Another pioneer gone. Another piece of gayporn history forever lost… Read the XBiz obit
Category Archives: porn
The truth about PornHub
“Pornhub announced today a series of safety and security policies enhancing measures for verification, moderation and detection of content with the goal of positioning the company “at the forefront of combating and eradicating illegal content” (read the full XBiz article). In that very statement PornHub so claims: “Over the years, we have demonstrated our resolute commitment to leading the fight against illegal online content”. What? PornHub was built on the massive theft of intellectual property aided and abetted on the platform. Hiding behind the DMCA, and without the burdens of production costs, the company grew to be the #2 porn tube. When VISA and MasterCard pulled the plug, Pornhub panicked and rushed to take down 10 million “non verified uploads”. Something content producers (the few of us left) have been asking for 13 years, to no avail. By taking them all down OVERNIGHT, hoping to appease VISA and MC, PornHub proved they had the tools to do the right thing all along. They simply decided not to: they would not have the traffic nor the business they enjoy today, without those 10 million FREE videos. So, please. Spare us the crap about your “resolute commitment to leading the fight”. You are not entitled to your own facts and you won’t get to rewrite history. We know what has happened on PornHub (and why) since 2007, we know what happened to the adult industry, once thriving, because of PornHub (and RedTube and XVideos and Xhamster…), we hold it accountable.
Scott Masters
Another giant passed away. Scott Masters/Robert Walters left us this Fall at a retirement home
I can’t think of any gayporn producer more consequential than Masters/Walters.
With a career spanning almost 4 decades and relevant contributions in each decade.
As a magazine publisher in the late 60s, as the man behind Nova in the 70s, as the
Producer in charge of Catalina in the late 80s, as the co-founder of Studio2000 in the late
90s/early 2000.
Scott and I became friends after my directing debut at Men of Odyssey in 1997, with “Journey to Italy”. He was brutally honest with me: “Lucas”, he told me. “You didn’t give Men of Odyssey a 80K movie. You didn’t deliver a 50K movie. Hell, you didn’t deliver a 20K movie. You had no idea of what you were doing!”. Was he right… and I loved him all the more for it. Scott taught me a great deal about self-discipline, self-criticism, work ethics. And about the industry I was about to embark on.
We would get together for lunch in Weho every now and then. I would ask him, star struck, about Nova, the early loops, the later feature films (“Someting Wild” is, to this day, one of my favorite movies of all times). He would hardly discuss any of them. Perhaps not realizing, not fully, the richness of his legacy and its impact. On the language of gayporn and the forms of
gay desire. Farewell, my friend.
Below a picture taken at the premiere party for All Wolrlds’ ANDEL’S STORY. From l to r, Gino Colbert, Tom DeSimone, John Travis, Bill Higgins, Scott Masters and yours truly. © “Unzipped Magazine”). And a quote by @wishfultopping I found on my Twitter feed, best defining porn back then vs today’s porn : “We didn’t watch porn back then to simply bust a nut, it was almost a lifeline for some. It projected everything society told us we weren’t: happy, free, successful, charismatic,beautiful ! Those were the first movies I’ve seen gay men in a positive light”. And that is Masters true legacy.
Throwbackthursday: Jeff Stryker’s Underground
The Matinee Idol
The Making of…
Our 21st b-day celebration wouldn’t be complete, without a close look behind the scenes and a tribute to the tireless crew. What does it take to ‘make porn’ on location? Lots of hard work, sure: camera equipment, sound equipment, grip/electric… But also lots of fun. And the camaraderie built over the 3, 4 weeks of production. Check out the photo gallery on LucasKazan
The Holiday Sale
Christmas with BelAmi
Give yourself the gift of BelAmi, get 1 month FREE.
Call Me By Your Name
We take a break from porn today to recommend Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (now in theatres in the US; In Italy this coming February): achingly beautiful. Breathtaking.
But also to take a step back and reflect on the sad state of porn these days. You’ll find more erotic tension –and infinitely more meaningful– in “Call Me By Your Name” than in most porn schlock out there (formulaic scenes, reality crap, bareback hydraulics, silly parodies and offensive gimmicks). What happened to the art form –and the filmmakers– that once explored the human condition? That once knew how to build characters’ arcs and to shape our sexual psyche? What is porn today, what it used to be and what should it be? Time to re-discover the pioneers: Tom DeSimone, Steve Scott, the early Joe Gage… Time to say no to piracy and the cancer of ‘corporate’ porn (you all know whom and what I mean)
Below yesterday night’s screening in Hollywood, with director Luca Guadagnino and young Timothee Chalamet
2017 Hustlaball Awards
It’s award season already… We racked up 4 nominations at the 2017 Hustlaball Awards (Berlin): Best Director (Ettore Tosi), website, studio and movie (Of Boys and Men). Cast your vote here and win 2 tickets to the show!