PART 6: NEW DIRECTIONS

I have been told by certain sourpusses (who will remain nameless) that there is no market for plot-driven bareback porn. Ha! I disagree. I think the market is ripe for story-based sex movies. Just ask Sean Storm.

In 2004 Storm, collaborating with Helix Studios, co-produced "Storm Drain," the bareback genre’s first true plot-driven video. And it was very successful. So much so that Storm created his own production company and began filming "The Storm Chronicles" – a multi-part story that follows Storm’s self-inspired character on a lampoon of his life and livelihood as a porn star caught between his love for sex, his love interest, his career, his fans, a stalker, and his long-lost twin brother (on a mission of sexy revenge). The story is set during the onslaught of a hurricane. His character is genuine, funny, and sympathetic. The sex for the most part is hot. And the series is both charming and successful.

As well, take a look at what some of the non-bareback studios are doing as of late. These are videos I consider my "YSW" list (YSW stands for "You Should Watch"):

DANGEROUS LIAISONS > Lucas Film
Michael Lucas released "Dangerous Liaisons" in 2005 and it won all sorts of accolades (including best picture) at the GayVN awards – as well it should have. "Dangerous Liaisons" is a very well done movie with plenty of sex, drama, intrigue, and more.

FUCK FICTION > Cazzo Films
Not as polished as "Dangerous Liaisons" mostly because of the dialogue between German actors being delivered in stilted English. However "Fuck Fiction" won Best Overall Film in the 2007 European Gay Porn Awards and is well worth watching for inspiration.

SEX HIKER > Black Scorpion
Black Scorpion is a relatively new production company who released a film last year called "Sex Hiker" and it won the GayVN award in 2009 for Best Group Scene. And it’s no wonder. The scene was very well shot. Overall the film has an Indie film look to it thanks to the wonderful camera work by Mr. Pam. I recommend this one for the overall look of the film in addition to the use of a rather simple but effective premise.

TO THE LAST MAN > Raging Stallion
The hands-down winner in this year’s GayVN Awards was Raging Stallion’s "To The Last Man" – a 2-part plot-driven movie that captured awards for Best Picture of the Year, Best Editor, Best Art Direction, Best Oral Scene, Best Three-way, Best Music, Best Screenplay, Best Videography, Best DVD Special Edition, and Best DVD Special Features.

To The Last Man takes the sex movie to new levels. It is a violent portrayal of life in the West, complete with brutality, a hanging, rape, a drowning, and a revenge-fueled killing spree. The sex is of the caliber Raging Stallion is noted for. And the acting is better than in many indie gay films that have played the film festival circuit. But while the violence and bloodshed contained in this picture seems unnecessarily over the top, the fact still remains that this is about as close to a Hollywood movie as any gay porn film has ever come.

I cite these examples because I feel they show a trend that is developing in gay porn. And I believe today’s gay audience is far more sophisticated than many porn producers are giving them credit for. These films are the equivalent of fine cuisine compared to the junk food our genre has been churning out ad nauseum. There is no reason some of us in the industry couldn’t start making porn of this caliber. I do not believe we are any less talented, or that the kind of talent that is necessary to create such films is unavailable to us. Certainly these examples demonstrate that there are men out there who can act AND fuck. Perhaps we are not fully utilizing talent that is already in our midst.

Hollywood has provided numerous great genres we can tap into if we so desire: mystery, suspense, drama, action, romance, period, capers, film noir, crime, espionage, western, horror, sci-fi, even camp. We can borrow and adapt stories we love or we can tell new ones that are of our own creation. We do not need huge budgets to work with. What we do need however is a commitment to creating a better product overall. Once we commit to that the rest will fall into place.

I am not saying that all producers of bareback porn must follow my recommendations. Certainly some among us are comfortable doing what they are doing and have no drive or passion for change. And there will probably always be a market for junk porn just as there may always be a market for the brand of pure dreck featured on Xtube. However we do need a few bold souls to get out of the junk porn rut and start producing something that will inspire and challenge the rest of the pack as well as entertain the portion of our audience that is craving something more sophisticated and personally involving. We need to break the mold again. We need to come up with videos that blow the porn-watching public out of the water and make the folks who organize awards programs such as the GayVN Awards take note that we are not the underlings they want us to believe we are.

No goal is too high to set for ourselves if we really want to achieve it. I firmly believe we can do this. We can change the direction of bareback porn for the better, and make it a more viable, marketable, and entertaining medium. I want to know who among you is willing to give it a try!

PART 5: THE FANTASY

Whether or not you are aware of it, porn is cinema. It’s that part of cinema that Hollywood leaves out. While the big Hollywood studios are making donuts, pornographers make donut holes. The industry of explicit gay porn began underground through the creation of little stories that were loaded up with sex to fill the void that the Hayes Code forced the motion picture industry to create. Some of those stories were borrowed from Hollywood in the form of gay-themed parodies. The practice still exists today, though mostly in the form of lampooned titles if not the actual content.

I believe porn is a unique form of motion picture art. Not only can it tell a story, it can also tap into people’s most secret fantasies and fulfill the viewer in a way no regular motion picture can. Porn also gives us a look at life as it is, as it was, and as it could be. Right now, however, our industry is making documentaries – or more accurately, "dickumentaries". We’re simply videotaping pieces of our sex lives and showing them to the public. And by doing so we’ve allowed the fantasy to wither out of the fantasy business.

Fantasy is as important to successful porn as milk is to cheese. Portrayals of fantasies personalize the sex and create richer sexual scenarios for the viewer to enjoy. It’s not enough to show just the sex act. People enjoy watching how we get there. It’s what we as humans do every waking moment. When we see a person we think is sexually attractive, we begin building a fantasy in our heads about how we will meet him and how we will seduce him into our beds. Or in a public bathroom. Or by the pool side. Or in the bottom of a submarine. Or in the back of a semi… Our minds are always creating rich scenarios. The traditional role of porn has been to inspire the viewer; to enrich his portfolio of fantasies, and to present creative ways in which a seduction can occur. But dickumentaries only serve to portray the act of sex itself, making the only aspect of fantasy in the mind of the viewer the fantasy of being with the performers he sees onscreen. If someone can come up with richer and more complete fantasies in his head, why the hell would he want to buy the fantasy-bereft porn that’s currently out on the market?

I also believe porn allows us to diffuse stress and anger in a non-violent manner. Just as we substitute ourselves for players in a porn scene to heighten our fantasies and get us off, so can we also substitute someone we are angry with and mentally put them into the video. In our minds we can give them the fucking they deserve, and receive satisfaction in return without having to act on it in real life. But if the actors are already naked or fucking when the scene begins the viewer has to fill in the fantasy that we left out. Some people just aren’t that inherently creative. And we shouldn’t be making our audiences work that hard.

If a person can connect with something in a fantasy video, it has a deeper significance to him. If he can’t, he’s just an outsider watching people have sex. Porn can allow people to experience fantasies they don’t even know they have. It can inspire, teach, and entertain. It has all of these potential ingredients that we could explore, but instead we give our audiences junk food.

At some level I think pornographers are filmmakers at heart or we would never pick up a camera. We have stories we want to tell; rich fantasies we want to share. So why are we collectively not doing that? Why are we cheapening our medium with an endless supply of throw-away porn? I dare say the answer is because many in our field are more interested in turning a quick buck than creating something that contains meaning, substance, and the fine art of fantasy. Certainly it is easier to point a camera at men who are already naked and on the verge of engaging in sex. But just as all cats are gray in the dark, these types of porn scenarios are barely identifiable from one studio to the next, aside from the general choice of models that each studio specializes in.

In the beginning of bareback video, the audience was largely composed of gay men over 30 who identified as barebackers. That is no longer true. Today’s audience is broad and includes adult gay and bisexual men of all ages and types, closeted or openly gay, some who engage in unprotected sex, and some who do not. Of course, with such a wide audience there is a correspondingly wide range of fantasies just waiting to be tapped (and capitalized on). I am interested in seeing who will make the move to restore fantasy into the business of making bareback porn. Any takers?

Next up: New Directions

PART 4: THE MASS CONSUMER AND CRITICAL MASS

erhaps one of the most important things to come of Michael McKey’s efforts and the efforts of the first small handful of bareback video producers was the identification of a market previously thought not to exist. Mainstream gay video studios cried out that bareback videos were tantamount to snuff videos and wouldn’t have a lasting popularity. How wrong they were. So wrong, in fact, that porn maven Chi Chi La Rue, who has taken a very public stand against the making of bareback videos, bought up all of the Catalina pre-condom content and has been re-releasing it on DVD in order to get a share of the raw sex revenue. Other companies, such as Falcon and The French Connection and Bijou have done similarly, dusting off 30 year old titles in order to squeeze out as much cash as they can from material they previously considered "old hat". Yes, there is a market for bareback porn. A HUGE market. And apparently the money made from it isn’t dirty enough to keep the more politically correct mainstream gayporn studio heads from wanting to touch it.

It is not only the established porn studios who recognize the marketability of bareback porn. In the last 5 years, dozens of new small independent studios have cropped up – some of them producing exclusively bareback content, some producing occasional bareback content, and some of them creating bareback-only labels under their parent company. And using the McKey model of minimalism, they have been pumping out a landfill’s worth of rubberless dreck. It’s quite astounding, actually.

As if that wasn’t enough to satisfy the porn-watching public, the new grade of affordable high tech toys like HD camcorders flooding the marketplace coupled with the availability of venues such as Xtube has made it possible for rank amateurs to churn out a proliferation of rather awful amateur porn. Whereas the previous 175 years of photography provided limitations that hindered the home consumer from making the pornographic equivalent of bathtub gin, the new medium offers little to no restrictions. It’s become an open market.

Just how wide technology has opened the door to home-grown porno was made evident in 2008 when an 18 year old boy at a Wisconsin high school posed as a girl on Facebook and enticed 35 of his male schoolmates age 13 to 19 to send him naked photos of themselves. Armed with digital cameras and cellphone cams, those horny young bastards all did as asked and dropped trou to click away at their juvenile equipment. And then using the current technology they transmitted these illicit (and illegal) images to the fellow who requested them.

There’s more to this story… the fellow who conducted the ruse, whose name is Anthony Stancl, then reportedly used the photos that he received to blackmail some of the boys into having gay sex with him. And bless his heart he got caught. And arrested. What the DA in the case doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge is that a scenario like this never would have happened if those kids hadn’t had digital imaging devices given to them by their parents in the first place. Let’s face it. You hand a guy an instant camera and sooner or later he will take a picture of his penis with it.

Then, he’ll take a picture of someone else’s and try to score a profit off of it. It’s human nature.

Well, anyway, so now there is a proliferation of porn flooding the marketplace… most of it bad. And an ever-increasing amount of it is bad bareback porn. While many perhaps see the enormous quantity of available porn as a good thing, too much of something is rarely ever good. Except where chocolate is concerned. There can never be too much chocolate.

To illustrate this point, think about money for a moment. (Mmm… money!). The more currency the Treasury puts into circulation the less value our money has. The same can be said of porn. I’ve noticed that the more porn a company cranks out (with only a few notable exceptions) the less there is worth watching. The reason is because the part that makes pornography work best – creativity - is thrown out in the process of chasing after the quick and easy money. Sure, a studio might come out with an original or semi-original idea, and that’s great. But in most cases by the time they have released 4 or 5 volumes of that same concept, the freshness of the idea has gone stale.

Something else that we lose in this deluge of content being produced is one of the original icons of pornography: the porn star. In porn’s golden years there were names that were as big if not bigger than the studios that produced them. And the public identified with them. Stars like Jack Wrangler and Casey Donovan, Kip Noll and Roger became porn idols. The studios made and promoted them much as Hollywood made and promoted their box-office draws. When bareback porn first hit the scene, a new kind of pornstar came into being – the silent pornstar. Men the likes of Steve "Titpig" Hurley, Steve Wiley, Ray Butler, and Will West became the genre’s representative stars, though not one of them (except perhaps Ray Butler) uttered so much as a word throughout their performances. As bareback porn began to become more prevalent and studios looked for new meat to exploit, the concept of the bareback pornstar faded.

The current tactic of porn studios seems to be to expose the flesh of as many individuals as possible, pay them, and be done with them. This is creating a culture of disposable performers giving disposable performances, and ultimately result in a barely navigable ocean of disposable porn. Out of the hundreds of bareback "performers" that have been marketed in the last few years, there are perhaps only a few bright stars who have emerged. Dawson, Brad McGuire, Jesse O’Toole, Drew Peters, Chris Neal, TJ Jordan, and Lito Cruz are the only performers I can think of who really qualify as "stars" of the genre. A few others, such as Sean Storm and Josh Weston, are crossovers who worked for mainstream studios and brought their established star power with them. The rest, sad to say, are part of an endless parade of faces, dicks, and asses whose names and performances are almost immediately forgotten. It is as if today’s bareback porn is mimicking the pre-AIDS gay culture of the 70’s with all of its random tricking and disposable anonymous sex.

When porn becomes disposable, it becomes junk food. It no longer nourishes the soul. And thus people crave more and more of it in order to feed some need that is not being met. So we have to keep putting more of it out there to satisfy the lack of nourishment we’ve created. It’s kind of a vicious cycle. And trust me… audiences are tiring of this junk porn diet.

There is too much lame, redundant porn in today’s market and the effect it is having is an overall watering down of the genre. Bareback videos used to be bold, controversial, and captivating. But for the most part, this is no longer true. Our industry needs a shot in the arm to keep from becoming so passe that the return on your investment of time, money, and talent doesn’t wither away.

In the next installment: The Importance of Fantasy to the Fantasy Business.

PART 3B: CHANGES IN THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

The 1960’s and 70’s saw a relaxing of what was deemed obscene. To meet the needs of a public whose attitudes and tastes were changing, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) adopted a film rating system to replace the Hays Motion Picture Production Code, thereby opening up doors previously closed to filmmakers and allowing them to produce content that had long been forbidden under the heavy hand of the censorship bureau. Simultaneously, some old movie houses that had lost audiences to television began exhibiting the new films that had been given an X rating. Pornographers had finally found themselves being granted permission to film sex. And they were offered venues in which they could exhibit their films, along with distributors and theatre managers who were anxious for content.

Advances in technology had already made it possible for high-end consumer-grade 16mm movie cameras to incorporate sound on film. Eventually Super 8mm cameras would also record sound, but still most film processing labs would refuse to return films that contained nudity or sexual content, thereby keeping all home movie-makers on the righteous path to moral decency. However pornographers knew where they could get their content processed and have it screened, and this gave the industry the exclusivity it needed to finally become successful. Studios remained loyal to the 16mm format for filming and theatrical screening, and released their movies in the 8mm and Super 8 format for the ever-growing home audience, thereby achieving something Hollywood would only later fully embrace: the simultaneous penetration of both home and theatre audiences.

With the new rating system, new venues to exhibit their films, new public attitudes toward sex coupled with a hunger for more explicit content, and new technology at hand, gay pornographers took on the role of independent filmmakers and went wild producing movies that told stories in the course of which a lot of explicit sex took place. Grass-roots gay porn studios found the ability to reach their audience at long last, and several became the production powerhouses of gay sexual content. Companies with names like Falcon, Mustang, Nova, Laguna Pacific, Colt, and Magnum Griffin became household words throughout the gay culture. Some directors, like William Higgins, Joe Gage, and Fred Halsted became legendary almost overnight. A new breed of performer exploded into being (literally): the Porn Star. Never before had anyone been considered a "star" in pornography, but the gay porn studios of the 70’s made sexual superstars of Al Parker, Jack Wrangler, Kip Noll, Buster, ‘Leo (Ford) and Lance’, Richard Locke, Dick Fisk, Eric Ryan, Clint Lockner, Bruno, Giorgio Canali (aka Rocco Rizzoli), and many others.

And just when the industry thought things couldn’t get any better along came the videocam. As the 80’s rolled in, 16mm film quickly lost favor to video. With video the pornographer could eliminate the long-term cost of the film lab by investing up-front capital in video equipment. The camera equipment was big and bulky compared to the 16mm cameras, but the images it produced were sharper and the colors more true most of the time. The poor little film splicer, a staple of film editing for decades, gave up its ubiquitous status to the big bulky editing machine and duplicating machines. Despite the initial inconvenience, pretty much everyone in the business found the switchover from film to video to be a worthwhile investment. Video proved to be more error-proof (it couldn’t accidentally be ruined by exposure to light), convenient, cost-efficient, and user friendly. It also opened the door to more artistic editing techniques.

On the home front, video proved to be much more convenient than projecting movies. Video eliminated the need for a projector, a screen, and a darkened room to enjoy. And the popularity of porn on video helped make the VHS system the popular choice in the US over the Betamax. Newer gay porn companies, the likes of HIS, Vivid, Huge, and Jocks began showing up on the scene. A burgeoning interest in ethnic performers brought about the creation of specialty studios like Altomar and others. Videotape made the production of porn more achievable to the masses than it had ever been. But video also crippled the XXX Theatre business severely as porn videos found a greater success on the small screens in video arcades and at home.

Through the 90’s the nature of video changed. Cameras went from using VHS cassettes to 8mm video cassettes to mini DV cassettes. The size of the cameras got smaller and more lightweight, and the prices of equipment came down. Digital media did away with the need for editing equipment as the home computer could now handle the job. Suddenly everything changed. Digital technology found its way into the hands of the general population. Anyone with a modest budget could now film, edit, upload, and distribute porn from his own home – his own bedroom – and distribute it to millions of people through the internet without being restricted by the Comstock Act. More ambitious amateurs set up little porn studios in their spare rooms, garages, and basements, or wired webcams in every room of their house. Others found ways to put their content on DVDs and market them to a sex-hungry public. And most of them came into it because they saw how easy it could be to try to get a piece of the porn pie.

Faced with less control over the regulation and distribution of adult content, the US government played its hand at creating a new roadblock: the 2257 record-keeping law. Initially devised as a means of putting an end to child pornography and the exploitation of minors, the laws which were adopted under Clinton were again revisited and reworked under the Bush administration in a conservative effort to seriously wound the industry as a whole. Billed as a ramping-up of child exploitation protections, the 2257 revisions created by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were a thinly cloaked attack on adult entertainment and did not do anything new to protect children. The law is still being challenged in court for its unconstitutional provisions at the behest of the Free Speech Coalition.

Even with the 2257 laws as they stand, the industry is still growing. New studios are cropping up everywhere in the US and abroad. With all of the changes that technology has brought to pornography, the hardest part in making porn these days is, perhaps, finding the performers.

Once upon a time, pornography was the domain of the most daring photographers of their day, a handful of individuals who had the vision to create intimate images of the naked human body – images that had the power to stimulate some, seriously offend others, and result in a jail sentence simply for having been taken. And while technology has pushed the art along and given it exposure to whole new realms and greater audiences, technology has also brought with it a menace, commonly known as the mass consumer.

Up next: A Critical Mass of Mass Consumerism.

PART 3A - TECHNOLOGY'S ROLE IN PORN

When you look at the history of modern pornography, you see that the photographic capturing and marketing of the naked human form has had a series of ups and downs, throughout which the realm of the pornographer was very small and covert. Challenges abounded, limiting the acquisition and distribution of pornographic images. It is only very recently that porn has become so easy to produce and access.

The first "camera" came into being in 1827 at the hands of French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, who figured that a metal plate coated in certain chemicals might actually be able to record an image when exposed to light. His first successful photograph was crude and took several hours to expose. But as he was the only man in the world with a camera he was a very exclusive individual. However over the next 30 years, photographic science would take a sufficient number of leaps and bounds that photographers would soon be popping up in every city in every industrialized nation on the planet. And of course, photographers, being artists, began training their new mechanical eyes on the human form in the nude.

In 1841 the invention of the negative allowed photographers to make multiple copies of their images, thereby facilitating mass reproduction and distribution of their work. But the following year the US passed an obscenity law that made it possible for the government to seize pictures it deemed obscene. With the advent of the Victorian era and its accompanying conservative social views, the distribution of nude photos had to be conducted with extreme discretion. And in 1873 the Comstock Act was passed prohibiting the distribution of obscene materials through the mail. This would be a major roadblock for the would-be pornographer for a century to come.

In 1900, Kodak released the first commercial camera for the everyday man. One would think that the market for amateur porn would have opened wide up. But, as the film – in fact the entire camera – had to be sent back to Kodak for processing and the prints then had to be mailed back to the customer, taking nude photos was a very risky pastime for the amateur photographer. Eventually, darkroom supplies would become available to the amateur photographer, allowing him to process his own risqué photographs at home. But that pesky Comstock Act still got in the way of allowing him to distribute his nude photos. Despite demand, the porn business remained very much underground.

In the 1920’s Kodak introduced the 16mm Cine-Kodak home movie camera. But again, as the film needed to be mailed to Kodak for processing, the Comstock Act made amateur porn an undertaking for only the most brazen.

In 1948 Edwin Land marketed a camera that used a proprietary new film that needed no darkroom or outsourced processing to produce photographs. He called it the Polaroid. Now anyone who could afford a Polaroid camera could take his own porn pics. One still couldn’t distribute them easily. But the middleman and expensive darkroom equipment were cut out of the equation, and underground personal porn was finally available to the average consumer. The Polaroid enthusiast would enjoy this new artistic and technological freedom for the next 60 years.

During the Second World War, in order to keep the morale of soldiers high, the Pin-Up Girl made a debut. With the Victorian mores fading in the distant past, not too many eyebrows were raised (although a number of soldiers’ members were) as painted images of dames with their skirts hiked up made the rounds throughout the military barracks. Following the war, a more relaxed atmosphere toward nude images led to a number of photographers, largely in Southern California, taking "professional" pin-up photos. Female models, mostly. But a few bold souls entered the realm by taking beefcake photos of the influx of strapping young men coming to Hollywood for a chance in the motion picture industry.

While all but the most prudish among the public could accept the existence of the pin-up girl, the pin-up guy was another story. A few photographers such as Bob Mizer, Bruce of LA, and Lon of New York were arrested on obscenity charges (under, you guessed it, the Comstock Act). Some, like Mizer, argued in court that their photos were artistic representations of the human form. And to circumvent the Comstock Act, Mizer added literary and educational content to his Physique Pictorial magazine which he marketed at newsstands and by subscription through the mail. Hugh Hefner would follow Mizer’s lead and incorporate articles and nude photography on glossy paper stock that would ultimately make Playboy the leading men’s magazine of its day and garner Hefner a publishing empire.

Mizer and others also began making films of naked men… sometimes the subjects did nothing more than pose in the nude, or lounge around in posing straps. Other times, Mizer had his models act out silly and strange little stories that, through various plot devices, culminated in the models getting naked and wiggling around to rock and roll music. They were tame and goofy films by today’s standards, but they were risqué little shorts in their time. And of course, these movies were shot on 16mm film – which required processing at a lab. Mizer and his contemproaries located kindred spirits in the film processing business who would develop their films and reproduce them on the sly. Because of the stigma against gay porn and the nature of film to degrade over time, few examples of these early gayporn films exist today.

(Part 3B will examine the next phase of technology and how it made porn a common form of entertainment)

Footnote: The current owner of Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild (AMG), Dennis Bell, has been re-releasing Mizer's erotic films on DVD. To order, or for further information, go to http://www.athleticmodelguild.com/

PART 2: ORIGINS

"Bareback Porn" got its official start in a garage playroom in Phoenix Arizona when director Michael McKey asked a few friends if they would like to be filmed having sex without condoms. It had been nearly a decade since the gay porn industry almost unilaterally decided to adopt a policy of using condoms in each and every video they cranked out. Such an undertaking on the part of McKey and friends would be controversial. Scandalous. Rebellious. And that is exactly what McKey had in mind.

He had worked as a videographer for gay porn studios in the past, filming in the industry’s widely-accepted paint-by-the-numbers style. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with the way things were being done in the industry. So Michael McKey made a conscious decision to break every rule he knew about making a porn video. And he set out to challenge the idea that there was only one formula to follow to make a successful picture.

Among his radical changes were the following: No condoms. No scripts. No pretense to tell stories. No cameras on tripods. No elaborate sets. No shaved, buff pretty boys. No disco music to drown out the sounds of sex. No costly overhead. No shooting schedules. No chain of command. Instead, McKey did the whole thing himself, on a shoestring, in his garage with its walls and floors draped in blue tarps and black plastic. His "set" consisted of a sling or two and some wrestling mats strewn around the floor. Lighting was provided by overhead fluorescents for the most part. And his actors… the antithesis of the porn stereotype: leather-clad, hairy, bearish, pierced and tattooed men over 35. But the big selling point was not only that the gents performed without condoms… but also that McKey filmed the cumshots in all their glory – perhaps in a way that had never been done in the pre-condom years. He captured unforgettable images of orgasmic juices as they sprayed, oozed, and dribbled out of every orifice, focusing as much loving attention on the money shot as he did the action that was needed to deliver it.

It’s one thing to film taboo. It’s another to wallow in it.

With that one low budget film (titled simply "Bareback – The Video"), McKey tapped a nerve that inspired several other would-be pornographers who quickly followed suit. Bareback had been born as crudely as if he had given it birth behind a dumpster. And that one little 77 minute garage-porn video colored nearly everything that would follow in its footsteps for years to come.
Initially barebacking became synonymous with leather. And what followed was a slew of barebacking leather daddy pictures from various newcomers to the porn industry.

By mid-1999, I was appealing to Hot Desert Knights, with whom I had developed a relationship and who was the most productive studio in the genre at the time, to consider using performers that were of a more universally (and commercially) appealing type – younger, smoother men. My rationale was that the genre had become bogged down in leather and was limiting its appeal to a much smaller segment of the porn-viewing market than it could be reaching. HDK wasn’t interested, citing that they knew their market and what that market was interested in buying. But in 2000 they released a video called "Boys Club" that featured ten smooth-shaved men in their twenties. It was an immediate success, and fostered a handful of other younger-men bareback videos in the HDK line. Other studios took note, and started offering content that moved away from the leather daddy stereotype.

New companies began popping up here and there. Helix studios, Tipo Sesso, and Cobra debuted with offerings of college-age boys having unprotected sex. Puppy Productions featured men in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Gaslamp Video (now SX) had already begun to find an audience for bareback videos featuring mixed-age performers. SX was all over the map, using twinks, daddies, musclemen, men of color, "str8" men, and college jocks (sometimes in leather drag). The only thing consistent in the SX line was the apartment they used as their studio. Whereas their actors’ performances were by-the-numbers, their creative use of the same space from picture to picture was interesting to note – and inspiring to this porn-director-wannabe.

Even with all of these evolutions one thing didn’t change. The shooting model that Michael McKey set up became the model by which nearly all bareback videos since have followed: no scripts, no storylines, hand-held cameras, and low budgets. McKey amputated the fantasy aspect from porn by bypassing the "set-up" and going directly to the sex. He proved his point. But now there’s such a plethora of point-and-shoot bareback porn that it’s become both redundant and mediocre.

Certainly there are standouts among the studios. Treasure Island Media, for instance, has made an art form out of their gonzo-style productions in which the cameramen are as much a part of the scenery (and sometimes the action) as the tops waiting their turns in the background. And newcomer on the block, Slut Machine has managed to create a hybrid between the action style of Paul Morris (Treasure Island) and the visual production style of Owen Hawk (Dark Alley Media) that breathes a bit of fresh air into a stagnating genre.

Today there are dozens of other gayporn companies producing bareback porn on the cheap by adhering the decade-old McKey filming blueprint. And with venues out there the likes of X-tube, it appears that anyone with access to a video cam these days thinks he’s a pornographer. So while there is a never ending torrent of new bareback porn flooding the marketplace, most of it I dare say is not worth watching – unless your entertainment threshold is very very low.

Next up, the history of gay porn, how technology plays into the current state of affairs, and what it promises for the future.

Part 1 - Intro

Welcome to my blog! The purpose of this blog is to open a discussion about the future of gay bareback pornography (or for the more timid among you, gay bareback adult entertainment).

This is not a forum for discussions about the pros/cons or your personal feelings toward bareback sex. I have other venues for that type of discussion. Any posts that do not respect this requirement will be deleted.


I suppose the first thing I ought to do is introduce myself to those who do not already know me.
I’m Bareback Jack. Obviously that’s not my legal name, but it’s a moniker I have used since I first came on the barebacking scene in 1997. Since that time, the things I would count among my achievements are many:

• I created one of the first internet hookup sites for the bareback community – now, the longest continually running website of its kind
  
• I have acted as a community leader and voice of reason for our community
  
• I was first to implement graphic HIV status icons for the personals section that allowed my website’s members to quickly and easily identify each other’s HIV status (so as to make better hookup choices for themselves)
  
• I created the world’s first (and still only) website dedicated to educating the public about healthier practices when barebacking
  
• I have crusaded against the use of crystal meth since the beginning, and was one of the first to notice and make public the connection between crystal meth use and new HIV infections
  
• I was instrumental in bringing down Dr. Laura Schlesinger by creating a contact list of her advertisers and imploring others to write them in protest – an act which ultimately resulted in getting her national TV show canceled
  
• I participated in the world’s first Phase III HIV vaccine trial
  
• I created and ran the Annual Bareback Video Awards from 1999 through 2004 (more on that in a bit)
  
• I created the concept for the first bareback reality video, "The World’s Hungriest Cumhole Contest", which I successfully pitched to Hot Desert Knights. Additionally I organized the selection of the contestants through my website and performed in the video
  
• I have acted as second photographer on several bareback video shoots
  
• I have interviewed bareback pornstars for a feature on my website (any of you BB pornstars want to be interviewed next???)
  
• I provide space on my site for any and all companies who produce bareback videos to advertise their newest releases at no cost, and I have assisted many companies in promoting their videos
  
• I have consulted several producers of bareback videos over the years to discuss their productions and the direction of the industry
  
• And, I have watched a shitload of bareback porn

There may be some things I have forgotten at the moment, but these are perhaps my most important achievements over the past decade.

My association with the porn industry and my passion for the genre of gay bareback porn puts me in an advantageous position. I have been involved with bareback porn in many of its aspects since it first debuted, and I have watched with extreme interest the direction it has gone – noting its acmes and its shortcomings. The Annual Bareback Video Awards were devised as a means of promoting and legitimizing the genre back when only a literal handful of bareback video producers existed – those being Hot Desert Knights, Dick Wadd, Treasure Island Media, Puppy Productions, and Gaslamp Video (now SX). An underlying purpose of the BBVA was to act as a method to raise the bar in the industry and to inspire producers of bareback content to better their product through friendly competition.


Changes to law made by the Bush Administration made running the BBVA nearly impossible after 2004 and so the concept was shelved until a new and workable solution could be found. I have now found that solution, and so beginning this year (2009) I will be re-introducing the Annual BBVA in a new format to once again inspire video producers to continually upgrade and improve their content and reward them for their achivements.


Why am I driven to do that? Because, the state of bareback porn has stagnated for the most part. One has to look hard within the genre to find new and stimulating ideas. To put it plainly, the fantasy has gone out of the fantasy business. If bareback porn is to thrive again, big changes will be needed. Some will argue that the genre is indeed thriving because there is so much bareback porn being produced these days. I concur. There is a lot of bareback porn being produced these days… cheap, redundant, creatively malnourished bareback porn by the boxcarful. I will go into the reasons for this claim in my next installment. In the mean time, if you have any comments, please… let’s hear them!

Fondly,
Jack