefield Poole, Porn Pioneer (Part 1, Part 2)

“In the 1980′s I watched a few, and one they became so formulaic, and I’m not interested in anything, what do you call it? Gay for pay. I made movies about people who wanted to fuck with each other. Not just people who wanted to make money. People said, “What makes your films different from everybody else’s?” I said, “The people that I used, really wanted to make love to the person they were with, or I didn’t use them. I made sure there was some chemistry there. I didn’t say, “Okay now you fuck him and now turn over and fuck him. Lick his ass.” I never did things like that. I made the things happen, and I was the director.”

Though Kenneth Anger, Pat Rocco, Peter de Rome, and Andy Warhol were responsible for setting the stage for hardcore gay porn to emerge in the early seventies, the man most responsible is, of course, Wakefield Poole, who directed the “one that started it all”, Boys in the Sand, and its follow-up Bijou, a film I consider to be the greatest porn movie ever made. Though I’d read Poole’s autobiography, and had seen I Always Said Yes, Jim Tushinski’s terrific bio-doc, I still approached my conversation with the porn pioneer with much trepidation. But when we called each other for the interview, my fears soon fell away, as Poole eagerly answered all my questions about everything from the influence of Powell and Pressburger on his work to what it was like fucking Rock Hudson to what he really thought about Jake Decker’s Boys in the Sand “tribute sequel”.  Impossible to cut nearly anything Poole said from my final interview, I ended up stretching it into two parts, which, given his importance, seemed fitting. If you haven’t yet purchased Poole’s restored and remastered films from Vinegar Syndrome, now’s the perfect time to do so.

2. Rocco Steele, openly HIV+ porn daddy and rising star

“I’m pro-safe sex. I believe negative should stay negative. I’m positive, there’s nothing I can do about that. What I can do about it is be responsible. When I’m barebacking in real life or in porn, I bareback with other undetectable people, not just positive but undetectable people, because I can still catch another strain of the virus. It doesn’t mean I’m 100% risk free, but those are ways I can minimize transmission of my strain or somebody else transmitting their strain to me. If I’m having bareback sex with a negative person, its their decision, and I’ve had several negative actors that I’ve been wanting to be able to do scenes with, and they’re bareback negative actors, but they only bareback with negative tops. That’s fine, I respect it. It’s their decision and it’s fine, I wouldn’t want them to put themselves at risk.”

While the year’s biggest trend amongst gay men was the popularization of Truvada as an HIV prevention drug, one of the big trends of the year in gay porn was the popularization of the openly positive bareback porn star. This meant that I could finally interview someone like Rocco Steele and not worry about how we would have to hide or dance around the topic of status so as not to hurt his career. When we finally got together, I was able to not only discuss some of his darker struggles with drugs and alcohol, but also play devil’s advocate and talk about the moral and ethical grey areas surround barebacking and their potential to inspire unsafe behavior amongst viewers.  The result is a provocative conversation that I hope more porn stars and viewers will be able to have in 2015. How will our view of bareback porn change next year as Truvada continues to spread? And will we be able to stop shaming and criticizing HIV-positive sex workers and porn stars and treat them instead as human beings? For the sake of my interview subjects, I really, really hope so. Hey, even if you don’t agree with Steele’s choices, or his views, you’ve got to admit he’s one gorgeous daddy with a beautiful fucking cock – thankfully on display in a set of amazing Isauro Cairo photos.

1. Chad Hunt, porn legend and definitely not a former cult member in hiding

“Quite frankly, in my opinion, and this is probably the quote that’s gonna fry me in all the blogs, to me there’s no such thing as a porn star anymore. There really isn’t. I think they were a dying breed and I think I was probably one of the last of the dying breed. It seems like today, boys do one or two movies, call themselves a porn star and by the time they get to five they quit.”

It took me a long time to track down the reclusive 00’s porn titan Chad Hunt, but the wait was most definitely worth it. Hunt gave a juicy and very articulate interview about his path from married father to the biggest name in the business. Even when he chose not to speak about something, like Michael Lucas and his attempts to create a PR stunt surrounding Chad’s supposed rival Ben Andrews, it still managed to cause a stir, resulting in a predictably nasty rejoinder to The Sword from La Lucas. Yet there was another controversy that haunted my comments feed all year – the debate over gay-for-pay porn stars and their place in the industry. Hunt, who has always identified as bisexual, had some rather elegant words to say on the subject, and though I hoped they might be the final word, the bizarre and fascinating war between the anti G4P commenters and Hunt continued long into the comments below the article. In short, my favorite piece of the year.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

In the heart of New York’s Bowery, a few blocks from sinful early-20th century hotspots like The Slide and Minksy’s Burlesque theater, lives Scott Ewalt, a man who has been a witness, historian, archivist, collector and preservationist of the city’s famously sexual culture.

After moving to New York in the early 1980s, Ewalt quickly fell into the nightlife scene as a bouncer and DJ at raunchy parties like Rock and Roll Fag Bar, Hustler, and others. He later became a fixture at The Cock, the famously filthy East Village gay bar, whose iconic rooster logo he designed. Drawing on his intense fascination with the sexual history of America, from strippers to burlesque stars to hustlers to the porn palaces great and small, Ewalt also began pursuing artistic goals, creating gorgeous paintings, sculpture, and installations that evoke the thrill and decadence of the Times Square porn and burlesque palaces. As we sit in his apartment, I look around the walls covered with framed photos and signage from many of those fallen Times Square venues, which he methodically collected after each one fell in the 1990s: the Eros, the Venus, Billy’s Topless, and others. Though New York’s gay sexual culture has moved away from backroom bars and picking up hustlers on the street to Grindr and Scruff and Rentboy, Ewalt remains committed to bringing his brand of sexual nostalgia to all his creative endeavors, including designing the poster for this year’s Hustlaball on October 12th. I sat down with Ewalt to delve into what drives his passion for all things dirty.

Adam: Have you ever DJ’ed Hustlaball before?

Scott: Only once. I did it with Pierre Fitch. He was very fun. But I was playing retro-disco and he was playing hard-techno house. It was funny. He was really sweet.

How did you wind up doing the poster this year?

I’ve always been friends with Sean Van Sant. I just love his perspective on the whole Rentboy.com thing and the Hustlaball thing. There’s no shame involved and I like that. We did this party at The Cock called Ho-Down for a while, that was something to encourage people to meet the boys in person, I think that’s a very important thing. To kind of, take the rentboys out of the jpeg world and let people know they’re real people.

This year’s poster, designed by Ewalt.

Did you ever hustle yourself?

No. I never had the confidence. Also when I came to New York it was a very scary time sexually, so I had a lot of admiration for people who had the guts to do it, but I never did it. I never hired one myself, either.

But you surrounded yourself with hustlers and sex workers socially?

Yes. Most of my friends were involved in some sort of sex work. I just admired them. Because they were just normal, nice people. I admired their courage. I admire anyone who’s a performer or who can have their whole act be just themselves. Which is why I like strippers so much. They’re like rock stars without a band.

You’ve lived in New York a long time and from our previous conversations, I know you have long loved and embraced the culture of New York that was openly sexual, that celebrated hustlers and burlesque performers and go-go dancers and porn stars and other sex workers. I’m curious, do you mourn for that era or do you feel like Rentboy is connected in some way?

Well, you can’t really mourn the era because the technology and the politics and real estate have changed so much. Of course it was going to change, so it was either be disappointed or embrace the new guys, you know? And they’re not any different than the old guys. And I do love all those earlier eras, but I think the common link between all of it is that people have the freedom to do these things. The reason I’m attracted to burlesque and strippers and openly sexual culture is that I like the fact that we live in a free country and you can voice your opinion about stuff like that.

Do you have a moment where it all clicked for you? Was there an early formative moment where you saw a hustler on the street or walked by a strip club?

Definitely. When I was a kid I grew up in San Diego and before they renovated the downtown there, it was just non-stop blocks of Asian-themed burlesque houses and tattoo parlors and strippers and sailors. It sounds really corny now, but it really was like that. It was kind of the Southern version of the Barbary Coast. I’ve done a little research and I found out they zoned downtown as a “servicemen’s entertainment center,” which allowed all those businesses to thrive as long as they stayed within a certain zone.

Was your family military?

No. But San Diego has three giant military bases in it. I grew up in a very conservative family, so actually the tantalizing visual aspect of that downtown area was just a carrot on the stick that I couldn’t reach.

Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island.

Exactly.

Did you ever get to go exploring those spaces? Was there anything gay in that world? One of my previous interviews told me San Diego was a city where, because of the military, half the guys had had sex with a guy by the time they were leaving the service.

I think that is very, very likely. There were some gay ones that I heard about. But by the time I was old enough to go to them, they had renovated downtown. So I missed it. But I did come to New York in 1980 or 1981 and stayed in Times Square and the first thing I saw, coming out of the hotel, was the Gaiety theatre. To see the sepias of all those boys in their sequined tuxedos and leather, it was just a giant light bulb to me. I thought, “Wow, there is this inverted version of female stripping.”

I went to the Gaiety only once, about a year or two before it closed. And it was so amazing. The guys would come out and strip and go backstage and get hard and come out hard. Was it raunchier in the beginning?

It was actually more classic the first time I went there. They had an emcee and it was a more structured show, with costumes and props and a skyline made out of mirrors behind the whole thing. It actually got a little bit less vaudeville-burlesque towards the end. But I think that’s what I loved about it so much, that it was like a variety show with stripping in it.

Though most people think it was just the 70s and 80s, from the earliest years of the twentieth century New York was linked to sex and sexual culture. I’m thinking of clubs like The Slide on the Bowery, and people like Little Egypt and those classic strippers who would perform at the World’s Fair.

I love Little Egypt and Sally Rand and Gypsy Rose Lee. It is strange when you look back on it now that there were strippers who were considered to be national institutions. The one I’m most interested in now, who was as big as all those gals, was Henry E. Dixey, who was the first male stripper who performed over on 13th and Broadway in the 1880s. He really was the first male burlesque star.

Henry Dixey, America’s first male burlesque star.

How did you learn about him?

I bought a book called Burly-Q which came out in 1931 and they had a chapter on him. There were two seminal male strippers from the Victorian era. First, Henry E. Dixey and then he hired Eugen Sandow as his warm-up act. Sandow was the guy who coined the term “bodybuilding” and he stole the act and came out nude, which was totally unheard of. It was just one of those classic Hollywood movie type things where one guy’s career ended and another’s began, literally on the same night.

That’s amazing.

There were two branches to male stripping: “the perfect gentleman” which was Dixey; and “man as sexual animal,” which was what Sandow was.

What was the perfect gentlemen’s stripping act?

I have pictures of it here. It was kind of the unobtainable gentleman that every woman wanted. The act was based on Pygmalion and Galatea and the burlesque of it was that he was the statue that was being carved. The big reveal with him was a pair of sheer white tights and the fact that you could see his whole body through this body suit.

He was a living statue?

Yeah but he moved. At the time, women were doing the same thing — white body suits and that was as low as you could go. Victorian women would literally faint at the sight of his package.

Because it was so big or because it existed?

Just because it existed. It wasn’t a working class guy in a swimming hole, it was like the man you would see promenading down 5th avenue that you would never imagine seeing in a sexual way.

So in the ’80s you moved to New York, and you started exploring the different scenes — life in Times Square and the East Village and club life. Can you tell me a little bit about your involvement in those worlds during that time?

Well I moved here to go to college and a year and a half into it I started coming into the city to go to Danceteria and Paradise Garage, Peppermint Lounge, and Michael Schmidt [fashion designer and creator of legendary party Squeezebox] actually became one of my very first friends here, and I really wanted to get involved in the whole thing. Because I realized if you were involved then you had this whole entrée into the is other layer. So he said if you want to get involved, get involved. So I got a job as security guy at Boybar. I did the door and security there. That led to working at The Ninth Circle. Which was a —

Eugen Sandow, the “living statue.”

Sex club, right?

It wasn’t a sex club. It was a male-prostitute bar off Greenwich Ave. A friend of mine who worked at Boybar, Len Whitney, was kind of my mentor. He said, “You’ve gotta work here because you’ve gotta see this.” So I worked there two days a week and it was a crazy place. You’d have Peter Allen and people like that in there. The hustlers really did look unbelievable because they were doing the same look as Peter Berlin was at the time — peroxided mullets and 4 pairs of scrunch socks with biking shorts and crop tops and sailor hats and really —

Putting it on, boy drag.

Yeah. I think that’s one thing I really appreciated about the male sex workers from the 80s is that the internet and phone lines hadn’t come into maturity yet, you really had to look like a prostitute to get it across to people that that’s what you were.

You couldn’t be just walking down the street in normal clothes.

Yeah. I think the most exaggerated version other than Peter Berlin was Vladimir Correa, whose outfits were just insane. He used to wear those spaghetti strap tank tops that went just above the nipple that were cropped all the way up. 15 pleated gym-jams that were day-glo paint spattered, with yellow tennis shoes and a headband. It was visually assaulting on a street. He looked like sex on wheels. You couldn’t believe this person was barreling down the street looking like this. Him and his boyfriend would hang out literally right on 42nd street and 8th avenue on the corner.

It seems like that would be terrifying to a certain type of john. Someone who was so conspicuous.

Yeah. But I think that those were the guys who really did succeed. Leo Ford and Joey Stefano and all those boys really had an insane visual. Leo Ford was kind of funny because his thing was preppy-hitchhiker prostitute — daisy dukes with a popped-collared Izod shirt. Super tan with super white hair. Really super exaggerated.

Today’s hustlers are indistinguishable from men you see walking down the street in Chelsea on a hot day.

The women were doing extremely exaggerated looks too. Now it’s hard to tell them apart from the bridge-and-tunnel Sex and the City girls.

How did you become involved with The Cock?

I went to graduate school in LA in 1993 and I started deejaying with Bryan Rabin And we had a night at the Gaslight called Burlesque on Cahuenga right across the street from The Spotlight. It wasn’t a huge success but it made me realize I could be a DJ and play music other than Madonna and have people come. We booked some really great early neo burlesque performers — Patti Powers, Madison, Ron Athey and The Dueling Bankheads and people liked it and it gave me the confidence to come back here and pursue it even more. When I came back I started doing stuff for Jackie 60 and my big break was that Jackie 60 asked me to DJ the Bettie Pages magazine release party and it was the first time I could play exactly what I liked, and it turned out everyone else really liked it too. Dean Johnson was there that night and he was re-launching Rock and Roll Fag Bar and asked me to be the DJ for that.

Wednesday nights at The World…

Yeah. It used to be a huge thing in the 80s and then he restarted it at the same space as Boybar, which was also Coney Island High. I got to DJ that. Mistress Formika came to see it and wanted me to DJ a party he was starting called Hustler at Cake with his friend David who was with Mario Diaz and he liked what I was doing, and that I was dressing the part and looked like a hooker. I was deejaying with JoJo Americo and we would play Vampira records and “Hot Sexy Dominatrix” by Vaginal Crème Davis. Everyone just liked it and it was a complete break from the non-stop house music that was just going on and on and on.

How did that lead to your being a fixture at The Cock?

So, after Cake, Mario Diaz did Foxy and then Studio Filthy Whore, and he built up his audience so much that he had the confidence to open up a seven night, weeklong thing. And he hired about 65 of us that were living the scene at the time, and got us all to work there, and so it just became this clubhouse for freaks. 17 years later it’s still going.

What was the opening night of The Cock like?

Yeah, I was lucky enough that I got to DJ the opening night. It was a hit from the minute we opened the door. People knew what to expect because Hustler was very, very popular, and then Squeezebox had already been going. People were really dressing the part, and everyone was really into either the new rock or the classic rock or punk music. So it was great. We got to enjoy what we actually enjoyed for a change. It just kept going.

You also designed the famous rooster logo and neon sign that hangs outside the bar. How long did that take you to come up with?

Well, Jackie Beat came up with a couple of names. Her and Mario are thick as thieves, still. One was “The Swallow” and the other was “The Cock.” Mario liked The Cock better. So we literally just sat down with the piece of paper and drew it out. He was like, “I want it a little chubbier, and I want it to look a little more confident, but more mean, and more strutting.” I just kind of drew it out and then two weeks later we had a big giant neon rooster. There’s been 15 of them now. We use them if we change locations or go to other cities. I’ve also exhibited them as sculptures.

I want to talk a little bit about the culture in that time. The thing that’s missing from most New York and LA bars now is that there were backrooms, most bars had backrooms to have a free for all. And the old Cock’s was really amazing. I had my first kiss and handjob in that room. And that to me feels like the last remnant of old New York. Do you think backroom culture could come back? Or is it just impossible with Grindr and Scruff?

I think what you’re getting at is that the tangibility of it is gone, but I think that it is still here. It’s diminished of course, but I think that the nice thing about The Cock is that people do turn off their phones and want to meet people in person. It’s such an outsider bar that some of these people don’t fit into the cookie-cutter thing of an internet profile. People have to boil themselves down to this series of numbers, and if the numbers don’t match with whatever the zeitgeist is, you have to go to The Cock. I love the characters that hang out there. We have a bunch of regulars that are so far off the grid and it really makes me happy. We have a lot of Hasidic Jewish men for example. And just a lot of people who drive in from Staten Island and have a wife and kids or a lot of people cheating on other people. It’s kind of a catchall if you want to do something wrong.

How has it been able to stay in business? I remember being at the old Cock and the police came in and made the lights go on and we sat there for an hour and I wound up dating the person who was sitting next to me. Does that kind of stuff still happen?

Oh yeah. The owner makes it look easy but I think what people don’t understand is that there is a lot of time spent with the 5th precinct and a lot of time spent in court. He really keeps on top of the paperwork and it’s been a real invisible effort for him to keep that place open, because things completely changed this neighborhood since we opened. He’s been able to keep them away.

I just noticed right next door is a children’s boxing studio.

There’s a PetCo on the other side now. The block could almost be inside a mall in Wichita if it wasn’t for The Cock in the middle of it. The thing I thought was funny was when they built that fried chicken place on the corner that had almost the same logo as we did.

When all the places in Times Square started closing, what made you decide to start collecting them?

The big moment was — I lived in Times Square at the time and they were taking the marquee sign from the Adonis theater on 50th Street and cutting it into sections in order to get it into a dumpster and I asked them if I could have the sign and they said absolutely. I asked how big it was and they said it was four feet high and 16 feet long which was probably the size of my apartment at the time. So it just created this desperate hole in my mind, that all that stuff was free if you could just figure out a way to get it. The second sign was kind of on top was this one that was right above the Gaiety theater which was called the Whirly Burly Girlie Review. I tried to get that. All these signs are twice or three times as big as you think they’re going to be. The sign was actually two stories high and thirteen feet across.

It didn’t looks so big from below.

Right. It was five stories up. It looked smaller than it was. The first one I actually got my hands on was, after a storm, the Babydoll Lounge in Tribeca, their shingle sign blew off and I noticed it was gone and they replaced. I went in and offered them money for the sign, and they thought I was completely nuts. I walked out with it. That was the first sign in my collection. After that I made it a full time hobby to contact any burlesque signage and offer them money and let them know it was going to a place that appreciated it. Then the bigger the collection got, I could say, “I already have Billy’s Topless, I have the Babydoll, I have the Venus, the Eros,” and so it kind of snowballed and the people would be more willing to add to my collection.

Do you have a prized possession?

There are probably ten prized possessions. The Tura Satana light box and the Eros neon are probably my very favorite things I own. I love the sister one of the Venus. And I love that all-male theater sign, which is literally the oldest sign ever advertising male movies on the outside of a building.

As I mentioned before, you’re not just a historian and DJ but you’re also an artist. I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about your most recent show and what you’re working on now? There was what I called the devil burlesque show…

I did this installation show called Back in the Night, which was a take-off on the phrase “back in the day” and a song by prepunk band Dr. Feelgood. It was my impression of Times Square. I wanted to document all these businesses but I didn’t want it to be like Edward Hopper or a 70s photorealistic thing, where it had this instant nostalgia thing. I wanted it to be more uplifting than that. Kind of the only logical inhabitants of these landscapes were male strippers as devils, because as gay people we were raised, especially my generation, to think that we’re anti-god. At a certain point in your childhood, you realize, “Okay I am the Disney villain and everything — I’m not supposed to like what I like.” So you kind of grow up with this inverted perspective. So I just thought the most inverted way to represent gay strippers, is as little happy devils. I love mythology, because it’s pagan and un-Christian, and since it’s un-Christian, it’s not as judgmental towards gay people, so it’s a pagan hell paradise.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on four really large pieces right now. They’re a little bit toned down sexually compared to the last show, but they’re of the four strip clubs that I grew up fascinated by that kind of formed my aesthetic.

When you deejayed the Hustlaball last, did you see a connection between the performances that were going on and the stuff you saw when you first came to New York?

I guess the interesting thing about the performances you saw in Times Square, was that they didn’t expect anyone would actually see them. So there was this kind of lack of self-consciousness. Whereas everything is so well documented now that the boys at the Hustlaball who perform have their act more together.

People in the audience are taking photographs and shooting video.

And there’s a premise to what a sexual performance should be. Whereas I think the people at the Gaiety theater and the Show Palace and all those male burlesque theaters of Times Square, they didn’t really have a template to work from. It was “I’m from MN and I need money so I’m gonna get out there and do a cowboy act.” No matter what, though, I’m a total performance junkie and it’s because I don’t have the confidence to do it myself. I put performers on a pedestal. They just wake up and say. “I’m gonna do an act with a snake and how am I gonna do it and who’s gonna pay me?”

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Though fans of twink porn like their boys young, innocent, and smooth, Liam Riley’s been growing out his facial hair, rocking more stylish looks, and trying to embody the persona of an older, more mature New Yorker who knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. When the transformation is complete, it’ll be light years away from the “innocent little twink” image Riley had at Helix Studios and closer to the look and attitude of the other edgy bad boys at CockyBoys, where he was wooed by CEO Jake Jaxson in August of last year. While his early fans might bristle at the thought of such a makeover, Riley is happily embracing it. “I’m not the little boy I used to be,” he tells me excitedly, in reference to both his porn persona and teenage rule-breaking tendencies which included sneaking out, stealing his mom’s car and heading to underground LA parties or ultra-secret hook-ups with straight boys. So far, at CockyBoys, Riley’s appeared in his own video, Meeting Liam, the final scenes of Answered Prayers, and is gearing up to star in the sequel to Max Ryder and Jake Bass’s popular Road Strip movie, only this time with his CockyBoys BFF, Levi Karter. The film will follow the new roommates as they journey to Hustlaball and the Cybersocket Awards, with stops in between. I sat down with Riley a few days after New Year’s to discuss all the changes, his relationship with Jaxson, and the role his parents play in guiding his porn career.

Adam: Liam, You live with Levi Karter, right?

Liam: Yeah. We just got an apartment together in October.

Liam with his new look, in his first scene for CockyBoys, fucking new roommate Levi Karter.

I literally couldn’t choose a better roommate. We hang out with each other like non-stop. We work together, go out to the same clubs together. We’re best friends. It’s easy to get along with somebody you live with. But we get our own space, like when I went home to California and he went to where he’s from. Or like, I’ll go upstate and he’ll stay home and vice versa.

So you have your space and then you come back and are besties again?

We’ll always be best friends. Which is great, because I’ve seen horrible roommate situations.

What’s the worst one you’ve ever had?

I haven’t had any but I’ve observed some. My old roommate and me were best friends too. I think I’m an easy person to live with.

What makes you a good roommate?

I’m clean. I’m so OCD when it comes to things. Everything has a spot and place and I always clean up after myself. I feel like nobody ever has a problem living with me.

Is that because of how you were raised or is it something you instilled in yourself?

My mom always had to pick up some stuff, but I did get the over-obsessiveness of cleaning from myself. She always told me to pick up after myself and I was always like, “yeah yeah yeah.”

How many months have you been with Cockyboys now? 

I first signed my contract in August but nobody knew about it until October when Meeting Liam came out during Halloween week.

Did you have to keep it a secret from people?

Yeah. I couldn’t tell anybody about it. It was very low profile. I felt like Jake Jaxson wanted everything to just fall into place. Originally it wasn’t supposed to be released, but everybody found out when we were doing the Meet the Morecocks photo shoot and something went up online, and people wondered what I was doing there. That was supposed to be kept a secret, but it was let out of the bag.

How long were you with Helix?

That was another secretive thing. I filmed my first scene in November of 2013, but then nothing was let out until February. Then I had done a scene in January which was the first one to be released. It wasn’t even the first one I had filmed. So my first scene that came out was February 3rd, I wanna say.

So you were only with them less than a year?

Yeah. It was an exclusive six-month contract.

So in August you were able to move on?

Yeah.

Did Jake approach you or did you approach them?

I met Jake before and he was always super nice to me and I came out here for gay pride and we were all partying together and having fun. He told me then, “In the future, just for reference, I would love to work with you, I feel like you have a great energy about you.” Inside I was fan-girling trying to keep it cool. You know? Jake Jaxson is a huge person in the industry and he’s somebody you want to work with. I was like, “You wanna work with l’il old me?”

I wouldn’t picture you as a shrinking violent.

Yeah. I didn’t think too much of it, but towards the end of my contract I was like, “Okay, what do I want to do?” The more I thought about it, I was like, Jake’s a great person to work with, he has a great plan and knows what he’s doing in the industry. I said to myself, it wouldn’t hurt to take a risk and just go for it. I emailed him and we had a phone call about it. He was like, “Is this something you really want to do?” I said, I think it is. He said great. We’ll talk later this week. Then he sent over a contract, said look at it, have your parents look at it. They went over it for me.

Your parents look over your contracts?

Yeah.

So they’re really supportive?

Yeah. They’ll be at Cybersocket.

Liam in his recent, twinkier Helix days.

It is but then again it’s not. I’ll send my mom my pics — not my nudie pics but I’ll ask what do you think? She’ll be like “Oh my god, you look great,” or, “Not my favorite.” She’s really honest. My stepdad sends the contract to his brothers because they’re lawyers and they make sure everything’s okay. He’ll send it to me, and say, “Everything’s good, just go over it and make sure you like what it says.”

And you really don’t think it’s at all weird that your parents are looking over a document that outlines how you’re going to be getting fucked for six months or a year?

I don’t think so. Me and my mom are best friends. I tell her all about my personal stuff. I tell her about boyfriends, boy problems. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for her at this point.

Is she like a “cool mom”?

Yeah. At first she wasn’t upset about it, but she wasn’t all for it. She said,
“I would prefer you did something else.” But she said she was going to be supportive no matter what. Just like with cheerleading, she was always there at my competitions and stuff. She’s always been my main, number one supporter behind me forever and ever.

What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve told your mom about your sex life?

Um, she’s walked in on me, when I was still living at home.

What was her reaction?

It was in the middle of the night, so she walked in and everything was pitch black, and I was like, “Oh my god get out!” She was like, “Oh my god I can’t believe this” and left. The next morning we just laughed about it and acted like nothing ever happened. And then she called me a slut but she was just joking.

What was your life like with her growing up? Was it always easy or did you guys struggle?

Most definitely a struggle. Her and my dad got pregnant super young. They were 16 when they had me. We always had money problems but then they would split up, get back together, split up and get back together. It was always shaky growing up and then my dad passed away. My mom had to take care of all that by herself. I always knew that we weren’t okay financially so when my dad passed away she obviously went through more problems because she had to pay for everything. But she remarried and got a job and now she’s totally fine. We’re all totally fine. I always say things have to get really bad before they get good. Not everybody’s going to have it really easy.

You’re from California, right?

I grew up in Calabasas and then I moved to Miami for cheerleading and I lived there for a year. When I moved home, my family moved to Orange County. My first reaction is to say I’m from the Valley, but I don’t live there anymore.

Despite how you struggled, I have this mental image that throughout your youth you were kind of like jailbait, completely out of control?

Hahahaha. You think???

Am I right?

Yeah. I definitely learned how to relax. I was very social. I really liked the whole socialite life. Growing up, I watched Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie on The Simple Life, and I thought, “that’s something I want in life.” So it was interesting because in high school, I needed to be at everybody’s parties. I always needed to be at every big high school event that was happening. I would take the car in the middle of the night.

And go where?

Sometimes we wouldn’t even do anything. We would just go to the beach and hang out on the lifeguard towers at three o’clock in the morning. It was the cool thing to do. We lived in LA. We could do so much fun stuff and never get caught. There were underage clubs that we would go to. On Tuesday we would go to clubs in Santa Monica. It was interesting.

Who were you screwing?

I always had things for straight guys in school. My whole quest in high school was to hang out with the football players and the baseball team.

Did you get fucked by the football and baseball players?

Basically.

Tell me about it.

It was scandalous.

Did other people find out?

No. It was a great thing, in cheer too, there were so many straight guys who cheered. It was always a fun thing between gay guys, who could flip who. I hold a pretty good record when it comes to sex with straight guys.

What’s the process? Do you have technique?

No. I think, unlike a lot of my close best friends, it’s easier for me because I come off more feminine to most straight guys, so they get blurred feelings. They’re like, “You’re so similar to a chick, it’s no different if I was to just hook up with you.” I try to use that card.

So you gay it up?

Not gay, where I’m flamboyant. But I’ll definitely be softer with them. It’s easier for me to attract a butch guy like that. My friends always get annoyed that it’s easier for me than it would be for them.

Liam and Levi in ‘Meeting Liam’

What’s been the hottest experience?

This guy I put in years of work for. He’s one of the hottest guys in cheerleading to this day. I put four years of work in, and it was a great experience. We got really close, to the point where we were best friends. He’s a really well known cheerleader. He would just come sleep over my house all the time.

And he would fuck you every night?

Basically. For the longest time it was the hugest secret, because it was a trust barrier where if I kept it a secret, the more often it would happen. Then eventually I had to tell my best friend, so they know but still to this today nobody in cheerleading knows who it is or anything about it. What makes it so hot is that it’s one of the biggest secrets that I have.

It’s interesting because you are somebody who doesn’t seem like you have a lot of secrets, but for you keeping a secret is perversely hot. 

Secrets are definitely a turn-on. Things along those lines I’m into.

Are you mostly turned on by guys your own age?

It varies. Lately I noticed for some reason, my tastes in a lot of things are starting to change. People say it’s —

Very normal. Around 25 I started going for twinks when I only used to be into daddies. 

My fashion senses are changing, my eating habits are changing. Lately with guys I’m going for the rugged look. Before I only dated guys who looked like me. Other twinks or twunks. Lately I’ve been going through a phase where a little chest hair is sexy. I think it’s New York, something’s in the air.

It’s a different vibe here.

It’s true.

When you were growing up who were your porn idols? I know you mentioned Paris Hilton, and I feel like a lot of young porn performers I talk to grew up idolizing her.

Yeah. She was the it girl and she did both. Jenna Jameson was one of my inspirations. What I respected so much about her was that she saw it as a business and changed the way people viewed it and how models wanted to work in it. It’s fun and giggles but it’s also an industry and you’re employed for a job. It’s your business and brand and name. I respected her a lot for that. I emailed her a few times because I applied to be her assistant. She’s book smart and she knows how to talk to people. I found that so fascinating in her story. I watched her E! documentary. She’s smart but at the same time she makes bad decisions, which everybody does.

She’s gone a little off the deep end -

Lately. But in her prime she was the best.

What about gay porn stars?

Before I did porn I didn’t know so much about it. The easiest way to look at porn was to go to Google and type in keywords to find a video that would get you off really fast. But before Helix I didn’t know there were exclusive models. I didn’t know there were gay porn stars. The first model I ever heard about was Evan Parker, and that’s who I had the huge fascination and crush with. I eventually was like, that’s who I want to work with and who I want to pursue in my life. He was the first actual model that I knew had some kind of exclusive contract and that it was a thing.

Levi’s inspirations were Brent Everett and Brent Corrigan.

I never heard of them growing up. I didn’t watch porn like that. It was once in blue moon.

Porn wasn’t your primary source of getting off because you had straight guys and secret relationships and stuff like that?

Haha. Yeah.

When you started with Helix was there a learning curve? Did you walk on set like Dirk Diggler and just lay it out cold in the scene, or were there messy moments — not literally…

Never messy moments!

No, but were there complications?

No. It was really easy. I feel like, for some reason, everything in my career has felt like it was planned out in a sense. My first scene was filmed and it was a real cam scene. It was just me and my partner with hidden GoPros around the room. There were no directors or photographers. It was easy, one, because it was me and Evan Parker. I was like, this is my crush. It was losing my virginity in a sense. I had the butterflies and the nerves, but at the same time I was comfortable. It just felt natural to me. The second time, the first few days were just b-roll. But it was a whole production. That’s when Sex on Rouge came out and that’s when everybody first learned who I was. It was a full production, days of b-roll, so I got used to being in front of a camera, and learning how they would light me, and how production would go, and the last day was when we would bang it out. It just all seemed natural to me.

Liam and the CockyBoys gang (Ricky Roman, Levi, and Tayte Hanson).

Was there any weirdness when you became friends with Levi, with regards to Evan Parker? I know they used to date.

No. There was no awkwardness because I met Evan before Levi. So that was fine. When I met Levi, I was already over the Evan fascination, so like, by that point he was just somebody who I had worked with. Then me and Levi became really good friends because I came out here with another friend and they were friends. We stayed at Levi’s house and that’s when we became friends. Later on I came out here for Pride and that’s when we got really close. We would talk, text, and Facetime every week or something. Not every day. We would catch up and stay friends.

What’s working with Helix like, vs. working with Cockyboys?

Working for Helix was it was a great experience, I loved it -

Don’t give me the canned answer…

No, no. You’ll see where I’m going. I’m still great friends for everybody. It was a great place to start. They helped me build a name and get somewhere, but the difference with it, was that my whole image at Helix was that I was the innocent little twink who was so adorable. But at Cockyboys, Jake was like “We want to scruff you up. You’re a young man now.” He asked how I felt about growing out facial hair, and I was like, I’ve never done it before but I’m willing to try. if I don’t like it I can shave it off. The difference is that Jake wants – and I totally love it, before I was like, black is so overrated, but in New York I’m like, wow black is in. He’s into everything being chic, and wants to create a more mature looking me. A young adult boy who can relate to a bigger audience. Which I love.

Is there a sense that you’re not so much the innocent boy anymore, but that you’re the bad little boy?

Yeah. That’s great.

It’s more your persona.

Yeah. The rebellious flirty—

—kid who sneaks out to go to clubs and flip the straight guys.

Yeah. At the same time when I look back at my porn it’s like watching my whole life happen before my eyes. I was a little boy before and now i’m not so much the little boy I used to be. I’m a more mature young adult. That is my life. I was the great little innocent boy, especially in cheerleading, and now I’m breaking into my own person.

Do you feel like Cockyboys is the place for you for a long time, or is it a stepping stone to even greater things?

It’s a great place for years to come, I would say. The chemistry I have between me and Jake and Adrian and Benny is the same relationship I had with my cheer coaches. It feels like home to me.

They’re mentors. 

Yeah and that’s how my coaches were. They invested so much in me and I want to give so much back. I want to make them proud. It’s a great circle that I love to be in. It feels so comfortable. Sometimes I’m not even working and we’ll just go sleep over their house. They’ll treat us like their kids and take us to the movies. It’s very much a family even when we’re not working. Being so far from home it’s great to have a relationship like that because I don’t have my mom here.

Let’s talk boyfriends. Do you have one, do you want one?

No. I was talking to somebody recently. It sucks because I was so invested and I genuinely liked them for the first time in a long time since my other bad relationship, I just like have awful luck with guys. It’s so unfortunate.

What do you mean?

I find the great hookups, straight guys.

But you can’t have relationships with them?

Right. Exactly. So when I have invested relationships with somebody I like, for some reason, things just always happen. Something always happens and it’s so unfortunate but this last guy, I don’t want it to all be about me, but i don’t want to be the last priority. This last thing was like getting to know each other and talk and I kind of see things early and I could see that I wasn’t going to ever be a priority. He’s so into his career and it’s starting up and he works not even in the industry, so he was so busy and never had time to talk to me. It kind of upsets me. I figured it was better to get out now than when I couldn’t.

Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?

To focus on myself.

Narcissist! 

Ha. This past year I was just so distracted on having a boyfriend and falling in love. I’m such a hopeless romantic and that’s where a lot of my focus went, and then when it didn’t work out I would get so worked up and upset about it. It would drain me out for a few months. Love can be so toxic. This year I really want to focus on finding — it sounds cliche but, finding myself. Learning how to not depend on another guy and enjoy what CockyBoys has to offer me this year. Why would I want to get distracted with a guy? My other resolution is to just get ripped and look super hot.

Update: Here’s a new vlog Liam made about “loving yourself.”

 
___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The great James Bidgood has five days left to turn his life around. At midnight, on Friday, Bidgood’s first Indiegogo campaign ends, and his attempt to raise $35,000 dollars to fund a new era of erotic artwork will either succeed or it won’t. He’s not worried though. He’s resigned to whatever happens. So much in his life hasn’t gone the way he planned it — from the musical comedy career that never materialized to the disastrous fate of his pioneering early gay erotic film Pink Narcissus (1971), which was taken away from him by producers and recut to his dismay — that he’s used to things not turning out the way he hoped.

Bidgood famously took his name off Pink Narcissus, an outrageously sexy early piece of art-porn featuring gorgeous young boys in erotic reverie while milling about a series of lavish homespun sets. Even though the film was rediscovered and elevated to cult status amongst gays and underground film fans many years later, Bidgood still finds it unwatchable, and never quite felt comfortable with the reverence the film’s rabid fans (including myself) began to pay him. Yet it’s these same fans who now have the ability to make or break his campaign and help him buy a new camera, materials to build his legendarily homespun sets, and give him the chance to make something new he’s truly proud of. I sat down with Bidgood at his home in Manhattan to discuss his campaign, his rocky career, how he transitioned from photography to filmmaking, and how he reconciles the way others see him with how he sees himself.

Adam: So you’ve got your hand out begging, huh?

James: Yeah, I guess so. Actually I always thought I would be begging because so many things have gone wrong in my life. The landlord has been about to put me out so many times, and I’ve had to go to court so many times to stop it. I always expected one day to be on the corner with the other homeless people drinking a wine bottle and pooping myself. [laughs] Their wardrobe is actually similar to what I’m wearing. I wouldn’t have to get a costume. [laughs] Next question.

Pan from ‘Pink Narcissus’

It’s actually for a lot of things. All I have so far to do photography with is lighting equipment and the stuff to hang the sets from. I don’t have a camera right now. I’m building everything in layers the way Hollywood does, life-size stuff in the foreground, but the mountains in the background don’t have to be that big. I’m going to do a lot of scale-model stuff, and after I’ve photographed all the layers I’m going to put them together in Photoshop. That’s my new project, my new process.

So it’s mainly for materials for the sets and camera stuff?

Mostly for the camera, but also there’s a lot of other stuff I have to get. I don’t photograph trees outdoors, I have to make the trees. I need all the stuff to make the trees with. That kind of stuff. I only asked for what I really needed. In fact I could use a lot more and I’m very grateful for what we’ve gotten. I think I wrote this on Facebook, but I have had so much nice correspondence since I started this campaign. I just cannot tell you how overwhelming it’s been to me emotionally. I don’t want to start crying, but I had no idea, all my life I never had any idea that I had any kind of effect like that. It doesn’t matter what happened before this, the things people write me now, they really knock me off my chair. If I went to my grave I have helped somebody in some way. It’s really done a great deal for my spirit and heart.

Okay let’s get funny again.

Let’s talk a little bit about your previous incarnations prior to being one of the world’s great erotic artists. You started out as a dancing girl at the Club 82.

Yes. I came to New York to be a musical comedy star, and ended up in a dress at the 82 Club.

And that was really one of the premiere drag night clubs of it’s time.

Oh it was. There was only one other that was as glamorous, and that was The Jewel Box, because they had a revolving stage and stuff. It was just a bigger space so they were able to do bigger production numbers and stuff. But the 82 Club spent every bit as much money. We had hundreds of costumes for every show. There was a cast of thirty, and so there were thirty or forty costumes for three different production numbers. That’s a lot of costumes and they were very elaborate.

It sounds like it was the Ziegfeld Follies of drag.

Well, I would say the Jewel Box was more the Follies, because they had a revolving stage and higher ceilings. We were in the basement, my hats could only go so high. [laughs] They scraped the ceiling.

Is it from the stage and that drag world, where you learned the techniques of set building that ended up being intricate to your photography and Pink Narcissus?

I’ll tell you something when I was back living with my parents who were the janitors for the Masonic Temple of Madison, and we had a little apartment, even then, when I was five or six, I would get cardboard boxes and cut out a stage and put Christmas lights and I would take my Ziegfeld paper girl dolls and parade them around the stage. I pinned a little staircase on the walls and had the paper dolls parading down the walls. I think because I was so into the movies, I started playing with sets. Then when I got older I started building really elaborate ones. Big boxes with big curtains and sets for different operettas. I would play the operettas and had people on tracks and push them in and out. When I came to the 82 Club I was bringing a lot of knowledge that nobody else there had. I knew about lighting because I always did stuff when I was a teenager. After a year of doing drag I was costume designer and set designer and featured in a couple of numbers.

From Pink Narcissus.

At what point do you start looking at what was basically at that point called pornography, although it looked very different from what we call pornography today?

There wasn’t much porno then. In the early sixties I would go all the way up town and there was a guy who sold porno movies, black and white, but they were like prostitutes with guys with guys who were wearing masks, and were fat and old and all hairy. It was straight and it was awful. There were no gay ones. The first gay one I ever saw, which I don’t really remember now, it must have been French. It was really exciting. Then suddenly it was everywhere. It started with the little peekaboo things and then there was the Park-Miller Theater. There was also a place on 42nd Street that showed straight stuff. That was a little earlier, where Warhol stuff eventually showed. The underground ground films were eventually showed there. But before Warhol it was a straight porno thing and girls could blow a guy but they would put a silk scarf over the hard penis, and I gotta tell you that was sexier than the later stuff. That was very hot.

Did you have any early photography influences in terms of gay erotica?

You mean, who influenced me? There was a painter called Quaintance, and I looked at his work and thought, “Too bad those aren’t photographs.” That’s about it, because what I was influenced by was how bad things were. I just didn’t understand it. I’ve said this in a lot of interviews, but Playboy was doing these huge productions to show a girl’s twat, with lighting and styling and costumes and all that. When they would photograph a glamorous star they didn’t take such pains. But the gay people who you would think would be the first to do something grand like that, were just showing tacky boys in those little satin or silk posing straps leaning against the same fucking mantle somewhere or by a swimming pool in California. I just thought somebody should be taking boy pictures and demonstrating how much you thought how beautiful the male body and men were. I thought the photographs should be as beautiful as the boys were, and they weren’t.

One of the major things that is always fascinating to me is that you were doing this all on your own with not much help, and sometimes it would take you a very, very long time to build your sets.

It certainly did and I was basically alone. One of the huge problems when you have so many actions – I used a phonograph and put a spool on it so I could wrap string around and turn the phonograph so it would pull the string and that was pulling something that would make movement in the photos. I was desperate for motors or somebody to come in for a couple of hours and pull a string when I told them to. Sometimes I would turn the camera on and have to run and do things myself. My hand is in Pink Narcissus because I couldn’t get anyone to be a hand even. People would be interested for a few days and they would disappear. Then they wanted it to be done because they wanted to see what they had done. I can’t blame them because they wanted it done. I think If they knew what it was going to become maybe they would have been more interested.

How did you meet your subjects?

I could have found people on 42nd Street but every time I went down there I was too shy or timid to ask them to be a model. I would sit for hours at the cafeteria and look at these boys who I knew I could get, and who would have loved to do it, and wouldn’t have wanted much money – although nobody got much money in those days even for tricking — but I couldn’t get the nerve to ask them. My subjects came through friends usually. Somebody would say, “I know a boy.” Jay Garvin was a male dancer at the 82 Club. Bobby Kendall a friend of mine introduced me too. Mostly they came through friends and then as I did more stuff it wasn’t quite as hard. They were just catch as catch can.

What leads you to move from doing the photography to doing a film?

In the back of those gay magazines, they were selling little movies of a guy getting dressed in the morning. They weren’t really porno, just a guy taking his clothes off or putting them on. I had these huge elaborate sets and I thought I ought to be making some of those movies. I started out to make one of those 8mm reels for the boys, and it just grew and grew and grew. If I do something and I think of something else I can do, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I’m trying to curb that because you never get anything done. Like when I started out photographing Bobby. In the film, he comes in and takes his clothes off, and then I thought well this could be something better. Pink Narcissus was always intended to be shown at this theater near me that was showing this Warhol movie about Ondine. I saw that they were showing stuff like this, and I thought, it could get shown there. I never intended New York critics to review Pink Narcissus, and not even my version, but some aborted piece of it. I didn’t think I was writing a great novel. I never thought it was something that was going to cross over to the big time.

How did you visualize your work — did you draw things out, were there storyboards?

Oh yeah I always did a storyboard. Nobody else could figure out what they were because I did them very rough and with scratches. But I knew what they were telling me. For every shot there was a little drawing, it was very rough, not like Hollywood does. But now when I take a photograph, I do do a drawing ahead of time so I know exactly where it’s going. Now that I’m doing things in layered, I have to do an elaborate drawing. You have to do it because you cannot take a photograph in layers unless you know what every layer is going to be and how they have to end up fitting into the photograph.

How much did substances play a part in the conception of Pink Narcissus?

Substances? You mean drugs?

Or alcohol.

Oh, I didn’t drink. But I took a lot of amphetamines. At the 82 Club I was introduced to amphetamines. Every queen there took ups. In fact, everyone took ups in those days. Every housewife was taking ups. She’d get her goddamn house cleaned and still fuck her husband at night. The demands life made on most people you could realize if you took those diet pills. They were very big and then somebody decided we shouldn’t have this. Now, I loved acid. It was so good for me. I resented that I didn’t find out about acid until many years later. Can you imagine what Narcissus would have been if I’d known about acid? There was acid at the time and I thought people were on other kinds of drugs on my sets, extras and stuff, but they were on acid. Can you imagine tripping in one of those sets? But I never had any problems on acid like other people did. I’d take acid on a Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday night. I’d go back to work on Monday morning like I’d been to Hawaii. I was totally refreshed and wonderful. Other people were completely wrecked by it. But I think that’s why drug laws are bullshit. Everybody’s pornography is different and everybody’s body chemistry is different. We all respond to grass or pot or anything differently.

The part of the film that I find so striking that a lot of people don’t talk about is the Times Square sequence that’s like erotomania times 1000, with all the crazy characters in 42nd Street cruising with their cocks out in these amazingly exaggerated ways. Where did that sequence come from in your head?

Pornography was all around us in advertisements and on television. I even think “In the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant” is a dirty reference. I think there are mountains in the background that look like buns. It was just everywhere. Sex was in every advertisement, in all the signs flashing, and so I put a lot of those signs in, and it was like if you took 42nd Street the way it was and carried it a little further it might have looked like that.

It’s very well known about how the film got taken away from you, and you took your name on it, but when you started to realize that it was a cult item — 

Well I didn’t know. Whatever they say happened back then didn’t. Nobody cared. It was a big nothing. Many years later it became something but not then. I didn’t even know that Michael Lumpkin had found it and thought I was dead and bought a copy of it or the negative or whatever. He started showing it, but I was totally unaware that all of this was going on. Then one day I saw it was on television. I woke up in a daze and there was Jay Garvin dancing towards me on some channel. I thought I was hallucinating because I tripped a lot then. I thought, “My god, what’s going on?” I had no idea that anybody had any of that. I kept thinking about re-doing it, that one day I was going to get all the original material and put it back together and make it the way it should have been, but it kept me up at night, and I was getting eaten away by it, and I thought if there is no material, I’ll stop doing this because it’s never going to happen, so I destroyed all the extra material that there was. If it hadn’t been for the fact that a box of the negatives was in a place that I couldn’t get to, they’d be gone too. It’s very sad, really. I made other movies, too.

So you never actually sold any other short movies in the backs of magazines? Nobody out there could have copies of those?

No. I only sold the stills. Slides and prints. They sell now for more than I earn in two years. The older and more ruined something is, they might as well put me on the market. I totally don’t understand. I understand the romance of it, but still. I would rather have a little print with the colors the way they were, not faded. I’m lucky in that all the stuff I did on Kodak film was done before they changed their formula. Anything filmed a few years after I was done filming would have turned red by now.

I know you don’t have nice things to say about the way the final film turned out, but when you hear from so many people who say it’s genius, and they give you retrospectives, how do you reconcile that?

I think I could have made a great a film. Pink Narcissus would have really been a very interesting film if I had been able to finish it the way it was intended to be. Beyond that I just think I demonstrated a talent and I never understood it but now I realize it, but the reason I could never have been picked up by Hollywood, no matter how big my talent was, was that I was gay. And I made gaaaaaayyyyyy movies. About as gay as you could get. It was one big limp wrist. It wasn’t John Wayne. It was just not going to happen, but I didn’t realize that. I really had this naive head about being gay for so long. Ever since I was a kid. I didn’t think it was any kind of problem.

I understand, but I don’t think you answered my question. How do you reconcile your view of the film with that of others? 

I don’t reconcile it. The fact that you’re talking to me on this machine right now, it’s hard for me to put it all together. When I go to gallery things or screenings, people treat me amazingly. It’s like they just want to touch me, and to go from that adulation to go home to what I go home to, it’s very sad. That’s why I won’t let them send a limo. I say please don’t. It’s like if I were living homeless on the corner and the limo drives up, and I go to a gallery or a screening and then I go back to being on the street corner. It’s very hard for me to deal with it.

Is there any piece of what exists as Pink Narcissus now that you think is true to what you wanted it to be?

There’s a dolly shot that I really like, where I’m high up and I go down as if I’m on a dolly. He’s sitting on a chair and gets up. It’s one of my favorites. My favorite shot is where he’s looking over the grass and the wind is blowing and the clouds are moving in the background. What I like in it are shots. I love the storm scene, with the down angles of his body that looks all iridescent. It’s very pretty stuff. Mostly that’s what I like. The funny thing is, I would have cut a great deal more out of the movie. I would have put in a lot more stuff they left out. I think it’s very difficult to sit there and look at because it just goes on and on. A lot of stuff that seems to go on and on, may have been intended to but there were seven other layers that were supposed to, so it wouldn’t be quite so boring. If you only could show one layer it wouldn’t be interesting. You need all the other layers to make it make sense. That’s what they left out. All the other layers. There were layers and layers. The Times Square scene was supposed to have hustlers from the past, were all filmed in slow motion and the hustlers of today were filmed overlaid. It was supposed to be 42nd street of all time with ghost figures of the future and the past floating through. it was very hard to do timing wise, because it was a dolly shot.

Let’s say I gave you 100 million dollars to make a new version of Pink Narcissus. You can cast anyone you want. Who would you cast?

Oh god, there’s so many pretty ones out there. I don’t know. I can’t tell you because I’m not current with names, but every day I see another one. Whether they’re a model or a movie star. There aren’t a lot of Bieber age ones. They’re mostly 29-30, the great beauties of today. Bieber is a very pretty boy but not the kind of face that would have done it for me. There aren’t a lot of teenage types. Zac Efron, he’s very pretty, but he never really looked young. Baby fat young. Even as a teenager, he looked like a young adult. Bobby Kendall didn’t look that young but he had something that was very beautiful, a certain innocence about his face. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t gay. It’s just something there that I still – when I look at Narcissus, or the photographs, for a boy that thought he looked like a monkey, he was very beautiful. There is a boy on Facebook who I hope to photograph, named Taylor Nelson, and the thing that I like is that he isn’t perfect. It’s like with Travolta, it’s the flaws that make them so beautiful.

To back James Bidgood’s Indiegogo campaign (and score yourself original Bidgood artwork and Pink Narcissus t-shirts), click here. 

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

When he first started at KinkMen.com in 2008, Van Darkholme had to overcome a bit of a learning curve. “When I first started out here, I would sit up and draw pictures and write dialogue and plan all these bondage suspension ideas,” he explains, while sitting in a secluded spot in the massive Armory building that houses Kink’s studios and behind-the-scenes operations, “and then the shoot day would arrive, and the model would arrive and say, “I can’t do that. I got a shoot tomorrow. I got a shoulder injury. I can’t be suspended.”

Darkholme quickly realized he was wasting his time planning things out and soon thereafter decided to throw caution to the wind and improvise. When the shoot starts, he goes into work mode. Models will get tied up in shibari rope bondage, flogged, shocked, and fucked by multiple horse-dicked hunks, but there will also be messiness, new ideas, things that haven’t been seen before in traditional bondage videos. On a shoot set in a grocery store where someone’s gang fucked as revenge for stealing, a nearby watermelon is turned into a helmet that the victim is forced to wear while getting fucked. It’s this spirit of improvisation and a mental library of bondage fantasies that contributed to making Darkholme the ideal person to become KinkMen’s artistic director and an international BDSM icon, and also contributed to the site’s winning a Cybersocket Award for best hardcore/fetish site. Yet for someone who spends his days whipping, torturing and verbally humiliating other men, Darkholme is surprisingly self-conscious about his ability to give a good interview. “I’m not very hype-y and sell sell sell,” he explains midway through our hour-long talk, “I hope you can make something out of this.” I assure him I can, and I will and we continue talking about watching Cruising as a youngster, being invited to mud parties as an adult, and what he really thinks of the new puppy play craze.

Adam: Van, I’m sorry I’m calling you five minutes late. I’m glad I’m not there in person so you can’t punish me.

Van: Ha!

So let’s launch right into stuff. What are you guys working on right now? Bound in Public ended, right?

Just for now. We’re trying to re-formulate what we’re going to do for 2015. But I don’t want to say what’s coming out because I don’t want to say stuff and all of a sudden it’s not going to happen and I look like a jerk.

Can you talk in general terms? What do you think 2015 is gonna be about for Kink?

Right now we’re changing the format of our site so it will be more searchable, more user-friendly. We can suggest stuff, similar to how Netflix works. That kind of format. The site will intelligently learn what sort of stuff you tend you buy and we’ll suggest something similar that you’ll like. So it’s about format changing right now.

So if someone wants to search a certain type of bondage or pumps or clamps or things like that, they can search that way?

Yes. We’re going to have tagging and so if the shoot contains a pump it’ll say that and you can search that way. It’ll also suggest three other shoots that have pumps in it. Stuff like that.

Let’s talk a little bit about your history. I know you’ve been at Kink for a while now and I know you talked a little bit about this in the Kink documentary, but can you tell me again, for our readers, how you discovered you were kinky?

I grew up in the midwest, and there’s not much going on, so a lot of times I would just fantasize. It was a small farming community. It’s not like I could go to the city to find stuff. There was only five thousand people in the town. No stoplight. So what I did was I just fantasized cause I was horny in my teenage years. I started fantasizing about the football players, or some cute guys in the class. But for me the fantasy has to be real. It’s not realistic if this football player and I get together and have a romantic, loving relationship, because I can see that he’s with a girlfriend. But more real is that I knock him in the head and tie him up and have my way with him. That’s more realistic. That’s where the bondage stuff started to come in.

So your fantasies early on were mostly domination, or were you getting dominated too by the football players?

No, because then it’s not real. They’re not gonna want to tie up some goofy kid. What for? Just to beat the shit out of him and not to suck his dick. So it’s always the other way around. I’m always doing the dominating. I also went to Catholic boarding school when I was younger, in Vietnam. There were all these Caucasian Catholic Nuns. All the verbal stuff and the discipline and all the scenarios, I learned it all from the Catholic boarding school.

Were you heavily disciplined at those schools?

Oh yeah. Especially because I’m left handed. I got beat up a lot for that.

Because they think it’s the devil?

Yes. Then because my stepfather is Caucasian, and I have mixed half-brothers — half-Vietnamese, half-American brothers and sisters. In the school they would get teased and beat up and I would always try to defend them. So I would get disciplined for getting into fights and stuff.

Was there a moment when you were getting disciplined when you found yourself getting turned on and connected with it in a sexual way?

No, not really. Not at all. But like, every afternoon, all the boys would strip naked and line up in the courtyard and there would be a nun standing by the rainwater well and it’s like prison camp, we all do one step at a time, go up, get a scoop of water and pour it on our heads and soap up and go back to the circle. I would realize that the older boys who were 13, 14, 15 years old, they would get embarrassed, but the younger boys didn’t care. I found myself getting turned on by their humiliation at a younger age.

So what was your earliest real bondage experience? The earliest time when you really started to explore that side of you…

In my twenties. I’d been trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life and trying to make a living. I was working in a bank for a while. I wasn’t making a lot of money. Then I saw this video in the video store called “Fetish”, which was BDSM. It was kind of straight. Not gay. I watched it and I thought, I can do that. I can do that with my eyes closed. I’ve been doing it in my head all my life. I just thought, faking and doing it as I learned was the way to go. I put an ad out to be a dom, and I was very successful at it.

So you were a dom for a while, were you able to quit your job?

Oh yes, I had to. I couldn’t do both. It was impossible.

How long does it take before you decide to quit the bank and pursue a career in BDSM?

I was in Los Angeles, and I was like, “Where do I go to see some fetishy people? The leather bar?” They have this leather group that has meetings, but I go and end up feeling like I don’t belong there. It’s just a different kind of people, not my aesthetic, not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the boy next door into bondage. Not like somebody who’s all leathered up for a long, long time. So I kind of start making videos for myself, because I enjoy doing that. It’s for me. But then I found out that I can sell this stuff, so I start making videos for others. I start my own company and the wholesalers just eat it up.

In the early days, there were restrictions, right? You couldn’t actually show sex in those early videos?

Right. You can’t show bondage and sex in the same frame.

So people couldn’t be being beaten up with a whip and being fucked at the same. 

You can, but you can’t be tied up. You can’t see someone tied up and being fucked.

Because it was a rape thing?

Yeah. It’s more about with DVDs, if you ship it to somebody in Kansas and it goes to the wrong house, and someone’s grandma is watching it, it’s somehow indecent. I didn’t make up the laws, it’s just what exists. You can go around that. You can show a wide shot of the guy tied up, bent over, and then you can the show the close up of the penetration.

Take me through a typical video.

I usually would get whoever was the hottest in West Hollywood and ask him if I can tie him up. So it was just guys getting tied up and having sex. When I first started the videos were very minimal. Not flogging and stuff. It was just about guys getting tied up – guys who you wouldn’t normally see getting tied up. It all goes back to my teenage fantasy. I’m just making that.

At what point do you start to think about the philosophical side of kink? Do you read up on historical S&M things?

That started when I met Daddy Zeus, because he saw my work and I ran into him somewhere and he recognized me and said he loved my stuff. I just melted because I’d seen his stuff for so many years when I was in school. We became good friends and he kind of became my mentor. That’s when I started thinking more about master and servant dynamics, relationships. But I didn’t develop it until I stepped into the Kink building in 2008. That’s when I was suddenly surrounded by world class directors and I learned a lot from them.

Do you start to look at classics like Born to Raise Hell or other things that are the big touchstones of BDSM porn?

The one porno that I love that’s inspired me most, I think is LA Plays Itself from 1972. I’m madly in love with Fred Halsted on the motorcycle. He works over a boy, bound in the closet on the top of these stairs. It inspired me mostly because of the visual. It’s a simple day to day setting – apartment, closet, a little rope- which turns into something extraordinary. There’s no need for the dungeon, BDSM gear etc. That was the first time I could really relate to BDSM. The rest of my influences are mostly just Daddy Zeus videos. I still tie people up with the hands the way he does and work somebody over. I learned the BDSM technique from him and how to be myself, and not to put on this macho “dom” act that we all think doms should behave like. He taught me to believe in my work and let it speak for itself – no need for hype or machismo. Oh, another funny thing is that when I was fifteen, sixteen, I saw Cruising on TV for the first time. That made a huge impression on me. Before that the only representation of a gay person I saw was Flip Wilson or that queeny guy from Bewitched and all the other queeny guys on the daytime game shows. I imagined that was what gay was.

Paul Lynde.

Yeah, and the guy who throws confetti all over the place.

Rip Taylor. 

Yeah. For me that was what gay was. When I saw Cruising I was like, oh my god, a gay guy has to go work out, he has to get in shape to be in a gay bar. That’s what I identified with.

Your view of gay people changed, but it was also tied in with this S&M underworld angle.

Exactly. I was watching that the whole time and I kept watching the door because I was afraid that my dad would walk in.

Van Darkholme with Derek Pain in a scene for Bound Gods.

Do your parents know what you do now?

Well my father passed away. My mother doesn’t know.

What do you tell her that you do?

I just say I work in computers. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it, but it’s just she doesn’t have the capability of understanding it. She’s from the old world, she’s very old fashioned and superstitious. She would think i’m out murdering people or a criminal. For people who get it, I tell them. But it depends on if they can process it.

I imagine that kink porn viewers must be harder to please than most gay porn viewers. What kind of criticism do you get and how seriously do you take them?

There’s not a lot of it going around, so people are appreciative of anything with a high quality production. Before it used to be somebody in their basement with a sheet in the background. So people are very appreciative of anybody taking the time to have good production and good skills. The only thing is that everybody has their own fetish and they want to see it in each video. Somebody who has a glove fetish, they want to see it in every single video. If they don’t get it, all hell is gonna break loose.

Are there new fetish trends emerging?

I was just thinking about that the other day. A lot of the stuff in fetishes hasn’t changed since the sixties or seventies. The floggers still look the same. The mouth gags. The same blind folds. The leather looks the same as back in the seventies. The harnesses haven’t changed. Some people tried to do some asymmetrical style ones, but they didn’t catch on. The classic harness is still in style. If you go to Folsom that’s what everybody is wearing. It hasn’t really evolved much. The rope bondage came in like seven or eight years ago, and I think I’m one of the very first people who put it in porn videos.

You’d been doing the shibari rope stuff for a long time beforehand.

Yes. For the past five years shibari was huge, everybody’s doing it now. You click on bondage and there’s a thousand bondage websites with people doing that. I’ve been wondering a lot lately what the next thing is. But we don’t know. I would be a rich man if I knew.

I feel like the big thing that I see now, and maybe it’s just because I’m not necessarily in the scene, but I feel like everybody is getting really crazy about puppy play.  It seems to be replacing master and sub in some way. 

Yeah. I don’t see too much of that. When I see it usually I just roll my eyes.

Why do you roll your eyes at puppy play?

Oh, I don’t know. I’m gonna get the puppy community pissed off at me, but I guess it’s just a personal thing. For me, it has to be visually striking. I think it’s just my upbringing. That wasn’t in when I was growing up. Therefore I can’t relate to it. I’m more looking for something that’s sexually charged and visual, like a muscle guy tied up, or just a lean guy tied up with a rope real tight on his cock and just pulsating hard. To turn around and look at the visual of someone with a puppy mask and bouncing around and panting, I mean… [laughs] It’s just far from what gets my dick hard.

Do you have other kinks you won’t go near besides puppy play?

I’m fine with puppy play. I’m very neutral about it. I don’t hate it. I’ll come up and pet a puppy or smack him in the ass. I’m okay with it. Don’t get me wrong. Anyway, to answer your question, when I was in Germany, they invited me to a mud party, and just for a split second I was like, I’m in. But then I said, you know, there’s just some things in life that you don’t need to be in. So I turned that one down.

You didn’t go in the end?

No. I was really surprised because we went there a couple of years ago for the Hustlaball Berlin, and we went to a leather store and everybody was like, you’re the Bound Gods guy, I know who you are! So I was like, wow, all the way in Berlin? I was really surprised. They were like, come shoot in our store and come to our fair and we have a mud party. I said, okay, no thank you… You know that’s scat right? They call it mud…

I know it’s not real mud. Real mud might actually be an interesting fetish. 

Yeah, I’m into that. That’s about it.

In the porn and kink world, who do you see as your competition? 

I mean, I don’t usually look at other people because then I can’t sleep at night. I start comparing myself to others. I just try to focus on what I’m doing. I don’t do that. I don’t really know. Do you know? Sometimes, once in a while I’ll ask the models and they don’t know either.

Well all the other porn studios now try to do their own version of kink — Lucas has done kink stuff for years, and Hot House has their whole fisting leather thing — but they still operate within the realm of traditional porn. Your films feel much more spontaneous and complex. You’re also doing something different than underground bondage auteurs do. You’re using recognizable, established porn stars with porn star bodies, whereas other people are using guys who are more ordinary — that Treasure Island look. 

That’s why my films are different. Because I’m trying not to compete with other people or watch what they’re doing and emulate that. Even when I do the bondage, people take classes and courses, and their bondage comes out exactly the same the teacher and they get used to that. I try to figure it out on my own. It’s problem solving for myself, so it’s gonna look different. It’s a little messy. It’s not perfect. I like it messy because it emulates life. Life is not perfect. So if I Google bondage I know exactly which photo is mine because it’s a little messy. I like that.

Can you talk about that further? Tell me about a scenario or scene that you worked through in the way that you’re describing, maybe in a recent video or something that sticks out in your head.

Well, for instance with the rope work, usually I put a rope around someone’s chest. Today I decided to do something different. Instead of doing it the usual way, I wrapped it asymmetrically. I was like, “Wow this looks so good.” I had to take a photo because I would never remember to do it that way again.

So it’s about being creative in your bondage, as opposed to following the set pattern and procedure?

It’s that way for the entire shoot. I shoot three or four times a week. For me to sit there and plan something, that’s crazy. I’ll show up on the set, and look around and create on the fly. Usually my best work is when I do that. Throw things together and work with the chemistry of the models and their capability. When I first started out here, I would sit up and draw pictures and write dialogue and plan all these bondage suspension ideas and then the shoot day would arrive, and the model would arrive and say, “I can’t do that. I got a shoot tomorrow. I got a shoulder injury. I can’t be suspended.” So now I just go in and spend an hour and talk to them before the shoot and then I just create it on the fly.

Totally improvised?

Yes.

That’s impressive. One of my favorite scenes is the one where you’re dragging the guy through Folsom in the bear mask and the people are stepping up to piss on him. 

The piss is just impromptu. “I wanna pee on him.” I say, “Okay then pee on him!” Or like, we drag someone to the street, and I saw a bunch of recycling bins, so I grabbed his head and dunked it in and made him take up all the trash in his mouth and I shoved his body into the recycling bin and called him a recycling whore. I started beating him and making him shout it out to the crowd. It was all improvised.

I also liked the recent one where you made the guy wear a scooped out watermelon while getting fucked.

Again, we were at my friends grocery store, and from looking around I said, “Oh there it is, let’s do something with that.”

I mean that to me is super erotic because it’s like you’re creating something that didn’t exist before. You’re not like, lets’ get those masks and do that same thing again. 

Yeah.

Do you have any younger guys that you’re taking under your wing? Are you mentoring young directors of your own?

Yeah. For the past year I’ve been mentoring Sebastian Keys.

How does it feel?

It’s kind of weird because I don’t have a kid but it feels like what it must be like being a father. We’re literally father and son because I’m older than his dad. It’s so sad. Anyway, this is what I think it must feel like to have a kid.

Okay, let’s talk trash. Biggest disaster that you’ve ever experienced on set. 

That’s every week. If you see how we make this stuff, you’d be like, “What? How did they even manage to get the shoot done?” What I do is extremely difficult because like you said I pick well known actors, people who are not necessarily people who have done BDSM before. It’s my job to make them look like they know what they’re doing. It’s not easy. It’s extremely difficult.

So you have guys who come in and are like, “I’m game” and then you put the clothespins on and say we’re gonna pull them all off, and they say we’re not doing it?

No no no, it’s not that easy. They don’t come in and say, “I’m game for this.” They come and look really sad and scared and don’t want to be there.

Why do they come in? Do you pay really well?

We pay the same as everybody else. But I think there’s curiosity and it’s a challenge. I think because we have social media that everybody’s doing, so let’s say someone goes on Twitter and posts a crazy ass photo of them strung up and with all sorts of stuff on their cock and their porn friends see and are like, “What??? You did that?” So those friends are challenged and they want to do it.

So they signed up for bragging rights and then they step onto the set and realize, holy fuck I have to do this?

Yeah.

So what are the disasters? Take me into a typical disastrous everyday shoot.

Well the main thing is the boner. That’s the hardest thing. Trying to get everybody to get a boner, especially when you beat them up for an hour. Then you’re like, “Get a boner while you get beat up.” You have to stop and get a boner. Then get beat up again. I think I spend ten percent of my life waiting for people to cum. I’m giving away secrets of the set. People are going to be like, wow it’s not glamorous.

Well I think everybody knows by now that most porn sets are chaotic and aren’t glamorous. Do you have a favorite of your own films?

Usually my favorites are when I work with someone for a long time and then it’s time for them to have a breakthrough. And then it happens on film and it’s like wow… It’s amazing stuff. and i can honestly say that you’re not going to see this anywhere in the world except at Kink. I’m really proud of that.

You’re one of the few visible Asian performers and directors in gay porn. Do you feel proud of that – or is it a weird situation to be in?

Well, I mean, it’s a double edged sword. I get emails like by the hundreds, weekly, especially from Asia. It goes in waves. First was Japan, then South Korea, now it’s China. “Oh my god, you’re amazing, you’re my hero. So glad to see you in the world. I’m so proud of you.” I just say “Thanks, Stay in School!” (laughs) That’s the good part of it. They recognize me worldwide. They identify me because in something western there’s a face that they can relate to. But we also get haters. That’s just part of the business.

Guys who are like “This would be hotter if there wasn’t an Asian guy in there.” 

Or like, “Ew, he’s ugly, get him off the screen.” I think it’s all part of the business. You get the good with the bad. I’m not the only one being singled out. The funny part is sometimes I read the email, and then I Google it. Usually they turn out to be Asian from Canada or the US or Europe. It’s a self-hatred thing, and they project it onto me. I have a form email I send to them when I find that out. It’s not about being Asian but being a foreigner in general. I never think oh, they hate me or alienate me for being Asian. It’s more because I’m a minority race in a particular society. Growing up in Vietnam, the situation was reversed for my half white brothers and sisters. They were the minority race in a Vietnamese society and they were harassed a lot. So there isn’t any self hatred or inferiority complex on my part. I’m simply a minority/foreigner who chose to be here. I can change my situation anytime by moving to a place where I’m part of the majority. For me it’s geographic instead of race. It has a lot of pluses too because you’re basically an outsider, and you’re on the outside looking in. As an artist it helps because you can see the whole picture, instead of being in the middle of everything.

You’re an outsider in an outsider art. 

Exactly.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

While his boyfriend, porn star Cutler X, is fucking a hot Puerto Rican boy in the bedroom, Adam Russo is sitting outside on the phone with me. If our roles were reversed, I’d be eager to get off the phone and join the fun, but Russo clearly wants to be where he is. “One thing you should know about me baby — even when I was younger, I was still an alpha male,” he says at one point, and this statement seems to sum up his approach to life in general. He makes strong decisions, doesn’t do what he doesn’t want to, and doesn’t accept or get involved in any drama.

Russo grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in a family whose attitude was part liberal, part strict Catholic. After graduating high school, he split and pursued a path that involved a sugar daddy, working in fashion and interior design, before turning to escorting and then finally porn — both in front of and behind the camera. He’s upfront about the fact that he got into porn solely to boost his visibility as an escort, and doesn’t withhold his opinions about the pluses and minuses of working with certain studios and performers. From the time we began speaking he was honest about his experiences on a Dick Wadd set the day before. Then, over the course of an hour, Russo and I delved into his history, his decision to go bareback, and yes, Armond Rizzo’s beautiful, magical ass.

Adam B: How was filming with Dick Wadd?

Adam R: It’s the second one I did for them, and they’re very heavy on watersports, which is fine. I enjoy watersports. But the first shoot I was so fucking bloated, because they have you drinking so much water and Gatorade that it was uncomfortable. I told them that when they called me. I said, I know you guys like piss, but is this all focused on this? They said no, you don’t have to drink too much. I said fine. So I get to set and there’s seven of us, and there’s like a lot of other guys standing around cheering whatever action is happening in the front and it was a long shoot and I’m just kind of like, I think I’m done with Dick Wadd.

Because it was a long shoot or because —

The way it was done, the shoot, you had all these guys who were not utilized. Some were just sitting in the back. It was okay, but I wouldn’t do it over. For a while I was doing different shoots for different studios, because it was basically my PR for my escorting work. That’s what all this is about. But there’s so much shit out there on me already, so many videos, at this point I’m just like I don’t need to do that.

That makes a lot of sense. Your openness about it is refreshing. Let’s dive into that. Were you escorting before the porn or was it porn and then escorting?

It was escorting before the porn. I was up in San Francisco when I made this decision. I had tried once before when I was in New York and things were getting a little tough, between jobs. This was a time when you had to get a beeper, so it was some years back.

The nineties!

Yeah. You were either a doctor or escort. So I went down to this agency and I’m nervous. Not in the right headspace. I want to be the best fashion designer ever, not a fuckin escort. I go down there, kind of halfheartedly. They said, okay, we’ll hire you. Go get a beeper. So I get a beeper and it goes off and I look at it and don’t answer it. The beeper goes off again and this time I look at it sternly. I still don’t answer it. Third time I’m like, “I just can’t do this.” So fast forward to 1998 or 1999, many years have passed. I was bartending in San Francisco. The bar made a lot of mistakes and suddenly I wasn’t making the same money. I had bills. I couldn’t go back to the jobs I previously had — interior design, fashion and all that. I decided to start escorting. I was in a long-term relationship at the time. He wasn’t exactly pleased with it but he said okay. I started doing that and I figured why not do porn to up the exposure.

Did the escorting derail your relationship?

The relationship was already starting to derail. We had an open relationship and were already sleeping in separate beds at this point. We were together for fourteen years but it wasn’t a complete relationship. It was time to move on. I was having sex but no intimacy. Know what I mean?

Totally. 

It’s nice to have both intertwined. But we are still best friends. He’s got a key to my apartment. That’s how close we still are. He loves Cutler and lives in LA. I’m traveling so much I get to see him every once in a while.

What’s your upbringing like? Is your family liberal or conservative Italian?

My grandparents were deeply religious, so I grew up in a very Catholic environment. I went to parochial school. My grandfather wanted me to become an altar boy. But my mom, my father, the other parts of my family, were more open minded and liberal. Great family to be in. Lots of love. Food was very important. Most of my family owned restaurants and their own businesses. It was a good upbringing until my parents divorced. I was about 12 or 13.

Wow, that’s a hard age for divorce.

Actually I was ready. I helped my mom pack. My father was a bit abusive to my mother. Also a bit of a dick.

They go hand-in-hand. 

I had to forgive my father years ago, and I did. My sister, who’s also gay, and my brother, are very attached to him and see him all the time. For me it was a different circumstance. They were also much younger when all this happened.

Growing up, do you realize you’re gay early on?

Yes. It was about half a year after my parents divorced that I figured out I was gay. I’d been kind of looking at these hot guys, and in my head I thought wanted to be them. Then it dawned on me one day. I was jerking off. I thought, I don’t want to be them, necessarily, I want them. It was a revelation. So I knew I was gay. I still dated girls because at that age anything gets your dick hard. I still do girls every once in a while. I do straight clients — straight couples every once in a while. I have no problem with women at all as far as sex. Relationship or trying to get a women to have sex easily like men? Forget it.

So maybe you’re like a five on the Kinsey scale?

Maybe. The thing about it also is that it’s taboo. I’ve been gay for so long that actually having a woman is taboo.

What do you like most about women when you’re with them?

Well there’s a whole different feel to them. I can’t do the girls with little squeaky voices. If I do it it’s gotta be a woman who knows what she wants. She’s a woman. Not a little girl. I tend to like brunettes more than anything. Beautiful women, breasts. The whole feel is different. They’re just much softer. That’s a nice change from men. It’s nice to have a change. And I do like eating pussy. I gotta say. I think I just made every man who is gonna read this cringe.

Our commenters are especially crazy about determining who’s gay and bisexual and telling people they’re straight as if they were scientists.

I’ve had people attack me on Twitter before. I always make a joke out of it “I’m gay with straight tendencies,” which I think is a funny line. But some people say, “Oh no you’re bisexual.” But I don’t really consider myself bisexual. I know bisexual men. They have relationships with women. I don’t have relationships with women in that respect. It’s like, okay, just throw a woman into the mix once in a while, sexually. I’m not walking around like, “Oh I need a woman.” It’s not that way for me.

So you move to New York at some point to do fashion, right?

Yeah. Actually, I had a sugar daddy when I was 19. For about four and a half years. I moved to Buck’s County, Pennsylvania, and then he had an apartment in New York. Since I wasn’t working, I started teaching myself how to sew and make patterns. Then we moved to Miami, and that’s where I went back to school for fashion. Then when I went back to New York is when I started working for Geoffrey Beene and Joan Vass.

So was it a natural thing for you to take on a sugar daddy? Were you always looking for that sort of thing?

I wasn’t. I was always the artist. I was into photography. I won scholarships. I was into theater, but it wasn’t gay or feminine. It was always just like people called me “artistic.” I started to gain my own voice, which was important. I wasn’t looking for a sugar daddy or anything like that. Having nice things was always important to me, and of course, growing up in the eighties, everybody was into money, money, money. So I just sort of fell into it and the funny thing is, he became a father figure. We’re still friends to this day. He’s 25 years older than me. He was able to provide me things that I was never able to have in my life at the time. I am really very grateful that that happened.

But it wasn’t a situation where you felt like you were forced to be around someone you didn’t like for the money?

Not at all. One thing you should know about me baby — even when I was younger, I’m still an alpha male. I’m still very much one. When I was in high school I started gaining my voice. That strong character started coming out.

So you’re doing the stuff in New York and it’s going well and then eventually they don’t and you move into escorting for good. What’s the learning curve like? Do you take to it instantly or do you have to find your own way?

Once I was ready for it, my whole idea about it had changed. The escorting and porn are actually very cathartic as far as my sexuality is concerned. When I was coming out, AIDS was splashed all over the front of the newspaper. That had a big impact on my sex life. If I would have come out earlier, I might not be here today because I’m a very sexually driven person. That changed how I viewed sex and what I did in sex. It wasn’t until later that I started to relax about it and get a better understanding on who I am and things like that.

So for instance, you wouldn’t get fucked?

I barely got fucked or fucked. I was a top in my relationships if I did.

I’m 14 years younger than you but in the 90s all I saw on TV was AIDS. So when I came out it was the same exact thing, don’t do this or that. Just oral and jerking off. 

It changed a lot of guys’ lives. Even to this day. Even though things have changed, some people are still not quite understanding the changes that have taken place as far as PrEP and guys who are on medications and things like that. The whole world of that has changed. I talked to my doctor and some other doctors, and they’re a few years away from eradicating the disease from the body. All of this changes. The whole outlook of everything has changed. People are very slow to understand that. So many older guys, I talk to them and they just don’t get it. They say they haven’t heard about it. I’m like, why not? You’re having sex, you should be informed and know about these things.

Adam in a recent scene for Bareback That Hole.

When I look at your old website, only two years ago you were like, I don’t do bareback on film… so did that change for you when PrEP came on the scene or was it something else?

Yeah. A lot of that had to take place. But in my relationship for 13 years, I was barebacking him. But it’s just like when you’re doing it on film it’s a whole different story. A lot of things did start changing. The PrEP started coming out. It had a changing influence. Also if you barebacked, some companies wouldn’t hire you at all. You were blacklisted, and that was another issue. So there were all these other issues combined, which didn’t make it very favorable to do so. Then things changed and I was like, this is fine. I’m okay doing it. The funny thing is when I started to do it, is when things started to explode for me.

So now you’ve been doing this for some time, bareback stuff more regularly. You started with a story of a not-so-great experience on a set. What’s the best experience you’ve had on set?

That’s a tough one because there’s so many. When I was shooting my own stuff it was nice because I had more control. So to be able to pick who I was working with and really enjoying that a bit more. But still, it’s always in the back of mind that there’s a camera. So you never quite enjoy sex the way you would normally without the camera.

Can you elaborate on that?

When you’re having sex without a camera, I don’t have to modulate my voice. I can whisper in the guy’s ear. He hears me. When I’m working with a camera, they need to hear me. The audience needs to hear me. There’s a difference there. You’re very much aware of it. You enjoy the guy. You can have fun with the guy. But you’re always aware of the camera. So it changes the whole thing. It’s like the scientific principle — when you observe something you change something.

The observer effect. 

When you have that it does change things.

What would you say is the biggest change?

I think there’s a little a bit of the intimacy that’s lost. When I’m fucking a guy, I can’t fuck him like I would normally fuck him if it was just him and me in bed. Like if Cutler and I were in bed without the camera. I fuck differently. I can hit his points and spots in a different way, where his eyes are rolling back in his head naturally. That doesn’t really read on camera very well because it’s just he and I in that connection. To get a camera to take that, it’s very difficult. It would look slow and a little boring to you if you were looking at it on film.

What’s the worst experience you’ve ever had on set?

The worst experience I had was working for this studio. I was there for a week, and they flew me out. I thought they were mixing things up a bit. They usually hired very young guys. I thought they were hiring older guys for a different site. But they didn’t. When I say younger guys, I mean they looked like they were 12 year old little girls. I was like, there’s not enough Viagra in the world to get me hard for that. It was disastrous for me. I was supposed to fuck them all but I couldn’t. I was still young in the industry at that point. Now I could fuck a dead person at this point. Not that I would! Ha-ha. But it has changed things. That was a definite horror story. I’m not really into feminine men. If I wanted a female I would fuck a female.

That’s interesting that you make that distinction. A lot of the guys on that bi spectrum can go for a more feminine guy.

Yeah. Some do. The very twinkly young thing. But some of them look too young for me. It’s a little pedophile-ish.

It hits a place that makes you uncomfortable and doesn’t turn you on. 

Absolutely. I’ve nothing against the guy, it’s just that I don’t want to have sex with them. I can be your friend, but I don’t want to have sex with you. I can’t have sex with everybody. Then when it comes to stuff like that when you’re escorting, it’s my job. If I take it and I have people who are more feminine, I work at it and make it work so that we’re all happy. But it’s not my thing that I would want to see or go for. It’s difficult in that range. That’s another thing with escorting, not everybody can do this job. I hear people saying, I only want to fuck the hot guys. Don’t get me wrong, I have some very hot clients, but most of them are just average guys. And if you’re thinking you’re just going to fuck these hot guys, you’ve got the wrong idea.

In the past year you’ve also worked with a number of people who are controversial figures in the industry. I want to go through them and ask you about your experiences with them. The first was Michael Lucas. What was your experience doing the bareback stuff for Lucas?

Working with Lucas was fine. I think the whole thing with Lucas was that I just really wanted it on my resume. Know what I mean? I know he can be a difficult person to work for. It’s out there. I’m not telling anybody anything new. My interaction with him fine. It was very brief. I can’t say I had any issue with him at all. I didn’t. The filming went very smoothly. It was very easy. Working with Jed Athens before, I had filmed with him previously. For me it went very quickly and smoothly. Not a problem at all. I’d work for him again.

Jed Athens is my second. 

Oh, Jed, Jed, Jed. He and I have some history and not all of it good. I didn’t really have any problems with him on set. I know he’s had conflicts with other people, but we were fine.

Number three: Brent Corrigan. 

Yeah. The thing with him and I, Cutler and I met Brent off-set and had some fun together. We had no problem whatsoever, and then I got him involved with Nica Noelle from Icon Male, which, if you saw on Twitter they were having a little tiff about his experience on set.

She’s my number four. 

Oh good lord.

You are a magnet for the controversial people!

Jesus. And I’m so not involved in any of their drama. Brent I love, we had a great time. I got him involved with Nica. We had a great shoot together. She loved him and hired him back obviously. I wasn’t there for this last shoot. I don’t know what happened and I don’t really want to know. I just don’t. It was between them. I had no idea. I don’t want to involve myself. I like both of them. I would work with both of them again.

You never had a bad experience on one of Nica’s sets?

No. I’ve worked with Nica several times now. She’s looking to work together again at the end of February or March. I haven’t had a bad time, but I know some people have. But people have had problems with Chi Chi and a lot of these studios. I think sometimes it’s personality clashes. I’m pretty easy to get along with. I don’t take bullshit so I’m not going to be crazy. I go in there and do my job, and hopefully do it well, and that’s about it. I adore Nica. I love filming with her because I love doing the b-roll, which has been helping me with the acting part and the filming part, because I’m going to be doing some mainstream acting soon. Working with her — she has her own style, of what she does, how she works. What she does. But so does every other director. It’s just a matter of how you mix together. I’ve worked in artistic industries — fashion design, interior design. Fashion design — you wanna talk about some egos? You need to learn how to get along with people. That’s the whole thing. I’ve already learned how to get along with people so I don’t have the issues or drama with these people. It’s very rare I have a problem with a person.

We haven’t talked about your relationship with Cutler X at all. How’s it going?

Right now he’s in the bedroom with a boy that he’s fucking.

Sounds great!

Beautiful Puerto Rican boy. Very pretty. I will join them after we’re done. Anyway, it’s going really well. It’s like the perfect relationship. I’ve been able to have everything that I need and want. I’m having my cake and eating it too. We have a very open relationship, very understanding. There’s no jealousy. He goes to fuck people, I go to fuck people. We fuck together. I have my boys. I picked up a new beautiful boy in New York, recently. He’s beautiful, built like a brick shithouse. But he understands that Cutler’s my boyfriend. I do have several boys all over the world at this point, because I travel so much. I would love to see more of them, it’s just difficult. The travel is difficult. I’m able to have all this. I’m Cutler’s bottom but I fuck my boys and most of my clients because I’m alpha-male. If I was strictly in a monogamous relationship it wouldn’t work for me. I need all of it. You know? This relationship gives me all of that. It’s wonderful. He’s an alpha-male but I take care of a lot of our bookings and everything else. I’m very head-strong on things. It’s a deeply passionate relationship. When I have friends or boys I’m very loyal to them. I help them when I can. The boys are half my age, but it’s not just sex, they become part of the family. I mentor them. It becomes a family thing.

It’s a natural progression, you look in a book about gay psychology, it’s totally natural, when you’re young you seek out an older guy to teach you and when you grow up you pay it forward. 

Exactly.

Adam and Armond Rizzo in a scene for Men Over 30.

Last question, Armond Rizzo. Is that ass as amazing as it looks?

Yes it is. He’s got a beautiful ass. He was my boy for a while. He was getting a little jealous. He knew there were other boys, and that Cutler was my boyfriend. But he’s a little Latino. I still love him even though he fell out with me. He got upset with me. I said, “Baby that’s okay if you don’t want to be here. I don’t collar my boys. You’re here with me because you want to be with me, not because I have you under lock and key.” Although with the one in New York I may change my mind. But yeah, he’s got an incredible ass and he has a good heart, but he’s young and needs to work on our issues — like all of us. I’m still working on my issues. It doesn’t stop until you’re dead.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

In 1973, a 48-year-old New Yorker named Boyd McDonald published the first issue of a small underground zine called Straight-To-Hell. Thanks to its groundbreaking mix of true gay sex stories submitted by readers and news commentary which skewered straight men in positions of power, STH amassed subscribers and fans among horny queers around the world, including luminaries like William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, John Waters, and Felice Picano.  Readers flooded McDonald’s post office box with filthy tales of secret assignations with strangers met in cruisey parks, bathrooms, and clubs, and in chance encounters on the street or other surprising locales.

In the mid-1980’s, McDonald started putting out a series of successful books which collected the best of these stories, with titles like Cum, Flesh, and Juice. He needed someone to take over the magazine and so he turned first to Victor Weaver, and then to my friend Billy Miller. Over the years Miller has carried the torch of STH, keeping it alive despite the fact that most print publications are dead, the queer zine zeitgeist of the mid-2000s is over, and Tumblrs, Vines and other online platforms provide no shortage of documentation of true sexual encounters with visual and aural accompaniments.

A cover from the 70s.

Adam: I’m so excited that there is a new issue of STH finally!

Billy: Yeah well it took a while this time, but it’s got a lot of cool stuff in it.

How long did it take you to make this one?

It’s been over three years. It took me so long because I was sidetracked with a lot of other projects. I have been collecting the stories over time, but the reason to do it now was really because of the LA Art Book Fair last weekend. I got a table there so I figured I had to have something new to have at the table. Now I want to do a book similar to what Boyd MacDonald used to do with those anthology books with the one word titles: Raunch, Juice, and Meat.

That’s so great, because I’ve been saying to everyone lately, Billy needs to do a book or an anthology of Straight-To-Hells, all the way back to Boyd’s days. 

We might, but I’m not sure. Some of those earlier issues are sort of problematic in terms of publishing.

You’ve told me before that some of those early issues had content that would be frowned upon today. 

They’re also just sort of radical and they’re different in a way than what the contemporary version of STH is. The earlier stuff is just about Boyd MacDonald’s brilliance. It still has the same content, minus the newer scenarios. Ever since Victor Weaver and I started doing it, it doesn’t have Boyd’s caliber of sardonic humor. In a way it does. But I don’t write editorials or anything.

Right. Boyd would intersperse sex stories with editorials about news articles – mocking public figures who were known or suspected to be queer, or ridiculing an article about a gay sting by police or something like that. So much of what he did is the same kind of stuff that blogs like Gawker and Vice and even folks on Tumblr do today, four decades later.

Yeah. He this humor that kind of made it different. He would run a picture of Lucille Ball, later in her life with a wrinkly neck, and underneath for the photo credit it said “Lucille Testicle”. In one issue he listed three or four pages of news items he’d collected about famous people’s bowel movements or gas. He was a really funny person. The stories are the same format today as they were then, but the way they’re submitted now is different than it was then. Back then people would send in handwritten stories, and today it’s much different with the internet.

Did you know about STH before you met Boyd? How did it come to pass that you guys came together?

I ran across an issue of STH at a bookstore in Chicago in about 1976 or 77. I became a fan right a way and I wrote him letters and he wrote me back and then when I moved to New York in 1985 I was gonna interview him for something, and I did interview him but the publication ended up not being published, but over the time that I would hang out with him we started to become better friends and then we ended up being friends for almost ten years before he died. So when he started doing all these books which he started to do before I met him, actually, he really was concentrating on that because he was making decent money with that. So he asked me if I wanted to be the editor of the magazine series — the chapbook series and I had never thought of it. It took me about a year before I did anything, and I’ve been doing it now since about 88 or 89. It’s hopefully gotten better. The first ones were held together with scotch tape.

This format of a magazine that just featured true sexual stories — what kind of void did that fill when it first appeared on the scene?

Well there probably had been a precedent for it in straight things like the Penthouse letters and things like that. But this was also Boyd’s take on things. I always say Boyd was punk before punk. Even though Boyd had nothing to do with that. He had that kind of attitude and approach to things. That was something that I had never seen before in any sexual literature, especially homo stuff, because at the time, in the early 70s, it was still very much the hippie era. Boyd was very raunchy, especially in the titles of the books and the articles. One of the article titles was a question that went something like “Q: Is it proper to eat shit?” and then the answer was “Only if you wash it down with copious amounts of piss.” You know, titles like that with these images and raunchy stories. Another title was “Can heterosexuality be cured?” That kind of attitude was so different than the hippie attitude which was, we’re all alike and love your neighbor and all that stuff. Boyd was something different.

Johnny Hazzard on the most recent cover.

He was also about talking about having sex with straight guys. The stories were as pervy and real as possible. 

I — and other people — had never seen the reality of it printed like that. There had been pulp type stories and some of these early homo publications that published stories that were in the realm of fantasy. Stories about football players or things like that. They were erotic but not political or graphically raunchy. That was one of the big differences.

What was Boyd like in person?

I thought he was really funny in person.

What did you do? Did you hang out and talk or go cruising together?

No, we didn’t go too many places because he was agoraphobic in the extreme. We did go a couple of places. Basically I’d go up there and he had this room in a single-residence occupancy, with piles of books, an old fashioned typewriter and this little cot for a bed. No furniture and a hot plate. I just started talking to him. We just used to sit around trying to crack each other up. I would talk to him about the projects we were working on. I was going to this psychiatrist at St. Luke’s and he had this nervous breakdown and committed himself to St. Luke’s too. We bonded on that because we were going to the same place. One time I went over and the door was ajar and it was really dark in there. And in the dark I could see this puff of a red dot from his cigarette. And when he would take a puff I could see he was wearing a ski mask over his head. A dark ski mask to cover his face. And the whole room was dark. That was his idea of weirdness. He was capable of doing that. But mostly we would sit around smoke cigarettes and drink black coffee and eat donuts.

How was he surviving?

He made money because his books started to make a lot of money. They were really popular with the gays. He wrote for a bunch of so-called mainstream gay publications. He did a lot of things over the years. Some of them I only found out about later. I know he used to write for Time or Newsweek. He was also a stage manager for this off-Broadway or Broadway show called Via Galactica, which was the same producers who did Hair. It was their second thing and a million dollar bust. They spent all this money on it and it didn’t work out. Boyd had done a bunch of different things. He went to Harvard and graduated at the head of his class. Do you know Bill Arning? His parents knew Boyd and Boyd was the best man at his parents’ wedding. It’s weird. He was originally from North or South Dakota, I always forget.

He had a normal life and then something happened and he went off on this radical, sex crazed queer tangent?

Well, he used to be a big drinker in the 1950s. The deal was in those days, single men moved to the city because it gave them the opportunity to live their lives away from the eyes of their parents. So they had all these things that were for single men. Boarding houses, things like that. They used to have them for women too. I think they still have them for guys. It provided a kind of anonymity, so someone like Boyd was able to come from South Dakota in 1949 or whenever he moved to New York and find himself.

One of the things that the magazine does really well and why I think it is elevated above traditional porn is that, for instance, if you read old issues of Drummer or Blueboy or things like that — it’s just a time capsule. But STH really feels like it is performing a function of an underground alternate history of gay sex in America. One of my favorite stories in the new issue is a story that takes place during World War Two and it doesn’t really end happily.

It’s not just stories in America, but if you take it back, all of them put together, from the first one to the one now and the three editors, it really does describe that kind of thing you’re describing. Kinsey probably has more stories, but this takes place over the long history of STH, which is over 40 years. Some of the stories I got, when I first started doing it in the early 80s, from guys who were really old then, were describing experiences in the teens and the twenties. It’s just interesting how the internet comes into it, and different media, and the changes in the way people interact socially.

A vintage party poster.

Yeah. 80% of the stories in this new issue involve hook-up apps. To your point, I think there’s been an evolution of different kinds of things happening with the internet that weren’t there several years ago, or not as much. This hook up app thing has become in a way, it has an underground thing about it, although everyone is being marketed to because there are ads popping up when you use it.

Yeah. You click on the bottom of Scruff accidentally and some weird thing comes up. Sure. 

In the past they used to avoid all that. But now that you can switch off the commercials on television, if you want to go use these apps, they’ll go right for your libido.

We are in this moment where we can all have unlimited access. I can turn on my Scruff and within a few minutes I’m talking to ten different guys in my neighborhood, and I can arrange a week’s worth, or a day’s worth of sexual encounters. In a way that’s different than in the past, but there were places in certain cities where you could accomplish the same thing even before the internet. 

You could do it here where I’m walking in San Francisco back in the seventies, because the opportunities for it were all over the place.

That’s what I’m saying — in a certain milieu, there isn’t much difference between the access and availability to create these stories, but in other ways it’s very, very different. 

The desire is beneath all of it, but the way it plays out has evolved in some way. I do think that the more traditional type of cruising that went on was obviously far more anonymous. There were interactions that could happen then that would be extremely rare now, namely between different classes and things like that. In the Rambles or the World Trade Center, or here where I’m walking around. It could be the Wall Street executive and the delivery boy. That wouldn’t be likely to happen in the same way now with Grindr.

That’s similar to what Samuel Delaney says in Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. His whole theory is that those spaces were liberating because they brought people from different classes together. 

Right. With Grindr and other apps, there’s certainly sorting within body types. Different apps are even targeted to certain body types and fetishes if you will. Do you know about Chasabl? It’s for really heavy guys and chubby chasers. Guys who wouldn’t be even on Growlr. I was thinking they should have one called “Clevr”.

For smart people?

I suppose. At least for people who think they’re smart.

You could have one called Mensr, for Mensa members.

That’s a good idea, too.

How do you find the guys who give you these stories?

Most of them find me, but sometimes there are people who I have met, and tell me they have stories and then I encourage them to just send it to me in an email. But then some of it has been people who have just gone to the STH website and submit because they’re fans. I get a lot of them that way. I’ve also interviewed a lot of people too. I just take myself out and put together their interview as a story.

A lot of the stories don’t revolve around relationships or partners or boyfriends or whatever. Is there a design to keep things more on the anonymous, cruising, one-time only level?

I don’t know about that. Maybe it’s just that the people who are in relationships don’t submit as much, or when they do write about it, they talk about something that happened prior to the relationship. Or they don’t mention that part of it. They want to make it sexy and hot.

How do you find the photography?

There’s a stable of people that I know whose work I really like, and who I think really work with STH. I’ve also contacted people because I like their work. About a third of them are people like that. I just also run into people from other things I’m doing. For instance there’s a picture by Jill Greenberg, that’s a picture of a guy with a huge cock hanging out of his pants, and it’s a reference to a famous Robert Mapplethorpe photo. I ended up seeing that picture because I knew her work more from taking pictures of babies and people’s faces and things.

One of my favorite stories in the new issue is the babysitting story — about a babysitter who ends up hooking up with his young ward’s father. It’s an incredible story but it reads so much like fiction. How do you determine what’s true and what’s fake?

With that story, the person who sent it to me sent me other stuff in the past. I trust him. It’s hard to say what the ultimate truth is, but I always tell people that they should send me something based in an actual story and event that really happened. A couple of things were submitted in the past few months and I thought they didn’t sound all there. I ended up just not using them. In the new issue, there’s at least one or two stories by a guy from prison, and those definitely came on prison monitored stationary and envelopes. There were stamps and everything. Some of them are from people I’ve gotten stories from before because they’re just people who are really good at writing them, and interested in doing it. There’s a guy I ended up meeting who was a fan of STH’s and he showed me his collection of toilet paper with dirty notes on it, that he’d collected from various encounters over several decades. He has stories connected to the collecting of all those dirty notes. Some of the guys I have known since the 80’s who were sending me stories for a long period of time have died. Not all of them, but a few of them.

Do you ever put stories of your own in the magazine?

No. I’ve never done that. I’ve thought about it, but I never have. First of all, I don’t need to, because there’s enough material that I don’t need to do that. If I ever did that it would just be to fill it out if there wasn’t enough.

One of the other things you’ve been very involved with over the past few years was bringing back to the surface the legacy of Bob Mizer.

Yeah. We’ve had three or four shows. First at the Exile Gallery in Berlin, then Invisible Exports in New York, then the LA Moca, a show with Tom of Finland. Then a show at NYU’s 80 Washington Square gallery, which Jonathan Berger, Dennis Bell from the Bob Mizer Foundation, and I put together. But I’ve been doing this STH stuff now for a while, and I don’t have the energy to do both. It’s been an interesting adventure. I always knew there was more to Bob Mizer than his former — or even probably still — significance as a camp beefcake physique photographer. He was that too, but a lot of people who thought they knew the material were surprised. Jack Pierson was walking around the show before it opened, because he teaches there, and they hadn’t put the name on the wall yet, and he asked the attendant whose work it was. And he was a Bob Mizer model. Mizer shot about 2 million individual images, and around 6,000 films. It was an amazing output. He might be the most prolific photographer in history. I don’t know. But it wasn’t all beefcake.

A lot of your work has been connected to these two publications — Physique Pictorial and STH — that shaped a way of looking at the world from a gay sexual perspective during the 20th century. Do you ever stop and think about why it is that you think you’re drawn to that?

That’s a good question. I’m not sure. I guess it was just something I was always a fan of and I was drawn to it. I’ve always been, since I was a kid. These two people – Bob Mizer and Boyd MacDonald, were very influential to me when I was younger. The chance to be involved in anything with them is just fun.

The next issue is the 69th issue. 

Yeah. That’s going to be a good one. Maybe it could just be all content that involves 69-ing. Like that person who wrote that book that left out the letter i or e. It might be too hard to find all that stuff.

Yeah. I wouldn’t want you to do anything that delays another issue from us for four years.

It won’t now because we’ve got a lot of stuff now. I’m trying to get it down to being something that works. The whole way it used to be distributed isn’t around anymore. When I first started we only sold it at gay bookstores, so called “dirty bookstores.” Both of those things are basically gone now. In the past few years, fashion and art bookstores have shown an interest. Boyd would have been surprised at that. It’s odd, but it’s changed. So I’ve been trying to adapt, but the content is basically the same. It’s the same stories and attitudes. I realize you could look at pictures and read things online, but I”m trying to make something that’s very much an object. You can take in your pocket and read it in the woods or the basement. You don’t need electricity or internet. It’s hopefully something someone would want to keep.

Last question, do you have a story from all the issues that’s your favorite?

No. Not really. I’m not even thinking about it in that way. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so I’m always on the lookout for people who would want to write or publish their pictures. I’m not thinking of the ones I’ve already done, I’m looking for the next, for more.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

At 2109 Broadway, on New York’s Upper West Side, stands the Ansonia Hotel, a building which was once the major destination for horny gay New Yorkers, thanks to the famous den of sin that existed in the building’s basement: the legendary Continental Baths. Not only is this where Bette Midler began her cabaret career, this is a place where thousands of men came to get off with each other during the late 60s and early 70s, in addition to watching the midnight show in their towels. But if you walk into the Ansonia today, you’ll find nothing about the expensive facade, the doormen, or the classy black and white tiles that gives even a suggestion of the sexual history of the building. Across the street, however, things are different. Though the 73rd Street building may be swanky, inside lives a man who is far less well known, but whose work produced more orgasms worldwide than those that took place at the Baths ten times over. His name is Bob Alvarez, and he is very willing to take us back in time.

In the mid-1950s, Alvarez moved from Florida to New York in the hopes of becoming a professional dancer. After some twists and turns, he found himself working first in the underground film scene, then on legit documentaries like the Oscar-nominated Woodstock, before winding up one of the chief creative forces at the most beloved gay porn studio of the 1970s, Hand-in-Hand films, which was founded by Alvarez’s partner, the legendary porn director Jack Deveau.

Alvarez took his film training and became the editor of all of his husband’s films, including A Night At The Adonis, Left-Handed, Drive, The Boys of Riverside Drive, Dune Buddies, Rough Trades, and Sex Magic. He also edited films for Peter de Rome and other classic filmmakers who worked at the company. Alvarez and Deveau became known as the masters of narrative gay porn, integrating well-written scenarios (sometimes ordinary, sometimes outlandish) with jaw-droppingly hot sex scenes. Their stable of stars were the legends of their day: Jack Wrangler, Roger, Malo, Big Bill Eld, and more. “Have you seen Boogie Nights? That was us. That was our little family,” Alvarez explains to me over coffee and pastries. While Wakefield Poole and Jerry Douglas both faced financial difficulties after their initially successful films, Deveau and Alvarez’s studio became an industry powerhouse, and a generation of porn filmmakers would crib and steal from the innovation, humor, and rebellious spirit they brought to their work, long after Deveau died of lung cancer in 1982. I sat down with Alvarez this past weekend to talk about the golden age of gay porn, his Hollywood dreams (and very famous star supporter) and the evolution of his relationship with Deveau.

Adam: Bob, you came to New York to be a dancer after high school, right?

Bob: Yes. I started dancing late but nevertheless I wanted to do that as a career. The only place to come was New York, but I wanted to come anyway. I came here, started studying, did a little bit of off-off-off-Broadway and some things like summer theater. Finally, I did a tour one summer with Juliet Prowse. But I really wasn’t into it as much as I thought I was. So I decided to get out of it. I had a partner who encouraged me to get into something else. I got out of that and floundered around for a while. I fell into working with a group of experimental filmmakers, before they were called underground filmmakers. It was the beginning of that whole era and movement.

Who were the filmmakers you worked with? 

Kenneth Anger was one. The guy I worked with mostly was Gregory Markopolous. I was in a couple of his movies.

Wow. I just watched Twice A Man the other day. With Olympia Dukakis.

Oh wow, I love that movie. I wasn’t in that one. I was in one about Prometheus. I can’t say I understood them but I loved them and they were sexy.

The experimental filmmakers helped break down the censorship barriers that cleared the way for porn, and they themselves were a kind of place that you could go and see things that were queer, erotic and proto-porn-ish, right?

Exactly. That’s where I got into looking at Andy Warhol’s films. I became a huge fan. For a while he was showing his movies in a regular theater near 42nd Street. I wouldn’t miss one. I think I saw everything that he came out with. Then a friend of mine who was also a dancer, and who had the same mindset that I did about eroticism — because I mean I loved porn — he decided that he was going to do a porn film. He had fooled around a lot with mixed media presentations, he and his lover. They’d done some things at a gallery.

You’re talking about Wakefield Poole?

Yeah. As you probably know he came out with Boys in the Sand. By this time I was working in film, making a little money.

Legit film?

Yeah. Documentaries. My most famous one is Woodstock. I worked on that. Then I did a lot of documentaries what’s now PBS, it was then Channel 13. I did a series called An American Family, which was very big at that time. I was an assistant on that.

That’s amazing. It’s one of my favorite shows.

Anyway, while I was doing that, Wakefield went out and made Boys in the Sand. My partner at that time was involved industrial design. He had a partner. I got him interested in this type of filmmaking—

Porn?

Not only that, but some of the underground stuff as well. He wasn’t exactly a lover of it, but he appreciated it. I talked him into trying to make a movie. I said, look, Wakefield did it. If he did it, we have similar sensibilities, I’m sure we can do something too. So we did. We went to his then-business partner and formed Hand-in-Hand Films. I was to edit and he was to more or less produce and direct. My partner, of course, was Jack Deveau.

How did you and Jack meet?

At an opera. A performance of Saint of Bleecker Street which was down in Chelsea. He was there, not because he was an opera lover, but because his mother was playing in the orchestra. He cruised me and came up to me and talked to me. He was very charismatic and asked if I wanted to meet him after the performance. I said, sure. We went out and that was the beginning. After that we saw more and more of each other. Finally we became hitched, more or less. He was really something. When I do these interviews now, I think, you know, Jack should be doing these interviews, not me, because he was very charismatic, like I said. He could charm anybody. We set up shop, both together and with Hand-in-Hand Films, although we had been together sometime before Hand-in-Hand was formed. So we made our first movie, and it was Left-Handed.

As I understand it, Left-Handed went in almost immediately after Boys in the Sand left?

Yeah because Boys played for a long time. During that time we shot Left-Handed, and I edited it. It was ready to go when Wakefield moved out. We decided that we would keep control of it, like Wakefield did, and not sell it. We weren’t the first by any means, but we were the ones who were different from anyone else. Wakefield’s movie made an incredible amount of money. Everything Wakefield says is true, about how people were lined up to see it and it became porno chic. He made a lot of money and he made a couple of other films. It inspired us to do ours and we did. We were not as successful as he was by any means, but you know, he was the first.

Wakefield describes his directing process being something like, let’s set up the scene and just observe. What was Jack’s directing style like?

Very similar. We had to come to a realization that it was somewhat like shooting a documentary. You couldn’t direct too much. You could do minimal things to position people and perhaps set up the scene and keep your fingers crossed that they would get along and be attracted to one another and just go for it. A lot of the film took place in the editing room because invariably there were people who didn’t click or had a hard time and got self-conscious about it.

And you had to make it look like they were still super into each other. 

Yeah. One of my favorite things that I remember is, I don’t know if you are familiar with a film we made with a guy named Malo.

Yeah. I’m going to ask you about him later.

After he saw how we edited his scene in A Night At The Adonis, he said, “Thank you for saving my ass.” And I did.

The scene in the bathroom? It’s hard to believe that wasn’t a scene he enjoyed.

It was work. It wasn’t like what people imagine. Now they have things like Viagra, which makes the whole thing a lot easier. We didn’t have anything like that then. Anyway, back to what I was saying about the method of doing it — I guess we created a genre and a way of handling things. Our films are different in that we tried to have a minimal storyline, and we liked to inject things like humor and some absurd storylines. It was nevertheless an attempt to get closer to the crossover line where they could say, “Oh they could make a movie.” Which was what we wanted to do, eventually. We were enjoying what we were doing very much. Have you seen Boogie Nights? That was us. That was our little family.

Did you guys feel like you were just in a business, or was there a sense that you were doing something politically important, that you were doing the world a service by showing gay people having sex?

We were very into it politically, although we weren’t political. We felt that we were definitely moving things in the right direction. I had seen how Hollywood had picked up so many things from the experimental filmmakers that had never been done before.

What was the involvement of the Hollywood star Sal Mineo in Hand-in-Hand Films?

Sal Mineo is someone that we met in Spain one year. We hung out with him while he was making a film, Was it Krakatoa: East of Java? Was he in that? Something like that. We knew the screenwriter, so we hung out a lot together. I was very, not enamored, but I really liked him a lot. Because when I first knew about Sal in Hollywood, I didn’t care about him very much, but as he got older he got more interesting. We met him again in Hollywood after we made our first movie. We looked him up and by this time he was on a downslide. He was living very modestly, like a hippie. He had this nude painting of himself up on the wall. He had kids running in and out, swimming in the pool, doing acid. We got closer and I helped him set up his little homemade editing machine. I think I even cut some things for him. But he was, I guess, impressed by us, because he came to New York not too far after that to do, what was that play?

Fortune in Men’s Eyes.

Yes! He had directed that in LA and was moving to NYC.

Don Johnson said recently that he had to sleep with Sal to get the part in the L.A. production.

Hmm… I wonder about that. Anyway, Sal got us more interested, especially Jack, in getting into this business. He contributed moral support, but he didn’t invest anything. He couldn’t, he was too broke. He even wrote a couple of scripts for us. We didn’t use them but I have them in my closet.

Wow! Someone is credited as “Al Mineo” in one of your films. That wasn’t him was it?

No, it wasn’t. We were sort of giving him a jab. I think it was me who was actually “Al Mineo” in that.

Did you get to sleep with Sal?

Almost. We were in sort of a ménage. We were together a lot, but I never did. It was funny because I was never interested before, but at that point I was very interested. We met him again in Hollywood after we made our first movie.

So let’s talk about your family. This question has obsessed me for years. who was Moose 100, who wrote a lot of your scripts?

Moose 100 was Robert Satcheloff. He was just somebody who came to us after we’d made a few films. I don’t remember if someone introduced us or whether he just called us up and wanted to meet and so on. He dealt with Jack mostly, so I’m not too up on how he got involved. But he did three or four films for us and he was good. He was a real writer. He wanted to do some legit plays and he did end up doing them. He was one of those analytical types who loved the porn industry from an academic point of view. He added something, which was a real sense of the language and some jokes and things.

He wrote so many funny lines. Why did he call himself Moose 100?

Because that was the time when a lot of so-called artists were going around with a spray can, putting their names on things. The names would be like Joe 108—

So it was a spoof of graffiti artists’ tags?

Yeah.

What about Malo? He’s a really interesting character. What was he like?

Crazy. He was sexually wild. He came into New York from, I don’t know where. He was Mexican. I think he must have lived somewhere other than Mexico before he lived here. He spoke perfect English. He was trying to be an actor. He studied at the Actor’s Studio, or some place like that. He got into things with us because he was just so horny. We put him in a couple of movies and much to his surprise it wasn’t as easy as he thought it was — as I mentioned before. Because invariably, whoever he was with — they didn’t click or vice versa, although I can’t imagine anyone not liking him because he was built like a brick shithouse. He was a real showman. He loved when after we finished shooting, to sit around and play and get stoned with Jack, and stay up for hours.

Jack Deveau or Wrangler?

Deveau. Wrangler was professional. He was wonderful in his own way because he was very interested always in how he came across as a character. He was into more than just the sex part. So was Malo, for that matter. But Wrangler was always asking — “Did you get that close-up?” Real professional, old Hollywood kind of attitude.

Star quality. 

Yeah. But he was very nice. One of the nicest people that we worked with. He was a dream to work with because he could get a hard-on anytime. “You want it now? Okay. You want an orgasm now? Okay.” He would do it. He really worked. He didn’t just think, I can just knock this off in no time. He was really involved. So we used him three or four times as well.

What about Roger?

Roger was gorgeous. Magnificent. He was great. He was somewhat bisexual. At least that’s the impression I got. He came to us from a magazine called Blueboy. That was where he was first seen. We saw him and thought, wow. He came to us through his manager. So right away we put him in a film. He was easy to work with. His personality wasn’t dynamite, but who cares. He was a good performer and worked hard. His big thing was to hustle on the side. So when he came to town he lined up clients, so he could make more money.

Which is the norm now for porn stars. The porn is the advertising for the rentboy business.

Right. He eventually got married, I think. I don’t know whether he gave it up. He disappeared.

So then my last one is my favorite, the enigma, Big Bill Eld. What was he like? He was a strange guy, right? Sort of nerdy…

He was okay, except that he had one big flaw, which was, he loved drugs. He would do anything to get his hands on cocaine. Even steal if he had to. I know someone who had a run in with him because of that. Other than that he was okay. He was kind of an enigma. You never knew what was really going on in his head. And he wasn’t the smartest guy in the room. There were rough edges. He needed the right kind of person to direct him, and Jack did. He was one of the success stories. Just to get him was a real coup.

So you guys were all a real family. 

Yeah, as it went along it grew into that.

How did your relationship with Jack progress? Were there struggles or was it always a meeting of the minds, a real partnership?

We had a very basic, good relationship I think. I knew what the pluses were and I knew what the minuses were and I went with it. Jack was not a person to be monogamous. I knew that from the very beginning.

Especially in the business you were in.

Although we didn’t use that to get laid. We did get laid, but it wasn’t the purpose. We got along pretty well, but we had deep set problems. Had he not gotten ill, I think we would have finally had to deal with it somehow.

What were the problems?

The problems were that I felt that we weren’t really close or communicative on a one-on-one level. We were using everything around us to keep the relationship going, but we weren’t working that hard on it. But he had some wonderful qualities and he was as generous as you can imagine. He took many of the actors on a trip to Paris and we stayed in a wonderful hotel there and had a great time and then went to Cannes after that. He could be extremely generous and enjoyed that. The main thing was he was a lot of fun.

You also appeared in the films, in sexual roles, although very briefly. Was it weird to suddenly be in front of the camera?

No. I loved it!

Hand-in-Hand wasn’t just Jack Deveau’s films. You also put out films by Peter de Rome and Tom DeSimone and others. What was it like working with Peter?

Peter was another one who came into our family. We didn’t know anything about Peter when we first met him, but when he told us that he had these little 8mm films that he made just for pleasure, I became fascinated.  Having had the experience working with the underground filmmakers, I knew what the language was. I appreciated the shoestring attitude. I loved the fact that he was so into sexual things. You looked at him and you would never think that this little guy was such a fireball.

Flipping straight guys and all that.

Yeah. So we were introduced to him and the next thing you know, we were watching his movies. I was working at the time on An American Family. For a while I did both. So a lightbulb clicked in my mind and I thought, why don’t we blow these up, because in An American Family we did that with some of Lance’s films he shot when he was in Paris. So we blew that footage up and used it, and Jack went with it. We put it out as The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome. Peter was delighted. But all his films were softcore. So we decided that we would shoot some new material, and he ended up making three new hardcore films. One of them was my very favorite – Underground, which is a sex scene in the subway. I take credit because when Peter told me that idea I said, “Peter you have to do that!” I had had sex in the subway before. Going to work every morning, there was a certain car, and at a certain time if you were in that car, there was a group grope going around one of the bars. Things that were accomplished there were amazing, between stops. I participated in that several times. So I told him he had to do it. We did, and we actually went on the subway and stayed all day and made the movie. I love the whole concept of it, it’s gritty looking and amateurish and jump cuts and all this stuff. I thought it was perfect.

Let’s talk about the films. My favorite is A Night At The Adonis, which is a true masterpiece of porn filmmaking.  It all takes place at The Adonis, which was a big gay porn theater on 8th avenue. How did that come together?

That was one of our mid-way films. We were doing business with the owner of that theater. We had a deal where he would put up the money for the film and after a certain amount of time when the money was earned back we would get profit. We always liked the idea of showing the underground, doing things in unusual places, that really are real. The Adonis was certainly real. It was probably more daring than what we showed. I saw a man walking around completely naked one day. We also wanted to try a new bit of technology, which was the steadicam. By that time we were both into film. So when Jack saw that — he said, “I want to use that.” We decided we would shoot that film, and that it would start with one long steadi shot that would show you the whole theater, from the entrance to the ticket booth to the first floor, up the staircase to the balcony and all that. Then you arrive at the kid who is the head manager, interviewing this new novice. That’s how it starts. That’s all one shot. There was also the idea of the movie within a movie. We had several movies we’d actually made, and so we decided to put them as the movies the guys were watching in the film.

There’s the wonderful moment where they’re watching this movie called Narcisssus, which is Big Bill Eld jerking off looking at a double of his image jerking off. 

That was a new piece we created. That was something Jack liked to do because Jack was an amateur magician. He loved doing parlor tricks and illusions. In In Heat, there’s a scene where three guys are looking at each other from different windows in different buildings and masturbating. But the funny thing about it is they’re all the same person, wearing different disguises. A lot of people probably didn’t realize that. Jack liked doing things like that.

When you’re making something like that — from script to screen how does it work? Does Jack say, “I want to make a movie set at the Adonis,” and sketch out the storyline and give it to Moose 100 to write? Or does Moose 100 say “I have a script and you should use it.”

All of the above. It varied. Moose would come up with ideas, Jack would come up with ideas. It was never filmed off the cuff, because the set-ups gave us our trademark. We always had a storyline, even if they were minimal. But they were narratives and subject to change at any moment. That’s how we worked. There was always some kind of plot. Usually Moose 100 was around whenever we needed to change something. We were hoping that we were getting close to making real movies. Our real goal was—

To go Hollywood. 

If not Hollywood, at least independent films.

Jack Deveau (left) with Alvarez ca. 1975.

Did you have projects that you wanted to make?

Yeah. We had two that we did turn into scripts. Moose did one of them. We called it several things, “Strangers in Paradise”, and then finally we used another title that was really outrageous. People said we couldn’t use it: “Jews at the Beach”.

Ha!

Now of course, people would think that was hysterical. We had those scripts and ones that Sal had written. But things changed. Video came in, that changed everything. The porn industry became more of an industry and the experimental or crossover films were not around anymore.

People wanted hardcore or nothing. 

Yeah. We were a big fan of Pasolini, because we felt he was on the road to doing what we wanted to do.

That was the dream?

Yes. That’s where we wanted to go.

Back to the films. Rough Trades. A fabulous film. It’s just these guys in an apartment – the cab driver, the repairman, the delivery guy, and it has this amazing scene where this guy takes a series of vegetables up his ass. How did Rough Trades come about?

We had made other movies that took a long time or were expensive and we weren’t making a huge amount of money on anything, so we didn’t have the ability to spend what we really wanted to. We decided we would make three films at a time and make them very simple, little comedies. Which Rough Trades is. It was the first one we did – they were all shot one after the other. Jack loved these old shorts that Hollywood came out with every so often called Pete Smith Specials, narrated by a nerdy character which showed him having all sorts of absurd things happening to him. Slapstick. The dialogue was very minimal but funny. That’s what Rough Trades was. Like in the beginning, the guy gets in the cab and the cabbie says, “I’ll take you home.” And he replies, “Okay, but I GOTTA get up tomorrow…” That kind of short exchange. That’s what Rough Trades is — one thing after the other. “Of course my phone is broken and you have to come in and fix it, telephone repairman.” “It won’t take me a minute.” “Alright.” And it immediately starts into sex.

Drive is an anomaly in porn cinema. It’s got a script by Christopher Rage, who also played a drag queen villainess. It’s a James Bond spoof story. Were you guys worried that it would be so out there that porn fans wouldn’t get it? Now it’s a bit of a cult classic.

I hope so because it’s one of my favorites. It’s so insane. We had this kind of rebellious attitude about things. “Let’s give them something really out there and see what happens.” Nobody had done that. We were crazy. We willing to take a chance like that.

Another chance you took was in Strickly Forbidden, which is another incredible film. You shot in the Rodin Museum. 

Yes. We shot in France. Jack wanted to deal with a couple of guys in the business who were making porn films. They were supposedly backing us and giving us all the money. We loved Paris. One of the things we noticed is the art everywhere. There are umpteen museums, and we saw these postcards where the statues are half-people and half-statues. We thought that would be a great visual idea for a gay film. What better place to do it than Paris. We decided we would do that. Moose was on that too. So we went and shot this film. I edited a rough cut of it, and we ran into problems with the money people. So after we got our rough cut together, we had the reels in our possession, and we were having screenings in this posh hotel we were staying in. We used one of the conference rooms to screen dailies of this porno film. The people that had the money had possession of the negatives. All we had was the workprint. We were kind of stuck because they didn’t want to give us the negative. They just wanted us out. We were kind of stuck because we already spent a lot of money ourselves. We had nothing except the workprint. We had a little James Bond episode. We put the film in the basement of the hotel. There were thugs standing outside of our window waiting to go outside. We had to make sure we were let out a different way. That’s the nice thing in Paris, you pay the money but they take good care of you. So we left the film in the basement of the hotel. We escaped the thugs and came back to New York. They, in turn, did a version of the film themselves. They used some of our crew to put the film back together their way. So we’re here in New York, years pass. We came to find out that the prints were still in the hotel, so we sent one of our partners to Paris to go and retrieve it. We brought it back, and if you notice, Strickly Forbidden has black and white footage and color. It should have all been color, but those were bits in the original workprint that weren’t in color. So I tried to do my best to edit it like The Wizard of Oz, where she goes through the doors and it becomes color. That kind of idea. Some scenes are black and white and some are in color. Thank god we had a workprint on those. We made a copy of the work print, and released whatever we could. I don’t like it, I think it’s a shame that it never was printed properly.

I think it still has a cult following. It’s certainly one of the most interesting films of the time.

Yes, the effect is still there. The statues come to life which was all done with lighting.

So right at the key moment when porn is transferring to video and things are changing, at the beginning of the eighties, Jack gets sick with lung cancer. How quickly did that progress?

Six months. By the end of 1982 he was gone.

What did you do next? Did you try to keep the business going or was that it?

No I tried to keep it going. We had another partner who had been working with us for a long time. Jack’s other partner. I was a partner but I was relegated to the editing room. We had some unfinished films. We made two short-films movies, one was called Private Collection and the other was In Heat. I directed one of them. That was my first and only attempt at directing.

Did you enjoy it?

Yes. I always wanted to but I didn’t want to have a conflict between Jack and me because he was very sure of himself and wanted things done his way. So we had some episodes we’d already shot, I think maybe Peter de Rome had one in there. There was one about a marathon, I think that was also Peter’s. And the one about the three guys jerking off all together who were all the same guy.

What do you do next?

I started looking around, because I wanted to get out of the porn business after Jack died. I just didn’t have the heart or the assurance that I could pull it off on my own. I decided I should go into something else. I started investigating other jobs. By this time computer editing had come into the world. I took a few courses but I couldn’t get with it. I didn’t have anybody pushing or encouraging me. I just thought, “God there are guys coming out of college now that can already do this, what am I gonna do?” Someone said, why do you want to be in this business, you’re always at everybody’s beck and call. I said, he’s right. I decided to get into becoming a personal trainer. I quit smoking and drugging, and was living a healthy life. I started to go to the gym. I liked it and got results. I thought the best way for me to work and continue to work out is to become a personal trainer. So that’s what I did.

I can see that you’re extremely fit, by the way. You have a nice musculature.

Well nothing like I was. I’ve been doing that for 25 years and I’m still working.

What is your favorite of the films you and Jack did together?

I keep getting differen signals when you say something like that. Part of me wants to say Left-Handed because it’s the first one. Every time I see it I’m always amazed how inventive it is. I’m very fond of it. I’m very fond of Drive. I like a lot of the smaller films like Rough Trades and Dune Buddies. That’s a real comedy. Jack would probably say Left-Handed if he was alive. It was the first and it worked. I’m very fond of a lot of them.

Do you watch porn today?

Not very often. I don’t have the time. Once in a while I’ll get in the mood and want to see something. I have to admit, some of them are very sexy. But the formula is tiresome.

What advice would you give people today about how to be a good porn editor?

I would say go with whatever turns you on. Don’t be afraid to be original, you know? That’s what was fun for me, when I could throw in something that I knew had never been seen before. Mostly, though, I like being turned on by it.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

After a dispute with his evil landlord resulted in him becoming homeless, America’s favorite bearded art-loving porn star Colby Keller decided to fulfill his dream of traveling around the country in a van, seeing America, fucking hot boys, and making videos out of it. “Colby Does America” or “the project” as he refers to it, raised nearly $50,000 dollars from a crowdfunding campaign, thanks to fans enticed by personal rewards and the chance to fund a kind of porn project very different from what the mainstream studios put out.

But the project’s also given fuel to Keller’s haters, who love to attack his “pretentious art-world aspirations” are. One need only look at the comments section from last week’s posting about the “Colby Does New York” video release, which was made as a fashion collection video for the Brooklyn designer BCALLA, to understand how divisive a figure he is to porn fans. But whether they like it or not, Keller’s probably the single most well-known porn star in the industry, with name recognition far beyond the porn world, and a career that spans 10 years. The two of us happened to be in the same city at the same time — Los Angeles — and so I met up with him yesterday to discuss his curious place in the industry, the haters who may or may not have shut down his Instagram account three times, and what it’s been like to fuck psychopaths and virgins as he traverses the U.S. of A.

Adam: So how was your Oscar night? What did you do?

Colby: We were in Palm Springs then we drove back and had dinner in in Thai Town. Then we came back and watched a documentary about Ayahuasca.

Have you ever done Ayahuasca?

No. I’m hoping to soon, though. I’m trying to prepare myself for it.

You know you end up pooping in a bucket and vomiting for hours before the trip starts, right?

That’s what I’ve heard. [laughs]

There’s a really great episode of Howard Stern where Robin describes doing it in Peru and Howard is just berating her. It’s so funny. I guess it all depends on the guide and the circumstances that you experience it in. I wouldn’t want to be in a room with 50 guys who were all pooping and vomiting. That would be a hell for me. But I guess there must be some way in which it doesn’t become a hell. 

Well I don’t think it’s a big group so hopefully that will help the situation.

Light pooping and puking. Nice. So you wanted to talk first about censorship stuff, right?

Yeah. That was the other thing that happened to me yesterday. While I was in Palm Springs, my Instagram account got suspended, for the second time. So I opened a new account and it was fine. There was nothing on it that could have been remotely seen as questionable and it sent me a notification wanting me to verify the account with my phone number. I verified and went to look at it an hour later and they deleted the account. The third time they removed it! It’s interesting because Facebook deleted my account last week, and it really does feel targeted. I don’t know if it’s Instagram, specifically the moderators there, or maybe people who are maliciously trying to shut down my account by complaining. Every once in a while I might post a picture that they’ll take off, typically it’s been pictures of me in a scene with a black man. They’ll take the black man off.

Wow, seriously?

I posted this picture of a guy I did a scene with. He’s covering up his penis, it’s not an erotic photo at all. He has a balaclava on, and he’s just laying on a bed. I did two scenes, one with a white guy and one with a black guy. The picture with the white guy wasn’t taken down. Black guy was immediately taken down. So I don’t know, like, who it is, what it is, what’s behind it. Instagram is horrible because they send you this message, saying “You violated our terms, this account is suspended.” And there’s no details. Am I really suspended or is the account deleted? They don’t tell you and there’s absolutely no way to contact them and no accountability. It’s really frustrating because for me that’s really the only way — I mean there’s Twitter — but when I’m on the road, there’s really no other way to effectively communicate with people what’s going on with the project, other than Instagram. I don’t even know what it would have been that would have caused them to suspend the account.

It just sounds like there’s probably some uptight queen who’s repressed or has some deep self-hating hangups about sex and gay sex and probably is a fan of yours in some weird way, and they’re the censor over Instagram, or they’re the people reporting you. 

I read an article in The Advocate, about a photographer who’s dealing with the same thing on Facebook. You know they’re the same company, Facebook and Instagram. He was saying that he had pictures — one of Alex Minsky, the Iraq War vet who’s missing a leg, who became a model. He had a picture of that guy that he took. It’s a beautiful photo, not erotic, but he’s naked and you can see his butt. They took that down immediately. But then ESPN has the same type of photos on their page, but because they pay money to Facebook, their photos were not removed. He actually had people complain to Facebook about the ESPN photos and they got messages back saying they would not remove those photos. Essentially saying, hey they’re paying us money so fuck you. So I don’t know if it’s uptight people complaining or the moderators being hyperactive. Part of me wants to be a little suspicious, but I don’t know for certain that it’s haters. I don’t want to blame people I can’t see. It might be haters. It might not be. I definitely do have people like that, though. You’ll see them pop up writing comments. I don’t understand it because it’s like, if you don’t like what I’m doing or me, why are you following my account?

Well the comments when we posted the BCALLA video last week were insane. “He thinks he’s an artist.” “He’s so pretentious.” “This is the unsexiest porn ever!” And it’s like, A. you don’t get it, and B. why are you so intent on porn stars just fitting into this exact box that you have created, or that has always existed. Like whether or not you’re pretentious or not, why is bad that you’re trying to do stuff that’s arty or different? Even if they don’t like it so what?

Right. Exactly. I think it threatens people because porn stars, we’re really not supposed to be people. We’re these objects that you use to jack off to. It’s threatening to people to insinuate anything other than that. Honestly that’s what part of Colby Does America is about. But there’s payback for that. I think it’s irresponsible of Instagram to play to the lowest common denominator for that. The people who are complaining. But I get a lot of that. It’s really hard too because part of the video with BCALLA, was about that I really loved his work, we came up with the project together, and it’s supposed to be fun, and it’s not porn!

A still, with muppet apron by BCALLA, from Colby Does New York.

It’s a fashion ad! It’s not supposed to be an art film, it’s first and foremost a commercial in a way, but artfully done and silly and sixties and cheeky and bawdy. It’s great!

A lot of people are intimidated by things they don’t know. But honestly, I try really hard not to be pretentious. I really want to include all different types of people. Different voices. Different ways of working. Different styles. I’m really interested in engaging people on whatever level I can. But people get really upset by things that they don’t understand and it makes them feel stupid and they get angry because of that. And there are also people who wish they could do things and aren’t able to and resent people who can. Which is really sad to me, because this project is open to anyone. You don’t have to be that bitter person, you can engage me in a creative way if you choose to. But it’s a lot easier to be negative and mean and try to destroy people.

Everybody on my Facebook feed was gagging over it. There’s so many people who watched it and thought it was brilliant and hot and great and funny and unlike anything before, although it connects a lot to what Homopunk in Europe was about in the early 2000s, and stuff that existed in the 70s — porn with an artistic or weird bent. Look at something like Cafe Flesh, which is a totally insane Fantasia fever dream porn that I don’t think could be arousing in any circumstances, but it’s an amazing piece of work. People have a short memory.

They do. Porn is a big business. I think it’s kind of bland and formulaic for a reason and it doesn’t have to be that. There’s no reason I have to make that. I’m not a company, I’m not there to make money. I wanna have fun with the medium and the job that I’ve participated in for the last ten years of my life. It’s supposed to be fun and playful and creative and weird, if I can make it weird. But there are a lot of professional haters. People who have nothing better to do than be bitter and hate other human beings and try to destroy people. If they complain loudly enough they get what they want.

You mentioned you’ve been in the industry for ten years, and you mentioned professional haters. My perception of you is that you are now the biggest gay porn star in the industry. You’ve been in the industry as a major star for longer than anyone else. You also have the most name recognition, and while there are other people who everyone’s crazy about right now, those people are not going to be in the industry in a year or two. You probably will be.

Or not. [laughs]

Or not. But do you have a concept of yourself as that big of a porn star?

Doing Colby Does America and traveling around the country and realizing how many people recognize my picture, and how most people think I’m fake when they encounter me online, that maybe brought it into focus a little bit. But I really haven’t thought of myself that way. I still think of myself as, and maybe this is me being kind of not realistic, but I still don’t think of myself as being conventional in a lot of ways. I’m not a conventional porn star. I think maybe that’s the reason I’ve been able to stay in the business as long as I have been. I think there’s a lot of people out there who feel that way and identify with me. I think that’s why I’ve been able to have a career as long as I have. That and that a lot of people tell me it looks like I’m actually enjoying sex. And I do. I actually enjoy sex, and they find a lot of appeal in that. But it’s a really difficult business. It’s gone through a lot of changes. I’m really old by porn standards.

But you look better than ever. Your body is really sick now.

But I think there are a lot of people in porn who are threatened by me. I get paid less than when I started in this business. I might be the most recognizable figure, but I get paid a lot less than I did ten years ago. A lot less. Big huge companies, some of the biggest, try to lowball me on my rate. So if I have the greatest name recognition, I don’t think it translates into the things that people think it would for myself. I don’t make a lot of money. I’m very poor actually, compared to most other performers. Most other performers escort. I don’t, so I don’t make a lot of money. I encounter people sometimes who think I’m some rich millionaire. They don’t understand what this business is. There aren’t the kind of rewards that a lot of people might associate with it, personally for me. Really the reward is trying to rethink what sex is and what my job is in terms of an art practice, and that’s why I keep doing it. That’s why it’s really hurtful to me when haters come after me for trying to do something different. This is my life and I’ll do what I fuckin want to do. I try to be really positive and think about it in every kind of ethical way, and work out some of the artistic problems that are there. It’s a very difficult process. I don’t know. It’s a really weird business to be in, particularly for as long as I’ve been in it. You say, I’ll probably be here next year, but I don’t know. I’m really here because two companies in particular have been kind enough to continue to give me work. That’s how I see it. It’s hard to find where my job is empowering, because I don’t think that it actually is. In some ways, the more name recognition that I get, the more people are familiar with me, I think a lot of the more conventional gay men who don’t like what I represent emerge.

I think that’s really at the core of where the hate comes from. 

Yeah. They’re uncomfortable with me. I think they understand what it is that I represent and that makes them really uncomfortable. They can’t help but see it as an indictment against them, which it’s not really meant to be.

I think it would be a generalization to say, oh it’s WeHo or Chelsea queens, or this or that type of person, a physical type. But it’s comparable in the way that people and blogs love to get clicks by saying “Ugh hipsters!” This is hipster this or that. It’s like, you don’t even know what a hipster is! Am I a hipster because I live in Brooklyn and I try to read books and listen to new music and go see and engage with things in the cultural sphere, because I’m a filmmaker? I don’t know. Maybe I am a hipster. I just think I’m an artist. I think what they’re describing is a kind of vapid person who is only addicted to whatever they think is new and unknown or whatever Pitchfork tells them to listen to, and is only interested in trying to prove that they’re cooler than everybody else. There’s a fine line between trying to prove how cool you are and actually liking all these bands or movies or books.

Right. There’s a long history of anti-intellectualism in the United States. Part of that really dovetails with capitalism here. It’s much easier to control and exploit people who are not invested or as intellectually engaged with the world. Things that attempt to make people think about something more threatens that hegemony, that power structure. I think that’s embedded in every kind of business. You don’t want people to be smart, because then you might figure out that you’re taking advantage of them. You need people to be stupid and we’re all kind of raised in this anti-intellectual environment. Any attempt to engage people creatively, there’s a lot of resistance there that you have to work against. Particularly being in the public sphere. A lot of artists only work within the art world. And not that there isn’t a lot of tension there, but you’re kind of all speaking the same language and people respect that process. I’m in a position where I don’t think anyone in the art world necessarily respects what I do, and a lot of regular people don’t either. There are a lot of people in both of those worlds who are uncomfortable with what I’m doing.

A still from Colby Does Maryland.

Right. If you had a gallery show, you would not get Jerry Saltz or Roberta Smith showing up to write a serious review. You might get some of the gay establishment figures. But probably not even Klaus Bisenbach. 

And I’m not saying I deserve that, and I wouldn’t propose that I do, but I do sense that there is  a lot of animosity from both of those worlds. Although less from the art world. But as much as there might be haters out there who want to destroy me, I have a ton of really supportive, amazing, incredible human beings who are helping me. I really have to rely on people all over the country and the world to help. People donated their time and money and energy and helped me build the website and edit videos, and are participating in videos and helping me manage my email accounts. Everything that I do, there are ten people behind me helping me. That’s the really sad thing about this Instagram thing, like, there’s a couple of haters, but for all the haters there’s a lot of really excited people who are engaged by this project and are helping me out. I also want to give them credit and my main way of sharing that — like with the artist who’s photos I shared that got me banned — is through Instagram. That was the main reason I had it.

What’s the status of the Colby Does America project now?

The status of the project now is that I’ve done a little less than 30 states. I’m starting to run out of the money I raised through IndieGoGo. When I released the New York video I got more donations in. I’ll probably be able to get five or ten more states if I can stretch it. It’s difficult. I still don’t have my own vehicle. I have a friend who’s let me borrow his car for months. That’s helped me immensely. Right now I’m staying in LA for a bit. A lot of the videos are in the editing process. I have to rely on a lot of volunteers. People volunteered their editing skills. I’ve sent the footage to a person in the UK and she sends it to the editors. So it really depends when I get stuff released. I don’t have a sense of when that will be. I think several will be released soon. But there’s no deadline. I want people to have the freedom to spend as much or as little time with the footage as they want. I assume that some of them will be very traditional looking pornos. I’m on the road traveling, I don’t always have enough time to find an artist to collaborate with, so sometimes it’s just a person who’s willing to be on camera and sign a release form. I go to their house and we set up cameras and that’s the footage. So a lot of the creativity will actually come from the editors themselves. I don’t know what any of them will look like until I have the footage myself. It’s hard to say if I’ll be able to get all 50 states and Canada. Part of the idea of the project is that it was impossible, or well, it was possible, but it was also with the idea that it might not happen. I really want it to and if I can raise enough money to make it happen I definitely will. But at this point it’s still not clear.

This project is sort of like your version of Robert Frank, right?

The Americans! Yeah! In some ways I think that’s a good analogy.

What are some of the recent experiences you’ve had doing the project?

I just did a project with a friend of mine who’s car I’m borrowing, in Palm Springs. We filmed videos before. He did a little porn, we actually had worked together years ago. He’s a very close friend of mine. We were both suffering through some pretty awful breakups, two guys abandoned us both, and refused to talk to us and bring resolution to the relationships. So he has a farm in Tennessee, and I went there to finish two different projects that I was working on, including the one where I gave away all my belongings. I went back there during the first road trip I did, and we filmed some videos where we we didn’t have sex but got naked and talked about the relationships. Part of my objective with it was to be comfortable enough to cry in front of each other. We did that, we did a couple of other exercises like that. That was the footage we shot for Tennessee, then when I came here we did a few other videos in Palm Springs. One of which, we went for this long hike, then I got naked at the top of the mountain, and he laid these boulders all over my body, until it was starting to crush me, then took them off, one by one and broke them near my head.

Wow. 

It was a trust exercise. Then the next night, we gathered these really beautiful cactuses with pink needles, cut a couple of those off, and I tattooed his butt with this word from a poem, which we had been reading but nobody knew the meaning of and we had to look it up. He didn’t know what I was going to put on his body and I think it ended up being a really excruciating experience for him. Then after that we had sex. I already have a California video from a few months ago, so I’m going to maybe have this edited as the second California video or add it to the Tennessee narrative. Even though it takes place here. That was my most recent experience.

What about the psycho in the midwest you told me about?

That was really interesting. I talked to this kid and asked him if he wanted to do a video, and he said he might, and then he came over and didn’t want to do it. He was a really beautiful guy and the sex was really hot. We fucked three times. In between those sessions, we had this conversation where he revealed to me that he was a psychopath — those were his words, and the way he described his behavior, really does fit the classical definition of the psychopath. It was fascinating and some of the most intense sex I’ve — at least on this leg of the trip. He was beautiful, and he eventually let me take photos of him, but then methodically went through the thousands of photos and deleted any picture that had his face in it, which was a real shame because he was an incredibly handsome man.

Naked in a rainstorm.

Yeah. That’s the way he described himself. He plots out everything that he does. Every facial gesture. Where he looks, how he moves his lips, intentionally. He’s very masculine — at one point he was drinking a beer and poured it all over me and then started fucking me and it was really hot. But he tells me all these things he intentionally plots out. He intentionally lowers the register of his voice so that he can intimidate people. He has all these friends at school who he goes and has drinks with once a week so that he’s part of their group — but he actually hates their guts. It was this profound conversation. Honestly, talking about those haters, the people who are bitchy and manipulative, in some ways he was describing that behavior and being very honest about how he uses it to his advantage. I realized coming away from that experience that it was not just one of the most intense sexual experiences, but one of the most intense intellectual experiences for me on that trip. If I was going to do a video for Ohio, I had to address what happened in that room. I made a video after he left, of the room we fucked in. It seemed to me that he was revealing so much about behavioral pattern that I think is common to a lot of gay men. Unlike most gay men he was being very open and honest to what that behavior entails and how destructive it is and really owning it. I had gone through this relationship where this person was that. I think there was some mental illness problems and a lot of that involves manipulative, destructive behavior and it almost felt like I was talking to an honest version of that partner who was finally revealing the truth to me, and coming to terms with who he is. Even though it wasn’t the same person it very much felt like that. It felt like a groundbreaking moment but also one that wasn’t recoverable or easily conveyable to other people. That was a really intense moment on this trip.

You also took someone’s virginity, right?

Yes. In Louisiana I ended up meeting this really adorable kid who volunteered to lose his virginity to me. Which is also a difficult process because it was a long time ago that I lost my virginity and it’s never what you think it’s going to be. It’s usually — I wouldn’t say a bad experience — but a disappointing one.

Porn is the same way the first time around.

Oh anytime you film porn! And to lose your virginity while you film porn is an especially difficult task, and like you said I’m pretty recognizable and while there are a lot of wonderful human beings supporting me in this project, there are some people who are really mean and nasty and they’re going to say things about this kid when the video is released. I was trying to brace him for that and to make it an enjoyable experience at the same time, which was intense and I don’t think it was enjoyable for him. It really in some ways wasn’t enjoyable for me, because I knew that he wasn’t having a good time. But I knew all those things would happen before we actually started the video and so it was really tricky. Then I felt like, in some ways this is really great, to really show what sex is, you know what I mean? There’s these expectations and oftentimes those expectations aren’t met, and you’re attempting something else and our expectations are never really met. There’s really probably no moment in our sexual history that’s more explicitly that then when we lose our virginity. It was really beautiful to me to in the moment. He had a really hard time — he basically could not get an erection if I was touching him or anywhere near him, which was hard for me because I don’t want to rape this poor kid who just turned 18 years old. I kept trying to tell him, you don’t have to do this, we can stop. He was very persistent. But it was challenging for both of us in that moment. At one point I basically told him, basically “I think you’ve done a really good job, my dick was inside you, we don’t need to do any more. You can just relax and we don’t need to think about even cumming. Let’s just have this experience be what it is, and turn off the cameras and relax a little bit.” Then I realized that was probably a horrible thing to say because he became really insecure about not being able to get me off. At the time I was like, in some ways it was exactly what I expected but not what he expected.

I think so much of what you’re describing is the gay male sexual experience distilled in so many ways. Two people with differing expectations of what the experience will be like — oftentimes informed by porn — and when it goes well they are both surprised and enjoy whatever the other person puts into it, but when it doesn’t go well it’s this painful thing of cognitive dissonance on both sides. 

Right. It’s difficult to be honest in that moment. To say, “Hey you know this maybe isn’t what we both expected so it’s okay to stop it now.”

It seems like you’re being very conscious about what this project is. I don’t get the sense that — and this is a hater comment — that you’re delusional, that you think you’re going to be an artist but you’re just a porn star plain and simple. But nothing about what you’re describing about it sounds delusional or your expectations are wrong. You’re engaging with this in the same way any artist would. Whether or not the end results appeal to people remains to be seen. But they’re not supposed to.

Yeah. And I mean, the thing is, if people don’t think I’m an artist, don’t call me one. You know what I mean? (laughs) You don’t have to think of what I do as art if you don’t think that it is. But it’s important for me to structure what I’m doing as an artistic practice. Like the thing about this video with the virgin, is that I really wanted him to understand that the video won’t resemble a porno in any way. I don’t know if you could watch it and jack off. But I think it was a profound experience for both of us. I think an audience, if they looked at it with that understanding could gain some kind of insight, I hope.  That was my hope in doing it — to reveal what that moment is really like for people. As you said, the cognitive dissonance that happens between people when they have sex and their expectations aren’t quite met. That’s not something that I think traditional porn really affords you the ability to convey. But that’s oftentimes what sex is. I’m really more interested in what the reality of sex is, which is hard to cover. Anytime you turn on the camera, people are going to behave differently than they might otherwise. That’s the classical problem with documentary film.

Which is what things like direct cinema and people like Werner Herzog tried to acknowledge and address, that cinema verité was not what it claimed to be.

I remember several months ago with this particular partner that I was with. He was really excited about doing this project that purported to be something other than porn, that claimed to be capturing real-life sex. I had a problem with that. It was for a website I don’t want to name. We did it together, and because I was in love with him, I really wanted to support him and support this project. He wanted to do this project after he had broken up with me, and I was still in love with him. It felt like this horrible betrayal. I wanted to say to him, this really hurts me because you know I can’t say no to you and this is a site that you’re saying is not porn because somehow what I do in porn is bad and wrong and yet you’re wanting to exploit my love for you in order to make money off a sex video that we would make together. It’s essentially what he did. They were very insistent that it be real sex on film, but I was like, it might be real sex, but it is closer to what happens in porn than what really happens when a camera isn’t present. When I said that he would get so angry at me. But you have to consider the camera. The behaviors when a camera is on is different. It’s a type of reality that involves a camera.

Do you give any thought to how you’re going to survive after this project is done? What do you want to do afterwards?

My main objective has always been to be able to give myself enough money and time to be able to continue to practice art in some capacity. Whatever that might be, and what I realized is that the only way I was going to successfully be able to do that was to incorporate what I do professionally. To fold it into my practice and address it head on. Can I be an artist who’s a porn star and not address sex and porn? I don’t know if that would be honest, really. So this project is a part of that. I would like to continue making work that kind of speaks to the present moment that I have to experience as a person. So it’s hard to say. I don’t know. I’ve never been one to really plan my future out, because when I have done that, things have never happened the way that I thought they would. I really want to be open to whatever kind of experiences come my way. I found that it’s not productive for me to think in terms of a future but to think instead about how I can best understand the present. I don’t know how long this project will take. It could end tomorrow, or it could last for a couple of years. Hopefully I can still make money somehow. I’d like to continue to make money in this business if I can. Porn has been good to me in that respect. It doesn’t give me a lot of money, but it has given me a lot of free time to think about my art and that’s something I really appreciate. Finding another job like that, if I have to, might be a little challenging. There’s no easy answer there. The other thing is I’ve been a porn star for 10 years, and a pretty recognizable one, so what would I be able to do, you know what I mean? To make money. That’s not exactly clear.

One last question, I remember the picture of you from Scum Bag Fag Mag, where you have no beard and short hair. Remember that? And I thought you were so hot, and I mean, you’re really hot now and your body’s really great, but will you ever go back to non-beardy-ness?

I mean, every time I shoot with CockyBoys, they pretty much ask me to shave my beard off.

You look so cute without a beard!

It’s funny you say that because I did this video today which I wasn’t expecting to do, with this kid, who has this beautiful, giant, gorgeous dick, and I was sucking him off in his car, and videoing it and I looked at the video and was like, “Oh man, I need to shave,” because it does not look hot. It was just like this bird’s nest swallowing his dick. I think it would behoove me to trim up a little bit and shave every once in a while.

That’s just the Jewish mother in me. 

Ha. It’s funny I think there are camps. There are people who definitely don’t want me to shave, and then there are people who hate the beard and want me to shave. I try to give both when I can. I have very sensitive skin and sometimes when I shave I break out really bad. That’s really the reason why I have a beard. Also because it’s fun to play with. It doesn’t always look the best on me. I will admit that. [laughs]

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The first time I walk into Logan Stevens’ loft in downtown LA, a giant fake butthole farts noxious smoke on me. I’m here for Stevens’ new underground party EWW, a bash devoted to gross, tacky, and downright disgusting things. Guests arrive in revolting costumes like a dress made out of bloody tampons, or affix bejeweled tramp stamps and temporary tattoos to various parts of their body if they came unprepared. On the dance floor, people shake their hips, while others deep throat juicy twink cocks.

Anything goes here at EWW. It’s part radical faerie gathering, part Jackie 60, part Star Wars Cantina. Stevens swans about the room in a one-piece bikini, making sure his guests are having a good time, and alerting the performers — including Hercules and Love Affair vocalist Richard Kennedy — that they’re due on any moment. I leave around 4 AM, half stoned, tired from dancing, with the lingering taste of bodily fluids in my mouth.

A few days later I’ve recovered, and am back at the scene of the crime to talk with Stevens about his path from late 2000s Lucas Entertainment porn star to bareback star to fashion designer to some of the biggest names in the music industry (Miley Cyrus wore pieces from Stevens’ Slamenskraam line on her last tour) and now, party promoter. Stevens has recently been filming for small online studios like Bareback That Hole, and in the last two weeks started escorting again after a long hiatus. I sat down with him to talk about why he’s still doing porn, despite his successes, his evolving views on bareback porn, and what it’s really like working for Treasure Island Media.

Adam: I had a great time at EWW.

Logan: Thanks! There’s three of us, we formed this little collective that does these warehouse parties and we get DJs and performers. We have a rule that there be no lip-synching, because you can see that at any bar. We want singers or a performance artist because we want people to stay energized and get dancing. The parties are pretty costume mandatory. It’s an icebreaker and I think people are much friendlier when their in costume and there’s not a photographer around.

When I used to see you out in New York, Logan, the first thing I noticed was your amazing, intense body odor — 

Which I’ve really had to keep in check lately.

Logan in Raging Stallion’s Hung Americans Part 1 (2013)

Before I ever got interested in fashion, and I use that term kind of loosely, I always liked looking good or trying to look nice in some way. I definitely had way more conservative vision of that before, but I always enjoyed dressing up for some reason. I’m not exactly sure where that came from. I’m definitely an exhibitionist of sorts. That’s definitely another form of exhibitionism in a way. I also like being memorable because it makes life a little bit easier sometimes.

Either wearing the same look always, which can be memorable or you wear something new, so people say “Every time I see him he’s gonna be in something else.” 

It makes getting dressed fun. For a stupid thing that you have to do every day, because we can’t walk around naked. We have to get dressed up in something. I’d rather it be fun than a boring menial thing that you do every day. Before I moved to New York I was always reading The Sartorialist and imagining myself walking through the streets of Europe and looking so good that somebody wanted to take a picture of me. Then I moved to New York and I immediately met all these crazy kids who were making their own clothes. There are options when you can liberate yourself from the things that men are supposed to wear that you can buy in a store. I guess you can buy something really crazy but it’s gonna cost your soul in addition to all the limbs you can sell and still get around. I started learning to sew and making some messy stuff and not being afraid to wear it all over the place and it was so much fun. I kept getting better and better at what I was doing and now it’s turned into a full-time job for me.

How would you describe your label?

We call it pop-fashion.

It’s very LA.

Yeah? You think so.

Not in a bad way. But it’s bright, colorful, daytime club wear. 

Yeah. Bright swimwear. The colorful thing happened when I moved to LA and the sunshine and proximity to beaches certainly inspires a lot more color. I felt a lot sunnier too.  Then I met all of these people who were really pushing anime on me and so everything got really cartoony very quickly. It felt really natural. I kind of ran with that for a while.

Where did the name Slamenskraam come from?

We spell it like Ikea furniture. That came from my friend, who DJs out here. He wanted to come up with an alter-ego and call himself DJ Slam N Scram, like fuck n run. We started off doing speedos in crazy colors and stuff like that. And it just fit so we used that. Then we decided that we needed to spell it strangely so we spelled it like ikea furniture. The name might have to be retired because it’s not very searchable, and it’s so difficult to spell. It’s certainly the only thing that pops up when you Google it. But at the same time it’s a little obscure so we’ve been talking about re-branding —

FKA Slamenskraam. That would make it easier, right?

[laughs] Yes.

Miley Cyrus bought some of them for her last tour right? Was that the biggest thing that’s happened to you?

Yes. I also freelance doing costume and clothing and tailoring work for a lot of big names in the music industry otherwise. It seems to be everybody that Azaelia Banks gets into fights with on Twitter. Most of my clients are hip-hop artists and stuff. Then I’ll do custom things for TV promotion, advertising, commercials, things come up. Lots of different projects on that end.

Last week at your party you were wearing a woman’s bikini. People were waiting for you to get naked but you were just in a bikini. 

Yeah that was some shit I bought, I call them hooker fashion. People were like how come you didn’t dress up, I was like I’m so busy with everyone else.

When you throw a party it’s impossible to enjoy it. 

Yeah.

The gender stuff, the drag stuff, does that relate to your place in faerie culture?

I think it more has to do with that pre-existing thing of mine explains why I gravitate towards the faeries. I certainly still go to the mountain and everything but the faeries have now occupied a different space in my life than they did before. Before I was really heavily entrenched in it, and now it’s a smaller part of a much bigger constellation of different things. As I’m barreling into my thirties —

You’re not yet thirty? Shit, I always thought you were older than me. 

Really?

You just seem very mature in a way. I always think you have a very resolute, I know what I’m about attitude, and I’m the opposite, I’m a neurotic child.

Well see, that’s how I feel all the time. A neurotic child. Recently I’ve started feeling more like an adult but I still have all this anxiety that I’m not adult enough.

Logan in a new scene for Bareback That Hole with Donnie Dean.

Same thing with me. 

I think it happens to people around this age. Saturn’s return.

Right. Ha. Okay so let’s talk porn. Take me to the beginning of your career. Why did you start doing porn?

It felt very punk to me to do it at the beginning. I felt really badass and it was a decision that I couldn’t see any direct harm coming from it, unless I myself made the decision to cause the harm and stuff. That’s the sort of thing that happens in our lives all the time anyhow. So what difference would it make? That was the thing that lessened my fears about the idea of being stigmatized. I came from a background where it was gonna be like, “How’s this gonna affect your career in the future?” But at the point I started doing porn, I abandoned a career path that I was pretty sure was gonna be my future. I was just like, Nope, can’t do it. I hate writing.

You were gonna be a writer?

I was on track to be an academic. I worked in international development a little bit. That was really a terrible fit. Spending your life trying to help people, unless you’re really strong or delusional, it’s not a very happy life. All of a sudden I came to a realization for somebody to find out and have it affect my future career options, they’d really have to be paying attention. I don’t think there’s too much information circling around out there and there’s so much dirt out there on everybody that it’s not dirt anymore. If it was going to prevent me from a career, it’s a career I don’t want. And now I feel like things are going pretty well for myself.

I think so too. Do you start with small shitty studios or go right to Lucas?

Straight to Lucas. I didn’t shoot with anybody else before.

You were there during his real golden age, when everyone really paid attention to the porn he created, which is not the case anymore.

I suppose that’s true.

Did you have a good experience with him overall?

I had mixed feelings. Sometimes the experiences were really good and sometimes there was a lot of tension.

Was there a learning curve?

My approach to porn has been to — with the exception of camera angles and some acrobatic positions and things like that — I basically have sex the way I would do so normally. I’ve kept a pretty natural approach to it. Then I’ll just rely on the director to tell me to slow down or move my leg to the side but it’s never really interfered with anything. Once in a great while there’s a position that you’re like, “Oh my god, are you kidding me? Nobody would ever do this!” You can only do that for a short period of time before you start getting cramps.

Everyone wants me to ride their cock like in porno movies, but I’m like I don’t have the quads to do that.

But then you’ll have the quads through doing that.

I guess. Did you escort while you were doing that early stuff for Lucas?

I did. For me it’s been an off and on thing. I stopped for quite a while because I felt as though when I started, not that my life was out of control, but I felt that I didn’t have a lot of control over the things in my life. So that, I think, led to me feeling like I had less control over the situations that I was in. So in order to reclaim that control, I stopped for a while and waited until I felt like I had that control over my life in all other areas before I was willing to consider starting again.

Lucas was really anti-bareback at that point. At what point do decide to go over and do bareback? All of a sudden you were in Meat Rack…

Well I became positive. At that point, I thought, well, it doesn’t make that much of a difference anymore. The STDs that people get, the run of the mill thing, my experience had been that condoms never prevented those. You could wear a condom all the fucking time and you’d still end up going to the clinic. I’ve never had syphilis knock on wood. But I knew that using a condom hadn’t prevented me from getting things in the past. So I decided I was going to have sex the way I’d always fantasized about it and the way I always wanted it. A lot of people say the existence of bareback porn was making us fantasize about bareback sex, but come on. No person has not fantasized about bareback sex.

I’ll admit that when you fantasize you don’t imagine the condom getting put on.

Right. Bareback sex is how all of us came into being, so it certainly is more natural. I think, to put a plug in about safe sex, I think people should of course, do the things that conform with their level of comfort and the way they prefer to handle their health and what risks they feel comfortable taking and what risks they don’t feel comfortable taking. If you really want to never get anything, you’re just going to not have sex. Or you’re going to give a blowjob with a condom on and wear rubber gloves.

Well okay, there’s gradations. My view of this has shifted so much since going on PrEP and it’s a privileged position and I acknowledge that it’s bizarre and dicey, the shift in the way I view things. But I used to be super anti-bareback porn. 

I was for a long time too.

I used to be completely horrified about it. There was no cure, there was no nothing. There’s not a cure now but there wasn’t PrEP or other things coming down the pike. I still have never not used a condom. But I went to my doctor and said, “Look I’m on this for a year, everybody else I know who’s on this is barebacking.” He was like, “Look if you’re with other guys on PrEP or someone who’s undetectable and you know and trust them, you’re gonna be fine.” The problem for him is if I step into anonymous situations and am taking loads. He said I’m likely not to get anything, but if I wind up with someone with a high viral load I’m taking a 2% chance, which is a risk. He was basically like, don’t worry about HIV, worry about Hep C. 

Hep C is definitely a concern.

But I haven’t yet heard of people who’ve gotten it. He says it’s on the rise. So whether I will do it or not remains to be seen.

I’ve known three people who’ve gotten it. But that’s out of the literally couple thousand people that I know.

We’re in a weird, changing moment. It’s really strange to me that I don’t really have the same objections to bareback porn as I used to. I do still think that it kind of glamorizes bareback behavior to people who might not know enough to make the right choices. But then I do understand when porn stars are like, “It’s not my job to teach them.” 

People have to make their own decisions given whatever hand they’re dealing with. That’s why I’ve always been really interested in social workers and HIV counselors that take a harm reduction approach to things. Because the more you tell somebody not to do something, the more they’re gonna do it. If you work with them to say, here are the things that you can do to work with your hand of cards to minimize the risk that’s coming at you from the decisions you make. Some of the decisions you might be helpless to. Some people have addictions. You can’t deal with everything all at once. You have to deal with the discreet issues at hand that you can do your best with to make sure that they’re protected as well as they can be. Even with a terrible scenario. Even those people need to have to some advice. You can’t just let them fall off the radar because they don’t conform to everything you’ve laid out.

And say, oh they deserve it because of their behavior.

Yeah. Nobody deserves anything bad. Really.

That’s why I thought the thing Deviant Otter did recently was so great. He was being completely honest about his position on condoms for the first time, talking about being on PrEP. People were ragging on him for saying it’s okay to not use condoms on PrEP but honestly, that’s how lots of people are using it and it’s keeping them HIV neg. But worse for me is these companies that don’t put anything in front of their videos or stars who don’t talk about it for whatever reason. Deviant Otter saying he’s on PrEP is going to inspire a lot of people to get on it which is going to help keep a lot of people who share his behavior negative.

I think transparency is really good. I’m all for it. I would certainly speak up a lot more if I had the energy to go on crusades. I certainly have a lot of opinions but to spend a lot of time talking about it and going through it, it’s always been a really exhausting conversation for me any time I tried to do that. I second guess myself all the times because I’m like, “Do I really have the authority to speak on these things? I’m just living my life as I see fit, and I don’t think i have much of a place telling other people how to live their life. I certainly hold some things dear. I have very negative opinions about meth and I haven’t been as forgiving about that as I should be, because I can’t relate to it. Aside from cigarettes I’ve never been addicted to anything. I could certainly stand to dole out some more sympathy, or humility.

What was it like working for Treasure Island Media?

I’ve liked working for Treasure Island and it’s always been a really smooth and pleasant experience working for them.

That’s what everybody says.

They’re great to work for. They’re really nice. The shoots are quick and professional. I never dealt with any messy guys that I can remember. The funny thing is just, when the title goes on the film, it’s like poz fetishism, which is a little strange and off-putting.

How do you react when you’re in a video and it turns into a poz fetish title after the fact?

I don’t take it personally but I also tend not to watch many of the things I’ve done. I guess once in a while I’ve taken something personally, but then I think, it’s porn. Everything is somebody’s fantasy and everything is geared to sell something. To a certain degree I used to get angry when people would say “Porn stars should be teaching everybody about things.” I was like, I don’t think that’s what this is about. To a certain degree, I’ve sort of stepped off the soapbox because I can’t ever claim to be right in any situation and I’ve stopped arguing points because later on down the line I find out that this perspective that I had that I felt very strongly about, two years later I have a different perspective on it.

So now do you think porn stars should be teaching people?

I don’t think it’s a question of “should be.” I mean, what’s the question? What should people be doing? Once the “should be” has been decided, are you going to be angry that somebody isn’t doing it? Or praising somebody because they are doing it? That’s the kind of judgmental stuff that I think doesn’t really have that much of a place. And what’s the point anyhow? You’re gonna—

— attack a porn star for not being an ideal citizen.

Yeah! Make up your mind. Either you’re going to treat them like they’re the opposite of the ideal citizen or you’re going to hold them to the standards of being an ideal citizen. Make up your mind one way or the other.

Right. People will critique the porn stars. They’re lowest of the low, scum, and why aren’t those scum setting a better example? Like Woody Allen’s joke in Annie Hall, “The food is lousy, and such small portions!”

And that’s fine too. We can go ahead and be the punching bags and everything. Except that I think those of us who have a healthy engagement with the whole thing, just don’t listen. So troll away if it makes you feel better. That’s totally fine.

You often date people that you perform with, right?

That’s not entirely true. I’ve certainly dated people that were not sex workers in any way. As long as I continue to do porn or sex work of any kind, I find that it can be a hard pill to swallow for people who don’t do it. Do I actively choose to date porn stars? No.

Logan with his boyfriend of last year, Leon Fox, in NakedSword’s Boyfriends 2.

Well it’s just an observation. 

It’s a mix. I find it’s easier to date people out of the industry because I don’t want to hear about or talk about porn all the time. To me it’s not the most interesting topic of conversation. If somebody wants to talk and they say, “Tell me about porn.” I say, “I don’t know, go talk to somebody who’s really excited about it.” At one point I might have been more excited but it’s really commonplace for me now. It’s just something that I can do. I make extra money on the side.

And it’s not your main gig anymore. 

Very much not my main gig.

Why still do it then?

Why do I still do it? Because it’s still fun.

What makes it fun?

Well sex isn’t always fun, but most of the time it’s fun. Some of the time it’s not and if I’m rolling that dice on a regular basis anyhow, because I like having sex with different people and meeting different people that way. Those times when it’s not fun, even when you’re doing it just for fun, I’d say, then well why wouldn’t I also just do porn? I’ll get paid for it, and a trip to San Francisco or New York out of it. I’ll always extend my trip and hang out with friends and stuff that I don’t get to see on a regular basis, because I don’t travel that much anymore if it’s not for work. Working my regular job, when I’ve traveled on that, it’s work the entire fucking time and I don’t have time to see my friends. That’s really disappointing to me because I like having that extra time and the ability to go and see. So there’s all these perks that sort of come along with doing porn for me, that I’m not ready to give up on.

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

It’s impossible to overstate the impact Joe Gage has had on the world we fags live in. His iconic Working Man porn trilogy (Kansas City Trucking Company, El Paso Wrecking Corp, and L.A. Tool & Die) depicted blue collar men with undefined sexuality exploring sex with other men — which famously inspired generations of gay men to embrace their masculine side, and take on what eventually became the “clone” look — mustache, blue jeans, sunglasses — that has resurfaced in every decade since the 1970s. Joe followed those films up with Closed Set, still the most brilliant all-sex gay porno ever made.

After Joe took a 16-year break from porn — which coincided with a legit career directing indie movies in Hollywood, the AIDS epidemic, his marriage to a woman and the birth of his two sons (he openly admits he enjoys sleeping with men and women) he returned to porn in 2001 to direct a series of epic films like Arcade on Route 9, Men’s Room: Bakersfield Station, and Slow Heat in A Texas Town. He followed that up with a line of films for his label with Ray Dragon, and hit it big with his incest-themed films Dad Takes A Fishing Trip, Dad Goes to College, and Dad Gets In Trouble, which unleashed a flood of copycat films at Men.com, Icon Male, and more. He’s currently the only gay porn director who made films in the 1970′s who is still directing and blogs daily at JoeGage.com about the things that turn him on. What do we have to do to get him the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

A still from El Paso Wrecking Corp

Adam: So I thought Dad Gets Into Trouble was going to be the final film, making it a trilogy.

Joe: I was going to stop after three because I just didn’t want to be known as “Joe Gage, Mr. Incest”. So I went on to other stuff and people kept contacting me and saying, “Come on, do another Dad movie. Do something with relatives.” And it was pretty fuckin’ sick a lot of the stuff they wanted. But when I was making one of the first movies in my working man trilogy, El Paso Wrecking Corp, I added a scene with two guys and a girl. The press asked why I did that. I said now that ‘Gay Is OK’ which was a late seventies slogan, and homosexuality is becoming more acceptable, if I’m going to push the envelope what could be more radical than a gay guy or two gay guys and a girl? A straight guy, a gay guy, and a girl. For this movie I was thinking, how could I make that formula work for this — for another Dad movie. I thought, I know, I’ll do a son, a father, and a grandfather.

Who plays the grandfather?

His name is Scott Reynolds. He’s really good. I used him on a college picture I was doing for Joe Gage Sex Files. He had done two or three movies at that point, and he was real terrific, easy to work with. Gung ho, versatile, in good shape, and not a spring chicken. White hair and white walrus mustache. Really interesting man. I used him in the college picture, and then he gave me the idea to go with this. Scott could play the grandfather, Allen Silver could play the dad, and one of the sons, the one we like best, Conor Habib, could play the grandson. I rustled it all up and wrote a script about it.

When you and I first met, it was at the Ace Hotel, where we were throwing the Butt Magazine pride event to celebrate the gay porn pay-per-view which I curated for the hotel. We brought you in and did a Q&A and I remember at that point you had flirted with incest in Chainsaw, with Allen Silver and the two sons jerking off together. I remember very specifically you saying, “I don’t want to encourage that so I’ll never have a son and father actually fucking each other or touching.” There was some hesitancy on your part, because we all know that there’s a thin line between presenting incest as a fantasy and the actual reality which is not a very thrilling experience to say the least. 

Totally true.

What changed that led you to be able to say, okay I’m going to do this? And do you still feel qualms about doing it?

I feel no qualms about doing it because I approached it in a very specific way. I like to say it’s an ethical way. I did the first one — Dad Takes A Fishing Trip — and in that one the father and the son had no contact with each other. They’re in scenes together while things are going on, but they did not touch each other. I did that specifically the way I did it in Chainsaw. But then people called me and told me these deep unspoken fantasies and they wanted me to take it to the next level. But I said if I was going to do it then I would have to do it not as a porno, but as a real movie. And this one that’s coming out today is a real movie! A gosh darn movie. It’s got openings and closings and b-roll and complicated dialogue scenes, as long as the sex scenes. It’s shot like a movie!

That’s the last taboo in this day and age of porn, right?

Exactly. I guess it was the last one where I really went far out and totally did a father and son. But we did it in a dramatic way. It was written. It had motivation and there were reasons to do. It wasn’t just let’s get a younger and older guy together and say they’re father and son. It made a big difference to approach it as a movie and not as a porno. Although god knows it’s 85% pornographic material. But I really tried to give it some ethics. This one has an ending — which I cannot divulge — which really ties it all together. I’ve never ever done anything with an older man seducing a younger person whether they were relatives or not. I don’t do that. I don’t do people tricking people. I never would because it’s not ethical or moral. There was a book that came out like 15 years ago, called The Kiss, written by a woman who was a best-selling writer, about an affair she had with her father. I thought, that’s the kind of way I want to approach this. Nobody is raping anybody, nobody is manipulating anybody. The younger person is manipulating the older person to get what they want.

‘Brothers’ Sam and Joe Gage in the 1970s. Photo via BUTT

Incest survivors say “All incest is rape,” but a lot of gay people talk about desiring their fathers, and all my friends have stories about sleeping with older men when they were underage. Going to bathrooms and getting fucked at 15, 16, etc. They were the aggressors, desperate for daddy cock. The thing that still makes it controversial is that there are these lines that get drawn that we can’t cross. You’re in a curious position because you have a family yourself. When you’re doing these movies do you put that aside completely and think of what you’re doing as total fantasy, or does the knowledge of a family’s psychology from your own experience get put into the scripts?

No it doesn’t. My family is totally separate from all of this. It’s just my work at this point. Both of my kids are young adults now. One of them just got married a couple of weeks ago. They’re both straight. When my wife first got pregnant with our first kid, I thought, how weird is this gonna be. I’m gonna be a guy who has sex with men and women, what’s it going to be to have a boy around? Can I trust myself if a situation arises down the road? But as soon as you have a kid, for me, and I would say for 99% of the people in the world, you realize that’s not even a consideration, it’s a totally different thing. There’s no chance anything like that could happen.

You were hesitant to do the incest films when I first met you, then you got into doing these films and they’re great, and you’ve branched out — the Doctors and Dads series, and then in Runaway Sons you have a dad and son. Now Men.com has their Stepfather’s Secret and Son Swap series and other people are doing incest stuff much more openly. Do you feel like the pioneer, and do you think you’re doing it better?

I am the pioneer. But I think I’m doing it differently. Those guys are doing straight-up porn. A total fantasy, and it’s just a different approach really. I think what happened was the first Dad films were so successful that everyone said we have to make one too, and I understand that because that’s the way everything works in show-business, movies, books, TV, whatever. I mean look at Jurassic World. People copy other people and things that have gone before and try to get a piece of the pie for themselves. That’s what it’s all about, basically. I shouldn’t say it, but I don’t think any of them do it as well as me. My stuff is different.

I think the way some of those sites do it, they’re structured differently. 20-minute loop scenes and they give the briefest plot. You have, since the beginning of your career, been giving us full movies. You can’t imagine a 20-minute loop by Joe Gage. 

I have a couple of gonzo franchises like Afternoon Milking Club, and the Bukakke films. I’m going to do another one of those soon. Those are just balls out porno sex. But when I make a movie at this point, I want to make a movie, tell a story. We shot on a GoPro this time around because I said to Ray Dragon, come on, let’s try to do something adventurous filming-wise. He’s always jumped at the opportunity to try something new.

The next step is drones!!

We’ve been talking about that actually! Ray wants to do a vacation picture with drones and GoPros. He may do that. That’s one of his things he’s talking about doing.

How long have you guys been working together and how did that happen? 

He did a film for me at Titan, and I knew who he was from his Colt stuff. I knew he did other things. He left the business to go into fashion design, which he’s now starting to do again. When I was first starting to get back into the business, I wrote him a note and said, “I see that you have your own site and I’m considering doing that stuff yourself, can we get together and have a talk and let me pick your brain?” He said sure. Within half a year he ended up coming up on the casting list for a Titan shoot I was doing. I put him in and we bonded and became friends. He worked as an actor for me on two different projects. Then we just kept communicating back and forth. Finally we got together for the super-site. That was six years ago, or so.

A still from one of Gage and Dragon’s latest collaborations, feat. JD Ryder and Joe Parker.

What makes it a successful working relationship?

The fact that we’re in two different counties helps.

You’re not right on top of each other.

Exactly. When we need to deal with each other we do, and when we don’t we have our separate lives, although they’re oddly similar. We live in the sticks. We both have animals, although I don’t have chickens liker he does. We both have lives that are different than just porn. But he is a tech guy. He’s a terrific photographer, and he knows all the internet stuff. He is much more scientifically oriented. He likes that. It’s what he’s good at. When people used to ask me about Sam Gage, who was my first partner in the beginning. I would say, “I’m the dreamer and he’s the schemer.” Ray doesn’t scheme but he does handle all those complicated scientific gizmos. The scheme connects with thinking up new ways to shoot and the intricacies of everything. We’re constantly thinking of new things. We know that digital and internet is the future of all of this. In the last two years all the video on demand stuff is where all our revenue is coming from. The majority of it anyway. It’s good and it just keeps growing and growing. But at the same time, every six months or so, there’s a new thing that you have to learn and master and Ray is very good at that, figuring out how to use that stuff to our advantage.

One of the things I’ve always been interested in with you, is that you are among the most film literate porn directors ever. 

Just before I called you I had been watching Horror Express on Turner Classic Movies.

With Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

And Helga Liné! Immediately after it ended, I ran onto IMDB to find out what I could about it. I remember seeing when it played on 42nd Street in 1972, but I think I was stoned out of my mind at the time. I remember the red eyeballs and not much else. I saw the last half hour of it and thought, wow, this is really interesting stuff. I love kitschy European stuff.

I know a lot of your films have titles borrowed from other films. Cop Shack on 101 which is based on Shack Out on 101, right? A notorious anti-communist b-movie. 

Right. A Terry Moore movie.

Is that your way of staying interested in what you’re doing? Putting little connections to favorite films in your work? Or is it something that you think will connect with your audience base?

It’s funny. Those movies were out and those titles were out, and they were advertised in the movie section in the newspapers every day. Titles like that would just grab me. I was a child. I thought, wow, this is really interesting. I did something at UCLA with Vito Russo over 20 years ago, talking about film to a group of people. They asked what my influences were. One of the things I said was, to me, movie stars are basically equal and in those days, to me the biggest movie stars in the world were probably Rhonda Fleming and Fernando Lamas. They were bigger than life, gorgeous, Technicolor people, beautiful to look and they did interesting stories. To me that’s what movies are. No matter who is in them, a movie is a movie.

Why haven’t you written your autobiography yet?

Well people keep asking me and I think maybe I will. I’m a huge record keeper. I have notes about everything I’ve ever done. I wrote two novels and they were each like 700 typewritten pages. 500 published pages. It was probably the hardest fucking work I’ve ever done in my life. I could do it, but then, I think, do I want to do that and sell 3,000 copies or something? There’s a cut off in terms of the public interest. I think about it and keep making notes and think maybe I should do what Hugh Hefner used to do in the sixties. He did the Playboy manifesto, a collection of pieces he would write in magazine. Eventually they were published as a book. They were his philosophical musings. Not really autobiography. I don’t know. I keep telling people I will, and then I look at that work and the work that it would take to do that and it’s very daunting. It really is. That’s not to say that I don’t continue making notes about it, because I do.

You probably have thousands and thousands of stories and names to drop.

I really do. I was around a bunch of people because of my personal relationships at the time. I knew a lot of the creme de la creme. Both in front of the camera and behind.

Who would be the most famous or notable?

I really can’t talk about it all, but I would say Warren Beatty. He was a close friend of a close friend of mine. I was around him for a period of time. He was a fascinating man. Still is, I’m sure. But people of that caliber floated through my life considerably.

Do you watch other people’s porn? Do you get off on any of it? What do you like?

I like very much the work of Vinnie Russo at str8boyzseduced.com. He just blows these straight guys and they come back and he takes them through these steps of sexuality. He sets up the camera and it’s total reality. He’s very into sex. It’s hard to explain. It’s dramatic in a way that nobody else really does. But I watch everything. All of the American stuff, some of the Euro stuff. It’s gotten really tiresome to me. Who is the guy who makes only one or two a year? He’s an American but he’s lived in Europe a long time. Not William Higgins.

Kristen Bjorn?

Yes. I was fascinated by his stuff when I first saw it 15 years ago or so. There’s an event in Laguna Beach, once a year, where hundreds of people in the community pose in a tableau of a famous painting onstage. The curtains are closed and the audience is in an amphitheater and the curtains open and there is -

The Last Supper or something like that.

Yes. Perfectly realized. Lit, costumed, etc. I always thought of that when I would watch Kristen Bjorn’s work because everything is structured in such an intense way.

Right, those big group scenes are like Hieronymus Bosch or the The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault.

Yeah. I was fascinated by that for a long time. I also like Military Classified.

I know that you haven’t done bareback since the seventies when HIV wasn’t a concern. I’m curious if you watch it now, because it’s just everywhere.

Yeah. I do. We’re constantly asked on our site to go bareback. “Oh everyone wants it. The audience wants it.” Well, fuck the audience if that’s what they want. There’s plenty of places for them to see it elsewhere. I watch it and to me it’s not one iota different then when people are having sex with condoms. So if you had to make a moral choice then the right thing to do is that. People are telling me now about Truvada, which sounds like a kitchen cleaning product or some kind of special thing that’s advertised at 3AM for vitamin enrichment.

Yeah. I’m on it for over a year. For me it’s added protection. If I want to bareback with I can, but I’d prefer it to be with someone I was more closely involved than just anonymous scenes. Though I really haven’t done that yet.

I’ve worked and still work with people who are positive, but they use condoms when they get to the fucking scenes. I don’t have any judgements about that. But I wouldn’t do bareback. You know who Vivienne Westwood is?

Of course.

She has the famous t-shirt with the two naked cowboys facing each other with their dicks facing each other and almost touching. I wanted to do that image and so I was shooting Men’s Room 2. At the end, where the two leading guys were naked, facing each other, head to toe, full frame, dicks just barely touching. It was the end of the movie and one guy was lighting a cigarette for the other guy. Leaning in, cupping the flame. I shot it and Bruce Cam said I really want you to cut that scene. I said why? He said he didn’t approve of showing these guys smoking.

Ha! 

I thought, you know what? I fucking hate you but I’ll do it. Then about a year after I thought, he’s absolutely right. I never have done it since. I have somebody chomping on a cigar once in a while but that’s it. But I thought he was right. Why should you promote something if it looks beautiful visually. The days of Bette Davis smoking are over. It’s not healthy. It kills people. It’s the same kind of thing. Bruce was right. It’s the same thing with barebacking. It’s not my deal.

Do you listen to the criticisms people have about your movies? Do you take them seriously or not?

I take them all seriously because everybody has an opinion. If they’re going to air it, I’m happy to listen to what they’re going to say. Mostly they don’t like me dealing with straight people all the time. “Why don’t you just deal with gay men?” I think I have to re-educate everybody about the basics of drama, which is conflict. I don’t do gay men. I just do men who aren’t saying or expressing or showing in any overt way what kind of men they are. They’re just men. That’s always been my thing from the beginning.

The guys are fluid in their sexuality. 

Exactly. One of the key themes I always do is someone having sex for the first time with another person of the same sex, because that to me is what conflict and drama is and all that stuff.

Is that preference for not having the guys be explicitly gay-only informed by your own experience sleeping with men and women?

Sure. Other people who criticize my films don’t like the intergenerational stuff. The old guys, the young guys. “Why can’t they just be lovers?” Because I don’t want to just see two beautiful guys falling in love. That’s not my deal. Drama is conflict. You set it up and then resolve it. That’s what telling a story is. That’s what I do.

You are well known for creating an archetype of masculinity with your films that inspired tons of gay guys to take on a more masculine persona and look in the ’70s. Do you ever feel like breaking that mold and putting a feminine guy in one of your scenes?

I’ve used several people – willowy boys – like that, only when I end up shooting them, I try to soft peddle it as much as possible. When I find an interesting one I put them in. They are part of the sexual, masculine landscape. The thing about the masculine men that I started portraying was that I never did ultra-macho. I did the working man. Blue collar men. That’s the world I come from. I grew up in it and know all the archetypes. They never take it to the next step where they’re Tom of Finland guys, although I’ve been heavily influenced by Tom of Finland. But they weren’t there in terms of their ultra-butchness. Although I’ve used a few.

Do you have a favorite actor that you’ve worked with in your career?

I have a bunch of ‘em. Right now I’m loving David Anthony, who I use as much as I can because he’s just an ideal man to my way of thinking. He’s not pretentious, beautiful to look at, big dick, a great sense of humor and he’s a total professional. Comes in and does the work and leaves. He knows how to behave on a set. All the things you want no matter what you’re shooting. I also like Andrew Justice a lot. Both of them don’t take themselves seriously. Life is a bowl of cherries for them and they live their lives accordingly. They’re not trivial guys, they’re just good men. They know how to behave in front of the camera instinctually. The camera loves them and they’re comfortable in front of the lens.

A shot from the set of American Bukkake.

One of the things that I found so interesting when I visited the set of American Bukakke, was how much everyone told me it would be like a German precision thing. Come in 10 minutes before the shooting, take the pill, get into wardrobe and on the set right away, then off in an hour. Was that trial and error or was it always how you worked?

I did a movie once called Bad Girl’s Dormitory. We shot for a couple of weeks and one day of shooting was 20 hours long and at the end of that day I said, this will never ever happen again. It was brutal. There was no need for it if it had been properly planned out. I was very invested in the idea of learning how to run a production board and how to work with a shot list which I always do. Basically we have it down to what we think of as a perfect science, although it’s not because things change every day and we have to flip things around. For a Mexican-American, I’m very Germanic in my approach to work.

What’s next for you? Dad comes out today, but what’s next?

I have another Joe Gage Sex Files in the can and I’ll probably start cutting that soon. Then towards the end of the summer I’ll probably shoot another one of those, and then another big Joe Gage movie. I have a bunch of scripts and stories but I don’t know which I’ll do, because I’m also going to shoot a big 2 part movie for Titan this fall.

That was going to be my last question — whether you would ever go back to Titan?

Yes! It’s got an interesting approach to it which I cannot say because I don’t want to spoil it. So three more things this year, cut a Sex Files, shoot a Sex Files, and a Joe Gage movie for the holiday season.

And then you’ll write your book.

We’ll see!

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

Casey Scott and I are dishing about porn over burgers at Astoria’s famous Neptune Diner. The diner, which boasts a giant sign proclaiming “Number 1 Diner in New York City according to the NY Daily News,” is the perfect place for our gab session because despite the polished, clean fixtures, it’s a charming throwback to an old-school New York that both Casey and I long to return to. Casey especially. The handsome 30-year-old porn buff has been making a name for himself as the creator and chief curator of New York’s In The Flesh film series, which takes place at the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. In The Flesh showcases important straight porn films mostly from the seventies and early eighties. The films are screened on film — no easy feat to pull off as most porn films are woefully under-preserved — and so Casey has to be constantly researching and chasing down leads to keep his ship afloat.

His film choices are primarily classics and under-seen curios. The March edition showcased “Porn Noir” focusing on dark mystery and horror XXX-ers like Expose Me, Lovely, Corruption, and The Double Exposure of Holly. June’s edition of the series will feature a special “Gay Pride” theme, showcasing straight porn films made by gay men working in the industry. As Casey’s an accomplished expert on the subject, I sat down with him to discuss the blurred boundaries between the straight and gay porn worlds, whether he actually gets turned on by straight porn, and how the porn of yesteryear really measures up against today’s offerings.

Adam: Casey, when did you first start getting into porn, and at what point did you realize it was more than just a passing obsession.

My generation really started exploring pornography through the internet, and that’s how I found and got really into Al Parker and Casey Donovan, the big names from the 1970s and the 80s. I’ve always been into film and I always notice directors, because if I like a film I’ll watch more by the director. I got into the straight porn stuff because I was into exploitation films, drive-in-movies, and a lot of those directors did porn. But the real catalyst for exploring straight adult movies in a more in-depth way was The Devil In Miss Jones. I got the poster art tattooed on my arm, because it’s that important to me. Gerard Damiano is my favorite director. Then with those films came my favorite actors. The genre in general is a gift that keeps on giving, especially because it’s a genre that’s not really well documented. A lot of research is required to understand everybody involved and the stories behind how it all worked.

What was the first gay porn you ever saw?

Heavy Equipment in 3-D.

I’ve always wanted to see it.

It’s really not very good. But that’s how I got obsessed with Roger, the star of that movie. I love him. He’s still my favorite, that’s another one — gay for pay. But he sold it and was super hot. I don’t care if he was straight.

He’s great in A Night at the Adonis. [pictured above left]

Is he in that? I know he’s in Hot House and Sex Magic.

Pretty sure.

I know Malo is, and Malo’s the guy from Cruising who is the first murder victim, which I just discovered. I can’t find him and I’m hoping he’s still alive. And if he’s not I can’t find any evidence he’s not. I would say the movie that really got me looking at porn in a more serious way was the Joe Gage Working Man Trilogy. I remember I very discreetly bought Heavy Equipment online and then it was suggested that I purchase the Working Man Trilogy with it and I had some money so I said okay. Heavy Equipment was okay. But the Working Man Trilogy, I was just like, my god. Wow. Like a lot of guys I think Joe Gage was the eye-opener. Wow, somebody’s really doing something interesting with this genre and not just making beat-off material. It was obviously a clear auteur’s vision. He knew what he wanted to capture, and is really good at capturing tension and atmosphere and characters. From there it was like — Joe Gage, Steve Scott, Hand in Hand, PM, everything I could get my hands on. Then the French stuff, I really like Cadinot.

This is Roger, from ‘Heavy Equipment’

You curate straight porn now for your series. Do you find straight porn a turn on?

I do. Yeah. You know. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t. They’re obviously geared towards a straight audience but I think that there’s something about when something sexual is captured really well. Well photographed, well edited, there’s frenzy to it, and really good chemistry. It’s a turn on. I mean it helps when the guy’s attractive, obviously, from my point of view. There are women I love to watch because they have a real presence, and just sort of exude sexuality. That’s something I admire in men and women. It took a while for me to come to terms with that. Like is this okay if I’m gay that I’m turned on by these straight porn films, and some of these women are turn-ons? But yeah. I definitely do.

Are there missing films that you’re looking for?

Well there’s one. My holy grail is a straight movie called Big Thumbs, which was a movie that came out in 1977, made by gay men in the Broadway world, and it’s registered to the copyright office, they have a print. It’s never turned up on home video ever. And it’s impossible to find. I don’t know anyone who’s had a print. The people who owned the copyright to it are dead, they all died of AIDS or after AIDS. The composer died five or six years ago and he was the last surviving person who worked on the movie. That is a major orphaned work. I don’t even know where to go to retrieve that movie. That’s a big one. The gay porn movie everyone wants to find is Him, which is the X-Rated Jesus story.

I wrote about that years ago for BUTT.

Yeah. The only information that’s available, there aren’t enough clues to go on. And pseudonyms were much more common in gay films than straight films, because of obvious social stigmas.

It seems so weird that something like that could be lost for so long, because even with AIDS there just has to be somebody who knows the real story or knows who made it or had a friend who made it. It’s New York, anything theoretically should be possible. It’s only been thirty years.

What’s the other one that has the interesting backstory — Centurions of Rome, which was funded by a Brinks robbery, and when they found out that’s where the money went to producing this lavish, X-Rated Caligula for gay men, I think Lloyds of London technically repossessed the movie. I don’t know how it can legally be available anymore but it is.

George Payne in ‘Centurions of Rome’

Bijou puts it out right?

Yeah. All the crew members except for the director were straight. That’s how that story came about years later. It was photographed by Larry Revene, who’s a regular at our series, edited by Carter Stevens who is straight, and all the other crew members were straight. Word got out because of all the straight crew members. And that’s the frustrating thing. One of the companies I love is PM Productions and they were based here and did a lot films — John Amero directed some, Joe Gage did some movies for them as Mac Larson and their history is just, poof, it’s gone. I don’t know what happened to the guy. I’m trying to research that company, but it’s just impossible. There’s no record because when these gay men died — who gets their stuff? That’s the problem.

People just threw them out.

Or if they had partners, the partners died too. Or maybe they weren’t in touch with their family. Chuck Vincent is a great case. We’re showing two of his films in June and a lot of those films, the negatives are gone because Chuck wasn’t all that good a businessman. He was a good director and an artist but not a good businessman, so he would double-sell movies. So his negatives may have been given to people who had a limited licensing agreement, but he sold the movies in perpetuity to Distripix, but they don’t have the negatives. Where do you go from there? He’s gone, his lover’s gone, I can’t find any family members of Chuck who would have had any paperwork from him. It’s frustrating. It’s another factor in the loss of a generation of gay men. There’s so many missing pieces because these people left us so suddenly.

The great Al Parker.

How much crossover was there between the straight and gay porn worlds in the seventies and eighties? You talked about Centurions of Rome which was made by straight people, where did that come from?

Well that was around even at the beginning. If you see The Back Row, it starred George Payne, and he only did a few other gay films but he was a major straight porn star. Marc Stevens was bisexual and he was in gay films but also in The Devil in Miss Jones. Exploring the very fluid nature of sexuality was very big in the early to mid-70’s and as you went into the late 70’s and early 80s it wasn’t as prevalent. There are some examples like Peter North. He started out in gay porn as Matt Ramsey and went into straight porn as Peter North and he tries to pretend the whole gay thing didn’t happen but it’s all there on video. Behind the scenes there aren’t that many examples I can think of where there were crew members who would work both. Larry Revene would because he didn’t consider the gay films slumming because all the things he shot looked great. He didn’t have to be attracted to what he was filming. He was a cameraman who cared about the lighting and that what he was filming looked great. Ron Dorfman was another photographer who did a lot of low-budget gay stuff and he was straight. It wasn’t that common in technicians but it was very common in actors. I can’t think of that many actors that didn’t show up in some gay stuff. Even Jamie Gillis who was major —

Jamie Gillis did gay porn?

Maybe two or three. In Boynapped, I think he receives oral, and he fists someone but it’s a stand-in. It’s not really his hand. He did another film called 3 Sex Crazed Banditos but that’s missing.

Were the straight porn actors put in these movies out of necessity or did they just do it for a paycheck?

With Jamie he was just very experimental.

Because our Sword commenters go absolutely nuts over it — how dare these straight people come in and be in this industry — but what you’re saying is it was there from the beginning of gay porn.

Of course. AMG Models — those were all straight guys!

I feel like if you get a guy to do something gay, that should be a turn on. I just wish they would be more open and say they were straight!

I’ve been fooled by guys who claim in interviews they are straight and bi and leaning towards women, but if their performances are good enough and the fantasy is sold, that’s all that matters.

I talk to a lot of porn people now, but when I consume porn, I couldn’t give a shit what they do in their real life, it’s all about what they do onscreen. I get the idea of why that’s a turn off to people when you see certain people not engaging, but that’s just somebody who’s not enjoying themselves and are giving a lousy performance. You know, when straight guys are obvious because they’re just getting blowjobs and laying there. You just want somebody to be into it.

That’s one of the things I can’t stand is seeing bad head. Gay men give bad head too, but most of the guys giving bad head are the gay-for-pay guys. I really wish that the companies wouldn’t go by this formula like, “You suck, then you suck, and then…” it doesn’t have to go like that. A guy who’s going to do a bad job at giving a blowjob, that’s going to ruin the fantasy of your scene, so don’t include it. I think editing is really important in porn. I know a lot of people don’t agree with that, they think it ruins the illusion — “If it’s not real, it’s not real.” But editing is important. There’s so much that needs to be edited out. I hate when I see a guy who’s bottoming and he’s limp the whole time. In editing you can frame that out. But at this point it’s just such a glut of product, they’re just trying to get it out to you, they don’t care. Men.com is trying to get a scene out every day and it’s often like that. I don’t even know if it’s like 50-50 I think it’s more like 40-60, good to bad.

Men.com always has good premises. Like Stepfather’s Secret that premise is hot, but then when you go to watch it there’s so much talking. “Let’s play an endless game of Truth or Dare.” “When did you hook up with our stepfather?” They’re not good at that talking.

Johnny Rapid is a mess anyway. I cannot explain his popularity.

No! He’s so hot. He’s gorgeous.

Nasty white trash guy. Looks like they just picked him off the street.

No, his ass is so beautiful.

He looks like he got into a fight. His teeth and his hair’s always messed up.

Imperfection is beautiful to me.

Christopher Rage had a lot of people like that. But his movies were hot. I just don’t get the whole Johnny Rapid thing. He’s another one where it’s like, they shouldn’t show him giving oral because he’s terrible at it. I mean, I think he just won some award for like Best Performer of the Year by somebody — it might have been the Grabbys for all I know — and I was talking with a friend who was trying to explain Johnny Rapid and he was like, “Here’s this guy who’s straight and has a kid and he’s the industry’s top power bottom now.” I said, “But that was Kurt Wild five years ago. It’s just history repeating itself, it’s not that interesting.” And Bill Henson in the 80’s was the same thing. He was the power bottom of the 80s and was married and had a kid. It’s interesting how the industry will keep repeating himself by casting the same types of guys in the same types of roles with the same kind of off-screen histories.

Who do you think is making really enduring quality gay porn? Because you’re somebody with the knowledge to actually can give it a historical perspective.

I like for the most part what CockyBoys is doing. I think that their type of guy is very similar, cookie-cutter and I feel like they need a little versatility in there. I like Sean Cody’s stuff a lot. They’re very controversial for a variety of different reasons and they’re another one where the guys are very similar, but they do something with the editing and cinematography and the right selection of guys and it works really well. I think Titan is still really consistent in terms of making feature videos. I love DG Media which is Ray Dragon and Joe Gage’s videos. They do really great stuff. They need a better editor because the movies are really long. They can be pared down. If you think about Joe’s best movie Closed Set, it’s only like 80 minutes.

It’s his best movie. It’s amazing.

Yeah. He’s become like the David Lean of gay porn. David Lean used to make these very tight, compact movies in the early part of his career and then he started to do Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago, these four hour epics.

I loved what Gage did for Titan. Arcade at Route 9 is a masterpiece.

I like all the stuff he did there. It was just one good video after the other. He was the best director there. Brian Mills was still there. Jasun Mark was there. He does really good work with Titan. I like him personally.

They’re the only people who put that old-school production value into story and setting and coming up with something that’s really a movie.

I think Raging Stallion tried for a little while. I remember when they poached Tony DiMarco from Lucas and I was kind of excited because Tony DiMarco was doing amazing work for Lucas. He did La Dolce Vita and all the other good story stuff for Lucas. The Intern. That was really good stuff. But then at Raging Stallion I don’t think they knew what to do with him. I don’t think he’s done a story porn for several years now. The last was the two part Western — I forgot what it was called (ed. note: To The Last Man) Raging Stallion is interesting guys but the product isn’t consistent. They need a better editor. There aren’t too many other studios that I’ll always check out what they have because it’s going to be reliable. UK Naked Men used to be really good but I don’t know what happened.

Oh those fabulous Matt Hughes movies blew my mind. Man of The Match is one of the most incredible scenes I’ve ever seen I cum like before they’ve even had their cocks out. Sometimes even a trashy Next Door Male scene will get me off more than other things. They had a scene that with Trystan Bull —

I loved him. He was another one who they didn’t make him do anything he would be bad at.

It was these two young twinks and he was one of their stepdads and they skip school because they’re about to graduate, and he comes in the pool and then goes over to them and makes them hook up with him and at the end they have taped it all so they can blackmail him to do it to them every day. It was so funny and dumb and hot. Do you think there’s room for humor in porn?

Men tries to do that. Randy Blue tries to do that. They’re inconsistent but they’re the only ones who do that. Austin Wolf is one of their guys and he’s one of my very favorites. He’s amazing. I don’t like Tyler Wolf his partner. He’s not very good. I like Austin a lot though. Randy Blue always does a Halloween porn every year, and I think there’s definitely room for it, but I think it’s always been iffy to mix those two, because if it’s a real failure it’s a real failure. But that’s always been the case. It’s interesting you mention that because I’m thinking of movies in the In The Flesh series, we show mostly comedies, like intentional comedies. Two of the movies we’re showing in June are comedies, but they’re both made by gay men who are notorious for their witty sense of humor.

A Night at the Adonis starts with that great scene where Jack Wrangler, who works at a guy’s clothing shop – picks up a guy and the guy says, “What do you do?” and he says, “I’m in Men’s Pants.” I’m a sucker for a good double-entendre.

The way the market’s changed now is that back in the day, if you were shooting on film you would have to draw people to the theater and once you got people through the advertising and title, you got em. If they paid, you got em. You could put whatever you wanted in there. You could have a film like Drive, Jack Deveau’s film with a drag queen villainess. It’s a really funny, campy movie. I don’t think you could make it now because the focus on narration is gone. The market’s just changed so much that there really isn’t that room for experimentation and trying different things. That’s what makes these older movies so interesting. When I interview these directors they’re really like, “These were the independent movies of that decade.” The producers didn’t give a shit what you made as long as it had sex in it so they could sell it. You had horror films, film noir, Blonde Ambition which is the gayest straight porn movie ever made. I don’t know what straight man could possibly get off to that film. It’s not sexy in the least. It’s sexy for gay men but it’s not sexy for women and straight men. A lot of people were experimenting in ways to tell stuff. I’ll always be drawn and really more admiring of older films than I will of contemporary films which isn’t to say that I’ll pooh-pooh contemporary pornography, but it serves a different purpose. I had a conversation with someone who wanted us to show all the Inside movies. Inside Seka, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, and Inside Jennifer Wells. I said the difference is that the In The Flesh series is about showing good films. Those films are good pornography but they’re not good films. Contemporary pornography functions fine as pornography but they don’t function as films. Because I’m a big film person I’m always going to focus on film over pornography.

One of the things I wonder is why it seems as if most people in gay porn, with a few exceptions like Jake Jaxson, don’t come to the industry with the knowledge or interest in seeing what came before them in these classic films. There are so many great films that could be remade or stolen from or homaged in so many ways. I get that there’s not a lot of money so there’s not a lot of chances for people to take risks but it’s always astonishing when I’m like you have to see this pioneering movie and someone hasn’t.

In the early period the lack of money wasn’t a hindrance, it was a challenge. If you want to tell that story figure out how to do it with that kind of money. Now it’s like, “It costs too much, let’s just show these two guys fucking.” That’s the same in mainstream films too, where practical special effects are not as embraced as CGI, because CGI you can tell someone what you want and they can create it. Something like Flesh Gordon in 1972, the crew of that movie, the special effects makeup people all went on to win Oscars for their work. They all cared about their work, but they were making penis monsters and stuff. They wanted to create. I don’t know that the people in the industry want to create. Jake Jaxson you can tell came from a film background. And Jasun Mark is the same way, he comes from a film background, but there aren’t that many directors I can think. Tony DiMarco came from a film background. I think that plays a big part of it. You’ll notice that change in the mid-80s when people came in and said, “Well this is video, I don’t have to think about editing or lighting or anything. I can just put out product and make money.” That’s why I have a problem with Men.com because it’s very focused on creating product, it’s not interested in creating something substantial. Some of the editing on those scenes are just ridiculous, I remember one scene — an orgy scene where they actually included a shot of Johnny Rapid yawning — of course because he shoots every day. What editor did not catch that and cut it out? That just shows what kind of excitement is going on onset! It breaks the fantasy. I believe a lot of the editors are straight women, maybe college kids just doing it to get experience. But they’re not doing it with the same drive or experience as people in the seventies and eighties seemed to have. They wouldn’t have put it on a resume but they had the experience and gumption and would say I’m going to work in porno until I make it big.

We’re coming up to June, tell me about your In the Flesh program for June.

For June I decided to do a gay pride edition so there are three straight films directed by gay men, two by Chuck Vincent and one by the Amero brothers — two gay brothers. Misbehavin’, Roommates, and Blonde Ambition, which is the Amero Brothers. It happened in a roundabout way because we found a print of Roommates that Distripix didn’t know they had. I was like great we can show Roommates, and then I thought it was great we could show Chuck Vincent, and then I remembered we showed the trailer for Blonde Ambition and the audience went nuts. So it made sense to do three straight films by gay directors for gay pride. Someone asked me why I didn’t just do three gay films but finding prints of gay films is rough. I was trying to put together a gay film series partnered with Bijou but I don’t think they know what prints they have and if they do they’re really protective of them. There aren’t any print depots or anything that have gay stuff. I thought this will still appeal to our audience that we’ve generated and bring in new audience members. I feel like if we bring in more gay men people will be more receptive to watching gay porn in that environment and we could do a gay series. I’m really excited about doing these. Chuck Vincent is a genius. The Amero brothers are different kinds of geniuses. Their movies are very distinctive.

I’ll see you there.

Definitely!

_______________

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Talking ‘Straight vs. Gay’ With New York’s Gay Curator of Straight Porn appeared first on The Sword.

The work of Jürgen Brüning has always been a lightning rod for controversy from the very beginning. In the early days, when he produced and curated films by transgressive cinema icons like Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch, mobs of leftist-feminist-anarchists ransacked his underground theater and spray painted, YOU ARE ALL PIGS on the walls. Later, as the producer of Canadian alt-queer-porn superstar director Bruce LaBruce’s films like No Skin Off My Ass and Hustler White, among others, he and Bruce were both praised and attacked for pushing boundaries, exploring taboo subject matter, and breaking down the walls that separated independent film and pornography. His least controversial period came when Jürgen and Jorg Andreas founded the first German gay porn company, Cazzo Films, and released a series of smoldering titles like Berlin Bonking Bastards, Thom Barron Calling, and Berlin Techno Dreams. Jürgen left Cazzo in 2001, and started his own company, Wurstfilm, which continues Cazzo’s focus on edgy, fetish-themed, rough and dirty sex. Today Jurgen’s winding down his work with Wurstfilm, focusing his attentions more on the popular Berlin Porn Film Festival, which he organizes, and continuing to produce the work of people like LaBruce and Dennis Cooper, whose first film he is hard at work on. I called Jürgen this weekend to talk about his career in film, what attracted him to the edgy and provocative, and what the future holds for artistic impulses in porn. 

Adam: Jürgen, how did you first get involved in film?

Jürgen: Very easy. I went to the cinema. I loved Fassbinder and I was not really out gay, and Fassbinder never really said he was gay. He become my idol and I wanted to become a filmmaker. When I was 19, I moved to Berlin, to go to university, but I didn’t dare to apply at film school because I had a working class background and they only take like 20 students at the time, and also they said you should be older and have more experience in the world that you can tell stories about. It happened that I lived in a squat in Berlin, a warehouse space, and we started a cinema there. We started showing like super-8 films and I started making them. My first one I shot while visiting New York, and it was definitely not a masterpiece, then I was in an artist group, we did films and performances and installation. That’s where it started.

So you were mainly directing?

My role was really to organize all these events. In 1986 we wanted to do a feature length film and we decided that these two guys would do the script, and so we applied for money from German television and they accepted, they gave us a lot of money, which was great. And then everybody said to me, you have to produce the film. That was the first real film production in 1986, we had a budget of 200,000 dollars which was a lot of money then. But immediately with the first film we had problems with it. We sent them the script and they OK’d it — there was a department in TV that supported young emerging filmmakers which doesn’t really exist in the same way anymore. We changed the script a bit, we shot a four minute sequence that wasn’t in the script, and when the editor from TV saw the finished film she said we couldn’t have it in there. It was a scene where a woman was throwing a naked man through a roof and we played the German national anthem, and she said no that’s not possible we cannot show it on German television. I said “What are you talking about? There were so many people killed in the name of the German national anthem?” Finally it passed. But I always had problems with my films because of sexuality from the beginning.

You spent time in New York at some point, right?

In the late eighties I lived in Buffalo and was a guest curator at Hallwalls, this media arts center which was founded by Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman. They were looking for a film curator and I took the job. And I was always coming to New York and I met people like Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch, and in 1986 we did Richard’s film Fingered. Richard’s films were very straight, there were no interesting gay films like that in terms of sexuality in the 1980’s. There was a big scandal with Fingered because Lydia Lunch was raping a woman with a gun. All the women complained when I showed it at the Berlin Film Festival in 1987. It was very controversial at the time. I was still working in the cinema, the warehouse, and we showed films every night, and after the festival we showed the film in our cinema so people could see it — not to make money or anything like that — and ten masked men came into the cinema with baseball bats and took our money and destroyed our projection and wrote graffiti on the wall, YOU ARE ALL PIGS! I don’t know if you know Andrea Dworkin, but we had the same kind of woman in Germany — Alice Schwarzer, who was a big old feminist, and she started an anti-pornography campaign, and so this really left-wing German anarchist faction came to destroy our cinema. Like I said, I always had problems with cinema. Then I directed a film called What Is The Relationship Between Rosa Von Praunheim and Male Strippers in San Francisco? Rosa was the token gay filmmaker in German society. Fassbinder was not open, Werner Schroeter did artistic films. In America you had a commercial world — the Nob Hill Cinema and gay porn stuff in New York, and you had male strippers jerking off onstage in San Francisco. And we didn’t have this in Berlin. And I thought why is it that you can talk about sexuality, and not be open about it in cinema. In America you only had gay filmmakers in the underground, Gus Van Sant was not really out, John Waters was not really out, and so I met a young filmmaker Mark Goldstein and we directed the Rosa von Praunheim film.

When did you meet Bruce LaBruce and how did you start working together?

In 1989 I was in Toronto, and I met Bruce at a party. We didn’t talk much, and then he was in San Francisco when I was shooting the film about Rosa von Praunheim, and I invited him to come and we talked more. He wound up playing an extra in this film, and then he proposed that he had an idea for a film, and he sent me some pages of No Skin Off My Ass and I said, okay that sounds good, and he went off and took a long time and send me the film in super-8. But festivals couldn’t have shown a long super-8 film, so I paid for it to have it transferred to 16mm and it played festivals. The film critic Amy Taubin saw it and wrote that it was like “a new Warhol asthetic…” and the film took off.

The film was a success but it was also quite controversial and went against a lot of stuff that was around in gay culture at the time.

A little bit, but not really. That’s more of a legend. Presenting a gay skinhead as one of the main characters and having this feminine hairdresser obsessed with this skinhead was something new. I mean people weren’t versatile then. You were either top or bottom. But in Germany some magazines didn’t want to write about it because it was about skinheads. They thought everyone who looks like this is a Nazi, but it’s not true. Years later everyone was dressed like this. All the gay festivals showed the film, and it was my first production that was shown around the world.

Last week I was talking with Casey Scott, and we were talking about how there weren’t many countries around the world that had their own porn industries, and I’m curious if porn was being produced in Germany and what was your first encounter with it?

I think you have to see it a little more in the global capitalistic view, you know. American films were dominating the world and it was the same in porn. In America it was the same as in Europe, porn was illegal but there was still porn being done, like you had examples in the thirties and forties and fifties, and even earlier. But in Europe porn was first legalized in Denmark in 1967. We had this history of soft porn and stuff done in the sixties, and when it was legalized they immediately made soft and hardcore versions. There were people who made nude films that were educational in the late sixties and early seventies and they were million sellers. Five million people went to see the films. In Germany it was illegal to show porn in public, but what they did was they sold the ticket for 1 dollar, but you had to buy a drink for 5 dollars, so it was a kind of trick because it wasn’t a public screening because it cost more to buy a drink than a ticket. It was how they managed to do it Germany. In Germany it’s still a law that you can’t show pornography on the internet, to avoid people under 18 seeing it, so my company as a German company cannot put any porn on the internet, I have to go to another country to do it.

Is that why you partner with Dark Alley for Wurstfilm?

No, Dark Alley is putting our stuff also on the internet, but no, my porn company is very small and we didn’t want to become a big porn company like CockyBoys. Even when I did Cazzo we never wanted to. So we founded a company in the Netherlands and then we had to register in the Netherlands, and we gave exclusive rights to GunzBlazing which is actually owned by AEBN. All these big American internet companies are trying to buy content and so what they do is buy the company. But to go back to Europe, we started Cazzo the porn company in 1995, and in Germany there were two other companies doing porn, but they weren’t known. In Germany you could only buy porn in sex shops that you can only go into when you are 18 years old, or you can rent them there. 95% percent of the porn in the sex shops was from America. My porn idol was, what’s his name with the big dick?

Jeff Stryker?

Jeff Stryker! Yes. He was my idol, when I was 18-20. He was the porn guy for me. And there was only one guy in France named Jean-Daniel Cadinot, who started in the late 70s to do gay porn. He was the first guy who had any kind of vision in Europe. Cadinot was the other one I really liked. People like Wakefield Poole we didn’t have in Europe, the only one who compared was Cadinot. When we started doing porn, it was in the air. There was a new generation of gay people interested in porn and people were responding to the films I was doing with Bruce. I hated this discussion of “Is it art or is it porn?” So I asked a friend who studied at film school, should we do a gay porn together? And he said, Yeah. So he thought of the idea and I put the money together. The problem was when we wanted to find a cast, we wanted to find people and so we had to put an ad in a magazine, and they refused to publish sexual or commercial ads. I had to fight with them for three or four months to get them to put the ad in. When we did finally get the ad we got 150 people who wanted to do it. People really wanted to do it.

And it wasn’t about getting paid.

No, it was about presenting sexuality in front of a camera. People were really hungry to do it. Guys really wanted to expose themselves. We decided at that point to do our first porn, I asked friends, camera people and lighting people if they would work for free, because we didn’t have much money for doing the film. But of course we paid the performers who were in front of the camera. We cast ten guys, and we learned by doing. Nobody knew how to do a porn film. What do you do when there are no hard-ons? There was no Viagra then. Everybody was shy. You could hear a needle fall when a sex scene was shot and the guy couldn’t get a hard-on. Nobody dared say anything. It was so funny.

Was making porn a fun experience for you in general?

Between 1995 and 2000 was really the best time making porn with Cazzo. It was so much fun. And you could make money at that time in Germany. We were the first company who would push porn into other media than sex magazines. Everybody wrote about the first one, and then people said we should do another one. And then we learned about how to market them. We realized we could market it as “Cazzo, the first German gay porn company.” And then we realized we could pay with the money we made in porn for our other film projects. But we always decided to do not so many films a year. The first year we did two, the second year we did three or four films. In our highest time we were shooting not more than five or six a year.

One I really love is the adaptation of Run Lola Run, Thom Barron Calling.

For me what I liked was that there was a straight scene in a gay porn. Because my film Bonking Berlin Bastards had a scene where drag queens put a mobile phone into the ass of this guy and people were like, “What are you doing putting drag queens in a gay porn film, you cannot do this!” And I really liked that we put a straight scene in the gay porn film. But it wasn’t easy to find a woman willing to do that.

In films in the seventies and early eighties, you still saw things like drag queens and got glimpses of real life. Peter Berlin has a drag queen scene in That Boy, and Joe Gage has a straight scene in Heatstroke. Porn wasn’t always pushing towards the ultimate masculine fantasy. Things still looked a little like reality.

I think you have to see it in this context. Gay pornography was the only material where gay people could see their own lifestyle, because it was not addressed in any other mainstream gay film. It was the only place you could see real gay people. And when I see gay porn from America from that era, I see how much they cost and were shot in 16mm, and they portrayed much more of a narrative. I found out when we started Cazzo that there was already a formula. We were in the time when we were making video, which was much quicker than shooting film. And they said you need five scenes in your film. And in our first film Berlin Techno Dreams, we said we wanted to do the first gay porn film ever made in the world. We wanted first of all better music because most porn music was horrible. So techno music was trendy and so we found musicians to do music especially for us. And we went to an underground techno club and asked them to shoot a porn film, and they were shocked, and only gave permission because it was a gay porn film and not a straight porn film, because that would not have been politically correct. What we said was, people who are in front of the camera in porn, they are not actors. So we couldn’t really tell a story because these guys couldn’t act, it was stupid. So we said, lets present this feeling of what’s happening in Berlin with the music and clubs, and I think it worked. What happened was when it came out, the younger guys said it was great, but when it finally came to the sex shops, then we got information from the distributor that people complained the film was too dark, edited too fast, all these complaints. I always said it’s really difficult to do a porn film where you have a narrative story, because I don’t want to make fun of the people in front of the camera who can’t act. That’s why I did other films with people like Bruce. But Bruce’s films are always getting the same reaction, “Oh these people cannot act!” and we just had to say, “That is on purpose because that is the style we want to use.” But with porn it was really hard. We did casting in Paris for the Dennis Cooper film I’m doing, and it was really hard because we’d cast guys and then in the end they go, “Oh but I can’t do penetration.”

My favorite of Bruce’s films is Skin Flick and the hardcore version Skin Gang. When did you start the strategy of saying we’re going to do softcore versions that can play gay festivals, and hardcore versions that go to porn venues?

It was not really planned. It was problematic to get money to do the films. Hustler White was really difficult to get the money together for. We shot it on 16mm and it cost $50,000 which is not really very much money but it was still very hard to get together. I had to go to German companies to get an advance, but it couldn’t be too explicit because they couldn’t distribute it. So with Skin Flick we did in 1997 or 1998, and we had done Cazzo already and made some money with Cazzo, and Bruce proposed the idea of the film, and I said maybe Cazzo can put the money in but we have to do two versions, one like how you want to do it, and another with the sex. Like in Hustler White there is a little bit of sex they aren’t shot like real porn sex scenes. I had to persuade my partner Jorg who was really opposed to it. During the shooting there was a lot of fighting between Bruce and Jorg, because Bruce was not interested in shooting sex, and so there was fighting. That happened also with The Raspberry Reich. With Hustler White, different countries wanted to cut certain things to make it past the censors, and of course Bruce and me said we’re not cutting anything, and then we said okay, we’ll make a really artistic version how Bruce and I want it. And then when it goes commercial the companies can do whatever they want. Skin Flick was the first where we did an artistic and a porn version. But we decided that they had to be two different titles, so people didn’t mix it up. So we had Skin Flick shown in festivals, but festivals could never show the hardcore version. Of course when people get to know that there were two versions, now Bruce is having more retrospectives because he is getting more and more famous, and I tell them they can’t show the hardcore versions. That’s our thing. The porn version of Raspberry Reich is called The Revolution is My Boyfriend, and then one for L.A. Zombie, but the hardcore never gets shown in festivals.

A still from LaBruce’s Hustler White.

Do you think, as the head of the Berlin Porn Film Festival, that there is really a place for artistic impulses in hardcore porn?

Of course there is but it’s very difficult to achieve. I’m trying with some films. I’m very curious how it will work with the Dennis Cooper film, because, and this is the same thing with Bruce, Dennis can write really well, but to combine sexual images with the narration is really difficult, because the sex interrupts the narration. I would say for me, in a narrative film you cannot have a fifteen-minute sex scene. Like with Bruce for the artistic version, we show as much explicit stuff as is necessary for the story of the film, you show two minutes or so to show people what is really going on. The porn version is for guys who just want to get aroused and jerk off. The porn people are trying to change a little bit, and the independent side people are trying to change more too. There’s a young person Antonio Da Silva who’s very great. He would be a good person to do a film for CockyBoys. Jorg is totally out of porn now. After I left Cazzo I started the company Wurstfilm, which was another way to make money so we could do other stuff. Now Wurstfilm is winding down too. We are not shooting very much anymore. I’m doing all these other films like the Dennis Cooper film, and others. I produced Bruce’s most recent short film Pierrot Lunaire.

A still from ‘Otto, or Up With Dead People’

Do you enjoy the power of porn to shock?

That’s one of the smartest questions I’ve ever been asked. I would say it’s tricky. Does porn shock? I don’t know. When I really became a public porn person, I really enjoyed that you could shock straight men by showing two men fucking. Of course I don’t enjoy that homosexuals and other minorities get beat up over it. I guess I would enjoy it more if I could make a better living out of it. I don’t want to become rich. I never got rich with Cazzo. When I left Cazzo they ended up making more money. I enjoy what I’m doing but enjoyment means other people recognize what I’m doing and there are not so many people who recognize and enjoy what I’m doing. Bruce is getting really, really famous, and he’s the head of the Queer Palm jury at Cannes. He enjoys it a lot, but he had to make big compromises with his most recent film Gerontophilia, and because it’s not explicit it gets sold all over the world and recognized. I really liked when we did Otto or Up With Dead People, and I got a letter from Mexico, from a young guy who said, “I really identify with Otto and how he feels, it’s so great.” That I enjoy. I enjoy when it’s one person.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Jürgen Brüning Talks About the Early Days of Gay Porn in Germany, and Working With Bruce LaBruce appeared first on The Sword.

Though his name wasn’t called during the Grabby Awards last weekend, porn star Leo Forte isn’t bummed out about his recent trip to Chicago during IML. With a little luck, Forte, one of the industry’s leading fetish performers and BDSM practitioners, may be on the stage next year accepting an award for his work directing NakedSword’s upcoming series Hotel Hookup.

This was the first time Forte’s ever sat in the director’s chair, and as he tells me between hits off his R2D2 bong, he’s “freaking the fuck out” about taking this step. While Forte unwinds and gets stoned in his apartment (once an underground San Francisco sex club), we talk about why being a BDSM sex worker is like being one of the X-Men, where his fascination with rope play comes from, and the not-too-common scenario that would render him “poop-shy.” Oh yeah, warning guys: major Maleficent spoilers ahead.

Adam: Hey Leo, what have you been doing today?

Leo: Not much. I just got up and unpacked. I got in from Chicago last night.

So you stayed in Chicago like a week after IML was over?

Yes. I like to go out there because it coincides with my brother’s birthday and a lot of events going on. I usually go for a week or two.

What were some of the highlights of the trip?

The biggest one was that I made my first solo film for NakedSword while I was out there. Mr. Pam had surgery and she couldn’t do the film so I got the opportunity to do it. And I was very proud and freaked out about doing it because we kind of have a standard, even though I know I’m on the top of my abilities, I still freak out like ‘Did I get everything? Did I fuck it up? Is it going to be good? Could I have done it better?’

Leo’s candle mohawk at HustlaBall in NY last fall.

Yeah. I’ve been shooting now for 3 years now, but I’m always shooting second cam for Mr. Pam, so it hasn’t been — well it’s been my work but it’s mostly hers. I used to shoot for Raging Stallion when they still had the Fetish Force line. But this trip was the first time I did it all on my own. I was the guy in charge — the director. I didn’t have anyone else to fall back on to say “Is this right? Did I make the right call?” It’s a step in my personal evolution and it’s freaking me the fuck out.

Can you tell me what the content of the scene was?

It was really simple, it’s Hotel Hookup. Four different storylines that happen in a hotel room. I travel a lot and so do people in my industry so we’re always in different hotels and we have different stories. In one of them the guys are celebrating a one-year anniversary and they’ve traveled to Chicago, and I shot that all over the city, in Millennium Park. They were freaking out because I was having them walk and hold hands and make out all over this park, and it’s not necessarily a gay location in a gay city. I was like “Just go make out!”

I like that that’s where they suddenly felt inhibited.

Yeah! “I’m about to go get fucked on camera and I could care less but I’m making out with somebody out in the park and I’m freaking out.” The other one was a guy who’s coming in kind of late and he sees this twink and he’s there with his parents and bored and he’s out by himself. There was a Scruff hookup, and then I took Landon Jones sightseeing around the city for some B-Roll, and you know when you’re a tourist you have to sample the local fare.

Just from my own experience as a filmmaker, there isn’t ever a moment as a director where you’re not completely filled with self doubt and convinced you’ve just royally fucked the shoot up and could have done better. That’s a pretty normal feeling.

I gather that but it’s not something your mentors will tell you. They just let you figure it out along the way. I never had a moment of “I got this.”

I feel like it’s a natural progression from porn star to director, and you’ve always struck me as someone who has his head on his shoulders enough to really make a big success out of it.

First of all, I don’t concur with that — I think it’s not a natural progression. It’s actually a rare thing. It is how it sometimes happens. There’s a handful here and there that fall in love with the industry and they wanna do something with it. But just in my time I’ve only known like Steve Cruz, Bruno Bond, Adam Killian, and Austin Wilde, they’re the only ones I’ve known in my time who have been performers and went behind the camera. But for me it’s the one thing I fell in love with. I come from academia. I was studying emergency medicine. I was getting my DSM, and I was also doing paramedic work, and I went to culinary school. I did a lot of things and it was me trying to find myself, and what happened was I started going broke.

You had no money because it was all going to all these different schools!

Yeah! I had no money! So I was like, okay, let’s try go-go dancing, and that was great, but then the money started drying up there because of the recession and I was like okay, let’s do this porn thing, and that’s how that happened. That’s how I started with the porn world and I fell in love with it and that’s when I started to want to create something.

So is directing something you want to pursue in the future?

Oh absolutely, um, I mean right now I’m chomping at the bit to get in that seat, to get that hat on. I want it. I really want it. I want to be the one who walks up on that stage during the Grabbys and says, “Thank you for my best director award.” I think it happened because I fell in love with cinematography and videography, and the ability to create something.

Are you a cinefile? Do you watch a lot of movies?

Absolutely. I live off movies.

His ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’-inspired Valentine card.

Well I just got off an Elm Street bender, and I love anything Kubrick. I love A Clockwork Orange. I thought that was awesome. I like vintage sci-fi like Soylent Green and Logan’s Run. I love Barbarella. Lots of camp. I love anything John Waters. Everything. The thing is when I was little, my mother used to work at a video store called Latino Video. I used to go after school and watch videos all day long. That’s how I fell in love with movies. I loved the directors because of what they were able to create. Everybody’s always gaga for the actors, but if it wasn’t for the team behind them they would never exist. And the way people would start telling stories. I fell for the style of Martin Scorsese, I fell for the style of Quentin Tarantino. All these really awesome people who have all sorts of street cred. These people who were independent and went mainstream.

Did you see Maleficent this weekend?

Yes. I did. I was dying, I was like a little gay boy, wanting to try on my mother’s horns.

I really adored it so much.

The whole time I was looking at it I was like, okay, how would I fabricate this look. That’s one of my skills — I can fabricate anything. So I was like, okay how would I make her horns? What materials would I use? How do I rock that at the next big event?

I’ll read you something — this is how I was feeling when I was watching it, but my friend on Facebook described it in this really brilliant way that I totally agree with. He said, “Maleficient is a radical lesbian Oedipus saga that queers the hero/villain binary and applies a feminist retelling in which magic emerges from trauma.”

Yeah, I was totally getting that lesbian vibe from it. It was kind of a Oedipus lesbian story, like I wanna fuck my mother.

And she’s spying on her and tucking her into bed and of course true love’s kiss is from her not from the prince!

I loved that!

Moving on, so some of the guys that I talk to who do rentboy work, when the weekend hits, it’s time to work and you can’t get ahold of them. Is that the way it is for you?

Yes, weekends are when you’re always busy when everybody’s calling you at all hours, one in the morning, six in the morning. You have open office hours as it is work. But where some people do it for sustenance I do it for recreation. Some people are like, “Gotta make that money, gotta make that money.” That’s their only source of income and I get it, and they live these awesome lifestyles because of it. I do it because I can. I don’t do it to make ends meet. It’s not my first job. So you can find me on the weekends.

Leo was “addicted to cock” in NakedSword’s Addict.

Well if it’s recreation for you, as you say, how do you deal with it when you have a client who’s maybe someone you’re not necessarily attracted to? Does that factor in or are you very selective who you work with?

Well, okay, money is by all means the almighty equalizer of all things. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you look like, it’s whether or not you can pay for it. But I don’t really care because my clientele, how can I put this? I don’t approach it from an ego perspective. You’re giving of yourself to someone else. I do this with compassion. Whether or not you look hideous, or for instance I came across a burn victim once, and I remember this guy starts crying his eyes out because he finally has someone touching him and not wincing, not being scared. Do you know how important that is? In this moment the person is receiving the most basic of human needs which is touch. In moments like that it’s not about me. It’s about giving someone something that they emotionally and psychologically need. Or another one who was coming out of a ten-year relationship, nine years of which was detrimental to him, and again, his husband didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want to have a certain kind of relations with him, and here we are in this space together, and I don’t treat him like his best years are gone and he wasted his life on someone who didn’t care for him. I treated him as another human being, being desired, being touched. And again broke into tears. Or with my particular line of work where I deal with the S&M crowd. There is something far greater than the physical, it’s the mental. Are you an X-Men fan? If you ever read the books, they talk about how the telepaths go inside the mindscape of somebody and there’s this whole world that exists inside somebody but you don’t see it because it’s in the mind. That’s kind of how S&M is. You go into this person’s mindscape and play around with it. So it’s not so much physical, so much as mental manipulation and — not necessarily mind fuck, but being able to navigate someone else’s mind. For instance someone enjoys being tied up, but they don’t get it because no one else will do it or is scared to do it. And so they go to someone that they know will do it and it fulfills that need.

I’ve never really heard it talked about that way. It makes a lot of sense. I’m somebody who only does stuff like that in a casual way. It doesn’t always float my boat. But that’s a very interesting way to describe it. How did BDSM first become a part of your life?

It’s always been there since I was a little kid. You just don’t know what it’s called until much later in life. Understanding something as simple as corporal punishment, when you’re a kid and your mother or father spanks you or whips you, you learn these lessons, pain equals blank, pain equals love, it could equal discipline, it could equal cleansing of the soul. Pain could have so much involved with it, and these are things we learn as kids and don’t even realize it. I grew up on a farm and I was all about the rope work. The rope is a very important tool on a farm because it’s how we manage the cattle. It’s how we close the gates. Stuff like that. The rope was always around me. I remember being three, four and having the desire to want to learn how to manipulate rope. I would watch my uncles lasso bulls, lassoing horses and saw the umph that came with it. I remember being a kid and lasso-ing Piglet, and tying up my toys. Most people who are BDSM practitioners will tell you the same, that it’s always been there. They just didn’t recognize it until they were much older and it had a name.

Rope work is your specialty right?

It’s definitely one of my big specialties. It’s not the only one. Take whips. Whips and I have been together since I was a little kid as well. Coming from a farm watching people whip the horses, and use them, and then I got older and saw Michelle Pfeiffer cracking that big ass black bull whip in Batman Returns, and I was like, “Wow, I want to be her! I want that catsuit.” I have a lot of things at my disposal.

I sometimes wonder with fetishes, and the BDSM world, from my perspective it seems like it’s all become very commodified and expected. You go to a gay bar and everybody has the same leather harness.

There’s two worlds of leather. I consider myself a lifestyle practitioner which means it’s part of my every day. The way I interact with people, the way people interact with me, my social circle, it is bound by the — not protocols — but the handles of traditional, “capital L” Leather. It’s a lifestyle that’s kind of been lost, because AIDS when took away our alpha males in the eighties and nineties, the culture, the shamanism of S&M was lost, and what remained was underground. I ended up finding the underground, finding the rituals and finding the sacred aspect of leather and bondage. Then there’s the other side of leather which is the stand and model crowd, the glorification of the image. They’re not necessarily practitioners, they don’t know how to do anything.

And they like the look of Tom of Finland and all that.

Yeah. They want to perpetuate what it is to be a man. If to you putting on garb makes you a man, then by all means do it. But I’m gonna be the one in the corner kinda laughing at you. It’s just glorifying and perpetuating an image. You ask these little gay boys at the bar, “What are you here for?” and they go “Oh isn’t it national leather day?” No, you dumbass.

Ha!

Leather is a culture. Not a fashion. And in the latter years it’s become a fashion, and fashionable. Which is why the new guard of leather, the new generation, aren’t necessarily drawn to leather in and of itself. I have leather pieces but it’s not my thing — “I gotta wear leather to be a man!” I’d rather wear the Fort Troff stuff or Rough Trade gear where they make harnesses, jockstraps, everything that’s traditional leather garb, but they use it doing neoprenes and plastics, and it looks like a nerf ball. It’s hot and cool and that’s how we are redefining ourselves. People are like, yeah let me go and spend $500 on this leather harness that I’m going to wear once, and we’re like alright let’s throw some shit together, look really fucking cool and swag out.

I agree with you, I think it’s far cooler, and the thing that you never really see, for instance, how you were dressed at the Hookies, that would be so hot if I was watching a video or we were in a session and you were just dressed like that. If you were dressed like Maleficent that would be so much more interesting to me than just another leather outfit.

100% agree with you. To me because I am such a cult movie freak, and I love comic books more than I love everything else, to me the idea of somebody dressed as some giant horned creature dominating me, is far hotter than somebody wearing a motorcycle hat with chaps. It’s creativeness and true BDSM is a very magical, almost spritelike world. It’s just never seen that way because everybody has the idea that it’s black leather and mean people. But for me if I’m beating you, I’m smiling ear to ear because I’m having fun. I’m enjoying it. I’m in this moment which you’re allowing me to have. I’d rather be like “Wheee!” than “Take that boy! Take that!”

Are there new fetishes? Things that are just recently coming on the scene?

Come on, anything that is being done has been done before. You think your grandma wasn’t getting fisted? It’s always been there. It’s American squeamishness that has kept it under wraps for so long. And now that we’re flourishing into a sexually liberated society, which tied into things like the internet that make it easily obtainable, it’s just coming out into the light. There’s been shit-eaters and felchers — all this has happened before. We’re talking thousands of years. People have been tying each other up and beating each other for years. S&M is part of our human nature. It is within us. So are kinks and fetishes. It’s in the context of how something is created for us. What’s important is for someone to be introduced to a tool or a fetish properly, because if they’re introduced improperly, they’ll hate it forever. But if you do it right they’re going to love it and crave it and want more.

Do you have personal limits? Do people come with things and you say, I won’t do that?

It’s funny I got this question earlier. I don’t necessarily have limits because it isn’t about me. But my personal limit period is drugs. I don’t do drugs. I’m not a user. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m one hell of a fucking stoner, I’m totally ripped right now talking to you, but um, I don’t do other drugs. I’m not a partier. I think the biggest plague of the gay world isn’t even HIV anymore, it’s crystal meth. That’s killing off people left and right. I have clients who say “Do you party?” I say, no, but if it’s what you need, go for it, but I’m not gonna partake, or judge you for it, but it’s not my world. I usually ask people to do it before I get there because I really make myself open, when I come into people. If you believe in energies or the metaphysical situation, I am this gigantic lightning rod and everything that I receive either goes through me or I spit it out and so when someone is in these situations, it throws me a little bit.

Do you ever do scat with clients?

It’s not something that’s very common, and I’ve never done it. I’ve had one or two who would really like to have that experience, but it’s just never panned out. I think it’s just something I can’t bring myself to do. I can do a lot of things but to shit on you. I get poop-shy. “I really had to go three minutes ago, I was crowning and everything.”

Ha. Okay. Last question. Tell me more about the big party you throw during Folsom?

Oh you actually know about that?

Yeah!

Well it’s been going on forever and a day, but since I’m here it just kind of brought it to a new level. So my house has been titled Top The Hole, because we live on top of the Hole in the Wall bar. Top the Hole has parties for Dore Alley, Folsom, occasionally for New Year’s, or my birthday or if I just feel like throwing a party. But here’s the situation. This place, back in the day, it used to be a hook-up spot, like a sex club.

Your apartment?

Yeah it was called Mike’s Midnight Gallery and dudes would be up in here in slings and everything, and come here to fuck. Funny story. My boss Tim Valenti used to come here and one day he was at the party and he was like “Why does this place look so familiar?” and he was like “The bathroom! I recognize that bathroom!” But anyways, it just continues that energy of the house as a sexual safe haven. We throw parties here to celebrate it. It’s a select grouping. You have to be given a certain invitation. And the invitations are only handed out by the three people who live here. Myself, Richard, and Nicholas. We all have a different crew of people, but the ones we invite are the ones that we’re like, “Okay yeah they’re cool enough to hang.” We get about 300 people here in the house, anything goes. The only rule is don’t have sex or do drugs behind closed doors, do it out in the open where anybody can see it. But pretty much anything else goes. If you don’t feel comfortable enough to do what you do in front of all these people who are looking at you and knowing your business, don’t do it. We’ve had all sorts of people here, all sorts of celebrities show up, people from Project Runway, RuPaul’s Drag Race, ChiChi LaRue has been here, anyways, tons of people. You know Danni Daniels? She came to one of my parties and she went buck wild and in the middle of the kitchen where we serve the liquor. She threw me down and started fucking me over the sink. I was like, “Yeah fuck me, yeah yeah!” It was the first time I ever got fucked like that by a trans woman. She was like, “You and I should become an item!”

So if I come to Folsom, can I get an invite?

Of course. Let me know because we have people at the door and if you’re not on the list and if you don’t have the invite of the year, they won’t let you in. But yeah, we’d be happy to have you.

Sweet. See you in September!

 
________________________________

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Leo Forte Discusses S&M Through the Ages, Directing, and His Infamous Folsom Party appeared first on The Sword.

In the span of only a few years, Portugese filmmaker Antonio Da Silva has created a collection of innovative, thrillingly dirty queer short films that mix elements of experimental cinema, early gay porn, X-Tube, and surrealism to depict the unique ways gay men have sex today. Da Silva’s films have explored the Grindr experience, public sex, body types, fetishes, aging, love, and exhibitionism. His most recent work, PIX features thousands of traded phone pics cut and animated together to form one very dirty encounter. When Jurgen Bruning reminded me of his work in our conversation a few weeks back, I decided to reach out to Da Silva, who lives and works in London — using another name to distinguish from his XXX output. We Skyped to talk about his creative process, his influences, and how his films reflect his obsessions.

Adam: Hi, Antonio, how are you?

Antonio: A little bit tired, but it’s okay.

Why are you tired? It’s not that late in London.

No, it’s 8PM here, but just yesterday I ended up drinking a little bit too much, so I have a hangover. How have you been?

How balanced is your life?

I’m a little bit of a workaholic as well. Especially lately I’ve been really busy all the time and sometimes I don’t know how to stop and what to do when I have some time off.

Do you know where that comes from? Is it a family trait?

It’s a good question. My parents they really are hard-working people and they don’t know how to stop and take time off and go on holidays. It might come from that I’m sure.

What was your upbringing like in Portugal? Was being gay a challenge for you?

A lot of people in Portugal still struggle with it. We have a very strong Catholic background and it’s something that makes it really hard to open up about sexuality and relationships you know? So it’s a blockage for everyone. I was trapped by that, which is why it took me a while to let it come out. Just a few years ago I decided to let this queerness and issues they need to be spoken about. It was very hard for me. I have this self-punishing instinct in the beginning. What am I doing? All this images and bodies – what will God think about this? It’s stupid but it took me a while to get out of these things. London helped me a lot to get out of my country and my comfort zone, just to see myself in a totally different context. Slowly I managed to get a bit more free within myself.

Tell me where you came from and how films sort of became the path of your life.

My background is in fine art and art and design. I was connected with art since a little boy. Drawing was my big passion when I was little. Then when I got to university I started studying multimedia, so I specialized in sound design. When I was finishing my degree in sound design I started to collaborate with a lot of dance and performance artists. It was a very mixed atmosphere and I wanted to combine sound design and dance and performance so I specialized in dance films. That’s why I came to London and I wanted to combine two things that I’m very interested in — dance films and fine art. So then did two M.A.’s and after that I started to work. I was working as a video artist but I started my short films, and they started to go to film festivals, not just to the video arts scene.

What were some of your early shorts like? I’m presuming not like the sexual ones, right?

They are a little bit like the sexual ones — the technique is the same. They are journeys about encounters with people in places. They’re about certain trips that I made in my life. Like art residencies, going to certain places. Being in touch with people. Speaking about certain communities. They were movement-based films, you know. Visual storytelling and — I don’t want to make this too public but Antonio is a kind of persona that I created for this queer work. I have other work, I do other films, other things to pay my bills.

And you work under another name for other things?

Yes. Antonio da Silva is just for the gay films.

When did you decide that you wanted to make films that dealt with queer sexuality?

There was 2010, I was totally lost and I didn’t know what to do. All the grants in Europe and everywhere stopped, so it was a period where I was really lost and a longtime relationship ended, and I just wanted to rediscover myself and the queer homoerotic films is something I had in the back of my head that I really wanted to explore. That year I was totally lost, I just started to bring that issue out in my work, and then I made my first film.

The first film was Bankers?

It was Mates.

It’s such a beautiful film. Can you explain what the film is for people who haven’t seen it?

The film is a very short film about how short and ephemeral these quick encounters using phone applications like Grindr are. So the film basically shows from the chat online through exchanging pictures and the actual meeting of the two people. So each shot is a different guy, from a different encounter, but they all come together as one. Mates was just an experiment, but actually it was a personal story I was living. At that time I was very much into Grindr. I was free to explore this new device, this new way of interacting with people. From there I ended up doing most of the casting for Mates, so the film is a result of this lost period of my life in which I just wanted to find myself through other people and use these encounters to find out more about me and the community.

An image from PIX.

Yes. Totally. PIX is a more extended, more developed version of Mates. PIX is what I wanted to do in Mates, but I wasn’t that clear in my head about the technique and also in Mates it was more important to do the actual scene of the encounters. I think each of my films they are somehow a consequence of each other. They really influence what I’m doing now, what I’m doing next. I learn from each film and they give me directions for what I should do next. PIX was something that was you know, that born in Mates but it wasn’t totally out there, and I just decided to take it further.

I just adore it, I think it’s my favorite of your films. I really loved it. It’s so succinct and clear in its purpose in what it says, in such a brilliantly inventive way. You distill the modern gay sexual experience in a matter of minutes. It’s the kind of film you could show to people in 20 – 30 years to say, this is what this era was all about.

Thanks. It’s nice to know that you engaged in the film. It’s visually appealing as well. It has content, and visuals.

One of the things that I think is — aside from being a very good documentarian is that you’re also a terrific editor. 

Thanks. The point of my films is the editing and something else is the sound. I said to you, I have a background in sound design and then from sound design I went to study dance film and the big thing from dance film is about editing. It comes a lot from the video clip language. It’s not the same. Dance film is about bringing narrative and stories to dance. Basically it’s that. I have a background in sound design, and I start to train in image, in editing, in making dance films. That’s the key point of my technique.

Were there key films that you saw or studied that influenced the way you make your films today, because it is a very singular style — either in form or content?

Some artist films and the films of Maya Deren. I also got totally obsessed when I saw Wakefield Poole’s films. I connect a lot with him, because he also has this kind of background in performance art and dance film, and suddenly moving to porn. I just love him as a person because I ended up meeting him in Berlin a few years ago. Yeah the content and the whole background and everything. Also people like Travis Mathews, who I know you know quite well, it was extremely inspiring to see — probably one of the first times I saw someone from now doing something that has the quality of what I was looking for as well. I also like the idea of the Dogme movement from Lars Von Trier.

Did you ever share your films with Wakefield?

No, I have the feeling that Wakefield is in another dimension nowadays. He’s in the restaurant and cooking. I’m not sure if he is really interested to see what people are doing about sexuality and stuff like that. I got this feeling. I would imagine if I was at this age, I would do the same, and I wouldn’t want people to bother me just because in the past I did certain kind of films.

I think he would like them, though.

I thought so too. He’s the kind of person I would like to share and show him, maybe it will mean something to him, because of how much he means to me. But I don’t know. I don’t want to bother people.

For me Bijou is the masterpiece of all gay porn.

But you know Take One? Man, it’s the best film I’ve ever seen in my life.

I guess I have to watch it again, it didn’t totally gel for me the first time I saw it.

First time I saw I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was the big masterpiece for me. I know Bijou is a classic, but I think Take One totally took me off of everything. I saw the most hot scenes I’ve ever seen in gay sex films. The whole thing was extremely well shot and the narrative everything. That’s mine.

Let’s go through each of your films for a few minutes and talk about some of the intricacies of them. Let’s start with Bankers.

Bankers is a situation that I found out by accident. One day going to a toilet on my way home from work, someone made a sign. I followed this person into the urinal and I found this situation that became my obsession for a year, and that was this was a bank district, a bank area in London in which I never thought cruising would happen there. This man took me to a certain toilet in which, it was quite discrete, and everyone that would go there was mostly for the purpose of cruising. They were in ties and suits, so they looked like bankers. They could have been lawyers or whatever. Then I just became obsessed with going there and trying to understand what’s going on and finding a way to capture this situation. I began as an observer from the cubicle, trying to watch from under the door. But that wasn’t enough and I had to jump in the action and take the risk and hide the camera under my jacket and try to take a camera there in a blind way, I didn’t know what the camera was recording. I was just pointing it randomly. I ended up going there like 23 times and recording and putting myself into situations and going back home and seeing what’s going on there and trying to bring it together in a film in which people can understand the cruising there.
 

So you had your cock out and were hooking up with guys to make the film?

Yeah I was tricking as well. I put my cock out and was part of the action. It is a fetish that I had. I have a thing for men — working men, guys that they are in suits and they are — it’s not just a suit for a suit, I really like the classical, typical man that works. I don’t want a friend to just put a suit on, that doesn’t work. It has to be a real man who wears a suit.

That one and Mates were the first one that started to get you noticed?

Yeah, they were two very different styles of approaching things. Gingers had a bigger impact on the internet. And I guess when people who watched Gingers found out I had more films, I think it made it a little bit of a boost around, because the three of them are very different.

Gingers and Daddies are sort of similar in that they’re both more traditional documentary films, interviewing people — groups of gingers and daddies about the sexual identities, these different roles that we take on as gay people, right?

A still from Gingers.

What I like is that you can tell that it’s something that you are connected to instead of just something you thought was popular and would get attention.

Exactly, I think people can sense the camera enjoys what’s its doing, what it’s capturing. This ginger thing was a wave that suddenly came out and I sensed that it was a trend, and maybe the film contributed a little to the trend, but I had a passionate reason for making it. I wanted to find out more why I’m attracted to this kind of guy. I had these questions, is it just personality, is it physical and this experience gave me a few answers, I can understand much better. Actually I’m not attracted that much anymore, after I did the film. That’s the thing about making the films, my fetishes get solved, and I’m relieved I can stop obsessions and do something else.

What did you feel like you came to know about why you liked gingers?

All the gingers I met told the same story. I found out that a lot of the gingers are as a child, pointed at, have prejudice directed at them, and that’s what makes them become very strong and build power and confidence in their adult lives. So these guys had their problems and I can see now they are, some of them, have good jobs, actually the roles they have are about directing people, having big responsibilities, just for revenge. That’s one of the qualities, and I know there’s a particular thing related with smell, and there’s also a very interesting thing in visual arts, and fine arts. There’s many people who used and were inspired by redheaded models. There’s something about red-heads that affects culture and arts.

What about Daddies? Have you quelled your daddy obsession?

No I think that’s more about me. I’m becoming a kind of a daddy. I have salt-and-pepper hair. That was about me trying to understand my own condition in a few years. Daddies was a very simple story, something that I wanted to do while I was in San Francisco. I had met you and you were telling me about things you were shooting there. I thought that was amazing. You go to a festival and meet people that’s fine, but you can also take it as a good opportunity to you know, even to make work, as we did.

What’s next for you?

I’m finishing another film. It’s a film about dancers. It’s just dancers, but all dancers from Portugal and there’s a very specific reason of course for making this. And then I’m also working on another film in cooperation with someone that has been filming a cruising place for many years and he started to exchange messages with me on Skype and slowly started sending me this archive of material which is amazing. I’m working on that. I just want to make as many films as possible. I want to release films one after the other to see what happens. To see how people react. I love to see people’s reactions.

Do you think that you will want to make more feature length films?

I’m making shorts on purpose because I love short films. I never aim to do a feature length film, but actually I do think I’m gonna do one because people have so many questions about my films, and actually they are all a very long process to make, and um, you know, I might make a feature length film in which I explain to people the process, that’s it. The film’s just making everything clear to everyone so I don’t have any more these questions. The actual thing, seeing the whole process. In some situations it’s more interesting. It could be a potential feature length film. Like Bankers or even Mates. I don’t think Gingers needs to go that far. Or Daddies, but those two could be something. Or putting together the process of doing things. They are documentaries. I never passes in my head to make a fiction feature. I’m not able to do that.

See all of Antonio da Silva’s work at his website.
____________

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Antonio Da Silva Talks Tricking In Bathrooms, and the Secrets Behind His High-Art Porn appeared first on The Sword.

Walt Whitman begins his famous poem “Song of Myself” with the line, “I celebrate myself, I sing myself.” These words are on my mind as I sit across from Davie, a handsome, muscular, tan young man in his early 30s, who is lying in bed, naked and aroused, celebrating himself for thousands of horny fans all over the world. A small tattoo of Whitman’s bearded visage rests on his left ankle.

Davie is a homespun exhibitionist, who uses the still-wildly popular app Vine to make dozens of six-second clips of himself jerking off, staring sexily into the camera, and rarely, spurting out a few drops of creamy jizz. “For a cumshot to look sexy you have to shoot far, and I’m not a big shooter,” he explains, while stroking and pressing the screen to make the fast cuts that have become his video’s trademark.

Yes, it is possible to apply auteur theory even to something as short as Vines, which make three-minute preview clips on RedTube seem like epics. The majority of “dirty Viners,” as Davie calls them, use the entirety of their six-seconds uninterrupted. A Latin-American user named “Burro” posts six, seven, sometimes 12 clips in succession: 1. Pants or shorts are removed 2. The underwear comes off 3. Flaccid but still growing cock 4. Jerking furiously 5. The tip of the cockhead, mid-stroke, with a tantalizing bit of pre-cum oozing out, and 6. The cumshot. You could call it a mini-series. True Dick-tective. Cock of the Lake.

Another user named “Cocksucker,” sadly banned from the app in the March when Vine tried to purge itself of X-rated users, was more of a documentarian. Clearly addicted to giving head, Cocksucker did just that all day. During his lunch breaks he’d sneak out and document himself sucking cocks in seedy bathrooms or porn stores. One after the other after the other. Some Viners are more experimental, using the cuts to magically undress themselves, or animate their cocks growing like one of those time-lapse flower videos you used to see on PBS back in the day.

Davie’s aesthetic is more simple, more personal. He uses quick cuts because he finds them sexier. “I like the idea of giving the audience little peeks,” he explains. In a typical video, you may find up to twenty cuts. An establishing shot of him standing, his right leg raised in an exaggerated contrapposto, stroking his 8-inch uncut cock, followed by a series of extreme close-ups in rapid succession — cock, nipple, face, lips being licked, feet, legs, then shots of him suddenly without any clothes, then suddenly his shirt’s back on, then it’s off, then there are two cocks pressed up against each other — a simple but disorienting trick with a mirror. Think Bergman’s Persona if it were about a horny stoner in Brooklyn instead of two dour Swedish kvinnor.

A still from one of Davie’s vines.

Davie and I discuss his process. “Normally I would just be lying in bed jerking off looking at other people’s Vines, most likely. And then I’d want to tape myself,” he explains.

“Are you studying the work of other users the way a budding filmmaker might study a tracking shot in a Scorsese film?” I ask. “No,” he insists, “I’m just doing it because it turns me on watching other people. But there’s another level when I’m exposing myself to other people. I don’t know if that makes sense. Not to be a total narcissist, but it’s thrilling to see yourself onscreen jerking off as you are jerking off.”

Weed plays a big part, as does laziness, which is why Davie’s more recent videos feature him lying in bed, against vibrant red sheets, and filming himself with a flattering overhead angle. He is extremely picky about what he posts, and over the course of my observation he shoots several versions of a video then deletes each one before I even have a chance to see what’s wrong with them. “There’s a lot someone can do with camera angles to make someone feel sexy,” he explains, moving the camera to a profile of his chest and stomach to demonstrate his point. “Really unflattering angles like this, make me look fat. It’s a matter of playing around and seeing from which angle you look sexiest.”

After a few abortive attempts, I’m finally allowed to see one of his rough cuts. I notice an unflattering angle on his face that makes him look more sad than sexy. The video also seems almost identical to the past 7 or 8 videos he’s posted over the past few weeks during this latest “Bed Period.” Davie confirms my assessment, before the muse calls him back to work and he motions for me to hand back his iPhone.

Even when he finally likes a video and posts it, there’s no telling if it’ll remain there for more than a few minutes. “I’ll post a lot of videos in succession and then, like, quickly delete the earlier ones because I decide I like one of the later ones better. Practice makes perfect, you could say. The posted video quickly racks up 158 likes and 31 revines. “Looks very tasy (sic) love to eat that cum,” comments one user. “Do u have skype?” asks another. My legs are briefly visible in one of the shots of his cock. “Wish I was that guy there sittin watchin you hah,” someone comments.

Yet it’s precisely my presence in the room that makes Davie’s Vine session not quite a typical one. As the observer effect states, any time you study an object, you change it. I ask how turned on Davie is. “About 50 percent,” he says. The charge he gets from being watched by the global masses is diluted by the charge he feels from me being in the room watching him. “It’s a little weird,” he admits, trying not to offend, “because when you’re jerking off normally you lose yourself in erotic reverie and it’s more difficult to do that when there’s another person there. Which is why I love masturbating so much, more than sex, because it’s more fun, you can absolutely lose yourself in fantasies. It’s hard to engage in fantasy if another person is there watching.” I offer to help him get in that headspace and stare at him intensely while he jerks off. This seems to work. His cock shoots up and he starts filming again.

After he posts a few more videos, Davie looks up at me and asks if I’d like to direct one. There’s no time for storyboarding. I’ve got to improvise. I ask him to stand, since that’s my favorite way of seeing him in the videos. I place him in front of a plain white wall and have him jerk off. I lean down and film his cock from three different angles, then his smile. I show it to Davie. He considers it for a minute, then frowns. No dice. “I think I look really good there but my penis isn’t very sexy looking.” I’ve suddenly gone from being the director to just the cinematographer.

My second try is more successful. I tell him to grip his cock and slap it against his hand. I’ve got my first shot. I go in for a medium angle from the left side on his shoulders, chest and head, looking down at his cock. Then I put the camera over his cock and capture his POV of his cock sliding in and out of his foreskin. My foot appears slightly in frame. Then I get two shots: his cock from a side angle, and the classic porn under-the-cock shot. I pull back, still staying under, to get the rest of his body, looking down at the cock. Normally this might be an unflattering angle, but it’s actually quite sexy. The last frame is an extreme close-up of pre-cum oozing out of the tip. I hand the phone back to him and he smiles. “That’s cute.” This video gets 276 likes and 62 revines, twice what his previous video received. The comments are even more effusive. “Amazing!! I like it!” “So damn hot and sexy.” “Your dick is sexy!”

Davie gets back in bed and keeps at it, while I ask him a few final questions. Who are his favorite Viners? “Usually it’s new people. Someone I’ve never seen before.” Before the March purge, Maverick Men Hunter and Cole were his favorite people to watch. Now there are fewer and fewer couples on there, most people just stick to solo videos. He’d love a boyfriend who was also into making dirty Vines so they could make them together, but it’s not a high priority. And no, he doesn’t want to do porn. He doesn’t want to come up in a Google search when he’s applying for a job, which is also why he insists I don’t use his real name or Vine handle.

He’s about to get dressed and head to the gym, when I ask a final question: does he think he’ll keep doing Vine for a long time? His reply is immediate. “Vine’s something I would like to delete, and have deleted several times and that’s why most of my videos are a couple of weeks old, because I keep on deleting them after a couple of weeks with the hopes of eventually shaking off an addiction, this need to jerk off on Vine. But I keep on finding my way back to it during horny moments jerking off in bed. Hopefully soon I’lll delete it but I don’t know if that will happen. I’ll probably keep coming back to it. We’ll see.” In the words of Walt Whitman, “The future is no more uncertain than the present.”

____________

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Talking With Davie, An Anonymous ‘Dirty Viner’ appeared first on The Sword.

Cyd St. Vincent has his sights set high. In addition to big plans for making a success out of his new porn company, Bonus Hole Boys, which specializes in scenes featuring sexy transmen like himself and hung gay men, Cyd’s also got a celebrity co-star he hopes one day to land. “A lot of people tell me that I look like the gay guy from Glee, Chris Colfer,” he explains, laughing. “I’d like to do a twincest porn with him. That would break some minds. I can’t sing though. I would have to pound the ass and he could carry the tune.”

Breaking people’s minds open seems to be the larger goal of BHB, specifically, expanding people’s views of what trans guys and gay guys sexual lives could look like. “I think the beauty of queer sex is you don’t just have to say, ‘This is the only type of body that I’m attracted to,'” he insists. “Most people are happier when they allow themselves that room.” The idea for the company began in the mind of Ex Libris, Cyd’s friend and the company’s sole financier. Cyd’s work as an in-demand Rentboy and activist made him a natural person for Libris to partner up with, and he’d long dreamed of starting a porn company as well. Though the company only has a handful of scenes currently up online, they’re hot scenes influenced by directors like Joe Gage and Jake Jaxson. In “Casting Couch,” a fairly traditional porn set up — the casting director and the aspiring porn star — is made tense by Cyd’s nervousness over revealing his pussy. It’s raw, subversive and very sexy. I called Cyd on Sunday in San Francisco, to talk about his atypical trans background, how he handles negative reactions, and how he hopes to distinguish BHB from the work of more established trans porn stars like Buck Angel.

Adam: Tell me a little bit about your background. Where are you from?

I grew up in a combination of New Mexico and Australia. Among the most important things in my personal background is that I’ve been a sex worker for about 10 years. I’ve also done a lot of sex worker activism. I work at a public health clinic now for current and former sex workers. I’ve done activism around HIV issues, social justice, that kind of stuff. I’m also a writer.

How did you first begin to understand that you were trans?

I grew up in a time where the only people I saw being trans were trans women on Jerry Springer and though something about it was really alluring, I didn’t really understand how trans women portrayed in a sensationalistic fashion related to me as a young girl. I always felt like an ‘other’ and it wasn’t until I moved to Australia and started going out in the queer community more that I met someone who was a trans guy. I was like, oh, that’s intriguing to me in a way that I couldn’t really place yet. But as soon as I started fucking trans guys I was like, oh maybe this is what I am. You become the thing you fuck. Which is something I think many gay men can relate to. But I still was having sex with trans men then, as a cis-gendered women. I didn’t know many trans guys who were gay and I’ve always been attracted to men. I didn’t really understand how I fit into that. I think a lot of people conflate sexuality and gender. They assume that all trans people are transitioning to become straight in a way, which I think is a really heterosexist narrative or culture that we grew up in. The idea that I could transition to male and still be attracted to men was something that I had to learn to understand that it was possible and find. My sexuality and gender are separate things. So when I kind of saw that reflected around me, I was like, oh ok, this is who I am. That’s when I started transitioning. That was about seven years ago.

Your story sounds atypical to most of the transmale narratives I’ve heard. You didn’t have the thing where you felt more like you were a boy from an early age?

I do have a kind of atypical narrative. I remember when I was really young having some gender feelings that seemed really different from my peers but I think I kinda learned to repress that pretty quickly in order to exist in the world.

You transitioned about seven years ago. Take me through how the process went. What kind of procedures you had, if that’s okay to ask?

Yeah. I started hormones about six months after coming out and then I got top surgery in 2009. I transitioned a little bit slower than I probably would have done on my own because as a sex worker my primary income was escorting. At that time there really wasn’t a market for transman escorts. I needed to figure out how to go about combining that — what I need to look like and be like to get money and then also what I need to be like and look like for mental health and exist in the world the way I want to.

How different is your body now from then, in terms of your physique and your musculature?

It’s pretty different. I’m a really hairy person now. That’s one of the biggest things. I was never a voluptuous girl so it’s not a huge change in that way, but after taking testosterone I started getting really big muscles. My biceps just popped. It’s really interesting to inhabit a body that changes not because of your lifestyle but because of a difference in the chemicals going on in your body. There’s kind of this trope of like, transmen who do these YouTube video like “I’ve been on T for 12 days and 4 hours and this is what’s happening.” In a way those narratives, you’re like okay, not everyone needs to know about your fourth chest hair, but it is a really amazing process that does take a lot of your mental capacity. Wow, every day that I wake up there’s something that’s slightly different about my body that’s going to an end result that I don’t know yet. It’s really a fascinating process.

It sounds like a kind of a rebirth that you watch outside yourself. You’re changing moment by moment but also observing how you’re changing.

That’s true. For every second as we’re talking right now we’re getting older and living and dying and all that kind of stuff. I think that to exist in the world you have to get out of that mindset and taking hormones puts you back into that. With gender dysphoria, a lot of people who are trans spend a lot of years feeling disconnected from their bodies, and then hormones tunnel vision you right back into your body.

You didn’t decide to do the bottom surgery, why did you make that decision?

I mean there’s a couple different reasons. I don’t personally like the options that are available for bottom surgery and also they’re incredibly expensive. Also I’m really very happy with what I got. I feel really lucky that I don’t have gender dysphoria about having a pussy. I think that socially it gets awkward at times inhabiting gay male spaces and not have a penis. That can be distressing, but for myself and my own sexuality, I am really happy with what I got.

I think it’s interesting for instance, in the “Casting Couch” video on your site, the tension is about if you’re going to reveal that part of you, and what is that going to mean in terms of this scenario…

Yeah. I kind of wrote that scene based around experiences I’ve had. A lot of times when I come out at trans, the situation is not ideal. Someone will start crying.

People have started crying?

Yeah. This is really funny. I hooked up with this guy in New York once. It was funny because it was at a trans man party, but apparently he wasn’t that bright and didn’t think that it was possible that I was a trans man. So we were making out, blah blah blah, went to a hotel room that we got. He was like, “I want you to piss on me.” I was like, “Okay!” He’d also snorted some Adderall so he was being a little intense. Then he got in the bathtub and I got up and started peeing on him and he started crying. I was like, “Okay girl, what’s going on with you?” He was like, “I didn’t know that you were trans,” and started flipping out about it. I was like, “Okay well that’s a personal problem.” (laughs) I gave a lot of indicators that I was trans even if I didn’t specifically say, “I am a transsexual male,” I alluded to it.

“Trigger Warning! I need to disclose something to you…”

Haha. Yeah. It’s frustrating that I often have to do that. Sometimes it is appropriate. I don’t want to be getting into a bedroom with someone who doesn’t know what anatomy I have. But it’s a very frustrating process I have to go to, to be like all the time, “Okay you’re attracted to me, we’re getting along great, but you know, here you go, I actually have a vagina.” It causes different reactions. Sometimes people are just fine with it. I have hooked up with people in the backs of bars. I have had a lot of queer casual encounters in public spaces that I never would have had the confidence to earlier. But also sometimes it’s like I’ve told people that in the backs of bars, and suddenly I’m in Heathers and everyone starts whispering and pointing at me. It’s like okay…

When did the idea to start a porn company come into play?

I have wanted to start a porn company for a really long time. I decided to do it with my friend Ex Libris, who originally came up with the idea for Bonus Hole Boys. But I think the imagery is really important and there wasn’t a lot of imagery. Buck Angel has been around for a long time doing porn with cisgendered men, but my gender and sexuality aren’t attractive to some people. Some people are like “I only like dick,” and that’s fine. But I think that many gay men are interested in trans men but they don’t let themselves be, and I think that creating images that show trans men having sex with other gay men can unravel some of that.

I’ve had sex with one trans guy, and it was an incredibly enjoyable experience, and I was very turned on in a different way. It was a way where I felt both excited by not being bound up in the gay thing. It was an exciting and moving experience.

That makes sense. A lot of cis gay guys will say, “Well I’m a top, and I like bottoms, so you’re perfect.” It doesn’t complicate their sexuality any more than that. They’re like, you’re a dude with an extra hole for me to fuck and top. But I also think that we have really rigid ideas around sexuality, like either you’re gay or straight or you might be bi or we’re going to be kind of shady to you about it. Once you’re gay or straight you can’t do anything out of that box. I think the beauty of queer sex is you don’t just have to say, “This is the only type of body that I’m attracted to.” You can be attracted to multiple types of bodies and have different types of experiences. Most people are happier when they allow themselves that room, and it’s like also true within gay male circles, people who say, “I’m only gonna have sex with twinks or gay muscle bears.” They miss out on people who don’t fit that narrow physical image of all they’re into. Bodies matter but also other things matter.

When I had sex with this trans man, which is my admittedly limited frame of reference, I really wanted to fuck them, but they were like, “not tonight, I’m not ready.” I got the impression that they did not want to use the front hole to get fucked, they wanted to get fucked in the ass and maybe were not prepared. I’m curious, do trans guys who have sex with men use their pussy more than their anus, and in your porn are you going to have anal sex as well as vaginal sex?

Yeah. In our shoots we’re gonna have both. Probably for our site it’s probably going to be people who are comfortable having vaginal sex. That’s what I’m interested in showing. But all trans men are different. I can’t be like, “Most people are into this, or that.” A lot of trans guys I know have never used their front hole. They’re not interested in it. They’re never going to be interested in it. And that’s fine. That is what works for them. But I happen to be different and some people I know happen to be comfortable with that, but that’s by no means a rule. I don’t want people watching Bonus Hole Boys to be like “Oh this is what all trans guys are into.” That would be a fallacy the same way learning lessons from any porn scene would be. “I watched a girl get jackhammered in straight porn so I’m going to do that to someone I just met.” I also think that a lot of anxiety comes up for trans men in sleeping with gay men, that the gay men they are sleeping with will feminize that dynamic or say something sketchy or treat them weird.

You mentioned Buck Angel. Has his presence made it easier for you to establish your business? And are there things in your work that you’re trying to make distinctive from his?

I think he does great work and he’s been doing porn for a really long time and definitely has laid the groundwork for other companies to arise and helped people to understand that trans men who have sex with men exist. When I do escorting a lot of the time people will be like, “I’m a fan of Buck Angel’s.” I think that in our porn we want to show a big variety of different kinds of transmen and different kinds of sex. We’re doing a lot of role-play stuff. Daddy-boy role play. Cruising scenes. Fratboy initiations. BDSM stuff. So we’re trying to create, what would the right phrase be? A rich, diverse environment for different kinds of gay sex with trans men.

Beyond Buck Angel do you have other trans porn stars who are inspirations?

James Darling has a site called FTM Fucker, which always includes one trans men in each shoot. There’s a variety of different content. Some of it’s straight, some gay, some trans, some queer. He’s been doing really good work. I really appreciate his website and what it brings. Then I know that Bailey Jay who’s a trans woman, she’s starting a website that’s kind of about different types of trans bodies in porn. It’s gonna have some trans men, some genderfluid folks. I’m excited to see what comes of that. Crash Pad has done porn with trans men for years and years. None of those sites are specifically gay-only content though.

Are there gay porn stars or directors that you follow and look to as models for what you’re doing?

I’m really into 70’s gay porn. That’s kind of the aesthetic that I’m interested in. So Joe Gage is kind of where we are taking a lot of our cues. I really like the work of Colby Keller. Been trying to poach him for a while. I think Cockyboys is so beautiful. Some of what I’m interested in bringing with Bonus Hole Boys is intimate gay sex. A lot of times when I watch gay porn that’s made recently there’s a certain lack of intimacy and it’s very much about angles and holes and sometimes people seem kind of disinterested in each other. I like the way that with Cockyboys, you feel very present in the action and you feel like the people who are fucking each other really care about each other and are really excited and greedy for each other’s bodies. We’re interested in creating something like that.

Have you gotten in touch with Colby?

I have been in contact with him and I know that he’s doing a tour so I’m gonna email him again. He’s never had sex with a trans guy. He said he was thinking about and now that we have more content up we can message him again. We’ve been contacting a lot of gay porn stars, we’ve gotten a lot of applications and a lot of people have been really into it. We’ve been a lot of people’s scenes with a first scenes with a trans men and a lot of people’s first sexual experience with a trans man. It’s really awesome that they’re down to do it but I also understand when they’re like, “I don’t know what this looks like.”

We have all these commenters who are obsessed with “Who’s bisexual? Who’s straight? Who’s gay for pay?” This might be used as evidence, “Oh so and so is not gay they fucked a pussy.” People are too close minded to accept that there’s more things in the spectrum and just accept the idea that it can still be gay sex.

Yeah. They can get over themselves. I had someone give me a really good piece of advice when I was thinking about this website. And trying to deconstruct everything that I might hear about it. They were like “I really suggest that you get over yourself. It’s just porn. It’s not the end of the world.” If someone doesn’t like your porn, and says that person had sex with someone with a pussy and that changes how they feel about them, maybe they should get over themselves.

For sure, yeah. I understand that. Have there been negative reactions to the site?

Yeah. There are always going to be negative reactions to porn because it’s a very emotional topic for people. I think especially when there’s such a small amount of porn that represents trans people if it doesn’t feel right to them, or reflective of their lives, it can feel threatening. Whereas if you see gay men and you’re like “Oh I don’t like that gay porn, that doesn’t do it for me and isn’t what I look like, you can just look at another website. When there’s only a handful of websites doing trans male porn each one of those is going to hold a lot more meaning for you. We haven’t experienced a lot of backlash yet, but I imagine that we will.

 is there somebody famous – porn or non-porn that you’re most desperate to fuck? 

Ooh. That’s such a big question. I’ve had a crush on Conner Habib for a long time, although he’s been my riding instructor so that could be a little awkward.*

He was your riding instructor?

Yeah when he lived in San Francisco.

And you never made that happen? That’s a perfect porn scenario. You’re in the stable and you’re like that horse has a huge cock and he’s like so do I. You know? You’re a pornographer now you gotta push things!

Yeah. I was being respectful. Haha. He would be a big one.

Tell me about the logistics of setting up the business – do you have investors, capital, how do you pay the porn stars?

This project is actually from Ex Libris’ savings, which is a big leap. We’re putting down money and hoping for the best. Hoping for the market to spring into action. We don’t have investors and so we’re paying for models and doing all the work ourselves.

Do you have a plan for how you want this year to go?

Yeah. So we’re putting out releases, we’re gonna be putting out two releases. One this coming Monday and one the next. We’ll be doing one a month and also focusing on the world of marketing, which apart from escorting is not a world I’m super adept at. We need to figure out how we market ourselves. Someone took some photos of us off the Twitter page and did a short article on Queer Me Now that we didn’t know about until I Googled my own name. Some people were really into us and excited and some people were like, “This isn’t even gay porn.” Trying to figure out how to reach the people that we want to reach, in the face of having a lot of people not being interested in talking about us, is the challenge. I had a client in New York recently who was like “I had no idea that trans men were someone I would be attracted to until I saw your Rentboy ad.” So trying to find people like that who don’t even know something like this could exist is also the goal.

*via email, Cyd clarified that Conner was his writing instructor, not riding instructor, rendering the subsequent exchange hilarious

____________

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Trans Male Porn Performer Cyd St. Vincent Talks Buttholes and ‘Bonus Holes’ appeared first on The Sword.

With formulaic gay porn flooding every corner of the web, there could be no better time for the re-emergence of the great Wakefield Poole, the pioneering porn director whose films caused the sexual awakenings of millions of gay men all over the world.

When Poole’s groundbreaking first film Boys in the Sand was released in 1971, the sheer artistry at work, from the influence of Poole’s ballet training inherent in the film’s plot and style to the brilliant PR campaign and release strategy Poole and producer Marvin Shulman dreamed up, worked in tandem to produce a seismic shift in the world at large. Soon gay porn was being reviewed in magazines like The New York Times and Variety, forcing people to see all-male erotica in a joyous and beautiful way, rather than as something sordid and unnatural. Overnight, the golden age of gay porn was born. It was a period rife with experimentation, where filmmakers like Joe Gage, Jack Deveau, Fred Halsted, Jean-Daniel Cadinot, Peter de Rome, Steve Scott and Jacques Scandalari took the genre to dazzling new heights.

This year offers two major opportunities to re-consider the work of Poole and his impact on the gay porn industry. First, the cult and straight porn DVD distributors Vinegar Syndrome have issued the definitive restorations of Poole’s films: Boys in the Sand, Bijou, Bible!, and in November, Poole’s ultra-rare masterpiece Take One. The DVDs feature brand-new 2K restorations, all new directors commentaries, early never-before-seen short experimental films, and other extras produced by documentarian Jim Tushinski, who spent 7 years directing a thrilling new documentary about Poole’s life, titled I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole. Tushinski’s documentary follows Poole’s unbelievable life: his early years as a child prodigy, days dancing with the Ballet Russes, Broadway career, adventures in the porn world and his despairing slide into drug addiction. The film premieres in Los Angeles on July 12^th at Outfest: Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and screens at New York’s NewFest on July 28^th. Poole and Tushinski plan to be in attendance at both screenings.

Last week, I called Poole at his home in Jacksonville, the city where he spent his childhood and returned to in 2003. In the first part of our interview we talked about his early years, sexual experiences, cinematic influences, and the making of Boys in the Sand.

Adam: Hi Mr. Poole, first of all. Congratulations on the documentary. It’s terrific.

Wakefield Poole: Thank you. Jim did a nice job.

What was it like working on him to make it?

Long. It took us about 7 years. It was funding that was the hard thing, as it seems to be with most people making documentaries. We had to go for support from donors. Because it involved pornography we couldn’t get a lot of big grants. We got one grant of about eight-thousand dollars but the rest was privately from friends of mine and Jim’s. He went online and got stuff that way. We did it when we had the money to do it. We fortunately got off to a good start. We did interviews in New York, then we went out to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles. We did interviews with people in three major cities. Jim had a lot of material to work with. He could have made three movies.

Well of course with your incredible life I’m sure that’s true. For me the film also could have gone on and on. But for you it really did go on and on, cause you lived it!

Still going, thank god.

Have you seen the film with an audience yet?

Yeah. We did screenings in Philadelphia and we went to Berlin for a work-in-progress screening. We went to Israel and had a very successful time there. They showed one of my films every night for seven nights and ended with the documentary. It was like a Wakefield Poole festival. I was very excited by the reactions we got.

Have any reactions surprised you?

No, not really. I’m amazed at how emotional some people get. A lot of tears. I said to Jim, “I always had a fun life. I had a good time” so I’m surprised people are so moved by it. Certainly I’m glad rather than people not being moved. But the response has been terrific. The Q&As we’ve done have been very rewarding. People have been very responsive and they want to know more even after it’s over.

One of the reasons I’m sure the audience is so moved by the film is the amount of time spent highlighting your early years as a child prodigy and a dancer with the Ballet Russes. It starts off the film and is one of the most moving and fascinating segments of your life. Do you still go to see ballet and take in dance and theater?

I’m still very interested. We don’t have a lot in Jacksonville. I’m in what I call the belt buckle of the Bible belt. We have a ballet company here and at Christmas we have two different Nutcrackers. We have a wonderful art school that has a wonderful dance department. But we don’t have a lot of theater here. We get road shows but that’s about it. I try to go back to New York about twice a year. But because of the film, when I’ve gone back, I have to do so many activities related to the film that I don’t have much time to do much.

Now last night I was reading an obituary for Peter de Rome, the French gay porn director, and in this obituary it said his films were among the impetus for you to make Boys in the Sand. I remembered that you always said seeing Highway Hustler, which you thought was just awful, was what really inspired Boys in the Sand. I was curious which was correct?

Highway Hustler is the one that did it. I had seen Peter’s films because Michael Maletta, a very good friend of mine whose house we filmed Boys in the Sand in, invited people over to his house. We dropped mescaline and smoked grass and Peter de Rome had his little 8mm camera and he showed his films and they were not hardcore. Very much like Pat Rocco’s films. Very nice vignettes, very unpretentious. We saw about six of his films and then went on and partied. That’s when I met him. And I had hadn’t seen him again until after Bijou was made. Jack Deveau who was another filmmaker who ran Hand-in-Hand films he took Peter on and put his films out on VHS. That’s what started it. When they called to ask me to be interviewed for Peter’s documentary, they said they’d come meet me in Germany, and so they did and I saw them again because I wanted to see them before I did the interview because I really didn’t remember them well because we were so stoned. He was an influence, I admit that in the film, but he didn’t inspire me to make Boys in the Sand.

How long before you made Boys in the Sand had you seen de Rome’s films?

I had already made two sections of Boys in the Sand when I saw Peter de Rome’s films. That same summer when my lover Peter Fisk, who starred in Boys in the Sand, and I went out to stay with Michael and his partner Tom on Fire Island, we filmed the first section and had to go back and re-do it again. So that one I did twice in one month and in July I did the second section and in August, right before the end of the season I did the last section and I had it ready for a December premiere. It was a good time. I really enjoyed it. We were experimenting and trying things. I had no idea what it was going to be. We just knew that people liked it and we did decided to make it into a feature because people liked it so much. That was one of the best summers of my life when I did that movie.

I’m curious, Boys in the Sand is sometimes improperly referred to as the first gay porn movie, but as you’ve pointed out there were other people making gay porn movies before it was released.

Definitely there were. But like, going back to Peter de Rome, they called him “The grandfather of porno” and they said, “Do you mind?” And I said, no, why should I mind? He was making movies — his little home movies — for ten years before me. The only difference between Peter and I is that I was not afraid. I took the step and put it out there. Here it is and this is what I’ve done and this is what I think people should see. I put my neck on the line and Peter didn’t. He preferred to take his films around and show them in people’s living rooms. That’s what he did for years and years. I told my interviewers that the reason Boys in the Sand is called the first film is we were the first people to treat it like a film. We didn’t sneak it into town and play it in some small dark little underground theater somewhere, or in a 25-cent machine. We treated it like a movie from the very beginning. When we did the first segment people said, “Oh it’s wonderful, I’ve never seen anything like it,” and blah-blah-blah and went on and on, and I said to my producer Marvin Schulman “Marvin, I think we should make a feature, and lets do it like a real movie. Put it into movie theaters and have a press agent.” And that’s what we did. We did a lot of social screenings. Robert. L. Green who was the fashion editor of Playboy, did a brunch and invited all these New York models and Cal [Casey Donovan] was there and he knew most of the people because he had did some modeling. People started talking about it. It was Christmas Eve and we made the buzz happen. People really liked it. Mixed people saw it together – men and women, we didn’t make it necessarily a gay event.

And you had an ad in The New York Times, which was a big first.

Yes, the first ad was in the Sunday Times right after Christmas and we took a sixth of a page in The New York Times. I was surprised they took it but they did. It said “All Male Cast in Color” and we put the show times because we wanted people to go see the movie. Beginning at noon, the next was 1:30 or 2:00, and then it just went on. People treated it like a real movie. We got reviewed because by screening it and giving it the respect it deserved, the press had to review it. They couldn’t ignore because there it was in The New York Times. We kept large ads in everyday. We’d change the critic quotes everyday. One day it would say “Casey Donovan is every gay’s dream” and the next day it would say “The actors look they were hired from DIAL-A-HUSTLER” we started making fun of ourselves.

So you were making up the quotes?

Oh yes, Harvey and I did the whole thing with our press agent. We had an ad agency and we did different ads because of the size. Our advertising budget was the biggest budget we had. It went on for 16 weeks. Variety did a huge article — a page and a half — on Marvin and I. It said “Amateurs Bring in Bonanza” because the first week we opened we were number like 46 in the top 50 grossing films in the US and we were playing only one theater. The buzz was great. We were very lucky. We had good taste. We dressed up the theater. Cleaned up the bathrooms. Put toilet paper and paper towels. We wanted to make it a place where people had nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to go “Ew” about.

Casey Donovan in ‘Moving!’

Obviously you didn’t live in a vacuum and there were people like Warhol and Jack Smith making films, and I’m curious if you had other cinematic influences you looked at while you were making your films?

Just films in general. I started watching films when I was old enough to walk, I saw just about every film that was made. In terms of experimental films, certainly Andy Warhol was a big influence on me. I saw all his films. Sat through Chelsea Girls twice, and I had seen some of Pat Rocco’s films earlier. A friend of mine took me in Los Angeles. I think I met him briefly. Fellini of course in terms of foreign films. I used to go to the Thalia quite often. I would see foreign films. I wasn’t married to Hollywood films. I loved them all. I loved movies. I loved the ability to escape.

Were Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger a big influence on your films as well?

Absolutely. I saw The Red Shoes when it came out about a dozen times. I was studying ballet here in Jacksonville and I took notes. I could re-choreograph the whole ballet because I took notes and studied the choreography. I was blown away by that element. And during one trip to New York to study, across from Schubert Alley there was a theater called the Bijou and there was a theater playing Tales of Hoffman, and it was like a road show engagement. You had to get tickets in advance like a Broadway show. And then Life Magazine did a huge article on it and talked about the effects and how they did it. Most of it was painted on the floor, and they shot it from above. He was a great influence. I also loved the one he made about the murder mystery, about a man who was filming people. Peeping Tom.

I see that in your films. The thing of the men coming out of the water in Boys in the Sand feels like your version of Michael Powell effect. Or in Bijou too, which has tons of wonderful trick effects.

He got me into experimental films. Once I saw what could be done in a camera. I wasn’t even shooting films then, I didn’t start shooting films until 20 years later but that whole thing was so present in my mind I never forgot what the camera was capable of even on a low budget. I even rented 16 mm films after I made Boys in the Sand. I’d rent prints of Ziegfield Follies. We would watch the film on a projector, and then we’d watch it in reverse, and it was incredible because the music sounded like a Strauss opera and the dresses would flow, but in a different way than you’d ever seen before. So I experimented with other films and the way they were projected. The camera’s an amazing thing. When you were able to take one and hold it in your hand and had access to it. I got the bug and very simply they just amazed me. And the funny thing is today I don’t even own a camera. I stil have the old ones but not a new one.

In this age when everyone has a video camera in their phones you don’t have one?

I have one on my phone, but I don’t use it for anything but taking pictures of my cats.

I’m wondering if there was an early film that you remember being physically turned on by?

That’s a really good question. I don’t know. I think I remember a film about Rome, about gladiators, I remember that being very exciting, but I don’t know what the name of it was. It wasn’t a Steve Reeves movie or anything like that. My old age makes me forget things. I saw a lot of very erotic movies. I thought Reflections in a Golden Eye was unbelievably erotic . I didn’t find Last Tango in Paris erotic. It was really made at the same time I was making my films. It all depends on the mood you’re in and who you’re with and if people are talking into the theater and whether you’re able to get into a hot mood. I’ve never seen it again.

One of the things I’ve always wanted to ask you about is the time you had sex with one of the most famous gay movie stars in history, Rock Hudson.

Yes, I did. I met him. Well I didn’t meet him. I was picked up by somebody else who brought me to his apartment. I didn’t know where I was going. I was at the Continental Baths and being my trashy self. This guy had been watching me and I was aware of him watching me for the last 45 minutes I was there. He finally came up to me and said, “Are you worn out?” And I said “No.” And he said, “Well I have a friend I think would like you. Would you like to come meet him?” I said, ‘I’m always up for an adventure.” We went up to this apartment, and I think it was on the East Side. Might have been around Turtle Bay. We walked in and there he was in a robe. After we finished I left, and there was never any mention of who he was. I never mentioned it. I played the game.

What was he like in bed?

He was very calm. Nothing frenetic about him. We did just about everything, I think. We never moved to a bedroom. We did it right on the couch.

Was he versatile? Did he get fucked as well as fucking you?

Yes.

Did he have a big cock?

Yes. Bigger than average I’d say. He definitely liked huge dicks. He was a size queen.

What was the etiquette around that like? When you slept with a famous person like Rock Hudson, who you knew was closeted, were you able to tell your friends? Or did you want to protect him?

Of course I told my close friends. I didn’t make it a constant topic of conversation. I didn’t tell many people at all and I was not going to include that story in my book, but I did end up feeling it was too good a story to leave out. It was very self-deprecating on my part because I was such a slut at the baths that night that his friend would know that Rock would like me because he liked slutty guys. I never had a problem sexually. I had a boyfriend when I was five.

Tell me a little about that.

I was living in North Carolina. My neighbor behind me. We used to play together. I really loved him. Until I was about 8 years old. I used to leave my bedroom, sneak out through the garden, and go to his house and knock on his screen and he’d let me in and we’d sleep together and in the morning his father would get up and go to work. He was a Pepsi-Cola distributor, and I would crawl out the window and our families never knew about it.

Was it pre-sexual?

We had our first orgasm together. Once of the hottest things in my book Dirty Poole is when Jack and I were playing one afternoon and our next door neighbor’s father had built a playhouse and it was very large, a little one room house, and he kept his hunting dogs in it and one day he was cleaning it out and it got very quiet and I felt sexual vibes even though I was only eight years old. He kept insisting that we come in. You had to go through this wire enclosure to get in and he was cleaning it out, and he masturbated for us. It was the first time I ever saw an orgasm. Jack and I were standing there with our mouths wide open. We’d never seen anything like it. He said, “Sit there and watch and one day you’ll be able to do it.” He went “Oh god, oh god, Oh Jesus!” I thought masturbation was a religious experience. It wasn’t until later that I discovered people awful mentioned God or Jesus when they’re having an orgasm. Then Jack came down to Florida right after I moved. I wrote little notes to him and he wrote back and I asked my parents if he could come down and it was right when the war ended, one night we were in the bed and this guy had shown us how to masturbate and finally one night we reached an orgasm. He’s straight now and had six girls. Still alive.

In Boys in the Sand, you have two couplings, two scenes where men magically appear out of bodies of water — first the ocean and then the pool. I’m curious where that idea came from. To me it feels like something that must have been in a dream from childhood. It has that urgency.

I’m a Pisces, number one. Water was very prominent that time. I was on Fire Island at length for the first time and it was just so wonderful out there. A fabulous place. The only time I felt more free in my life was when I was at Woodstock. Being a druggie and smoking grass. Walking around and smoking joints and taking acid. I felt very free. I felt the same thing going to Fire Island. You don’t feel any pressure. You can totally be who you are and not have to put any restrictions on yourself. The ocean was there, and we went to parties and swam in pools. I never had that fantasy. But when I was thinking about making a movie, my ballet training was in my head, my theatrical background. I thought if I’m going to make something, I want it to be pretty, to be a fantasy. Play on the fantasy element instead of realism. That’s where I came up with the idea of appearing out of the water and appearing out of the swimming pool. I thought that would be funny. I wanted there to be humor in the movie because gay people aren’t just sleazy and down and they have fun. God knows we have fun. So I wanted to do a thing that was funny. I really make fun of movies in the second section. With the calendar burning and floating across the pool. Recently, about three or four years ago, people started to laugh. I thought how fabulous that they’re starting to laugh in the middle of a porno movie. When he comes out of the water there’s a huge laugh. That was very important to me, to make it well rounded and have the fantasy. To make the first section very innocent. The second segment is about wanting to be established, have a lover, someone to spend your life with. And then the third segment is hedonistic.

Hedonistic, but also fantasy.

Yes. Still fantasy but showing what someone’s life was going to be like once they came out and started to live their fantasies. Fantasies were going to change throughout their life. That’s what hit with their life whether they knew it or not. It took them on a journey through life.

Casey Donovan and Peter

Do you watch porn now?

No. In the 1980’s I watched a few, and one they became so formulaic, and I’m not interested in anything, what do you call it? Gay for pay. I made movies about people who wanted to fuck with each other. Not just people who wanted to make money. People said, “What makes your films different from everybody elses?” I said, “The people that I used, really wanted to make love to the person they were with, or I didn’t use them. I made sure there was some chemistry there. I didn’t say, “Okay now you fuck him and now turn over and fuck him. Lick his ass.” I never did things like that. I made the things happen, and I was the director. I set up things myself. In Boys in the Sand, I didn’t have any camera boy or anything. When the people were making love I didn’t want to stop so they just kept on going and I changed the film and rewound the camera. When I came back they might have been doing something else that they weren’t doing before. I learned very quickly that you had to have cutaways to match the shots. Because you might not be able to if you had to stop and rewind the camera. That I learned immediately. Even though they would continue to have sex they would change it up. That’s what I liked about it was that they were going on a sexual adventure the way it would happen in your life. You just don’t go to bed with someone and turn them over and fuck them. You try something here, change your approach, do something different. You get that in my films, you don’t get that in these other films. It’s just blow each other for a little while, eventually it ends up in someone getting fucked. And then it ends. That’s what got me out of porno, from watching it.

Did you see the remake that Jake Deckard made of Boys in the Sand?* [Editor’s note: He’s referring to Men in the Sand.]

Yeah, I did. He called me and said I’m making a film to honor you and blah blah blah. He wanted permission and I said, “I don’t understand, are you remaking the movie?” He said, “No I’m doing it as an homage to you.” I said, “Well you can’t just remake the movie, unless you want to come up with some dollars or an agreement or something.” I said, “Talk to your lawyer about it and I’ll make some agreement about it with you. I’ll work with you.” Of course he didn’t. He sent me a copy of the movie and of course he didn’t even say anything about me in any of the publicity. He had nothing to say about me. So what he said he was gonna do was bullshit. He said, “I’ll make Boys in the Sand viable again.” That’s what he said. “I’ll make it reborn.” I thought well I’m just gonna leave it alone. I didn’t go in for any lawsuits or anything like that. But I didn’t think it was very good.

NEXT WEEK: IN PART 2 of my interview with Wakefield Poole, we discuss his masterpiece Bijou, his glorious straight flop Bible!, and if he’s really been celibate since 1980…

*Editor’s Note: This question was corrected to reflect an error in phrasing. It was Jake Deckard who made Men in the Sand and not Colby Keller. Colby never contacted Wakefield regarding this film.

Below, a clip from 2012’s Men In the Sand. Watch it all here.

____________

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Wakefield Poole Talks About Fucking Rock Hudson and the Heyday Of Art Porn appeared first on The Sword.

In celebration of the new documentary, I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole, premiering at Outfest this week, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new DVD restorations of Poole’s groundbreaking classics Boys in the Sand, Bijou, Bible! and Take One, our interview with the the 78-year-old porn pioneer continues.

I rang up Poole at his home in Jacksonville, Florida to talk about his incredible life and work. Last week we covered Poole’s early years, the impact of Boys in the Sand, and what he thinks of gay porn today. This week our discussion revolves around Poole’s superior follow-up, the enigmatic sex-club dream film Bijou, which never achieved the same name recognition-status as its predecessor despite even greater critical acclaim and a cult fan base amongst die-hard porn enthusiasts which continues to grow. We also touch on Poole’s long-standing celibacy, the encounter which almost made him a very wealthy man, and his struggles following a scary car accident a few years ago.

Bijou is my favorite of all of your films and more than that I think it’s my favorite gay porn film ever made. It’s such an incredible piece of work. Where did the idea for the film come from?

Well after I did Boys in the Sand, I wanted to make another movie right away, and I was on top of the world. I learned so much making the movie I wanted to make another movie to show everybody what I learned. I was going to make a straight movie because right after I did Boys in the Sand, Deep Throat opened and it made all that money. We made a lot of money on our movie but nothing like Deep Throat did. So I thought maybe I should make a straight movie, and Martin liked money too so we entertained that idea. And I got an idea about a fashion model. All my movies come from what’s around me at the time and I was surrounded by models then. So I thought maybe I’ll make a movie about a model and there’s a place where she goes to get her rocks off and get serviced by these guys and it could be totally anonymous and she doesn’t have to have any commitment. She can let her hair down and do whatever she wanted. An then when the Nixon thing got so bad with all the lawsuits and all that, I thought maybe we should stay in this small little genre and they’ll leave us alone. So I took the original idea and twisted it around and made it about a construction worker.

A still from Bijou.

I had to think of some way to get him to the Bijou, and the original idea was that the girl just had the invitation in her purse, and she would open it up and look at it and go down there. I decided to change the model into a construction worker because I wanted it to be really not exactly clear who this type of person was. Most people thought construction workers were straight and so there would be a surprise coming later. I tried to think of things all the way through the movie that would be tension-building, and then have a release. More than one release, or more than one more orgasm.

We’ve mentioned Michael Powell as an influence, but Jean Cocteau seems like even more of an influence on Bijou.

Oh, absolutely. Beauty and the Beast, Blood of a Poet. I used to go to the Thalia often. We would see all those films. Genet as well.

How long did it take you to write Bijou?

I wrote the story in one day. The shooting script in one day. I had one paragraph for each person. I saw it exactly in my head as I wanted to do it. Peter went to the gym and then the baths afterwards and I spent the whole twenty hours just developing the look of the film and what I wanted in the film. It became very organic. We got Bill Harrison to do the film, which was a big plus because he was a wonderful actor, though you wouldn’t believe he is acting in the film. He was so trusting and so right with me, everything I wanted him to do. There was never any resistance. Even though he didn’t always understand what I was going for, he took direction beautifully. I would say pick up the purse and look at it and open it up and bring out the lipstick. Make a phallic symbol out of it. He licked it. He was right with me. He created the film right along with me. Everything I wanted to be not specific, he helped worked out. Right down to — I wanted El Greco’s Christ on the back of the door. In the old print they did such a terrible job that you couldn’t see it. But the new restoration by Vinegar Syndrome is absolutely gorgeous and when he goes out of the apartment, there’s El Greco’s Chris on the back of the door, and then there’s Playgirl pictures all over the wall. No shower curtain. All that was done on purpose.

Another still from Bijou.

And for the audience not to be able to pinpoint him down as one type of person. So that whatever you saw, for instance if you recognized that picture of Christ you might think he had some religious beliefs and then the fact that he had a little tiny unattractive apartment, maybe he was not sophisticated. The radio station was not necessarily talking about things a construction worker might be interested in. And there was rock music playing. Led Zeppelin. I was told that I should take it out or I’d get sued and I never did and I at one point a friend told me that Led Zeppelin had seen it and they thought it was hysterical and wonderful that I’d used that music.

How did you create such a precise world, not just the clues in the apartment but the Bijou club itself? Where did the visual inspiration for that come from?

From my interest in art. Going to art galleries. My association with Andy Warhol. Even though I was not a close friend at all, the whole pop art scene at that time was unbelievable. Peter got me interested in art. I mean I was always interested in art but we used to go to galleries and museums every Saturday. The Whitney, Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum. We’d do that all day. Madison Ave. Soho. All day. It was a big influence. That’s why there’s so much art in Bijou. The Richard Chamberlain sculpture which I owned. He walks by and touches it. It was big enough to fit on a coffee table, I photographed that and then shot Bill Harrison, and made it look four times as big as Bill Harrison was. There’s a chair that Bill sits on when he first walks in the Bijou to take off his shoes, and there’s a Dan Flavin fluorescent sculpture tied to the back of the chair. So there’s art all the way through Bijou. That’s really what made it so visually interesting. I was so overwhelmed with what was around me all the time.

In your book Dirty Poole you describe your art collection, and the list of what you owned is quite staggering.

I spent all my money buying art. At one time I had twenty-six Warhols, four Lichtensteins, two Oldenbergs, one Jasper Johns. I became a serious collector. I had all ten Marilyns. I also bought ten Electric Chairs. Someone said “Why are you spending all your money?” I said, “This is my retirement.” And it turned out to be, because when I stopped making films and I stopped having money coming in and I bottomed out on the drugs, I had no money. I was destitute again and not hire-able. There was nothing I could do. So I started selling piece by piece to keep myself straight and get off the drugs. I never sold art to buy drugs. Not that I didn’t want to. I sold a lot of other things. A Khyber rifle I bought from Afghanistan, but I never sold a piece of art until I wanted to keep living. I had my lover Paul at the time and he was very sick and I wanted keep him safe.

Bijou was critically one of the most acclaimed of your films. To me it seems like one of the few moments in the history of gay porn when you could see the possibility of another kind of porn taking shape. A more artistic, experimental dreamlike genre.

Bijou for me was like watching a live Michelangelo sculpture. With those beautiful bodies. I couldn’t photograph it badly. The way it was lit, the way they did things. The way they would form these pictures like living statues. I was able to capture those. And the fact that it was enigmatic, you had to add to it if you wanted to enjoy it all, if you wanted to keep going. Tension and suspense were always in the back of your mind while watching the movie. Along with the hard-ons and the art. All those things worked and I will be honest and immodest by saying I don’t think there’s ever been another film like it.

I agree with you.

Everybody who’s seen it, well I won’t say everybody because some people didn’t get it at all, the people that did get it has remained in their memory as an event. Jack Fritscher, the writer from San Francisco, he was the founding editor of Drummer Magazine and became a very good writer. Jack carried on about Bijou every time I saw him. Every now and then he’ll write something about Bijou on Facebook, calling it the highlight of his sexual life. After Bijou was over I got an invitation to screen it at the Designer’s Council Conference, where all the designers meet once a year to talk about what they’re doing and discuss what the fashions are going to be. One year  they showed Bijou and it was so successful they had to show it again at midnight. Brendan Gill wrote an article about the life-enhancing qualities of the blue movie. He used Bijou and The Devil in Miss Jones as the two examples. Linda Williams, who has written a lot about Boys in the Sand, did this one interview with me after she wrote this book about that film, she said “My god if I had seen Bijou before I wrote that book, three quarters of the book would have been about Bijou. She’s the one who called Bible! “a glorious flop.” By the way, you know we’ve got the most sensational reviews for Bible! since it was released by Vinegar Syndrome. Just unbelievable. Calling it a masterpiece and saying they didn’t know why it didn’t make it on the first time around. It didn’t make it because nobody saw it because we lost our ad campaign. We spent another $180,000 on the film and I couldn’t go on spending any more money. So we just closed. We got good reviews. Fantasic reviews.

Ronnie Shark, billed here as Bill Harrison, in Wakefield Poole’s Bijou.

I like it too. Did the gay porn crowd go see the films that were coming out in the straight world and borrow from what they were doing? Because some of their films had much more money than you did.

I saw The Devil in Miss Jones which I thought was brilliant. I saw Behind the Green Door, which offended me because they stole the concept from Bijou. I didn’t like the Mitchell Brothers either. I went to pitch them a script that I had written for Georgina Spelvin and Bill Cable called “The Hammer and the Nail”, and I took Georgina with me to San Francisco to meet with the Mitchell Brothers, and they said, “Naw, we’re doing our own films now, we don’t want to do anything else.” But he said, “Georgina if you’d like to do public appearances and stick dildos in your cunt and sell em for twenty dollars we’d like to do that.” And I took Georgina by the hand and said, “Let’s get out of here.” And we left. It was the most degrading thing they could have possibly said to her. Not that she wouldn’t do it! But how dare they say that. We were there for one purpose. I didn’t take kindly to the Mitchell Brothers. They deserved everything they got. Anyway, I didn’t see a lot of porno films. Not even gay films. Especially since I started making them. I saw some of Jack Deveau’s films because he was my friend and he and my partner were schoolboy chums up in Canada. Even though he was the competition. He said “I think I’m gonna make a porno movie, if you can do it I can do it.” I said “You’re absolutely right. Buy your camera and do it.”

He made some very brilliant films too.

He did. Bobby Alvarez, his lover was an editor so he had a built-in system. He would direct and hand it to bobby. He had a staff of writers. He was wonderful, I loved him. Very spicy. He was a terrific cook.

Does it make you angry or upset that the porn world didn’t follow your example more with regards to artfulness, fantasy, and experimentation?

Oh, I just think it’s unfortunate. Some people think my films have too much foreplay. The younger crowd that were raised on this other type of porno films, not that they’re sleazy, but they’re sleazy. They’re just people fucking. Nothing stimulates your imagination. They’re there for one reason, to get you off. To get you hot. The people who made the Ballet Russes documentary I was in, they showed my films to some people and they said a lot of people were disinterested during the foreplay. They wanted to get down to business. That’s one reason I’m sort of thrilled with these new editions of Vinegar Syndrome. They restored them frame by frame. Gorgeous to look at. People haven’t seen anything like that.

They’re loaded with extras. Commentaries, etc.

Those things are much more interesting than the movies sometimes. They have a lot of my 8mm films where I was learning with the camera. I was thrilled because some of them are very good. I love the one with Peter cooking, where I put Julia Child in the background while Peter’s cooking. You can’t follow what’s being said. We did things that were fun and that’s what it’s all about.

In your book you say around 1980 you stopped having sex after you went through recovery, that sex and drugs were inextricably linked and so giving up sex was the key to maintaining sobriety.

And my lover’s sobriety at the same time. Paul. It was all about the same time that it happened that AIDS started. It just sort of happened. It sort of seemed the way to go. I had been sexual for so many years, since I was eight years old. I was having sex with adults when I was ten. I was an abused child but I did the abusing. I was the one who found the places to get it off and I went there. My god. I could have gotten in big trouble. I remember at one point I got picked up downtown in a movie theater, he said, “Let’s take a ride in my car, and we went out to some highway a back road, and he gave me a bible, and he said now you hold this bible and while he was blowing me I held up the bible so that if anyone drove by it would look like I was just in the car waiting for someone reading the bible. He could have been a serial killer! I could have gotten in terrible trouble but I never did.

Another still from Bijou.

It just sort of happened. When Paul died I was still grieving over that. And I wasn’t sexually active at all during that period. We became celibate together. The main objective was to keep him alive as long as we could. He had a liver disease. We had gotten ourselves straight and I had to find a way to make a living because I wasn’t going to do porno movies anymore. I had done a few videos. They’re still pretty good. I mean they’re not super sophisticated. But there’s some intellect in them. I kept creating good movies but they didn’t come from my experience. They came from my mind. I thought of porno stories. I made one called The Hustlers. But I just never got back into the sexual mode. When you make pornography you get up, have a cup of coffee, sit down on the machine and start editing, it becomes a business. Becomes something else. I never had that need anymore. I didn’t need to fall in love again. I had four of the best love affairs anyone could possibly have. Including being married to a woman once, and so I’d had all that. What else was there for me to have? Except the repetition of something I’d already had. It was a funny way to look at it. It’s always a different experience because there’s different people but I didn’t have the courage to go through it all again.

So have you really never had sex since 1980?

No I had sex one time. It was after I came back to Jacksonville, about eight years ago with an old friend I used to ball with in men’s rooms when I was about 15. We used to have sex regularly. He worked downtown and when I’d see him downtown on his lunch hour, we’d go somewhere and have a little matinee. Then when I came back in 2003 I didn’t know anybody in Jacksonville. They were either dead or moved away. The only gay people I know where my sister and her lesbian lover. And my nephew is gay. That was my experience with gay people down here. I don’t drink anymore. I haven’t drunk since I was in my thirties, so I don’t go to gay bars. I thought well I’m gonna call Roy. I looked in the phone book and Roy was still there. I called him up and he said, “Oh my god Wakefield, I can’t believe it’s you. We have to get together. We’ll have dinner. Come to my house.” So I went to his house. He had married this woman who was a millionaire. She died and left him millions. He had a gorgeous home on the river down here. The first date we had, we had dinner and went back to his house. We tricked. And it was very unsuccessful. I mean I had an orgasm in thirty seconds.

Well after all those years, of course!

I said, “Roy I’m so sorry!” and explained to him the whole situation. I said this is the first time I’ve had sex in over 25 years. And the next day he called and said, “I want to take care of you. I want you to come and move in with me. Live with me.” I said, “Roy, this is moving too fast.” He said, “I don’t ever want you to have to worry about anything else as long as you live. I’ll take care of you totally and you’ll have everything you want, and we’ll live together, in this nice beautiful house. I said, “Let’s just cool it for a while.” Well, within six weeks he was dead. He had pancreatic cancer. He went very fast. Found out about it and within four weeks he was gone. He found out about two weeks after we got together. So that put the kibosh on that.

Oh my god. That’s awful on so many levels!

If I’d only said yes I would have been an heiress. We had a great time being back together. As it turns out he was almost a stalker. He had a scrapbook of everything I had done. Reviews of movies, After Dark articles. He brought it out and showed me that night. He said I’ve thougtha bout you all the time. Who knows what would have happened? He did introduce me to people here. He took me to a dinner group of gay people that I meet with, we have dinner every Wednesday night. We go to different restaurants every Wednesday. It’s a very congenial atmosphere. Some of us have gotten very close, some of us haven’t. As I said I don’t go to bars, so it’s nice to have this to develop friendships.

Going back to my earlier inquiry, just to clarify, if you’re celibate you don’t jerk off either?

No. I don’t masturbate. I had an enlarged prostate for a while and my PSA was very high. I sort of just turned off sex, it’s very strange. I was a very sexual human being. I think the last time I masturbated was maybe four or five years ago.

What is your day-to-day like now?

First of all I get up in the a.m. and feed my animals. I have coffee and once in a while I’ll have a roll or something. I go shopping. I watch a lot of television. I watch the things that were on the night before because there’s so much that I like on television that I can’t watch everything. I watch one thing and tape another one. My sister is here so I go visit her often. I play bridge as much as I can. I could play every day but I don’t. I play 2 or 3 times a day. It’s very different to what I’m used to. I’ve gotten used to it. I’m resolved to the fact that the wild days are gone, but I still have a few in me.

How many animals do you have?

I had three cats inside. One that I had since New York — he was 14 years old. I had to put him down last summer. I brought another one inside. He had been left out in the garden. Every one of these apartments opens out to a garden. I had been feeding her and it got to be winter and I thought, she’s not going to make it. She’s been here about three or four years. I brought another one in from the front of the building. I feed about eight cats outside my building every day. I go out and whistle and they come. I’ve turned into a cat lady.

Who would have thought that the most famous gay porn director of all time would turn out to be not just a cat lady but a bridge lady?

Ha! That’s true. I lead a very quiet life. I talk on the phone a lot to friends in New York and California. I’m still grieving for New York. The biggest mistake I ever made was coming home. I should have done everything I could to stay in New York. But I couldn’t retire and stay in New York. I could not afford it.

Nobody can afford to live in New York anymore.

I know. I was paying 2100 dollars to live in a very nice apartment on Jones St. in the Village. Very quiet. Not a lot of traffic. Nice apartment. Wonderful cat. I entertained people a lot. But now I’m too old to entertain. I’m too old to cook for more than three people. It’s a strain. I’m 78 and have had a hard life. I was fine until I had the accident.

This is why you’re seeing doctors, right? What kind of accident was it?

I was crossing the intersection right outside my condo, and I got the green light and she was on her cell phone and going about fifty miles an hour and she didn’t see me. She was in the far lane and if she had been in the near lane she would have seen me. But there were two cars already stopped for the red light, that’s why she couldn’t see me. She went barreling past and spun me around two times. Damaged four vertebrae in my neck. Affected my lower body and neck. They wanted me to have three operations and I said, “unh-uh” I’m too old to do three operations. I’ll take pain management. That’s where I went this morning I went to get cortisone shots in my lower back to prepare me for my L.A. trip. I see a lot of doctors. I have no complaints. I’ve lived alone since 1985 when Paul died. Even in my younger days when I was on Broadway I was alone. I’m very content with myself. I like myself so I don’t have trouble being alone.

My last question: do you have advice for a young person who saw your films and wanted to follow in your footsteps?

Get yourself a camera and just do it. I said that to Joe Gage. Joe and Sam came to see me at Hot Flash in San Francisco. He said, “Sam and I are thinking about doing a movie and we were hoping you might be able to help us out.” I didn’t have the money because I had a store to run and was making 28 dollars a week. They said “How do we do it?” I said buy yourself a camera and shoot it, or rent it. There’s no knowing how. I certainly didn’t know how. I learned every film I was doing. Every film that I did when it was over I couldn’t wait to make another film to correct all the mistakes that I had made in the previous film and show what I had learned. Even Boys in the Sand, each segment gets better, technically. What I learned I put into the next section. And then Bijou was the next step. Then the next film was Bible!, and that film is beautiful technically. Staggering that I got that film out of 16mm. I sound very immodest but I am also a realist. And honest. I know what I do, when it’s good and when it’s not good. So I would just say do it. However you have to do it. Like Jim Tushinski and me. It took us 7 years to make this documentary and we did it! I was very supportive of him making it. And I’m very proud of it.

Below, a promo for the Vinegar Syndrome remaster of Bijou.

Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.

The post Wakefield Poole Interview Part 2: On His Masterpiece, ‘Bijou,’ And His 30 Years of Celibacy appeared first on The Sword.