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 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.