"Making It Big：The History of Gay Adult Film (Documentary)" Transcript
30 Aug 2020
Making It Big：The History of Gay Adult Cinema
Gay Porn
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Aug 21, 2020
Preview posted to Patreon.
Aug 26, 2020
First uploaded (-CQhPCVZhho), available to Patrons. 'Part 2: Hard Times' teased.
Aug 30, 2020
First published (UfpkP6s_g_4). Previous 'Part 1' deleted.
Dec 05, 2023
Deleted post-callout.
May 8, 2024Channel deleted
Men, Murder, and Monopolies
"Making It Big" is a feature-length video essay about the history of gay erotic films in America. From Beefcake to bareback, this video explores the changing social attitudes surrounding porn, the people who made it happen, and the technological advances that made it all possible.
Based on the book "Bigger than Life" by Jeffrey Escoffier
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This video contains copyrighted material. The use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making this material available in my efforts to further bring to light the history of LGBTQ+ representation in film and television. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
00:00 Introduction
04:34 Part 1: Beefcake
09:36 Part 2: Softcore Boiled
14:13 Part 3: Sex on the Beach
20:36 Part 4: Flight of the Falcon
25:38 Part 5: Aspen
30:31 Part 6: Catalina
35:54 Part 7: Sex in the Ruins
47:59 Part 8: Requiem
53:44 Part 9: More of a Man
01:01:30 Part 10: Cyber Sexuality
01:03:32 Part 11: Cobra
01:16:44 Part 12: Rise of the Geeks
01:22:11 Epilogue
hardcore porn both of the straight and gay varieties entered mainstream american culture in the 1970s as the sexual revolutions swept away many of the cultural and moral inhibitions that had been keeping the country's proverbial knees together surprisingly the first porn movie ever to be previewed by variety the leading trade journal in the entertainment industry was boys in the sand from 1971 a sexually explicit gay movie shot on fire island with a budget of only four thousand dollars moviegoers celebrities and critics flocked to see it within a year deep throat a straight porno opened to rave reviews and a huge box office exceeding that of many mainstream hollywood films though we can't know exactly how much it made because it was financed by the mafia within two years we saw the devil and miss jones and behind the green door hit theaters these four movies made more money per screen than even the godfather which was released around the same time though the sexual revolution that made these films possible was at first a mostly heterosexual affair it also had a profound effect on gay men the intense stigma attached to homosexuality before stonewall blocked any open discussion of gay male sexuality and force gay men's sexual expression deep underground consequently the increasing acceptance of pornography during the 60s and 70s played a significant role in the sexual lives of gay men even more than it did among the straight men of the same age the increasing social acceptance of porn helped to legitimize visual representations of homoerotic images and gay sex in general before 1962 homosexual materials even those without any sexual content were considered obscene by definition in the us and much of europe the emergence of gay hardcore films provided explicit representations of gay's sexual behavior not otherwise available and the availability of such images helped to affirm the nascent gay identity since most gay men become adults without learning the social and sexual codes of their community porn contributes as film critic richard dreyer has observed to their education of desire erections orgasms and the performances of sexually desirable masculine and energetic performers helped to create positive images of what gay men could be instead of the holy negative images portrayed in mainstream culture gay porn produced soon after stonewall focused heavily on masculine men since the culturally accepted image of a gay man was that of the [ __ ] from hollywood movies the artwork of toko vago laxonen better known as tama finland helped to create the image of the hyper-masculine gay man that permeated gay culture in the 1970s and gay porn movies sought to emulate these ideals with the men they cast while it's by no means representative of the entire gay community these masculine stars showed gay men both young and old that they could be more than just hairdressers not that there's anything wrong with that if this pandemic has taught us anything it's that we really ought to be appreciating our hairdressers a lot more but these porn stars were plumbers carpenters cops firefighters bikers and construction workers the type of men that gay men desired to be and desired to have desire psychologists have found is not something given to us out of the blue it is constructed through fantasy and it is through fantasy that we learn how to desire pornographic movies are passports to a fantasy world where sex exists without the everyday encumbrances of social convention endurance or availability to imagine a sexual performance in a fantasy or to see one in a porn movie enables us to experience sexual excitements without the side effects of anxiety guilt boredom or danger and for many of us the erotic excitement is heightened when the fantasy includes an element of risk sex in public sex with a stranger sex without a condom or sex in front of a salad lets us explore these fantasies but porn didn't suddenly pop up in the 1970s fully formed and hard as a rock porn even gay porn has been around for a very long time now i'm not going to get into cave paintings egyptian carvings or renaissance art though this is a youtube video not a 10-part netflix documentary though netflix if you're watching call me so let's start at the very beginning of modern gay porn i hear it's a very good place to start [Music] it's the 1950s and you're walking down a busy new york street you stop at a news stand and hidden amongst the news cooking and culture magazines sits one or two issues of a physique magazine you buy it the clerk stuffs it into a nondescript brown paper bag and you rush home it started as an underground phenomenon with small magazines containing photographs of almost nude men being sold by mail and on newsstands in larger cities these physique magazines and the mail-order business that grew up around them were the primary source of erotic male images for gay men receiving the iconic nickname beefcake bob mizer an amateur photographer living in los angeles played a major role in developing the business of publishing homoerotic images at the time in post-world war ii america most photographs of nude men or drawings of erotic scenes were available only through private networks to select mail-order customers long aware of his attraction to men miser had taken nude photographs of attractive male friends since he was a teenager and developed the film in a closet set up as a dark room a few years later when mizer was experimenting with grouping photos together it occurred to him to create a magazine he decided to call it physique pictorial it featured photographs of young men wearing only posing straps bathing suits or loincloths and almost no editorial content as fvhooven points out in beefcake his history of the physique magazine the magazines were not merely one aspect of a wider gay male culture they virtually were gay culture one writer estimated that the total circulation of the beefcake magazines in those oppressive times was over 750 000 probably the largest audience of american gay male readers and consumers assembled to that point the cult of male beauty that the physique magazines fostered helped to shape gay men's physical ideals before there was any common culture a minuscule magazine featuring a bunch of guys with their clothes off but not completely naked may not seem like much of a revolution in the history of sex argues hooven but to the men who bought them they were something new and daring it took courage to purchase one of those little magazines in 1955 by 1958 mizer decided to branch out and began to shoot short eight millimeter black and white films of the same young men he was photographing they would be nude or dressed in greek tunics lounging by the pool or wrestling in oil made in his home studio now a fortress-like compound of seven buildings protected by razor wire fencing and several attack dogs i'm not kidding the films employed simple storylines in which the youthful performers usually played stock characters much like in the magazines the softcore shorts were gobbled up by his magazine's reader base with the sale of home projectors going up by 40 percent in the la area with the release of the first film by the mid-1960s bob miser had photographed more than 5 000 male models many of them street kids hustlers bodybuilders actors soldiers and sailors one young man who showed up on miser's doorstep in 1965 was joe d'alessandro a young runaway from new york only 16 years old when he first showed up joe had hitchhiked to california after escaping from a juvenile home he had since been supporting himself by hustling and washing dishes in a pizza parlor one of his regular johns had recommended he get in touch with mizer he lied when they met and said he was 19. although mizer only shot one film of d'alessandro it was enough to grab the attention of andy warhol who snatched up the young looker and started putting him in his own films in new york his timing couldn't have been better because there was a major crackdown on erotic material in california soon after d'alessandro modeled for miser virtually every physique studio in the state was facing legal prosecution for obscenity and prostitution charges prostitution and nude modeling for artists and photographers have a long shared history miser regularly recommended models to other photographers and to collectors even though he must have realized that the young men were probably being hired for sex but since he had never directly benefited from the exchange of sex for money from any of his referrals he did not consider himself vulnerable at the same time over the years he had developed an elaborate set of codes to summarize information about each of his models temperament honesty and physical traits as well as sexual characteristics and interests he offered the key to the code to various trusted customers nevertheless the secret code seemed suspicious to the lapd vice squad who arrested him for running a prostitution ring he was convicted and by the time he returned to his studio the world of gay male pornography had dramatically changed [Music] for years gay men in la had lived lives of secrecy and fear the lapd had systematically harassed and trapped arrested and brutally beaten the city's gay lesbian and transgender population on new year's eve 1966 for example patrons of the black cat on sunset boulevard many dressed in drag were attacked by undercover and plainclothed vice cops after a number of people exchanged customary kisses at midnight more than a dozen were arrested and forced to lie face down on the sidewalk until squad cars arrived to take them away officers chased one person to another bar where they trampled the female owner and beat the bartender unconscious said bartender was held in the er for more than a week when he was released he found out that he had been charged with assault the men arrested at the black cat were charged with lewd conduct all of them were found guilty on february 11 1967 la's first gay demonstration to protest police brutality took place organized by pride personal rights in defense and education a group of younger gay men and lesbians this event occurred more than two years before the famous stonewall riots sparking a rebellious streak in a young filmmaker named tom de simone a graduate of ucla's film program dissimone had worked for several years in the film industry as an editor and had directed a low-budget horror movie that had went nowhere he had been growing bored of the soft-core well-oiled eight millimeter bob miser clones that it started filling gay porno theaters and thought he could do better he began filming erotic gay scenes with full nudity but simulated sex he delighted in more psychological porn i was very disappointed with films shown at the park theater he recalled later i remember seeing a lot of young kids in them jumping around on pogo sticks and other such nonsense the quality of the films was terrible they were badly photographed and the projection was lousy i wanted to make one of these films and really show some quality work his first film to receive a wide release or as wide as gay porn could go back then was the story of a gay man who kidnaps young men and keeps them locked up in cages for his sexual pleasure while there was nudity the sex remained simulated and no erections were shown on screen nevertheless the film drew the attention of s m lovers but also the fbi who harassed any theater promoting a showing of the film it was eventually cited by the u.s commission on obscenity and pornography as an unhealthy example of pornographic film dissimon's no erection s m wasn't flying with the majority of patrons at gay porn theaters either they were seeing more and more eight millimeter shorts involving actual sex coming from unnamed parties and so simulated sex kinky or not wasn't going to cut it making hardcore was against the law according to captain jack wilson of the lapd you cannot make a hardcore film without violating the prostitution laws when you pay actors to engage in sex or oral copulation you've violated the laws you've solicited individuals to engage in prostitution by asking them to exchange sex for money because hardcore producers in the early 70s operated outside the law many were fly-by-night operations stories were written on matchbook covers and dialogue was made up by performers more noted for their looks than their writing talent one producer observed at the time filming takes place on a single day and the results are sometimes little more than records of sexual activity framed by the collective sexual fantasies of the people who filmed and edit one film a week every week of the year the switch over to hardcore dramatically altered how sex movies would be made tom de simone believed that having to perform real sex changed who would be cast in hardcore movies when you get into hardcore you're dealing with a different class of people you can't get actors or actresses anymore just pimps and [ __ ] but not everyone felt that way late one night in 1970 after a rehearsal for his new broadway show director and choreographer wakefield poole his boyfriend peter and some friends decided to go to the park miller theater to see one of disimon's films it turned out to be a disappointing evening and for poole a somewhat jarring experience unlike the dark and cruisy theaters that screened straight porn the lights inside the park miller theater were bright enough that the theater's customers could actually read indeed one patron pool reported was reading the new york times afterward they wondered aloud whether it was possible to make a hardcore film that was more erotic and that wasn't so degrading poole decided to find out [Music] like many other gay men wakefield pool had come to new york in search of something he was a settler to use the new yorker writer eb white's term it was the settlers who gave new york its passion poole grew up in the south but moved to new york city as soon as he could to pursue a career as a dancer when his lover peter gave poole a 16 millimeter movie camera as a gift almost immediately he began to experiment with it inspired by several amateur movies made by steven sondheim shown at parties and other social occasions poole created a series of multimedia dance events using light projections and film in addition to more traditional stage elements he had also shot a short film in homage to andy warhol after finding a painting of himself in one of warhol's shows several months after their outing to the park miller theater poole and peter were invited out to the fire island pines to stay with friends a narrow strip of sand and shrubbery along the southern coast of long island fire island was in the process of becoming a mythic landscape andre holleran wrote in his novel dancer for the dance fire island was for madness for hot nights kisses and herds of stunning men a national game preserve annually replenished by men each summer arrived from every state in the union cherry grove on fire island the tiny neighboring community to the south of the pines had been a well-known holiday destination of gay actors writers and artists since the 1930s and a predominantly gay community making it america's first gay and lesbian town the poet w h auden and his partner chester coleman regularly came out to the grove in the early 40s they were joined by an array of famous gay artists and writers like christopher isherwood tennessee williams and truman capote poole and his partner made plans to spend several months on fire island and it was during this time that he decided he would make his erotic movie once he had formulated his plot and begun to script it he started to think about how to cast it he first asked his friends that he was staying with who agreed but immediately had second thoughts hours later poole ran into a man named dino who worked in a little gift shop at the hotel in the pines the three of us had been flirting for weeks poole recalled i suddenly turned to him and asked him if he'd like to be in a film with peter they both looked a bit startled but moments later we agreed to shoot the next day at 6am over the next few months poole edited the scene into a 15 minute movie when he showed it to a group of friends they claimed that it was the best porn movie they'd ever seen marvin shulman his business manager offered to invest in expanding it into a feature-length movie over a series of mondays pool shot the rest of the film that would make him famous it premiered in downtown manhattan to sold out showings of gay men straight couples and film reviewers with rave reviews from multiple mainstream publications the film broke through the red velvet curtain that separated porn from legitimate movies wakefield pool wasn't the only star to rise from boys in the sand though he also lucked into discovering the first gay porn superstar with casey donovan donovan had gone from sixth grade teacher to fashion model to porn star in the run of three years and boys in the sand owed much of its success to him and he said i have this friend named wakefield pool he used to be a dancer and a director choreographer and he's doing some experimental movies on his own out at fire island and i know you just did this hardcore buck film and would you be interested in being in it i said well you know maybe i'd i'd like to meet him and and maybe see what he's done and then the rest is history boys in the sand catapulted casey donovan into a unique position as the first gay porn star characterized as a gay liberated robert redford the all-american male he resembled and aptly symbolized the newly liberated gay men living in new york city during the 1970s blonde and blue-eyed with a well-toned body and absolutely radiant smile donovan exuded sex appeal and communicated an almost irresistible charisma soon after boys in the sand opened after dark a well-regarded arts magazine that dabbled in soft core porn published a headshot of donovan in brief mention of his appearance in boys in the sand then in march it offered an upper body shot of donovan while referring to a recent theatrical appearance finally in july donovan appeared on the cover with a spread in the side a gay porn star had just become a national celebrity within weeks of boys in the sands premiere jerry douglas a young playwright and off-broadway director who had directed a couple of nude plays somewhat unique 1960s specialty was approached by a director of tv commercials to make a gay pornographic film producing a hardcore film was still considered such a taboo project that the film's backers asked douglas to not reveal the production company's name to anyone to memorize the firm's address and telephone number and to never put anything in writing the film would be a riff on the best picture-winning midnight cowboy and douglas decided without any hesitation to cast casey donovan in the lead it opened a year later to packed theaters in new york la san francisco and montreal but because exhibiting porn was a legal gray area at the time it was hard for filmmakers to ensure that they were getting their cut and there was no way of guaranteeing that a theater owner wouldn't simply duplicate the film print give back the original and continue to show the movie without ever having to pay another dime so theater owners in new jersey and san francisco were shocked when they were visited by members of the new york mafia gay porn producers decided to take a page from the straight porn book and enlist the help of la casa nostra in ensuring they got paid this partnership eventually led to gay porn being exhibited in mafia-owned theaters in most major cities removing the middleman and increasing profits for both producers and their italian enforcers while the involvement of the mafia led to many filmmakers leaving the business jerry douglas among them it gave the world of gay adult cinema a solid bedrock to grow from unlike art house theaters mafia run cinemas had the money to bribe cops who would have otherwise confiscated prince as obscene artifacts gay porn now had creative and innovative filmmakers nationally famous stars a growing fan base and a rock solid distribution channel there was nowhere to go but up the supreme court ruled today that if anyone wants to read dirty books or look at dirty movies in his own home he may do so and it's none of the law's business the law still may regulate the spread of obscenity in public but the court said a person has every right to satisfy his intellectual and emotional needs in the privacy of his own home that the law has no business telling anyone alone at home what books he may read or what films he may look at chuck holmes was the sales manager for a company that manufactured pre-fabricated houses this super exciting career was what brought him to san francisco in the early 1970s just in time for recession after losing his job since who can buy homes during a recession even prefabricated ones a friend of his suggested he start a mail-order business selling gay porn which is everyone's go-to when they lose their job he took the advice and borrowed 4 200 to purchase a handful of already made films and launched falcon studios in april 1972. i wanted something that had an image of fierceness and power and grace and was natural i thought a falcon represented that it was a bird of prey with sexual acts at least the way that we make him here at falcon there's generally someone who is the predator and someone who's the prey no i don't mean that in a harmful way but by the end of a falcon film somebody has snatched someone and given it to him good business was slow at first since there was a lack of product he was relying on local producers to provide him with the eight millimeter shorts he'd be selling growing impatient with their inability to provide on time chuck decided to start producing his own films the first movie falcon made was a two-part loop called muscle sweat and brawn holmes followed these up with taste my love part one and two and ace in the hole subtlety in movie titles was not his strong suit most of falcon's short starred handsome and sexually energetic young men who went by nondescript names like tom dan gary dave kenny rod phillip michael bill and pete a formula that would be replicated in the new millennium by producers like sean cody and corbin fisher falcon followed the erotic formulas developed by earlier producers but in a more blunt fashion most of the shorts portrayed sex scenes in a straightforward manner with simple production values lighting always the most difficult to manage production factor varied greatly from film to film there were almost never expensive or exotic locations and the loops rarely showed dramatic or sexual action that extended over a period of time these were after all only short movies consisting of one scene no more than 15 or 20 minutes long for the most part they were built around an anecdote never a full-fledged story they merely provided a setup that created a charged atmosphere in which the sexual action could take place from the beginning holmes clearly envisioned the falcon brand of sexual content to be fast urgent desperate sexual contact between two or more persons as desperate as we can capture on film or video the basic formula at falcon has not changed and i do not foresee it changing he said decades later more important than picture sound quality for holmes was grooming nobody could have dirty feet in a falcon video because i come from the midwest and they'd have these vfw stags where they'd have these porno movies and all the men and all the women would always have dirty feet and i always thought those lazy bastards why don't they wash those people's feet it's distracting holmes wanted to see the boy next door who looked like they wouldn't ever do anything but be the best little fellows the little businessman the good members of their community and all of a sudden they'd just kiss each other and all hell would break loose and they'd just try to [ __ ] each other to death holmes adopted a business model built on aggressive pricing and marketing policies falcons set its price is considerably above those of other companies eight millimeter shorts the high prices falcon charged for films and later for its videos went far beyond what was necessary to support its cost to production from the beginning falcon operated strictly as a mail order business though hardcore theatrical releases were garnering other producers acclaim and prestige theatrical distribution was both more expensive and riskier than the production of shorts for mail order distribution we didn't want to let 16 millimeter prints out of our hands that's all you needed to make an inter-negative and make all the eight millimeter and super eight copies you ever wanted and back then there were a lot of people in this business who did a lot of illegal duping falcon's policies stressing its mail order business catered to customers who were older and wealthier than the audiences who attended theater showings more closeted as well they were also more likely to live outside the metropolitan areas that had large and growing gay communities falcon essentially moved gay porn to the suburbs throughout the 70s john travis matt sterling falcon studios and numerous other producers of gay male porn incorporated a great deal of san francisco's gay sexual culture the scale and intensity of the city's sexual scene had created a distinctive world of shared experience anonymous sex in a communal setting in a sex club or a bath house or at an orgy led to a community based on pleasure rather than politics performing in porn was merely an extension of the communal sex in which so many men took part the city's pornographers often took their scenarios and images from the city's gay sex life itself they recruited performers from the community and they translated their own sexual experiences to the screen in the fall of 1977 chuck holmes met with his production and marketing staff to discuss upcoming projects falcon's cameraman of the moment colin meyer a recent graduate of the film program at san francisco state university suggested that they make a series of short loops putting all the biggest porn icons at the time into one movie three generations of the top gay porn stars as it were they decided the film would feature three main stars al parker who had become famous as a cult model dick fisk a young up and coming performer and the by now legendary star casey donovan in a world of entertainment that had now seen jaws and star wars change the movie industry this trio of gay porn royalty would make up the lead attraction of the industry's first blockbuster the other side of aspen if casey donovan was the linchpin al parker was the top dog donovan and parker had never met but donovan were considered parker one of his porno dream men almost 10 years younger than donovan parker was born andrew oaken in 1952. parker seemed destined for porn since the day when as a 15 year old he stumbled across a tattered magazine that included beefcake photos from the legendary cult studios around that same time parker attended the famous concert at woodstock where he spent practically the entire weekend in the back of a hearse having sex with a hell's angels biker and though barely in attendance at the concert itself he did manage to show up on the poster for the movie the other side of aspen had started out as a series of loops but once holmes decided to create a framework linking the scenes it quickly morphed into falcon's first feature film the production was probably the smoothest porn shoot to date having been cast with industry pros and a strong directorial voice behind the camera it ran like a well-oiled machine once filming had wrapped falcon ramped up its marketing strategy by sending out a pre-mailer with reservation cards to its best customers reservations poured back in then a brochure was mailed the response to the brochure was even more enthusiastic producing the highest revenues in the history of the company up to that point five to seven times greater than ever before the other side of aspen was falcon's first blockbuster and like all blockbusters it accounted for the lion's share of falcon's earnings its explosive impact marked a turning point for a company selling its films only through mail-order transactions unwittingly preparing it for the coming age of the vcr falcon deciding to release the film on vhs instead of betamax is considered by home video experts to be one of the reasons that vhs would go on to win the format war against sony's higher quality but more expensive to produce betamax it was good timing since many adult theaters were being shut down the success of aspen transformed falcon into a different sort of company one that began to increase its production values and adopt other policies such as signing performers as exclusives an old school hollywood tactic that had died out with the death of the studio system keeping certain stars under exclusivity contracts in exchange for regular paychecks and only loaning them out for exorbitant fees that made falcon into a powerhouse of gay porn companies with aspen falcon discovered the midas formula it went on to produce four sequels in its aspen series over the next few decades often starring the most popular performers of the day a sort of gay porn time capsule falcon studios had built its brand as a gay macho fantasy the studio skewed anything that appeared campier less than rigorously masculine following the model the rest of the industry had been built on for years the castro clone archetype butch men with middle class jobs had permeated gay porn all the way back to the photography of bob miser but the other side of aspen was a milestone for the gay porn film industry it signaled the culmination of the gay macho sexual ethos and turned the ideal gay male body young men with a swimmer's build no tattoos and little body hair the age of twinks had begun [Music] william higgins was a late bloomer he was approaching 35 and had never had sex with either a man or a woman he was running a stained glass business in houston where he taught housewives how to make stained glass decorations for their homes he explored his sexuality by going to theaters to watch gay porn but he thought the movies were so bad that he decided he wanted to go to california and try to make better ones and so in early 1978 higgins set out for san francisco though he only got as far as los angeles there he headed for hollywood because someone had told him that that was the gay area of town as he drove down santa monica boulevard lined with hustlers he knew he was in the right place stopping for a bite to eat higgins met a man and told him he'd specifically come out to california to make a gay porn movie the man encouraged him well okay let's do it he said the man helped higgins to find a cast and they shot the film in his apartment the film would go on to be called a married man it starred jack wrangler one of the leading stars of the time it all seemed so easy but filming was a disaster none of the performers got along they disagreed about shooting performance and editing higgins had virtually no previous experience with photography or production the film had been loaded backwards into the camera and ended up underexposed nor did he have enough sexual experience he had never even seen two men having sex up close though the century theater booked the film the owner of new york's adonis theater declined it was such an unpleasant experience the higgins decided to call it quits he then took a job as a clerk at a bath house in the san fernando valley and settled down in venice beach venice beach with its scantily dressed surfers and shirtless young men roller skating proved to be too titillating a sexual scene for higgins to ignore i was walking around venice beach and i said oh this would really be an interesting movie and so i started shooting some footage with film that we had left over from making a married man the footage shot sat on the shelf until he received a call from monroe buehler an independent producer infamous in hollywood for producing gay erotica wow we really liked a married man and i'm looking for a picture as my big christmas feature which is you know an important thing why don't you make another film higgins quickly agreed and put together a film he called the boys of venice set along venice beach the movie was built around the youth culture that had emerged incorporating the new roller skating fad into the movie the opening scene of the film takes place in a small bathroom with two performers having sex with roller skates on stunt doubles probably would have been a good idea the boys of venice was a tremendous box office success and decisively launched higgins on his career he set up his own companies to handle production laguna pacific and distribution catalina video and went on to become the most prolific gay porn filmmaker in the united states over the next five years he made 20 movies most of them record-breaking successes though boys of venice was filmed without a lead kip noel emerged as the star of the movie he was the first major twink porn star in fact he personified the twink an attractive young gay man with a slender build and little or no body hair originally recommended to higgins by monroe beeler noel was not new to gay porn he had performed before in a series of loops for director mark reynolds generally assumed to be straight null actually seduced higgins on their first meeting when kipnuhl got off the plane he really didn't look that good he had a look about him that was kind of butch but not that attractive part of it was his having a little mustache that didn't work overall he just didn't look like he would photograph that well higgins was about to send him back home but i thought i had to at least interview him the first thing he did was say let me show you what i look like and he dropped his pants which made me take a second look at him at that point he said well why don't you take your clothes off now i try to keep these things very above board and business like but he insisted for many kip knoll was the iconic william higgins star over the next three years they made four other films together kip knoll and the west side boys pacific coast highway class of 84 part 2 and brothers should do it the prolific filmmaker was dominating the video market when he decided to try an experiment the experiment turned into the film class reunion a feature where he decided to use all the stars from the past invitations were sent out to 15 years worth of performers but higgins had no idea how many might eventually show up for the shoot multiple buses worth of performers ended up making their way to the glendale mansion in which they were filming some people even snuck in who had never been in a movie before the shoot more or less became a giant orgy with three cameramen tracking around the room constantly like an extended scene from caligula class reunion wowed audiences with the sheer amount of men on film all at once something that ambitious hadn't been tried in gay or straight porn up to that point higgins would consider it his masterpiece an ode to the joy and sexual abundance gay men enjoyed at the time it was the early 1980s and that was all about to change [Music] the discovery of what would eventually become aids a new sexually transmitted disease a disease that destroyed the very mechanism that normally protected the body from diseases created a sequence of crises medical social and political the aids epidemic also provoked a crisis regarding sex itself within the gay community namely bareback sex however before the virus that caused aids was even identified sexual promiscuity was believed by many to be the most likely aspect of the gay lifestyle responsible for the spread of the disease then simply called the gay cancer was the sex gay men engaged in inherently dangerous or bad could gay men continue to engage in sex at all if they risk death from aids how could gay men have sex in an epidemic of a sexually transmitted disease the debates both inside and outside the gay community produced fatal displacements many of those most concerned failed to address either the practical actions one could take to prevent spreading the disease or how best to defend gay male sexuality in the situation as leo bersani pointed out attention turned away from the kinds of sex people practiced to a moralistic discourse about promiscuity the crisis about sex also created a profound sense of paranoia sex is just a completely different thing now porn star and director al parker exclaimed the entire time you're having sex you're thinking i'm having sex with everybody this person's ever had sex with i wonder what he's done i wonder where he's been if he's positive or negative i wonder if i'm giving him anything and you if you can keep a heart on while that's going on in your head you're better than i am since the aids epidemic had begun in 1981 the public debate about gay men's sexual activities had grown increasingly virulent their sexual promiscuity was often targeted as a public menace in particular the danger posed by men engaging in anal intercourse with particular ire directed toward those who were both topped and bottomed since the late 70s anal sex had become the focal point of gay porn while it is difficult to document the shift away from oral sex as the normative activity to anal sex was one of the major changes that accompanied the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s and one of the most notable developments of gay male sexuality since the stonewall riots was the dramatic increase of sexual versatility by 1985 the growing furor over gay men's sexuality explicitly promiscuity and more implicitly their sexual versatility caused many producers of gay porn to re-examine how sex between men should be represented in erotic videos i think that when aids happen it was devastating to this business i think it scared the [ __ ] out of everybody when we found out how it was being produced and of course when we then found out all of our actors were dying i mean i think it changed the industry a lot some people went out of business i think because of that aids activists and gay leaders argue that porn should help eroticize safer sex porn stars could serve as role models for condom use directors and producers hesitated to use condoms because they believed that showing performers taking precautions and using condoms would inhibit the sexual arousal porn films were meant to provoke nevertheless they paid some lip service to these concerns they were doing everything but using condoms they were dancing around that issue i would talk to chuck and i would say you need to use condoms chuck you have to use condoms i remember that was one of the big bones of contention with falcon was that they they were sort of the last ones to come on board with using a condom the feeling was that the consumer wouldn't buy a product that depicted condoms in 1988 chris mann the vice president of catalina video announced that aids became a factor about three years ago we've really taken a hard look at the situation we've had to this is something that drastically affects the entire nature of our business for activists and community leaders the importance of porn stars acting as role models blended with concerns that sexual activities on the set posed risks to the performers most people in the industry believe that the sex that took place on porn sets was relatively safe since performers had to pull out for the money shot industry insiders frequently argued that most performers understood the risk and willingly chose to take it in order to create fantasies that would encourage many viewers to stay home rather than engage in high-risk sex with another person man explained what we would like to do is have the erotic industry be a positive influence not a negative one the public knows there's a health crisis we show them how to have sex safely and still make it a fun joyous experience part of the celebration of being gay is the celebration of your sexuality if we did only safe sex films the erotic value would truly be gone after all when you watch a regular film you don't go out and drive your car the way those people do in street chases it's a fantasy not real life for decades gay sex had been limited only by the sexually repressive society there were no natural limits to threatened anyone's lifestyle no pregnancy to worry about it almost seemed that in sex everything was possible aids suddenly put on limits now sex especially anal sex had potentially fatal consequences various studios claimed that they screamed the actors who appeared in their movies and used only healthy performers in an effort to avoid losing their audience with performances that only consisted of safer sex studios first tried a more didactic approach starting in 1987 both catalina and falcon studios put three-minute long instructional trailers produced by the gay men's health crisis on their videotapes even as late as 1988 condoms are apparent only in a minority of films many producers and studios left safe sex up to the performers themselves director jd slater who adopted this laissez-faire approach said as far as safe sex in my work is concerned i will not preach or morally judge i am simply a documentarian of sexual incidents what an actor does is completely his own decision i let an actor do exactly what he wants any way he wants to do it some directors think it's their job to instruct the public on safe sex and for them that's great but that's not my responsibility there had always been a group of gay men who were ambivalent about porn they believed that porn promoted certain stereotypes of masculinity and represented commodified forms of physical desirability but with porn increasingly considered a safe alternative to casual sex they had come to believe that the aids epidemic had to some extent legitimized porn porn became another form of safe sex ironically while discussions among gay porn producers were taking place a fierce debate raged in congress over funding for aids education information or prevention materials on october 11 1987 over half a million lesbians gay men and their supporters one of the largest demonstrations ever to take place in washington dc marched both for their civil rights and to protest the reagan administration's failure to act promptly to address the aids epidemic the names project presented its memorial quilt on the washington mall in which the names of people who had died of aids were inscribed in over 2 000 panels it covered the equivalent of two football fields days later in his introduction to a debate senator jesse helms from north carolina dismissed the demonstration as this mob over here this weekend he then proceeded to introduce legislation guaranteeing that no aids prevention literature or efforts would go to gay communities the amendment he proposed sought to prohibit the use of any funds provided under this act to the centers for disease control from being used to provide aids education information or prevention materials and activities that promote encourage or condone homosexual sexual activities there is a feeling among members of any of a number of professions or just the general population that patients with aids many of whom are homosexual are a little bit different i think that that has led to a little bit of a complacency about the approach towards this disease it seemed that neither congress nor the gay porn industry wanted to acknowledge that condoms would make sex safer nevertheless some insiders were critical of the porn industry's stance terry legrand of marathon films declared producers are very wrong when they say we must produce a fantasy for the viewer i say [ __ ] fantasy time is over fantasy has to stop i think the biggest message we can give to people is through videotapes as long as it's you know subtly done if they see enough movies where people are getting screwed with condoms then maybe it will become a part of their own lives not long after making that statement commercial producers attempting to be responsible and activists and public health educators wanting to be effective adopted similar approaches they finally began producing safe sex porn though many companies refused to give in to condom usage until the dawn of the 90s despite the chaos of the aids crisis or more likely because of it the porn industry was booming in the 1980s as dave kinnick a gay porn reviewer and videographer noted the anti-sex backlash of the 80s had a devastating effect on the nation's bathhouses and x-rated theaters but it fueled profits in the video industry people may have stopped having sex but they certainly hadn't stopped wanting sex like bathtub gin during prohibition the popularity of videos soared casey donovan was actively involved in several of the early attempts to develop safe sex videos but otherwise he saw no need to change his own way of life while sex was the basis of donovan's professional life it also continued to be one of the most important activities in his personal life he seemed to be almost insatiable and would frequently engage in casual sex between appointments with his escorting clients toward the end of 1984 donovan and wakefield pool decided to return to fire island and shoot boys in the sand too they both hoped the sequel would revive their sagging fortunes neither had achieved any great success independently of their first joint venture he hoped the sequel might again put him on the covers of magazines and give him national recognition one friend recalled that he was more buliant than ever and i could clearly see that he was trying to keep in check his fantasies of becoming the man of the moment all over again but the film wasn't released until two years later the producer had died of a heart attack on the day pool started shooting the film and the ownership of the film stock was subject to legal battles lasting over 20 months by the time it came out in 1986 there was no buzz or anticipation no moment of renewed celebrity the world it came into was quite different from the one the original boys in the sand had entered it was more competitive in a field created by the new technology of video and the sequel offered a vision of sex that seemed outdated in the era already dealing with aids it seemed innocent and naive boys in the sand too opens with donovan and another man having sex in the shrubbery in another scene the famous scene from the first version of boys in the sand is reprised in which donovan emerges from the bay only in this film a young pat allen emerges from the bay as donovan returns to the waves seemingly forever a year later in august of 1987 casey donovan passed away though he never publicly disclosed his infection aids had now claimed gay porn's first [Music] superstar [Music] on march 10 1987 larry kramer stood before a large audience of gay men at new york's lesbian and gay community center in greenwich village cramer was the country's most vocal critic of both the federal government and gay communities failure to address the aids crisis in 1983 he had founded gay men's health crisis to provide support and social services for the gay men stricken with the disease two years later he wrote the normal heart one of the longest running plays ever at the public theater to dramatize the situation behind its establishment on that march evening kramer read from his 1983 aids manifesto 1112 and counting our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get four years later the number of aids cases had reached 32 thousand while any number of issues spurred his wrath that evening the tipping point was the overly restrictive drug testing policy of the federal government's food and drug administration which thus far had prevented the development of any medicine to treat hiv and aids he was also exasperated by the failure of gay men's health crisis to lobby or take an advocacy role he appealed to his audience do you want me to start a new organization devoted solely to political action a huge yes rose from the audience two days later more than 300 people met to found the aids coalition to unleash power act up their first political action was a large demonstration on wall street to protest the lack of corporate initiative on development of drugs to treat hiv and aids in the years that followed act up gained thousands of members and 70 chapters in the united states and abroad the gay community had reached a breaking point joey yale who appeared in la plays itself died of aids on april 18 1986. he was 36 years old jw king's stardom brothers should do it and these bases are loaded with his fictive brother john king one of the most popular gay porn stars of the late 70s and early 80s he died of aids in los angeles on december 5th 1986. he was 31. gay porn film director arthur brenson died of aids on july 28 1987 at 44. his film pleasure beach won the first annual gay erotic film award in 1985. casey donovan died of aids in florida on august 10th 1987 none of his friends or family knew that he had aids he was 43. john holmes who boasted that he had sex with more than 1400 partners died of aids on march 13th 1988. he was 43. photographer robert maplethorpe died of aids in a hospital in boston on march 9 1989. he was 42. johnny dawes the star of arthur brenson's prize-winning pleasure beach died of aids on july 25th 1989. he was 34. [Music] as the aids epidemic devastated the lives of gay men more gay men were choosing to stay at home and watch pornography than go out and cruise for sex at the height of the epidemic in the fall of 1988 jerry douglas launched the first issue of man shots a new magazine dedicated to covering gay porn films one of the articles in that issue was about safe sex videos and another was an obituary to porn star eric striker the fictive brother of gay porn megastar jeff striker it was the first time any publication devoted to erotic photography and porn had published an obituary of a porn star it was to be a regular feature of man shots magazine douglas felt that it was time for the adult film industry to acknowledge that many performers were dying of aids in the editorial introduction douglas compared the origins of mainstream filmmaking with the development of gay porn during the 20s when silent filmmaking was at its zenith few of its practitioners thought of their work as an art form or imagined one day their flickers would be treasured in museums and archival vaults silent film making if we are to believe the memoirs of griffith chaplin and especially senate with a carefree chaotic business in which people were delighted to be paid for being a little bit crazy today historians dig with the intensity of archaeologists to reconstruct the days and data of that era we suspect in time the output of the carefree chaotic business of skinflix will also achieve the status of treasures and future historians will likewise try to reconstruct the days of early porn to that end this magazine attempts to give some order to the first quarter century of gay erotic filmmaking jerry douglas saw many of his friends in the industry die of aids drug overdoses and suicide but he lived long enough to see the memorialize in a class on the history of gay erotica taught at his alma mater yale university not long after helping to launch man shots magazine jerry douglas decided it was about time he returned to producing films for his first project fratrimony douglas wrote a short script about two brothers and their sexual obsession with each other since it was his first film in 14 years he sought to make it as contained as possible both thematically and practically all of the film's action takes place in one house and only two performers appear in it it was unusual for a pornographic film to have only two performers but the movie was an immediate hit a master had returned to the industry the film was nominated for avn awards for best gay picture best gay actor and best gay director the success of fratrimony inspired douglas to make another film almost immediately the germ of a new idea began to grow while at the annual avn awards show in las vegas douglas has seen shishi leroux the drag persona of up-and-coming porn director larry pasciotti perform and was stunned by her flamboyant presence and style larue was a lavish personality who frequently emceed and sang at industry events though they had long had a telephone relationship while douglas was a magazine editor and larue the marketing and promotions manager at catalina video douglas had never seen larue perform she had recently left catalina to direct videos for anahana productions after seeing her performance in las vegas douglas wanted to build a movie around leroux but he asked himself how do i build a gay porn movie around a full-figured drag queen it came to him over lunch with larue who brought along a handsome brunette performer named joey stefano at lunch that day stefano talked about the difficulties he had coming to terms with his sexuality because of his catholic background stefano's struggles gave douglas an idea within weeks of returning from la douglas had written a script about a young man's coming to terms with his homosexuality against the backdrop of the catholic church and aids activism douglas incorporated some aspects of the relationship between larue and stefano as well douglas felt that more of a man was the first real film i made i think that's the first time i really hit my stride and got it right all the elements came together not only douglas's extensive experience as a playwright and theater director his pioneering role as a director of erotic films and his wealth of knowledge of the gay world as a journalist and observer but also the strong erotic appeal of the actors and above all the exact and delicate appreciation of the historical forces sweeping across the gay world more of a man sets the sexual action in the actual context of gay male life in the late 1980s a time overwhelmed by the aids epidemic filled with the fear of sex and riddled by doubts that aids could be stopped the main characters represented the two poles of gay male sexual life one a young man torn by guilt and self-hatred overwhelmed with a sense of sin and unwilling to identify himself as gay and the other a self-accepting gay man in a long-term relationship an aids activist the young construction worker engages in risky sexual encounters with strangers anonymous sex and public bathrooms while the activist uses a condom even during sex with his long-term partner the film was made within an industry that had hesitated for years to portray explicit sexual action using a condom douglas showed that within the grim historical setting powerful and arousing sex could take place more of a man won four awards at the 1990 avn awards including the best gay video best screenplay best non-sexual role for shishuluru and best performer for joey stefano stefano was born nicholas iacona on new year's day 1968. after his father's death when he was 15 he resolved to escape his small town of chester pennsylvania by becoming a model he put together a portfolio with the help of a local photographer and soon met tony davis an adult performer who introduced nicholas to gay porn after meeting shishi leroux who christened him joey stefano and starring in more of a man he instantly rose to stardom not just within the world of gay porn but outside it as well he created a hit clothing line and was featured in multiple madonna projects the singer was so smitten with joey that she was apparently devastated
[TODO]
[Added as an addendum in a pinned comment]:
- Somerton claims that Joey Stefano "created a hit clothing line." I am finding no evidence of this.
when she found out that he was actually gay and not gay for pay talent agent david del val who represented multiple hollywood actors and some of the biggest stars on broadway was thoroughly convinced that he could turn joey into a leading man and began shopping him around to casting directors shockingly they were pretty open to having him read for upcoming parts gay porn history or not he was a talented actor oozed charisma and had the type of movie star good looks that are rare like tom cruise with prettier eyes joey also took frequent trips back to pennsylvania to visit his older sister linda who he adored and who had helped him get sober after developing a drug problem in his late teens a habit he'd picked up to numb the pain after his father's death he was a doting uncle to her children and even gave her away at her wedding on one trip back in 1994 he told her that he planned to leave porn since david dalvall was busy lining him up auditions for mainstream movies in the meantime he was willing to mop floors or wash dishes whatever it took to keep the bills paid while he waited for his hollywood dream to come true before leaving linda's house that summer he told her that he had some unfinished business in la it was in la that he received the news that he was hiv positive there was still no effective treatment for the disease and he felt hopeless joey stefano was found nearly lifeless in a hollywood motel room his ashen body spread across sweat-soaked sheets garbed in only a red hoodie he was pronounced dead later that day at cedar sinai medical center the cause of death was an overdose of cocaine morphine and heroin a lethal combination that everyone who knew him said was obviously suicide i'll always wonder whether i could have gotten through to him that night whether he could have believed what i was telling him del val said later could he have had an acting career because let me tell you he really had it the ramifications of the aids crisis continued to rock the porn world well after the discovery of protease inhibitors that kept the disease more or less at bay much like the rest of the gay community stars in the gay porn world spent a decade and a half burying their friends colleagues and lovers it wasn't until stray people began contracting the disease via blood transfusions that any money was put into aids research in america the bulk of said money was earmarked for abstinence campaigns instead of research or safe sex awareness the christian right wing and let's be honest many of the left wing as well argued that porn stars and sex workers should be excluded from any kind of possible aids-related government-funded assistance or even drug trials video stores under pressure from family groups began to carry fewer adult titles arguing that porn with or without a condom straight or gay would lead to dangerous sexual practices especially among college students away from their parents watchful eyes many convenience stores stopped carrying adult magazines the playboy penthouse and hustler were mostly safe and under the guise of stopping sex trafficking the clinton administration advised the u.s postal service to stop transporting pornographic material it wasn't illegal to sell porn in your stores or for shipping companies to deliver it but at the time some people in the industry felt like they were just waiting for the other shoe to drop bill clinton's re-election campaign in 1996 turned shockingly conservative across the board and with the recent underage porn scandals surrounding tracy lourdes many directors producers and performers felt that porn's time in america might have come to an end but then the birth of the internet was a revolution for many industries but most of all porn making the purchase of adult films easier and more private the internet helped the industry grow from an industry worth an estimated 800 million dollars in 1996 to 10 billion dollars in 2006. the adult entertainment industry revolutionized the internet as well it was pornography producers that finance the software and technology necessary to make secure online purchases with credit cards a conglomerate of gay porn studios hired coding specialists in the mid 90s to streamline the display of photos online and then the ability to stream video technology that would later be adopted by facebook instagram and youtube european gay porn studio bellamy was the first company to stream live video over the internet creating a whole new industry of webcam sex shows in 2003 their streaming technology was bought by a small telecommunications startup called skype by 2010 pornography was estimated to make up ten percent of the entire internet in 2020 that estimate has changed to 30 percent there are more paid subscribers to porn sites in 2020 than there are to netflix and that's not taking into account the vast amount of ad-supported porn on sites like x-tube and pornhub lowering the barrier of entry to gay porn via the internet is believed by sex educators to be one of the biggest influences on the spike in homosexuality and bisexuality among the general population it's not that there are suddenly more queer people than ever before but that it's easier for them to explore their sexuality in a consequence-free way by 2004 there was more porn than ever with countless professional and amateur producers filling up the internet niches that has long gone under served suddenly had entire sites dedicated to them and quickly it became very obvious that the most popular genre of gay porn was the barely legal kind a genre that was about to rock the billion dollar industry to its very core [Music] at the end of the 20th century brian coaches was an unemployed medical photographer in dallas township a small town in pennsylvania he was so hard off that he'd had to declare bankruptcy coaches started cobra video in hopes of hitting it big and to many people's surprise it worked he had a knack for finding cute boys who would work for cheap and appealing to the fans of barely legal porn because of this coach's company grew quickly with adult video stores unable to keep his videos in stock coaches couldn't resist mixing business with pleasure though only a few months after getting into porn he almost scuttled his new career in the spring of 2001 coaches met a young pennsylvania boy in an aol chat room who used the screen name superboy298 although the boy was only 15 coaches picked him up twice each time he had sex with a boy including once on camera after promising him a job packaging cobra videos for online orders the boy eventually spilled the beans to his parents police and the fbi raided the house and took away pornographic material audio equipment and cameras initially charged with several felonies including the sexual assault of a boy who he had videotaped coaches was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge when prosecutors realized that the boy had lied about his age with the exception of the sex tape coaches made prosecutors were forced to return every item they had seized from him including 600 porn videos placed on probation for one year coaches served no jail time by 2004 he had left his run-in with the law behind him and had become one of the most successful producers of gay pornography in the world he drove a bmw a maserati and an aston martin had a large house and more money than he knew what to do with all of this came from making videos of his kennel of twins having sex and no twink was more responsible for paying for those cars and that house than sean lockhart aka brent corrigan coaches had discovered lockhart online he was a rare find a dead ringer for zac efron with charisma and sex appeal to spare while lockhart was still a junior in high school coaches made and distributed films that featured the 17 year old off the set he wielded obsessive control over the teenager's life desperate to know at all times where lockhart was and who he was talking to the dvds and downloads of lockhart's quickly became the top sellers in the industry one film schoolboy crush was the most downloaded gay video of 2004 but as lockhart's fan base expanded coaches faced a problem the young star wanted to strike out on his own coaches was paying lockhart only two thousand dollars per scene about the industry standard at the time for a handful of scenes each year coaches by contrast reportedly cleared two million dollars a year lockhart was determined to work for other studios though and so coaches sued him for breach of contract demanding one million dollars in damages the teenager was backed into a corner born in idaho on halloween in 1986 sean grew up in the seattle area his mother who he described as an alcoholic with a temper left him with his stepfather and three siblings when sean was in the third grade lockhart never knew his biological father and never sought him out my mother never wanted to tell me anything about him he said her flawed philosophy on parenting was to give me the space i needed to live my life when sean was a junior in high school he moved to san diego to live with his mother in a shabby house in a rough neighborhood he was interested in film and the move enabled him to establish state residency so he could attend film school in southern california being gay made him unpopular so he took refuge in the drama society he also became a regular in hillcrest san diego's wealthy gay enclave sexually active at 16 he was soon fending off men left and right it wasn't an easy time though sean's brother called him [ __ ] constantly and his stepfather another alcoholic ran into trouble with the irs growing up in my family it wasn't encouraged to show a lot of love to each other i just remember a lot of hate fighting and yelling i don't recall ever having a positive adult role model at 16 he began spending his weekends in los angeles with his new boyfriend a 21 year old he called jake the two had met online and jake became the first in a series of older lovers eager to exploit lockhart's looks in 2003 jake and aspiring porn star himself had applied for a job at cobra video the company owned by brian coaches he was turned down too old but sean who looked 12 was exactly what cobra was looking for considering how hand to mouth he and his mother were living sean was willing to give porn a try in an online chat jake gushed about lockhart to coaches i have the hottest new boyfriend who is 17 he's about to turn 18 he wrote to prove it he slipped off sean's shorts while he was sleeping and turned on his webcam to give coaches a live dose of lockhart coaches was hooked sensing the massive following lockhart would have he contacted shawn almost every day chatting online and on the phone for hours coaches sent lockhart a video camera which sean used to film a casting tape of himself masturbating brian was good at talking at my level lockhart says he asked a lot of questions he wanted to know about my family situation and about how inattentive my mother was he sort of took the place of my father and i thought he was looking out for my best interests coaches had the kind of childhood that lockhart could only dream of as a boy brian rose to the rank of eagle scout and won a nationwide photography contest if sean couldn't have an ideal childhood he'd try his best to have an ideal adulthood in february of 2004 nine months before his 18th birthday sean began shooting movies for coaches performing alone and with other models under two contracts he signed with the director lockhart was to receive an unspecified amount for each action scene he shot in addition he would be given a 2002 volkswagen jetta a set of four rims and tires insurance premiums worth twenty one hundred a cell phone plan and an unspecified signing bonus to a teenager living on the edge of poverty this was significant money lockhart chose a stage name brent corrigan by flipping through a telephone book on a shoot in florida in an online column he wrote later for a gay porn gossip site sean said i could easily disappear for four days for a shoot and lie to my mother about where i was going i was in it alone i promised myself i would do the work to get what i needed and then turn my back on it i was still somewhat ashamed of my homosexuality let alone having participated in gay porn despite lockhart's misgivings brent corrigan became a star dvds featuring him sold briskly at sixty dollars per copy as did online downloads at eight cents a minute he gained even more notoriety when schoolboy crushed and three other corrigan titles were pulled from store shelves and internet sites after it became clear that lockhart had been underage during their production it all started one day in august 2004 a woman who lived next door to coaches approached lockhart who was painting brian's house she demanded to know how old he was denouncing coaches as a pedophile and threatening to call the police afraid he would be arrested lockhart packed up his belongings and headed back to san diego where his mother was living with her latest boyfriend in a one-bedroom apartment sean moved in with them and graduated from high school with few job prospects no money for school and working for a hundred dollars a week shawn was at a dead end then he met grant roy a well-off trucking executive who was a fan of his work a relationship quickly developed between the two and roy decided they needed to wrestle control of brent corrigan's brand away from brian coaches they set up a website to promote lockhart and formed a new porn company coaches sued charging lockhart with trademark infringement claiming to own the branch oregon name in a counter suit lockhart alleged the coaches had engaged in fraudulent business practices which left him in emotional distress the lawsuit created further difficulties for lockhart who had left cobra to film the velvet mafia with falcon studios who had agreed to pay him ten thousand dollars for two scenes far above the industry standard but as soon as legal threats arrived from coaches falcon refused to build lockhart as brent corrigan calling him fox rider instead feeling like they'd have to produce their own videos roy began looking for models online where he came across a picture of a buff jock type named harlow quadra a navy veteran who made his living as a male escort in the military town of virginia beach quadro wanted to move beyond escorting and make even bigger money in online porn a brent corrigan fan he struck up an email correspondence with lockhart and roy which led to talk of forming a porn partnership quadra and his boyfriend joseph carakas made plans to meet them on january 11th at a gay porn trade show held in las vegas the two couples sat down for dinner at lucerck in the bellagio and the conversation immediately turned to business cuadra and caracas came on strong wanting to strike a deal right away they offered an obscene amount of money to do you know a couple of scenes and i just was like this is ridiculous whatever reservations lockhart and roy had everyone at the table knew that there was a major impediment to any deal brian coaches as long as cobra had lockhart tied up in court the star could not film under the name brent corrigan for both lockhart and quadra their fame and future livelihoods seemed to hang on a single middle-aged man back in pennsylvania so quadra made a proposal that struck both lockhart and roy as strange what if brian left the country he asked roy understood exactly what was being suggested we don't need coaches to leave the country he said changing the subject when dinner ended lockhart stumbled back to his hotel room and passed out neither he nor roy called the police within days their lawsuit with brian coaches was settled brent corrigan was now a free agent information that never made it to cuadra and caracas a day after the trade show ended according to police quadra used his discover card to run a 39.95 background check on brian coaches the check turned up his address on midland drive two days later on january 22nd quadra created a new email account the first message sent from it went to cobra cobravideo.com an account used by coaches the sender introduced himself as danny moylan and said would like to model happy face coaches invited him to come visit the next evening as kochus was speaking on the phone to his attorney in california danny moylan arrived the director said that he had to go and he sounded on top of the world less than two hours later coaches was dead stabbed 28 times his throat had been slashed and his house set on fire he was only identifiable by dental records the next day quadra called lockhart go to the wnep website quadra said referring to the abc affiliate in nearby scranton which was reporting on the murder of brian coaches sean changed the channel dropped the phone and threw up it didn't take long for police to zero in on quadra finding pictures of him on coaches hard drive but they needed more than just pictures and some chat history meanwhile quadra and caracas were using their newfound infamy as suspected killers to improve their business prospects they promoted their startup film studio on [ __ ] gossip sites that ferociously debated the murder cuadra and crackus also made it a point to keep in touch with their potential business partners at 10 14 am on march 3rd grant roy received an email hey grant it's harlow so when we gonna start filming you know we had an agreement three minutes later roy received a more ominous message don't [ __ ] with us to cement their deal quadra and caracas came to san diego for another meeting by now however roy and lockhart were cooperating with the police they had come under intense suspicion after coaches was killed and they wanted to clear their names so both agreed to wear a wire when they met with quadra and caracas on april 27th as a police helicopter worried nearby the foursome reunited over lunch at the crab catcher restaurant in la hola roy asked quadra if brian coaches had felt any pain when he died don't worry quadra said leaning over to lockhart he went quick the four men agreed to meet again the following day at black's beach a clothing optional spot north of san diego cuadra seemed to think that no clothes would mean no wires promising to tell lockhart and roy everything when they were on the beach nude apparently unaware of how small recording devices had become at the beach the talk eventually turned to the day coaches was murdered we were trying for you know some form of confession but really when it came down to it it was more they knew so much about what they'd done that that was damning enough on may 15th four months after the killing harlow quadra and joseph carakas were arrested in virginia beach and charged with homicide robbery and arson after lockhart testified both were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole lockhart and roy eventually broke up with sean going on to have an extensive career in gay porn as well as in some mainstream movies the whole ordeal was made into a movie starring james franco and former disney star garrett clayton in 2016 though the accuracy of its portrayal is questionable at best since then sean has pulled back from the spotlight preferring a more private life he prefers to not talk about brian coaches or harlow quadra within months of the brian coach's murder and the porn world was rocked with another gut punch the streaming video software they had helped to create in the late 90s was coming back to haunt them the launch of pornhub.com inspired by the still young youtube pornhub was a site designed to allow aspiring porn performers and horny imagers to post videos online for the world to see within weeks of the site's launch people were already uploading videos from sean cody corbin fisher falcon and bellamy it was a copyright nightmare the legal fees of which could send many companies into bankruptcy but not only were people posting copyrighted videos to the service but studios now had to compete with free porn available to anyone charging 60 per video seemed absurd in a world where people could find high quality pornographic videos for free with the click of a mouse seancody.com became particularly litigious suing not only people who uploaded their videos to sites like pornhub but also attempting to sue anyone who watched them pornhub tried to gain some goodwill from the industry by taking action and removing copyrighted content but industry professionals didn't care pornhub was breaking the business model that had been in place since the days of mail order loops if you wanted to watch porn you paid for it some studios suggested pornhub allow people to upload their amateur videos but to require a paid subscription to watch them the question then became was it legal for pornhub to make money from amateur content if not how would they pay the uploaders how could they be sure people were uploading original content and not simply ripping amateur looking videos from other sites and uploading them as their own their headache came to an end in 2010 when pornhub was purchased by manwin now known as mindgeek a canadian tech company that had spent the last few years buying up adult websites across the net the montreal-based company specialized in online advertising and was optimizing their streaming video sites to feature ads for adult products and any company secure enough to have their brand associated with porn traditional studios like falcon began buying ad space on mind geek owned websites creating an uneasy partnership between enemies but things were about to get a lot more uneasy over the next decade mind geek would become a monolith in the porn world as of 2020 they owned pornhub porn md redtube uporn browsers digital playground men.com sean cody and countless other formerly independent porn producers and providers they even own a steak and playboy vertically integrating their streaming and production businesses by advertising professional productions from men.com sean cody and browsers on amateur videos on their tube sites eventually uploading entire videos from their production arm to act as a tease for everything available behind the paywall many in the industry today both in the straight and gay worlds accuse mind geek of holding a monopoly over the industry while others claim mind geeks simply saw the future coming and prepared for it before anyone else today mindgeek is the third top consumer of internet bandwidth in the entire world behind only google and facebook with 115 million daily users they dwarf youtube's average of 30 million daily users it's also estimated that mindgeek has the world's third largest pool of monetized user data with only facebook and amazon beating them out with offices in montreal dublin london hamburg bucharest la miami and san diego they are by far the most far-reaching porn provider and producer on earth they've swallowed up many of their competitors though you wouldn't know it they buy studios with an area press release and keep them running advertising their content on their tube sites and paying themselves for the ad space as mind geek buys up production companies their website's monthly membership costs drop since mindgeek makes most of its revenue from advertising and big data which puts pressure on other producers to lower their own monthly membership fees a trend that has led many companies to slash how much performers are paid in order to remain profitable this is all that killed the decades-old studio system in the porn world in which a performer will sign an exclusivity contract with a studio those contracts are now exceedingly rare except with studios owned by mind geek to make up for the lost income many performers have turned to independent production and distribution with websites like only fans just for fans and even patreon popping up to allow individual models to charge a monthly fee for self-produced content another nail in the coffin of independent studios mind geek doesn't mind though since most of the performers will upload preview videos to pornhub accounts to help advertise their only fans pages and even though mind geek owns much of the porn world at this point it's very likely you've never heard of them they stay under the radar on purpose and their own website is so vague you wouldn't take them for anything but another generic tech firm even their headquarters situated not far from downtown montreal is almost camouflaged made entirely of reflective glass it blends in almost seamlessly with the sky above mind geek's secret monopoly has changed the world of porn for good studios now run on a quantity over quality basis constantly fighting to make sure they have enough content to keep subscribers happy and paying unlike the mainstream film industry's disastrous response to netflix porn studios have adapted quickly helix studios for instance has become well known for producing videos that are closer in quality to high-end independent films than the overly lit multi-camera soap opera looking videos from shawncodeyanmen.com and they're not alone cocky boys is another studio aiming for a more cinematic quality to their porn hearkening back to the days of when pornographers looked at adult movies as sexy films with a lot of sex instead of just sex [Music] it's interesting to see porn evolve in recent years as companies fight to distinguish themselves from mind geek's monolith fans of the videos are seeing nothing but benefits for people who want high quality erotic films helix and cocky boys have got you covered for people who want just the sex mind geek's collection of studios like shawn cody are there to provide for those who want more real of the moment porn there are thousands of onlyfans accounts ready for your monthly subscription [ __ ] has changed a lot over the last 70 years from the photos of bob miser to the films of tom de simone and wakefield pool to the creation of studios like falcon and catalina through the aids crisis and thousands of lost lives the creation of the internet unprecedented growth violent murder the rise of a monopoly and now the democratization of the industry gay porn helped to create the home video market helped push vhs to a win over betamax and developed the very technology being used to stream this video today the story of gay porn in the 20th and 21st century is a lot like that of gay people ourselves hidden in the closet like so many bob miser photos sparking a revolution to be acknowledged fighting through a plague no one wanted to see us get through and finally now to some kind of acceptance in the mainstream though many would be loathed to admit it [ __ ] has helped to shape what it means to be gay it was a rare look at gay sexuality when we were nothing but villains and jokes in hollywood films a place to feel accepted when straight couples lined around the block to see the boys in the sand a fantasy refuge from the aids crisis when being gay could be a viral death sentence a digital space to feel accepted in when the bush administration fought to enshrine gay discrimination into the constitution a place to see ourselves as desirable when people call us freaks it says something about our society that porn was at its most popular its most mainstream 50 years ago with the boys in the sand and deep throat being bigger hits than anything hollywood put out what happened why did porn go back in the closet the conservative tsunami that hit north america in the 1980s certainly did its part but have we not progressed since then gay men and women fought and won the right to get married and serve in the military two of the most conservative institutions on earth and yet many gay men won't admit that they watch porn in a 2019 poll 66 percent of gay men said they were embarrassed to talk about porn with friends they were afraid people would think they were perverts while 50 years ago we stood in line to see porn in a movie theater porn isn't about to have a theater resurgence not when hollywood itself is going more and more digital but i believe we need to open our minds and stop being ashamed of who we are and what we watch we fought for decades to not have to hide in a closet and yet we keep our porn hidden we fought to not be ashamed to our families to not be shamed by the population at large for loving who we love and here we are two decades into the new millennium we can get married serve in the military run giant corporations run for president and yet we're still ashamed not ashamed of being gay but ashamed of gay sex i think it's time we stop being ashamed [Music] you
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