Gay Star Interviews with Matt the Great!

Jason Sparks has a new club, www.clubjasonsparks.com. His new site features some of the hottest guys from around the country. Jason has been on an almost year long adventure traveling all over North America in search of the freshest talent to bring to you. I had a chance to speak to Jason about his new site and what you can expect to see there now and in the future. You can also follow Jason on Twitter at www.twitter.com/clubjasonsparks for all of his posts and updates on what is new on his site and in his travels and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ClubJasonSparks and Myspace at www.myspace.com/JasonSparksXXX.

MATT: Hey Jason, How are you?

JASON: I’m great, thanks. How are you?

MATT: I’m good. How have things been going for you?

JASON: Oh, very well. It’s been a busy last eight months since I started working on the site and finally everything is coming to fruition, which is a good thing.

MATT: That is a very good thing. When did you launch the site?

JASON: The site itself was launched about three weeks ago, but I started working on it about eight months ago. I’ve shot 55 scenes so far and I shoot all the time for it. Actually, I’ve shot more than 55 scenes because I stopped counting a little while ago, but I’m pretty much shooting all the time and I’m trying to get better and better models. And, you probably know this, we’re uploading three scenes a week, which is on the high side… there are very few companies that do that. So, we’re trying to play with the big boys and start off with a bang as opposed to… you know, when I started out everyone told me, “Oh, only upload one scene a week. That’s all you need to do,” and this and that. And I said, no, I really want to be a big player, so I decided to go and run with it from the beginning.

MATT: Now, you’re traveling all over the US to find these models. Are you just going from town to town recruiting or are you lining them up ahead of time?

JASON: When I travel around I’m meeting with different people. I’m not in the situation of a big studio where… I mean, I’ve made 33 movies myself, when I say made I mean appeared in for other studios and stuff like that. I’ve made like four movies for Hot House and three for Michael Lucas and a bunch of others. You know, I don’t have the budget nor the financing situation where I can take risks that they can take; for example, if Sean Cody or Hot House or someone like that gets someone who’s sent their picture to them and they show up and don’t look like the picture, they have the budget; they can just send the home and it’s not big a deal, they can just send them home and it doesn’t effect their budget. With me that’s a big problem, so with me I find it’s much cheaper to travel around and meet up with people when I’m traveling to see if they are a good match. And if they are I can fly them to Atlanta for a shoot, but I don’t have to take the risks because I’ve actually met them in person first.

MATT: So when you’re flying around you’re not actually shooting at those locations. You’re scouting for talent.

JASON: At this point I only shoot in Atlanta. It depends on the situation. Sometimes I’ll be out of town and if it’s like a solo scene, the guy who does my camera work is really, really good, so sometimes he’ll film a solo scene without me even being there, because he does such a good job. I trust him to do it. So sometimes there will be shooting there while I’m on the road at my direction. I found it, for me, to be a lot more economical to do it the way I’m doing it as opposed to take risks and fly somebody in to find their not what they looked like, because the one thing I found out in this business is that everyone’s going to send out pictures that make them look the best possible. That’s with everybody, and that’s not a bad thing, but the point is those pictures may be a year or two or three old and they might not look exactly like those pictures at this point. And I’ve been a bit surprised when I travel around the country and how many people I’ve met up with in person that didn’t look anywhere as close to as good as their pictures do. So, basically this allows me to find really good models to work with without having to take those risks of having someone come in and shooting that’s not going to be a match.

MATT: You’ve been on the road quite a bit lately. How long have you been on the road?

JASON: I started traveling at the beginning of the year. I post my schedule on my site.

MATT: You’re originally from Florida, aren’t you?

JASON: Fort Lauderdale.

MATT: What brought you to Atlanta?

JASON: Well, I went to college at Notre Dame, and after I graduated I wanted a sort of halfway medium between South Bend, Indiana and Fort Lauderdale. And in between the two, big city wise, there’s not many options. So, I didn’t want to live in south Florida and I didn’t want to live in the far up mid-west. So, Atlanta was a good option. It’s a great city. I love it.

MATT: Do you have any plans in the future to shoot for other studios?

JASON: When you say shoot, do you mean as an actor or as a producer?

MATT: As a producer.

JASON: I’m open to doing other things, but I’m not looking for it. I always look at every offer and see what is in the best interest. My site personally will never shut down, I mean, I wouldn’t do anything that would take away from my personal site. But, that being said, if there was a opportunity to add to what I’m doing, I would take a hard look at anything that comes through. Also, as far as acting for other companies and stuff like that, I haven’t shot for any other companies this year at all. Everything I’ve done this year has been for only for my studio, but if someone came up to me and said, “Hey this so-and-so and I would like you to do a scene for my studio,” as long as it fit into what I want to do then I would definitely do it.

MATT: You have actually released a few DVD’s under Jason Sparks Entertainment as well, haven’t you?

JASON: Yeah I did. Originally I decided I was going to go a little bit of a different route. I was just going to do DVD’s. I wasn’t going to do websites. I sort of messed around with what was the best seller and what was the best option and I decided at that point to do a bareback line. I did three bareback movies right away. And after that I totally re-evaluated the way I wanted to go, and after talking to a number of people including Chi Chi LaRue and Howard from Fab Scout and those sort of people I decided I wanted to be a bigger company and also in that respect I decided that if I wanted a bigger company you have to look out over the health and safety of your models, even though the models I chose for those for those first three movies, that’s the type of movies they wanted to do I still thought it was best to go the condom route, so now I only produce condom movies and www.clubjasonsparks.com only does condom movies. So, that’s where I’m going there; I made the decision to only go the condom route, even though what I’m finding is that bareback movies are selling better. Not that I’m not doing well, because I am doing well, but it’s interesting that an apples to apples comparison bareback movies sell better than condom movies, but I feel like as a producer I have a responsibility if I’m going to be a larger producer. You know, if you’re a small producer and you’re producing one or two or three DVD’s a year then you can go one way, but if you’re getting into a larger scale like I’m getting into you sort of have to change your focus and decide how you want to go, and I decided to go towards the condom stuff just because condoms work. So, at the beginning of the year is when I started shooting all the condom stuff. So all those 55 scenes that I have are all condom stuff. Interestingly enough, it kind of surprised me because of the fact that because one thing that I expected to happen would be some of the models I talked to in the past to shoot some of the bareback stuff would have no problem shooting the condom stuff. And interestingly enough that wasn’t the case. There’s a number of really hot models who had never done porn at all that were about to shoot for me when I decided to change focus, and interestingly enough, they were not interested in doing condom porn at all. But on the other hand I have a number of really hot models that wouldn’t shoot in the bareback stuff, but now will shoot because I’m doing the condom stuff. So it’s sort of a trade, you know.

MATT: I like what you said about looking out for the safety of your models.

JASON: Basically I feel like… my degree is in civil and environmental engineering, and I used to work on hazardous waste site for the US Environmental Protection Agency after college. I did that for a few years after college. And one of the things that you learn is all about worker safety and protection and all that stuff, everything from hardhats to tiebacks to coverings, protective boots, protective gloves and all these things, and they really impress upon you the health and safety of the workers, and after thinking about it long and hard and after listening to Howard and Chi Chi some other people I thought, you know, to be a long term successful studio you not only have to look at the short term profits of the studio, because, yes, you can make more money from the bareback, but you also have to look at the people that are working for you and their protection as well. I think that what people do in their personal life, I don’t really care, that’s not an issue for me. But as far as what I’m hiring people to do, I have a responsibility to protect them in those issues, regardless of what they do in their personal lives. I don’t judge people for what they do in their personal life, because, you know what, one thing I’ve found is that what people do on film and what they do in their personal life is totally different. But, that being said, I’m not hiring them to do something like that. I figure when I’m hiring them I have to give them a certain level off protection, then what they want to do outside of that, that’s their own business.

MATT: What can people find on www.clubjasonsparks.com?

JASON: Well, what I’m trying to do is a combination of things at the same time. I’m trying to get a combination of some models who have their names out there in conjunction with new models that people have never seen before. I’m sort of trying to do a mixture of both. So, I’m not an amateur studio like Sean Cody would be and I’m not a professional studio like Hot House would be. I’m basically a mixture of the two so I can get a combination of guys. Because it creates an interesting dynamic if you get people who are new to porn and also get people who have a following. So, mix it up, give people a combination of the two, give people really good quality content, lots of new fresh content. The one thing that I noticed doing my market research going into this is that the biggest complaint that people had about a lot of these porn sites is that they felt like for the price that they were paying there was not enough new content being put up on a weekly basis. Most of the sites that are out there, as you may well know, only put up one scene a week. Probably 80% of them put up one scene a week. Another, probably 15% of them, which brings it up to 95%, put up two scenes a week. The only one that I’ve found that puts up three scenes a week is Randy Blue. There might be a few other who put up three scenes a week, but on the whole the vast majority of porn companies only put up one scene a week. A lot of people thought that for the money they were paying that one scene a week doesn’t get them very far. A lot of people like to watch porn all the time and they want some new, fresh content all the time, so that’s what I’m trying to do. Plus, I don’t know if you saw the scene we put up yesterday, but we’re going to be putting up some behind-the-scenes stuff which people love. It was surprising. We put up our first behind-the-scenes scene yesterday and I’ve got so many emails from people saying, “Oh my God, that was so cool seeing those people not just acting but as their real self.” So, what we’re trying to do is sort of a combination… I’ve picked the things from all the sites that I’ve seen out there and put them all together as one.

MATT: When did you start you porn career as an actor?

JASON: About two years ago I made my first two movies back to back for Hot House.

MATT: And you’ve made over 30 movies since then. When did you make the decision to go on your own and form Jason Sparks Entertainment?

JASON: Probably around October of last year, and then around October, November and December I shot a number of scenes for the Bareback Journeys line that I put out and I put out three DVD’s right away. About January is when I decided to go into a different direction. That’s when I stopped shooting bareback and started for this new site, hired a company to build it, which is the same company that build Jet Set Men and a bunch of other sites, and I think they’ve done an amazing job with building my site; and started putting the whole thing together, putting the pieces together. It’s been a lot of work. It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because there’s always issues that arise you don’t realize until you get down… you know, someone says, “I’m going to build a porn website,” and that sounds like an easy thing to do. It’s not anywhere as easy as I would have expected. If I would have known how difficult if would have been from the beginning I’m not sure I would have embarked on the whole journey, but now that it’s up and running I’m happy that I have. I thought that when I started building and working on the site back in January that by March or April I would have a site running with content and this and that. I took all the way until August really to get it up and running and that was because when you build a site there’s always issues, there’s always this, there’s always that, there’s always things you don’t realize until you really get into the nitty-gritty of how complicated a website is.

MATT: You also have your blog at www.ClubJasonSparks.Blogspot.com. Tell us what your blog is all about.

JASON: I just started my blog this past weekend and basically I decided to do something a bit different. I have some time on my hands when I’m traveling so I thought, OK, why not do something different and start a blog because of lot of porn stars these days have blogs and a lot of fans like the blogs, so I decided I didn’t want to do a typical blog, so I thought, what do I have to write about that I can tell people about, and that is travel and porn, so I decided to combine the two. Basically I’ve been to 46 states, I’ve been to Canada, all over Europe, I’ve been all over the Caribbean, I’ve been to Australia, all over the world. And I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be a great idea to start blogging about my experiences traveling, and one thing you’ll find about my blog as it goes is it’s going to go both forwards and backwards. I started of with New Orleans because I was in New Orleans for Southern Decadence, and in between each thing I’ll have a posting about one of the scenes on my website. So, I’ll have a posting about a city and then the next posting will be about something on my website like one of the scenes and then the next posting will be about another city. I’m going to go both forwards and backwards, for example I’ll be in Alabama tomorrow for two nights and I’ll blog about Birmingham, and I’ll also go backwards and probably do something about Pittsburgh which I went to a weeks and a half ago, and I’ll blog about Cleveland, which is the next city I’m going to, and then I’ll probably go backwards and talk about Phoenix which I went to about a week and a half or two weeks ago. I’ll go forwards and backwards so I can start going back to the cities I’ve been to and share my experiences of the cities. And my experiences are, you know, are not going to be an end all, but since I’ve been to so many cities so many times I’ll talk about things like where I’ve stayed and why I’ve stayed there and what I’ve done and which gyms I’ve gone to. Part of the reason to is because I get questions from my friends who say, “OK, I’m going to this city. Where should I stay or which gym should I go to, what should I do?” Those types of things. And I don’t know everything about a city and I only have my limited view, but I can at least tell them from my experience what I’ve done and what my experiences are, so I figured since I get so many phone calls from people asking about a city why not start blogging about it so people can read that. I mean it may not be anything remotely of interest to somebody and that’s fine, but I just figured, you know, so many people ask about different cities that I might as well start sharing my insight. My goal is every day or two or three to put up another posting of another city and go both forwards and backwards so that every time I change city I’m in, there’ll be a posting but then I’ll also mix it with cities I’ve been to in the past and sort of mix them together.

MATT: Well, I love it. I’ve been reading and absolutely love it. You said you have been to Canada, Europe and 46 states. That’s impressive.

JASON: Yeah, I’ve been to 46 states, I’ve been to Canada, I’ve been to Mexico, I’ve been all over the Caribbean, all over Europe, I’ve been to Australia, I’ve been to the Middle East. I’ve been all over the place. I’ve done a lot of traveling. I’m not putting myself out as a gay travel website, because that’s not what I am. I don’t go to the city with the express intention of seeing every thing or going to every single thing. I’ve been to a number of cities a number of times and so I know based on my experience where I like to stay and why I like to stay there and what gyms I like to go to. For example, my next blogs going to be about Pittsburgh after I do Birmingham. And I’m going to talk about the fact that I usually stay on Penn Avenue which is pretty central to everything and that I worked out at the Gold’s Gym, which is my first time there. I went there twice a day. When I went there at noon it would be sort of the straight, older business man crowd, and when I went at 5:00 each day there were some of the hottest straight guys you’ve ever seen in your entire life. So, I’m going to talk about that so if anyone goes to Pittsburgh and they want to see lots of really, really hot straight guys working out at a really nice gym then the Gold’s Gym is a great option to go to. I just want to share my insights of what I’ve found from going around.

MATT: Out of all of your travels do you have any travel horror stories?

JASON: Um, not huge horror stories. The only issues I’ve ever had traveling was like canceled flights or delayed flights, things like that, but everyone has those types of things. The problem I’ve ever had was being stuck on a plane at Washington National for hours on end as a snow storm hits without any air conditioning and it’s snowing and freezing outside and without air conditioning we’re all sweating inside the plane. Other than that I really haven’t had that many bad experiences traveling around the country or around the world. I guess I’ve been kind of lucky. A delayed plane here, a canceled plane there. You know, that’s normal for traveling. I really haven’t had a lot of problems traveling and a lot of that is because I travel so much that if there is a problem with a plane, because I have status with Delta, because I fly them everywhere, they usually take pretty good care of me. But I really haven’t had many horror stories that I can think of. In fact I can’t think of any big horror stories that I’ve had while traveling. I’ve been lucky I guess.

MATT: Jason, thank you so much for the interview.

JASON: I just appreciate everyone going and looking at my site. It’s been more work than I ever could have imagined but I’m getting some really good reviews on it from people. Everyone has their tastes. Some people will love my model selection and some people my say it’s not necessarily what their taste is. I pick my models based on what I think look good for the site. I’m very happy with the way things are going so far and I have a number of models that are bigger names that I’m talking to that have already committed to shooting with me. I won’t be shooting again until later this year or beginning of next year because I have so much content right now that I don’t need to. But once I start up again I’ll be bringing down some bigger names as well as the fresh people that I’m hiring, so it’s going to be a combination of the whole thing.

MATT: Thanks again Jason. I hope a lot of people visit your site and I wish you all the best.

JASON: Thanks, I’ll talk to you soon.

It always amazes me how hot the guys are in Canada. Just look at the Canadian stars I’ve interviewed on this site alone; Pierre Fitch, Brent Everett, Jeremy Feist, Jeremy Roddick, Ian Duncan, Julien Cox and now Ryan Russell. Having just started in the business this year, Ryan is making a big splash and has big plans for the future. You can follow Ryan on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RyanRussellXXX and on his blog at www.ryanrussellxxx.com.

MATT: Hey Ryan, How are you?

RYAN: Hey, brother, how are you doing?

MATT: Doing good. Hope you are.

RYAN: Fantastic. Just fine here.

MATT: You’re 29 now.

RYAN: That’s correct. I just turned 29 this year.

MATT: And you just started in the business this year.

RYAN: I know, it’s unreal, eh? On my way to retirement.

MATT: Oh my God, you just said “eh.” I love it. That is such a Canadian thing.

RYAN: It’s true, eh? I can’t help it, I just can’t help it. It all part of the fantastic world of Canada up here. We’re all so friendly up here but we’re cursed with “eh’s” and “kers” and “perkinglats.” It’s a hoot.

MATT: I love it. I don’t here that when I visit Quebec.

RYAN: Well come to Ontario. If you come to Toronto you’ll here “eh” all the time.

MATT: I would love to visit Toronto and go to Goodhandy’s and the other great clubs and bars there.

RYAN: Yeah, it’s absolutely insane. Goodhandy’s is crazy. I mean a lot of the bars are really relaxed for homos here. It used to be different but now it’s very relaxed. You would have a very good time here. A lot of the clubs have dark rooms and shit like that. It’s so dirty, it’s fantastic.

MATT: How did you get started in the business?

RYAN: It’s funny. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to to do but it had to be on good terms, because you hear horror stories for sure. I’ve done a lot of research. I wasn’t sure what would be the right angle for me to come in, if it was going to be modeling or if it was going to be producing because I’m generally a very creative kind of guy working in multimedia. It’s been a big part of my life for the last 15 years and it’s interesting. And porn has always been the most fun aspect of any of it because it’s fun and edgy, right? So, I wasn’t sure what the right angle was going to be and in truth I thought it a little fun to model but I just never got that opportunity that was a good fit.

MATT: You were actually approached on www.recon.com weren’t you?

RYAN: That’s correct, yeah, absolutely, which is quick bananas. Patrick, their casting and modeling handler contacted me. It’s true. It just came out of nowhere and I guess they were looking for something specific and I just happened to fit into that. The interview process was really intense and I was working hard to make everything right. I really had a lot of stuff to make up to be able to do what I had to do for them and everything else. So it was definitely a good and heavy six weeks, but I think that it all worked out for the best for sure.

MATT: You already have two DVD’s coming out with Titan this year.

RYAN: That’s correct. I don’t know too much about the first one to be honest. The first one was supposed to be called “Maneuvers,” but I’m not sure what it’s finally going to be called to be perfectly honest, but I think that one comes out near the end of September. They weren’t final on that title yet so I’m not sure if it’s going to called “Maneuvers” or not. But the second one is going to be called “Toolbox” and that one’s coming out in November I believe. I was just reading about it. They made a press release for J.R. Matthews, who was my scene partner and who’s now a Titan exclusive, so that’s pretty cool for him because he’s pretty awesome, a hot fucking dude. Crazy, crazy broad shoulders. During my first two scenes I got guys with the broadest shoulders in the business. Between him a Tyler Saint it’s crazy. These guys are just massively hot.

MATT: So, you’re not exclusive with anyone right now, are you?

RYAN: No I’m not, I’m really not. I don’t know, like I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do coming into it. I was just going into it with an open mind. And truthfully, I think I’ll be able to do a lot of dynamic stuff without having to be exclusive to one particular studio or project or anything else. I do want to do a couple of different things, for example, one of my next projects coming up is with a Toronto based artist who does a whole bunch of different types of mixed media film and stuff like that. I’ll be talking about that on my blog in the coming weeks. It’s going to be really cool and exciting, all these little projects that you don’t always get to work with if you are a part of that contract arrangement. But on the other side, you get a lot of the marketing and a lot of the support and everything that comes with it, so a double edged sword. It’s good one way and good the other. I don’t know if I’m doing the right things or not, but I’m having fun and I think that is definitely my main focus.

MATT: Are you planning on making this a full-time career?

RYAN: Yeah, you know, truthfully if I can, absolutely. I don’t imagine that I’ll be able to do it for my whole life, indefinitely, but it’s so much fun and the more I do the more I like it. In whatever capacity I’m able to make it work it’s going to be certainly a pursuit because it’s such a fun world. There’s so many great personalities, there’s so many cool people and so much to do, so why not?

MATT: What were you doing before you entered the world of porn?

RYAN: I’ve been heavily involved in marketing since I was quite young. I started my first business in web design when I was 14 years old. I was able to make a ton of cash in that first summer and it really got me hooked on making money for myself and working independently and the whole business bug really stuck in. Basically that got me started in the world of marketing and every summer I would reinvent that business and it would grow and I would start doing more and bigger projects. By the time I got to university I was doing that in a very busy capacity and doing a lot of bigger projects and eventually consulted with other companies to do their marketing. It just kept building and building and I got to do more and more until finally I had my own marketing business. And basically we provide all kinds of marketing services. I’m a big technophile, so I have a lot of interest in developing my skills and doing a lot of different things and basically working with a lot of talented people to provide brand ID, we provide dynamic websites. We do all sorts if new media kinds of stuff all the way from brochures to special events and things like that. I get to do a lot of different and unique and dynamic things because that’s really what I like to do. So, I’m working pretty independently in that capacity so that’s allowing me time to work towards working on www.ryanrussellxxx.com and making a success out of that and supporting a lot of new projects that will take a lot of time to develop. It’s a lot of fun. To be honest is my world. It’s just a blast for me and this world of porn crossed over nicely.

MATT: Now, living in Canada, did you face any challenges working in the US?

RYAN: I don’t really know what the whole process is. We seemed to have gotten around it and made it work as well as we could. Obviously for the next round we are going to have to do a little more legwork to make it happen, but this time it was pretty painless. It’s a specialty service and so on, so you have a little more flexibility in terms of working, actually. My big concern right now is being able to get models from the states to be able to perform up here. So, it’s really interesting. In fact some of the studios I’ve been talking to so far have even said that they are considering shooting up in Canada because they’ve got enough models up here they want to do a scene with. It seems like it’s a big challenge for people to get around, but there’s ways to do it. There’s infrastructure and people to support it. You really do need the support of the company to begin with and there are certain requirements that need to be met. It’s definitely a pain in my ass too.

MATT: Haha, it sucks to be Canadian sometimes.

RYAN: It’s true, it’s so true, but on the other side we have wonderful people like Jeremy Feist and Pierre Fitch to keep us entertained up here, so it’s not that bad. Even Brent Everett for God’s sake. He comes from Vancouver, I think. So it’s a good thing Canada’s here.

MATT: You’re married, aren’t you?

RYAN: Yeah, we got married about six days after it became legal.

MATT: When did gay marriage become legalized in Canada?

RYAN: It was in 2003. It was legalized in the beginning of June and we were married a week later.

MATT: What does your husband think about your decision to enter the world of porn?

RYAN: Well, he thinks it’s a riot. You know what, to be honest, if he wasn’t totally supportive there’s no way I could do it. But he thinks it’s an absolute blast. He’s been hugely supportive and he gets a big kick out of it all the time. I’m fortunate in that regard.

MATT: That is good. I didn’t know if there were any heated discussions over it or what.

RYAN: No, we just laughed. It was pure laughter, because to all my friends I’ve always been like, I need to get into porn, got to get into porn, how am I going to do it, I need to do it, I don’t care, porn, porn, porn! It’s been like a high point of interest in my heart for many years. I think it was just a matter of time, so no big surprise. It’s perfectly in line with my bad personality.

MATT: You are really passionate about music as well.

RYAN: Absolutely. I live and die for music to be perfectly honest. It’s like one of my favorite things in the whole world.

MATT: Do you play any instruments or have you been a member of any bands?

RYAN: Absolutely not, no, no. I do Rock Band, I do Guitar Hero, I will destroy anyone at karaoke… and by destroy I mean make them cry and want to leave because it’s so bad, but I have so much fun. I can dance though. I’m not a great dancer. I’m not classically trained or anything, but I can get my groove on. I do much better with the dancing that playing an instrument.

MATT: So what is more your style of music?

RYAN: Everything from about 1942, 1943, around that era. Even like swing music and big band music straight on through. I just love music. I’m obsessed with it. I have thousands and thousands of songs committed to memory. I love listening to the radio and all the new stuff, I just can’t get enough. I absolutely love dirty, raunchy songs. There just so much good stuff and dirty, rotten stuff to get into. You know, the big, master hits like Michael Jackson. I love Michael Jackson to death. The Beatles drive me crazy, James Brown, everything, gosh.

MATT: So you really are into the classic end of Rock like the Beatles and stuff.

RYAN: Sure, the Rolling Stones. But you know, even the new stuff. There’s so much dynamic music that comes out every single week. There’s just so much neat stuff out there. It’s hard to stay on top of it. That’s the biggest challenge but it’s also the most fun. My friend, John Webster, who actually just linked up to me on my blog, is probably my music god. He knows and loves music. He can hear one bar and know exactly what it is. It’s amazing. You should check out his site. He’s the top link to me on my page right now. He’s very funny. Everything is very pop culture. He knows everything.

MATT: I’m glad you mentioned your blog, www.ryanrussellxxx.com.What will people find there?

RYAN: Well, the primary purpose is for me just to stay in touch with the fans, because although I haven’t really produced a great number of movies yet, there’s nothing a whole lot to work with, I’ve already got a whole bunch of really cool people who are interested in Ryan Russell. They’ve been extremely supportive. As soon as I recognized that there was going to be some of that interaction, it was my immediate focus to be able to find a great way to talk to them and just keep in contact with everyone. And it’s so easy because I get to have the emails, I get to have the quick conversations. I’m constantly on Twitter chatting with people. To me it’s the most fun part of anything I’ve done so far… well, getting fucked by Tyler Saint was the most fun part, but this is at least the second most fun part.

MATT: Have you gotten to the point where you are recognized on the streets of Toronto?

RYAN: I don’t think so. It hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know, who knows what will happen? It’s a good thing, it’s a different world.

MATT: You’ll never forget your first stalker.

RYAN: That’s so true. That is so true. But it’s cool, I think everything can be managed properly.

MATT: Does your family know that you have started doing porn?

RYAN: Slowly, slowly I think some people have started finding out, but it hasn’t been a big thing yet. I think there’s going to be a pretty good article on Ryan Russell in Canada’s biggest gay and lesbian magazine next week or the week after, so that will definitely make it a little more accessible to certain parts of my family for sure. So, we’ll see what happens. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t think it will be a big deal. It’ll be a piece of cake, I’m sure. Really, what’s the worst that will happen, right?

MATT: What future plans do you have right now?

RYAN: Well, right now I’m actually working with… well, basically as I mentioned, I work in marketing so I have all these great resources that support this magical world, and I’m going to be re-purposing a lot of those tools and talents, so we’re going to be producing our own material for www.ryanrussellxxx.com and we’re going to create a sister site that will be hosting and showing a whole series of new content. So, the first project is going to be a feature length film released in increments, sort of episodically, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s going to very dirty and you get to know a little more about me and my world as it goes. It’s going to be autobiographical and it’s going to be a hoot. We’re filming that right now and we’re very excited about that. The other big thing is we always try to find gigs and appearances and stuff like that. That’s always been the emphasis. There are so many fun aspects of this world that I feel like I can really tap into and enjoy.

MATT: Do you have any appearances lined up?

RYAN: You know what, I think around the release of the film is when we’ll start to put the emphasis on that. Right now I don’t know if it’s right. I want to do it the right way as opposed to just going out there and doing it all right now. So I thing slowly, slowly we’ll be doing the right things at the right times and pacing it out properly.

MATT: What are some of your favorite assets of the business, aside from working in front of the camera?

RYAN: Well, you know what, I have to say the single biggest thing, there are just the most incredible people that you meet. Like excessive, excessive personalities, but they’re excessively fun. They are engaging and it’s so much fun to be out and just talk to people who are really engaged with life and really want to do great things. You know they are doing dirty stuff, which is fun, and they’ve got a great sense of humor about it. I have to say, universally, everybody I’ve met, and it’s been a relatively small exposure so far, but every single person I have met has been an absolute blast for one reason or another, just an absolute blast. Really warm people who are really friendly and supportive. It’s just great, so I think I like that aspect of it most of all. That’s the most fun part of it and maybe secondly is working with the fan base and find creative new ways to express myself, because that’s what it’s all about.

MATT: Are there any things in your relatively short time in the business that really caught you by surprise?

RYAN: It’s funny, all the challenges that I expected to have weren’t real and all the things that I thought would be a piece of cake were a little bit different than anticipated. Just the little anxieties and anticipations, like when I get off the plane is it going to be OK, and is it going to be here and is everything going to work out? You just don’t know, but that stuff is just really easy. I think it’s the things you think are super simple that are a little more challenging like… I’m trying to think of a good example. Oh, for example when we first got on set, for the first scene was with Tyler it was a sort of military scene and we had these pants that are the new military style that have that pixelated square look to them, and as we walked past the bushes in the back they just disappeared. The camouflage perfectly on camera. It’s these silly little things that you would never expect that cause little hiccups. It’s minimal stuff.

MATT: As far as Twitter goes you’ve really made a lot of friends with the established porn stars out there and are really making some serious connections there.

RYAN: It’s shocking! I’m absolutely blown away myself! There are people that I used to watch on Twitter all the time. It’s a fun world to observe and it’s even more fun to participate in. I don’t even know what the shift was. It happened so naturally as I was building the website. I got a couple of cool people following me and I got a couple of people I used to follow following me and some nonsense would come up and you would just do a quick response and the conversation picks up, and you just can’t help but make friends with so many great and fun people.

MATT: Are there any porn stars that inspired you to want to go into the business?

RYAN: I think it’s funny. Probably the biggest single influence on me is probably the single biggest gay porn star, Jeff Stryker, because that guy… I don’t know what his world is, I just know it is completely insane. It all seems fantastic all the way up to the Country album he was working on a few years ago. It was completely bananas but I would have bought it in an instant. Everything about him is excessive and hilarious and super-engaging. He’s probably the single greatest inspiration but there are so many other people who have been in it like Ryan Idol for example. His whole story is just hilarious and fascinating to me. There’s just a lot of cool personalities and stories that have come up. You can’t help but be engaged by them.

MATT: As a rising star, what do you see for yourself down the road?

RYAN: My real hope is to transition this early success and good fortune that I’ve had into something that is actually long lasting and can contribute and make it a little bit better in some way. So I’m trying to work with good people and work on good projects. And I think one of the best things I can do is to work of cool projects internally and also working on all those really cool projects with other dynamic personalities. So, you know, it’s really going to be about picking the best projects and working on those projects, the right projects. I think it’ll naturally and organically develop, and the real big vision is to have that split between performing and developing your work and doing it in a creative and compelling kind of way.

MATT: Any future plans of possibly being behind the camera directing, producing?

RYAN: Absolutely, absolutely. In fact my husband, his whole world is creating film and so on, so he’s always been supportive and we’ve worked on a lot of projects together, and the marketing experience has supported that kind of work but it’s always been with a commercial intent and a commercial outlook. In doing porn I think it will be different, but I think a lot of the same technical skills will support the effort, so it’s going to be a matter of finding the right balance of working with the right talent, working with the right tools and hopefully injecting it with my own sense of what things ought to be and how things ought to go.

MATT: You mentioned in the future opening a sister site.

RYAN: Absolutely. It’s already in the works. It’s actually happening so it’s just a matter of time right now.

MATT: So you’re going to be recruiting models and producing your own content. I noticed on your blog you have a link where models can apply to you.

RYAN: That’s right, that’s exactly right.

MATT: What type of models are you looking for? Is it going to be a particular theme, particular body type, what are you looking for?

RYAN: Well, you know what, I think the key for finding good porn, for me anyway, is not necessarily is giving into any specific thing at any given moment. I think that the sexual interest in specific elements of the person or body type has limits and it also has limits for the performer. I think the key is that the performers are 100% into each other and 1,000% into having a super-hot fuck. That’s what’s going to come across on film. So, that’s going to be the first emphasis, finding the right chemistry with the right models. It’s not so much about a specific look. Obviously we’re all looking for similar things. There are things that people generally respond to, so I guess there is a base level or a base line that we can work from. But I’m not looking for exclusively twinks, exclusively black dudes, exclusively big dick dudes, exclusively hairy or smooth or whatever it is. Just people who want to have a great time and do it in a clean and supportive way and make it look extremely fucking hot, because that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. Everybody has this focus, but it’s harder than you imagine. And even just the search so far to find the particular look for what you have in mind, for that particular scene or that particular bit, and is that going to be the right look for the other person in that particular scene? You don’t really know. It’s kind of challenging. I’m sure we’ll encounter a couple of speed bumps along the way, but everything can be managed. In terms of the site plan, we are focused on new media and stuff like that. We are looking at delivering content to people’s blackberries or iPhones. I’m a super-huge iPhone fan and I would love to access porn on there and I don’t know why it’s so challenging for the most part to get it, because I would be using it that much more regularly instead of having to be constantly at my computer. So that is going to be one of the big ephasises. Maybe they access it directly. Maybe they’re going to the site and transferring it through iTunes or whatever they do. The idea is to have a limited site management so people can do whatever they want to with it. If we make it easy for people to participate and make it easy for people to feel like they are a part of the work and the part of the community, then it’s not about trying to get one over, it’s about trying to supporting inside work, so that’s the goal that we’re working toward.

MATT: Sounds like a huge market right there. If you can make it easy for people to access porn easily from whatever their smart phone is, then you really have something. Right now it’s so cumbersome to access traditional porn sites from a mobile devise.

RYAN: It is, and even with the iPhone, which is probably the most media engages phone there is, you can’t access a site that uses flash because flash is generally the video playback tool from the web. Youtube is probably the only exception , and it’s just because they go through hoops to make it possible. To normally watch a video it’s really challenging, but we’re going to work with the right people and the right companies to make it so people don’t have to think about it. They can just do the things they normally do with the media they normally work with and it’s just going to work for them.

MATT: Is there anything you want to say to your fans and the readers of this interview?

RYAN: I just have to say more than anything, if there’s anybody’s who’s interested in joining this world or wondering if they should or not or any of those trepidations, just jump in. It’s a lot of fun. Again, there’s a lot of cool people and it’s a very supportive environment. There’s absolutely no reason this should not be a very fun and engaging and sexually exciting kind of world. Overall, the biggest thing that I have taken away is the interaction with the fans and the great people I have come to work with. I just feel super-lucky and for that, I would recommend it to anyone.

MATT: Wow, that was fantastic.

RYAN: Matt, thank you so much. That was so much fun.

MATT: It was fun. Thank you again.

RYAN: If you’re ever in Toronto I want you to get up with me. You’ve been super friendly and supportive so far, so I just want to make sure that you to know that you can look to me for the same.

MATT: When I’m in Toronto I’ll hit you up.

RYAN: Please do.

MATT: Thanks again, Ryan. Have a good night.

RYAN: Thanks, Matt. I’m looking forward to meeting you in the future and whatever kinds of fun stuff we can work on together.

Wolf Hudson is one of the hottest and most in-demand performers in porn today. He has established himself as the King of Kink, but there is much more to Wolf than meets the eye. He has been extremely busy with his work, from being in front of the camera to directing behind the camera, Wolf is quickly learning all facets of the Business. Recently Wolf wrapped production on the new Bruce LaBruce movie, LA Zombie, starring Francios Sagat as an Alien zombie. Wolf was kind enough to do an email interview for Gay Star Interviews. You can follow Wolf on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WolfHudsonXXX and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/wolfhudson. Enjoy!

MATT: You recently wrapped production on LA Zombie, directed by Bruce LaBruce. How did you become involved in this project and what was the experience like for you?

WOLF: I have known Francois for some time and we both showed interest in working together. He told me about this film late last year, but didn’t think it would happen since I hadn’t heard back about the project for some time. One day in late July, I got 3 different emails, particularly from Mr. LaBruce, about doing this project. He gave me more details and I could not refuse. I like his edginess and style of filming and its totally up my league of pushing the envelope. It was surreal to hear some of the names in this movie. They are all porn superstars and I felt I really had to step up my game. I had a blast working with everyone. This was probably the biggest crew I’ve ever worked with and it was an exciting experience. Francois is an amazing performer and we had chemistry right off the bat and Mr. LaBruce is a very talented director. I am very honored to have been part of this groundbreaking film. I wish I could give you some gossip, but I can’t say much for now.

MATT: Your video blogs have become wildly popular. What gave you the idea for doing vlogs rather than the typical blog entry?

WOLF: Actually, one of the blogs posted a Vlog Chi Chi LaRue did and I was like “I can do that!” I think it caught on because I like to express myself on camera. I feel I can be very honest when talking on camera as opposed to writing like everyone else. I like to try different ways of reaching out to the masses. I think people are connecting more with me because of it and seeing me more as a human being. I still write, but I do the Vlogs when I have more than one thing to talk about.

MATT: Tell us a little about your background in dance and what that has meant to you?

WOLF: Its something I’ve always wanted to do. I looked up to people like Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse, Gene Kelly, James Brown. But my biggest influence was Michael Jackson. I was afraid to try it out, but finally got the courage to do it in High School. I joined a Hip-Hop dance crew and dance came very natural to me. I was able to express myself like never before and felt it was my calling. In many ways, I was able to break out of my shell and show people what I’m about. I am more in tune with my body and even my sexuality because of it. I love entertaining people and the energy I get from them makes me want to dance better and I give that energy back to them. Its an amazing feeling!

MATT: Because of your enormous dancing talents you have been dubbed the “Porn Dancer,” but you are also known as the “King of Kink.” What led you into the world of kink and fetishes? Is that something that you have always been interested in?

WOLF: I was never into really kinky fetishes at all growing up. When I got into the industry, I wanted to stand out from the rest and push the envelope. I was curious about Kink.com and applied to work for them. After my first shoot… I liked it very much. I discovered that I am very submissive and enjoy pain very much. But I also enjoy being dominant and being a submissive has helped me be a better top in my opinion. I do apply BSDM in my personal life, but I am not a lifestyle player, only when I’m in the right mood and it take a certain type of person for me to fully let go. I have to trust the person I’m with and vice versa.

MATT: Recently you were selected to host the Grabbys due to the overwhelming support of your fans. What was the experience like for you? Any nervous jitters before showtime?

WOLF: OMG, I was totally nervous. I didn’t know what to do with myself. On my way to the show, I rode in a limo with the Raging Stallion guys and the whole time I was shaking. They all noticed and giggled at it. I always get nervous before doing something big, but once I got on stage, I was completely in the zone and totally played that part. I was so grateful my fans took the time to vote for me. I really care about my fans and I wanted to do the best job I could for them. Chi Chi LaRue is the master when it comes to being an emcee and to be on that stage with her was quite an honor. I even managed to stop her dead on her tracks, which is no easy feat, so I can pat myself on that back for that! LOL, After the show, I was very happy to hear from people how much they liked my performance and how natural I looked up there on stage, That really made me happy.

MATT: In February you signed an exclusive one year deal with Cocky Boys. That surprised a lot of people. What prompted that decision and how is everything going for you?

WOLF: I already made the decision to take a break from doing DVD work and moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco to pursue other venues. I did my second shoot for them while in LA and they were all very impressed with my work ethic. I met up with Kyle Majors at the Cybersocket Awards and he flat out said, “I want to sign you now!” I told him I was not interested, but he would not take no for an answer. We talked for a bit and in the end he made me a deal I could not refuse. So far, its been one of the best decisions I’ve made. They are all very supportive of what I do and gave me a vote of confidence in bringing something new to the plate. I was surprised they signed me because I don’t have classic good looks, I’m not the boy next door, but Kyle said he liked my edginess and raw sexual attitude. So far, its going very good and its only the beginning stages of our partnership.

MATT: You have gotten into directing too. What is it like for you being behind the camera and calling the shots?

WOLF: I think its awesome! It was no secret that I wanted to go that route in my career. Its great to see thing from the other side and put in my dirty thoughts in front of the camera. I get to shoot it in the way I like to watch sex and love the fact that I can work with the model and bring out a new type of energy to their side. It was a little tough at first, but I quickly got the hang of it. I am already getting rave reviews for my directorial debut. It was a scene with Jesse Santana and I bottomed for that. Its part 2 of a previous scene we did. Directing myself is a bit of a challenge as well, but I have an amazing crew with me and they help me out so much. I feel its a collaborative effort and everyone has a voice to put in what they think will make the scene look hot. And that’s what its all about, making hot scenes for people to enjoy and have fun with. I have so many ideas and plans for the future and with this new opportunity, I can finally strut my stuff and really push the envelope as much as I can.

MATT: You have a fascinating cultural heritage. Can you tell us a little about your journey in discovering yourself and your family history?

WOLF: I had it very hard growing up. Believe it or not, I was discriminated against because of my skin color. I went to a predominately African-American and Latino school. Although I am French/Afro-Dominican, it was not enough for a lot of people in their eyes. I never felt like I had a real identity at all. When I hit 19 years of age, my features changed and it became even more difficult for people to figure out my heritage. I’ve always thought I was ugly or average to say the least. I had to learn to accept the fact that I was different and feel good about myself that I am a beautiful human being. A lot of people today totally dig my exotic looks and at first, it was weird to hear, but I know that everyone can’t be lying about that and its helped my self esteem. To be supported for being who I am is a beautiful thing and I am very proud to be of such a diverse gene pool. If you were to look at my family, you would think I was adopted because everyone is darker than me and some are even as black as coffee. We make fun of each other all the time because of it. You have to laugh about it sometimes and not take it too seriously.

MATT: You are really setting yourself up for a long term career in the industry. What do you see yourself doing years from now when you are no longer in front of the camera?

WOLF: WOW!! That is a very good question. In my head, I have this vision of where I want to be and what I’ll be doing. To be honest, I will always want to be in front of the camera in some capacity, but I will definitely be directing for sure. At some point, I would love to have my own production company and produce independent films, write screenplays and fully get into creative mode in making films. Entertainment is my passion since I was a little kid and I hope to do it for the rest of my days on earth. Dancing will play a pivotal role in my future, but I don’t know where I want to take it. Time will tell. But for now, I am just enjoying every minute of it and making each day count. I am truly blessed to have these opportunities at such a young age. It doesn’t happen to most kids my ages. I have to keep my eyes on the prize and keep moving forward.

MATT: Growing up in the Bronx is a world away from LA. How do you like living in the City of Angels? What keeps you occupied?

WOLF: I am very shy. LOL, Its true, as much as I like to fool around on camera and things like that, I am still a shy person. It takes me a while get to know someone, but when I do open up…. WATCH OUT!!! LOL

I first met Julien Cox at a local Montreal club called Parking while visiting Pierre Fitch. Before we knew it we had spent over an hour on the roof in the chilly March night air talking about his business and about his life. I found him to be a fascinating person from the very beginning. Now all these months later we are still friends. Beneath that beautiful blond hair and devilish smile is a sweet, fun loving guy. Don’t let the blond hair and charming looks fool you. He may be a man of few words, but he is incredibly bright and talented. He has been dating Pierre since April, 2009 and things seem to be going wonderfully for them. You can follow Julien on his Facebook page and on Twitter as well.

MATT: Hello Julien, how are you?

JULIEN: I am fantastic.

MATT: So you just got a new cat today?

(Loud growling in the background)

JULIEN: Yeah. She growls at everything. You pet her and it’s almost like she’s attacking you.

MATT: I can hear her. She’s loud.

JULIEN: Yeah. Instead of purring she growls.

MATT: How does she get along with the other cats?

JULIEN: Nothing too major so far. So Matty, what’s new with you?

MATT: Not a whole lot actually. You do know that you are the only person in the world allowed to call me Matty, right? I remember the first time I met you at Parking back in March.

JULIEN: Yeah, I think so.

MATT: I remember we stayed up on the roof talking of over an hour. You’re originally from Nova Scotia, right?

JULIEN: I was born in New Brunswick but I spent seven years in Nova Scotia.

MATT: You once told me that you didn’t speak a word of English until you were thirteen of fourteen.

JULIEN: Yep.

MATT: I’m a total idiot when it comes to this stuff, but I thought that area was mostly English speaking.

JULIEN: Well, in New Brunswick mostly French speaking, but I moved to Halifax when I was thirteen so that’s when I started speaking, or learning my English anyway.

MATT: How did you get started in the porn business?

JULIEN: I was always interested in it but I never had the guts to do it. Basically I met the CEO of VQuest and they asked me if I wanted to do a model shoot. At first I said yes, but then I ended up chickening out. Then after that they offered me a job as a recruiter. So I thought that would be interesting so they flew me into Toronto and the just told me, “Here are the lights, here is the camera. Shoot some porn.”

MATT: After you chickened out they hired you again?

JULIEN: Yep. I didn’t do any movies. I did the production at first.

MATT: It’s really only been a few years that you’ve been in the business.

JULIEN: It will be two years in March.

MATT: Now you have your own site, http://juliensboys.com/. When was that site launched?

JULIEN: It was officially launched on the twenty-third of June (2009).

MATT: You have had updated every week since it’s been launched, haven’t you?

JULIEN: Yep.

MATT: You’ve have a lot of great models on there. You also have your blog, http://vqmen.com/blog/. So right now what plans do you have as far as your business goes. Right now you are doing the camera work, recruiting models and modeling yourself.

JULIEN: Right now we’re working on a new site, http://juliencox.com/.

MATT: Oh really. What’s that going to be like?

JULIEN: That’s going to be site all about me. A lot of exclusive content, not just porn, but me doing dishes or jogging, or anything that people would be interested in seeing me do. It’s actually up and running right now, it just hasn’t officially been launched. If people go to it there are some videos there. We’re just waiting on the billing to be set up.

MATT: So people can get to know you more, the porn plus Julien Cox in general.

JULIEN: Yeah, pretty much. We’re working on that. It should be launched within the next couple of months. Other than that I plan to keep going and see where it take me I guess. We’re going to open up a few new sites as well.

MATT: What type of sites do you have planned?

JULIEN: They’re going to be personal sites for some of my models. If they’re really good I can make them their own sites. It’s basically going to be the same as http://juliencox.com/ but for whichever model.

MATT: You are an incredible dancer. When did you start dancing?

JULIEN: I started dancing in June of last year.

MATT: That was at Adonis in Montreal.

JULIEN: Yeah, for almost a year… like nine or ten months.

MATT: You actually used to do gymnastics when you were younger.

JULIEN: I used to be a professional gymnast from the time I was eight years old until I was sixteen. I was doing the Acadian Games which is like a step down from the Canadian Games. On my last year I was training for the Canadian Games but my funding was cut so I was forced to retire from that career.

MATT: That’s interesting. I don’t know a lot about Acadians, and your background is Acadian. What is the difference between Acadian and Canadian?

JULIEN: Well, the Acadians were the first French to settle in Canada like in 1604, so they were the first French to arrive and they were a peaceful type of people who did a lot of agriculture and things like that, and then they got deported in 1755.

MATT: I’ve heard about that. Many settled in Louisiana around New Orleans.

JULIEN: Yeah, well, what happened is when they deported the Acadians, Acadia was on the east coast of Canada, and when they deported them they put them all on ships and sent them to all parts of the world. Some went to Louisiana, some went back to France, London, Europe, they went all over the place. The Acadians are all over the place but they’re in very short numbers; not many of them left.

MATT: What was the reason for them being deported?

JULIEN: The reason was because we did not want to join the war with the English against the Indians. They didn’t like that so they deported us and burned all our villages down and took over and killed a bunch of Indians afterwards.

MATT: So there are just a few Acadians left in the area you are from then.

JULIEN: Where I’m from it’s almost all Acadian actually, so there’s quite a bit there; but generally speaking in the world there’s not that many left.

MATT: You’re an endangered species.

JULIEN: I’m an endangered species, yes.

MATT: You just started dating Pierre [Fitch] in April. How are things going?

JULIEN: Things were a little rough at the start but things are going really well now.

MATT: I think that’s a good relationship. I’ve known Pierre for a few years and I’ve known you since March. I just think you have an awesome relationship.

MATT: Now, where did you learn to cook? I’ve eaten in some five star restaurants and had some of the best food in the country. And your cooking tops most of what I’ve had.

JULIEN: Well, I’ve always cooked ever since I was a kid. I always had a passion for it. I started cooking when I was about eight years old. When I used to work with my best friend, Trista, and her dad’s a professional chef… well, not any more, but he used to be. I picked up quite a few tricks from him just watching and learning and asking questions and things like that. You actually taught me how to barbecue properly.

MATT: Well, you’re welcome. And I love the apron on you. That is so cute.

JULIEN: I love it too. It’s hilarious. I wore it today.

MATT: More about your career. You’ve spend more time behind the camera than in front of it, and to be offered that kind of business, you must have really impressed someone.

JULIEN: Well, I had a lot of help. VQuest does all the technical work that I can’t do.

MATT: Yeah, but you do all the filming, lighting, recruiting models. You do all the hard work. What made you decide to move from Halifax to Montreal?

JULIEN: The reason why I moved is because I started my business in Halifax and over there I had a hard time finding models because over there there’s not a big population of gay people there and their more conservative. I moved to Montreal because I knew the city was more sexual and open and I knew I could find lots of cute guys here, and so far I have. So that’s the main reason I moved, from a business point of view there’s a lot more models to be found in the city than in Halifax.

MATT: As far as models go, how do you typically recruit models? Do they come to you or do you place adds?

JULIEN: I recruit in many different ways. The most effective way is dancers. Most of my models are dancers because they are willing to do anything for money. I also have tried putting ads on kijiji.com. I’ve had one or two models off of that. As well I have quite a few people applying directly on the web site to become a model, and some people just come up to me because they recognize me and say they want to model for me, so that’s good as well. A lot of times too it’s word to word from model to model. Like, if I hire a model they tell their friends and they come and see me and want to shoot as well.

MATT: You seem to have an endless supply of models.

JULIEN: They just keep on coming.

MATT: Are you still dancing at Taboo?

JULIEN: No, not really. I started doing Julien’s Boys nights there, and I was under the assumption that it would only be once per month, but the owner wanted it to be every Sunday. I really don’t have the desire to dance any more since the site is running so smoothly. I do on occasion, but it’s pretty rare.

MATT: What’s something about you that your fans would be surprised to know about you?

JULIEN: That’s a very good question.

MATT: You’ve always been very open, so guess that’s kind of a hard question.

JULIEN: I guess my love for the country and country music. I guess a lot of people don’t see me as that type of person. I like being in the woods and country music and everything that has to do with country.

MATT: You really grew up in the sticks, in the country.

JULIEN: I hold my heritage pretty close to my heart. It’s one of the most important things. I love going back home and just walking in the woods by myself. It’s very peaceful. I grew up in the country and then I moved to the city when I was fourteen. I like the city but I like the country life at the same time. I like a bit of both.

(One of Julien’s favorite country songs)

MATT: You’ve started getting recognized out on the street. It’s like the day you were driving my car and someone recognized you. What is it like for you to be recognized by strangers on the street?

JULIEN: Actually it feels pretty good. It shows that people are looking at my site and the content and they appreciate it. It’s good to know that when they see me in person they know who I am.

MATT: Have you had any weird stalkers yet?

JULIEN: No weird stalkers yet, no. I thought I had one but I found it was for Pierre and not me, haha. I thought it was my first.

MATT: You just got your first tattoo in the spring. Now you have, what, six tattoos now?

JULIEN: Seven.

MATT: Oh, seven. I forgot about the Libra scales on your back. Do you plan on adding any more?

JULIEN: Oh yeah, I’m planning on adding tons more.

MATT: I remember when you didn’t want any tattoos. I think you were a little nervous about getting one.

JULIEN: After I got my first one I got so addicted I went the next day for some more. My first one’s were my red stars, then the day after I went and got the black stars on my shoulders.

MATT: On September 12 you are going to be performing at Goodhandy’s in Toronto. What will you be doing there?

JULIEN: I’m not actually sure. For the most part I’m going to be doing promotional work for my site. Pierre mentioned something about a live sex show with me and him with people paying to watch us.

MATT: Are you going to continue to do weekly updates for your site?

JULIEN: Yes, it’s going to continue to be weekly updates but we’re trying to turn it into a big production company. So future plans are to get it up to a Sean Cody type of style.

MATT: What type of models are you featuring on your site?

JULIEN: Well, there are two types that interest me. They have to be between eighteen and twenty-five. I do make some exceptions if they have a younger looks. It’s mostly between twinks and lean a muscular, not too build.

MATT: So more between a twink and a jock look?

JULIEN: Yeah, exactly. Anywhere between twink and jock. I go from twink to jock and twink-jock, haha.

MATT: I love the scene that you and Pierre did down in Pierre’s basement. Did I ever tell you how good that turned out?

JULIEN: That was the first timer for both of us for that type of scene with the leather and glory hole and dungeon type of scene. I didn’t think I would enjoy that much but I loved it. I always kind of liked the leather stuff but I never dared to experiment with it, but we did and it was good.

MATT: When I first me you, not that you were skinny skinny, but now you have really bulked up since you started going to the gym. What is your training routine like?

JULIEN: I work out four times a week and on the first day I work out my chest and shoulders and the second and I work out my arms. On the third day I work out my back and shoulders and on the fourth day it’s an all around work out with the legs and abs and a bit of chest and arms and shoulders and everything.

MATT: You had some pretty fast results from your workout routine. What about your diet?

JULIEN: Well, I changed my diet quite a bit because I didn’t used to eat all that much and I didn’t eat all that well either. So when I started working out I naturally got more hungry so I started eating more high protein food like steak and salmon and chicken breasts and eating five to seven times a day.

MATT: Julien, thanks for the chat. I’ve really enjoyed it.

JULIEN: Alright Matty, watch out for that hurricane.

There is an inside joke between Julien, Pierre and myself. I have been referring to them as an old married couple for quite a while now. They refer to each other as husband and wife and generally have fun with it. Shortly after they started dating is took some liberties with photoshop and sent them this picture. Hope you enjoy it!

I’m amazed that I had not personally known Ian sooner since we have so many friends in common. Strangely enough, it was Ian who found me on Twitter, and I’m grateful that he did. What started as an interview devolved into a fantastic conversation. We lost all track of time spending almost two hours on the phone. In addition to a great interview I feel like I have made a great friend. I have always respected him from the wonderful things I had heard from the friends we have in common. After spending an evening on the phone with him, I have an even deeper respect than before. You can follow Ian on Twitter at www.twitter.com/iantylerduncan, read his blog at www.ianduncan.com, be his friend on Facebook. Most importantly check out his sites www.videoboys.com, www.squirtz.com and www.slimergames.com.

MATT: Hi Ian, how are you?

IAN: Hi Matt, good, how are you doing?

MATT: Good. You know it’s crazy that you and I have never spoken before given how many friends we have in common.

IAN: That’s true. Who else do you know?

MATT: Well, Pierre Fitch, Jeremy Roddick, Jeremy Feist, and Kinsey Russell (producer for www.videoboys.com).

IAN: Oh yeah, It’s been so long since we’ve known Pierre because he got his start here with us in Montreal when he first moved here, back when he was a young, skinny little thing.

MATT: I remember that.

IAN: He did some live shows for us and he did his first movie ever for us back when he had no money and he was a skinny little thing, didn’t know what to do in Montreal. We tried to guide him in the right direction. And it turned out fine for him. He ran with it. Some guys do it for fun or it’s a sideline, but for Pierre it’s a full-time job, it’s his career and he’s making the most of it. It’s nice to see.

MATT: He really is a great guy.

IAN: Where are you located? You’re down South, right?

MATT: Yeah, I’m from the South.

IAN: Yeah, I can hear the accent… well, me too. I probably have the Canadian accent.

MATT: A little, but you don’t really have the Quebec accent.

IAN: No, no, I barely speak French. I’m learning but very slowly.

MATT: I barely speak French myself. Whenever I visit Pierre I can’t read the menus, so I look at the waiter and tell him to bring me whatever Pierre ordered.

IAN: A lot of people don’t speak French, but if you make a little effort and say “Bon jour” and “merci” and little things like that they will open up to you and they are very happy to talk with you. Imagine someone going down to where you live and they refuse to speak English and will only speak French, they wouldn’t get very far. A lot of them speak English anyway, they just want to know that you are open to it.

MATT: When did you start your very first site? Weren’t you just 18 at the time?

IAN: Oh yeah, it was so long ago. I was in high school at the time and I was working for an architect in Hamilton, Ontario and there was a big newspaper chain called Southern Media. They owned a bunch of newspapers across Canada and they had their R&D office in Hamilton where I lived. There was a man there starting a new group called the Info Lab. The Internet was all new at the time and it was just to explore how publishers and media could use it. He went around to high schools and chose about eight of us, and I was one of the ones he chose to come work at the lab. And that is where I learned everything about making web pages and marketing and seeing how a business is run from that side. From there, when that all finished like two years later and I was just finishing high school I decided I would start my own business; not necessarily because I wanted too, but because in Hamilton there was such a depressed economy I figured no one is going to hire me anyway so I might as well try to start my own business, so I did that. We actually started doing website design, hosting and marketing, and it was kind of lukewarm, you know, not doing that great. But one of our friends in Toronto who started a live cam show from a strip bar, Remington’s, had a live feed going from the bar. He told me, “Well, we are doing this new thing now, why don’t you just make a new site and resell, you can ask a flat fee each month and sell it to your members and give it a try.” I was like, OK, I’ll just try that as a side business, but it started doing so well that it became our only business at some point. For a few years we were only reselling stuff other people were making. That first company we were working with in Toronto became the biggest in the world at what they were doing and we thought, oh my God, people are just raking it in. We need to produce our own stuff to. We didn’t want to go to Toronto because that company was already there and they basically owned the town, so we were like, well, it doesn’t look like anyone in Montreal is doing this and Montreal is full of gorgeous guys that love being naked, so we moved to Montreal and started our own live Internet shows and moved into doing solo videos to go onto DVD and the site and the eventually movies too. We were doing maybe one movie a year because it was expensive and we didn’t have a lot of money, but it became obvious that this was the way to go. After nine years we closed down our live shows, which was very good, we were happy to do that, because we spent 80% of our time running the shows and it was not making money and it looked like it never would, so we just wanted to cut our loss there and focus on making movies. Now we are doing a scene every week for our site, www.videoboys.com,which also go on DVD. Each month a new DVD is released based on the scenes that we have. We try to combine something that looks nice together so you see different models. That’s pretty much where we are now. That was a long winded answer, haha.

MATT: You and Kinsey do a nice job of pairing models up to create good chemistry.

IAN: We try. When we started we were a little more desperate because we were new here. We would save up enough money, and when we started filming we would have to make that money back right away, so we had to take whoever was available at that time and we had to be a little less picky at the time. Now there is a line up down the street of guys waiting to work for us. They call every day, “When can I do my scene? When can I do my scene?” I’m like, “Well, there are 30 guys ahead of you. Just wait, we’re trying.” It’s great. We have a good reputation here now and people love to work for us. I think they like working with us because we respect them and we’re fun to work with. We treat them very well and we make them look as good as possible on the site too; we don’t put up stupid things that make them look foolish like some sites I have seen do. Now a days we can be more choosy and repeat the same models. With our solo stuff we were trying to do one new model a week that we had never seen before and we’re almost 400 models now. We’ve had a few repeats lately because after seven years we see a guy who was on before and now he looks even better and he was very popular – people want to see him again, so we bring him back and people are thrilled about that, but it’s pretty rare. We always try to keep a new face each time because there is a new one every day appearing. A lot of guys now… we don’t even have to look for them. Sometime they just show up at our door and they’re like, “Hi, I just turned 18 last week and I’m ready to do porn.” I’m like, “oh, hi, come on in.” That happens all the time. We start with solo just to see how they are in front of the camera, get to know them, see what they’re like and if that works well and they are interesting in doing sex scenes we’ll move to that later. It’s like a candy shop. We try to find a good combination ’cause, like I said before, we were less picky out of desperation and need, but now we have more leeway and we can take the time to find more models with good chemistry. It really makes a big difference. Some guys are doing it just for money or whatever, but it shows when people are really into it. It’s a better scene. We have a total range of models. There’s completely gay, bisexual, 50/50 guys, and some very straight guys who fuck guys on the side. ‘Cause here in Montreal the straight thing is very different here. You can fuck guys every once in a while but it doesn’t matter, you go home to your girlfriend and it’s no big deal. You can fuck a guy and enjoy it, and actually we have a bunch of straight bottoms here that we love. I don’t know if it’s true everywhere, but it seems especially in Montreal there some really odd guys that are absolutely straight and love to be fucked. You watch them get fucked and you just cannot believe that this person is not gay because they love it so much. Here it’s just like an identity, you know, it’s not what you do, it’s just the way you feel. For me I could have sex with a girl, no problem, but it doesn’t mean that I’m secretly heterosexual or even bisexual. I’m gay, I always feel like I’m gay but I can be open to different things. I think it’s the same for the straight guys too. But if they’re going to work for us and do a scene they can’t just be doing it for the money and be very rigid in their performance. It has to show that they’re enjoying it. So, we get a feel for it. We’ve had a couple of guys lately that are really good and I’m beginning to wonder how straight they are. I think the more experience they have too the more open they become to it and they realize they do like it. They don’t want a boyfriend. They still want a girlfriend, but just sex with guys once in a while is fun. It seems to be a Montreal version of straight which we are very grateful for; works very well for us.

MATT: You typically start guys out on www.squirtz.com, don’t you?

IAN: Yeah, that’s right. It’s easier and we need new faces on there all the time. With the sex scenes we can repeat the same guys in different combinations but we always look for a new face. It’s also less of a risk for us if it doesn’t work well because they make less doing a solo than a sex scene, so if it turns out that they are just horrible on camera it’s not such a big deal… which is very rare. But we always start with that then do the sex scene after if they turn out to be really great on camera. Some people cannot get hard or they can’t cum or they’re just demanding and complaining constantly, which is very rare, but when we see a guy like that we don’t want to work with that person. It’s not worth the trouble. Some guys are a dream to work with. They’re so friendly and easy going and they have fun, they’re very happy to make the money, but they’re enjoying it so much ’cause it’s a nice atmosphere here. We like to work with People like that, people who are here to enjoy as much as to make money. We want them to make money because they are providing a service and we want it to be an equal exchange. We don’t want to exploit anybody. So, yeah, it starts with Squirtz and if that works well they move on to sex scenes with Video Boys where they can appear again and again and again until either customers are like, OK, I’ve seen enough of this guy, or they just move on to different things. I did start the company when I was 18 right out of high school, or just before high school ended. And it was just me running it. A few years later I begged Kinsey to come in because I made a mess of the accounting and he needed to sort that out. I begged, please please please come work with me, I need you. He was already doing his masters at school and he already had a job, but he reluctantly agreed to come join me, now there’s more of us. It’s good that he’s here because he is invaluable. We all have our own unique talents here, I guess. It probably couldn’t exist without any one of us.

MATT: What is your biggest role in it now? Isn’t Jeremy Roddick your camera guy?

IAN: No, I’m the camera guy actually. Well, for Squirtz it Kinsey usually, then for sex scenes it’s me. Jeremy does the editing, William Godin does the programming and marketing, and they’re both amazing at that. Sometimes I do the Squirtz camera work too. It’s more like whoever meets the guy first, that’s who will do the video because the person’s comfortable, they already know that person. We don’t want them to arrive then say, OK, well here’s a total stranger. He’s going to be doing your video, and they’ll freak out. We want everyone to be very comfortable especially if it’s very new to them, they’re not sure what to expect and maybe a little scared and nervous. We want them to feel very secure and relaxed and know that they are in good hands and that’s very important to us. My main I guess… I do the camera work, I do all the photos. Every week that’s my main job really. Photos and photos and photos. We do hi-res photos now. We weren’t long ago, but now we are, which we send to our affiliates for promotional purposes and for DVD covers and stuff like that. Also, we go through the video and we do screen captures because the hi-res photos are really nice quality, but you can’t really catch the action with those like you can with the screen captures. Because we do progressive scan video each picture is a complete frame instead of an interlace. You know when it’s interlaced each frame is only every other line and then they get mixed together and all the edges are jagged and stuff. It’s more like film. Each film frame is a complete photo, so our video is like that. I can take a photo that way and it looks pretty good for a screen capture. And then I go through and I’ll capture like 300 pictures for whatever scene each week, solo or sex scene, work it down to the best fifty, color correct them and make them look as nice as possible and fix the color and lighting and then put them up in galleries and do the press packs and post the galleries for marketing. That would probably be my main job, and then once a week I just film a scene.

MATT: You really do have a good reputation in this business as far as the way that you and Kinsey treat the models. You go out of your way to make them feel comfortable.

IAN: Yeah, that’s true.

MATT: You have a strong stance on bareback, and that’s commendable.

IAN: Yeah, for the first time on my blog, it just went up the other day (www.ianduncan.com) I put a big piece about what I have to say about that. It was the first time actually I think I wrote about it on that site, but I just had too. It’s out of control these days. Bareback sells very well, which is bad for us, but we’re still not going to do it. I would rather make less money and feel good about myself and sleep well and know that I didn’t ruin someone’s life just for a few extra dollars. I know so many people are getting infected all the time, even models who are working for companies and doing bareback and supposedly are provided tests and sometimes the test results are a false negative, which can happen. I know in one case the documents were falsified and the model did get infected. It was a European model. He was extremely angry about that, obviously. I don’t think it’s a good approach to try to avoid HIV and be ignorant about it. I think it’s better to know exactly. We’re very happy to work with models who are HIV positive ’cause we know that it’s difficult to catch if you’re being safe. We tell all our models just assume that every person you are with could have HIV and don’t do anything with them that you wouldn’t do with someone you knew for a fact had HIV. So, just be safe with everyone all the time. We are happy to work with negative or positive models. It doesn’t matter to us, but for us they have to be up front about it. If we have an HIV positive model we’ll tell the person who wants to do a scene with them, well, he’s HIV positive; is this OK with you? If he doesn’t know much about it we’ll explain how it all works. A lot of these young guys, they’re not getting a lot of information about this any more. Back in the nineties you were bombarded with safe sex messages all the time and information, back when I was growing up. It just doesn’t exist anymore. You talk to these young guys now and they don’t have a clue. One guy had not even heard of HIV before, a guy from Quebec City. He was like 21 years old. So, I try to talk openly about that with everyone I meet and remind them, be safe, take care of yourself, at the very least know what you are getting into. For us what people do in their own life is their business, you know. Two consenting adults… if they want to have sex without condoms, that’s their choice. But for us, we don’t want to encourage it, we don’t want to put it on video. I know some people who say it has no effect on the viewers, but I’ve seen the exact opposite. I’ve seen these young guys watching bareback porn all the time and they think it looks so exciting and they want to try it and they do it. Young guys, when they’re out partying and maybe they’re drunk or a little high that night, they don’t make a good judgment call and they end up getting infected and it’s because they see all this. I don’t care what anyone says. I do think it encourages it a little bit. It’s becomes so common that people don’t think twice about it. Before in the nineties when I was growing up if you saw that you would be outraged because you just heard condoms, condoms, condoms all the time. That was the only acceptable way of having sex. And the thought of not having sex with condoms was just abhorrent. And now it’s normal because we see so much of it that people don’t think about it that much. I don’t want be a part of that. I just want to take a stand on that.

MATT: You’re probably setting a lot of models off on the right track by doing that.

IAN: In straight porn there’s no condoms ever, so it’s very different when we get a straight guy and he’s like, I’ve never worn a condom before. I’m like, WHAT? Are you kidding me? In straight porn you never see condoms. When a female porn star had HIV there was a big freak out and they had all these stupid ideas like, don’t hire anyone who’s recently been to Brazil or something idiotic like that. There’s a dumb approach to it. I think you should just see it for what it is, know what you’re getting into, know the facts and be up front about it. If the model is comfortable with that, great, and if not, fine, find someone else who is. Somethings are very easy to catch, like gonorrhea or herpes or something like that. And if that’s the case we’ll wait until it’s gone, but for HIV, it’s difficult to catch if everyone is safe about it and everyone is informed about it. We don’t want to rely on just turning a blind eye and avoiding it completely. We just want to know all the facts and be up front about it. And that’s worked very well for us. I think it’s a safer way to approach it instead of thinking, that guys doesn’t look like he’s sick, so he must be OK, or things like that. We try to remind these guys. It’s not the death sentence it used to be. You can live a long time with it, but you don’t want to have to. If you can avoid it, do it. If it’s going to happen to you it’s not going to be on our watch, it’s not going to be while you’re working with us. Maybe you’re going to out partying and make a mistake, but when you’re working for us everything is going to be fine, and we want to keep it that way.

MATT: You mentioned that you’re releasing one DVD per month.

IAN: One per month, yeah. Because we used to do one per year but we weren’t making a scene every week. The sex scenes we were making were not even online. We were just doing them for DVD. Myself, I was going to the post office every night and mailing stacks of these things. It was great. It was our biggest source of income for a while, but then DVD’s started declining because people aren’t buying them. They want downloads. We moved everything we had, all our sex scenes online and decided, OK, we’ve got to go all or nothing here. We’re gonna do one scene a week, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re small like us it’s a big expense to do a sex scene every single week when we were use to doing one movie a year. But when the scenes are done and they’re up in the site, they’re already paid for so we might as well put them on a DVD and make some extra money on that and get some more exposure. And our distributor, Eurocream USA, says that it’s best to constantly release something new to stay in the public eye or they forget about you. We put four sex scenes on a DVD plus two solos of two guys that were actually in the sex scenes. We’re trying to push the model as the star so people can get more information about them. We want people to know the real guy, and unlike a lot of other porn companies where everything is completely fake and they make up the whole story about the guy. We find the reality is far more sexy and far more interesting to hear what really turns them on and what they do for a living and see their real personality. They pick their porn names just because they like to have a funner name than their usual name, but other than that it’s the real story. We like to do interviews with them at the beginning to hear how they met each other, how they feel about each other, what kind of guys they like or girls if they’re bisexual or whatever, and when their first time was and all these things. On our solo site, Squirtz, it starts with the interviews and then a strip scene and then a cum shot, but the interview is the widely watched part, it’s the people favorite thing to watch, which we were surprised to see at first but we’re really happy about that now because they find it more interesting. The reality is more interesting than anything you can make up. You know, when you fake the story it just sounds like another cheesy porn cliche, especially for Montreal. People are very open here. They guys are very sexually laid back. They’re very open. Even a straight guy will tell you, “Oh yeah, I fucked a guy yesterday and it was great. I loved it.” So, we want to portray the culture here and the way people think and feel about sex because I think it’s unique in the world. Sort of the way Bel Ami owns Prague, they put Prague on the map, and when you think of Prague you think of Bel Ami. When people think of Montreal of French-Canadian boys we want them to think of Video Boys.

MATT: I’ve been a fan of Video Boys and Squirtz for years. When someone joins Video Boys what all do they get with that?

IAN: It’s changed recently because we are trying to focus on our on stuff. When you join Video Boys you’re going to get all the scenes we’ve done, all the Squirtz videos we’ve ever done. You’ll also get Jeremy Roddick’s site (www.jeremyroddick.com), Maximo Latino and Cruiser Boys. Mainly we’re just trying to fill it up with our own stuff. Before we were mostly like a portal site and people didn’t really know what Video Boys meant, what it was. You would join, come in and there was a bunch of different links going to totally different companies all over the place plus our own things mixed in there. Now when you come in the first thing you see are sex scenes. That’s the main focus of the site. We want people when they think of Video Boys to think of our sex scenes. And the other stuff like Jeremy Roddick, Squirtz, Maximo Latino and Cruiser Boys, that’s bonus stuff. But those are well worth it too on their own. I mean with Squirtz there’s almost 400 models on there now and we just redesigned the outside of the site, which is really nice, and the inside is going up soon, too, with the new design. Jeremy and William really work hard on good design. I used to do design like back in 1993 when it was so simple. Everything was just plain HTML. Now it’s so complicated that I just leave it to these little geniuses to handle. I just can’t do that. We like to get feed back, but people are not getting feedback to us, which is why we just signed up to Twitter with an account for each of those sites, and I’m pushing really hard to get as many followers on there and to get out the message and interact with people. Actually on there we’re getting feedback, and on our blogs too, people are commenting on our videos and telling us what they like and what they don’t like. That’s very good for us. We want to know what people like. It’s not just about what we find personally attractive, we want to appeal to a big audience too, because we don’t want to stay small forever. We’re trying all different things now, like our blogs are just going up and my personal one is gaining some steam now, that’s www.ianduncan.com, and the one for Video Boys is like a newspaper template called www.thegailyjerker.com. The template’s not up yet ’cause we only have a few articles. We were waiting to fill it up before we actually applied the template. When that goes up it will look like a real newspaper website. It’s supposed to be a little… not comedic, but a little bit fun in that we have our reporters going on the scene and reporting on the porn business and stuff like that. It’s supposed to be something original and entertaining, so I hope people are going to like that.

MATT: I love your blog www.ianduncan.com.

IAN: It’s going very well. It was actually the first site I had up when I was 18. It was like a little journal site and I started putting up naked pictures that my friends would take and just my daily thoughts and whatever. It was probably one of the first 1,000 sites in the whole world at the time ’cause it was at the very beginning of the Internet. There was almost nothing at all. And it grew so much that millions of people were going to my site every year. Everywhere I would go people would come up to me, in Europe or Mexico, “you’re Ian Duncan.” It was so much fun., but I tool it down after a while because I just wanted to focus on other things and just have some privacy for a while. Now I’m start starting to feel like… I just love writing. Some blogs are like a couple of sentences but for me I’m writing a whole story each entry because I like that. Through my blog… I’ve dug up all these entries. I’ve been writing my whole life going back to when I was seven years old, so I’m putting every entry I’ve ever written going back to 1982 plus all the new stuff. I put up previews of our new scenes plus daily life stuff. It’s kind of unique in that sense, mixing hardcore porn plus daily life and childhood drawings and whatever. I hope people will like it. We’ll see. It’s growing, people are coming, so that’s good. I’ll give it some time.

MATT: I think it’s fascinating. I’ve been reading all of these blog entries and it’s like you are reading the evolution of someone’s life.

IAN: When I used to do it before I wasn’t doing it for money, it was just for fun; I liked it so much. People were emailing me all the time. I would write about very personal things, which seemed to very rare on blogs at the time when I was twenty or so. People would write to me ans say, “wow, I just read this post on your site and it had such a deep impact on me when I was really wondering about something,” or, “you really encouraged me and I’m so grateful for that,” or another person would write, “I’m so alone where I live and just to read about your saying, you feel so good about your life and your so hopeful, you got away from an abusive life at home and made a better life. It makes me feel hopeful for my own future.” Every day my in-box would be filled with messages like this and it was the most important thing in the world to me at the time.

MATT: It’s kind of crazy you said that. Pierre [Fitch] just popped up on my computer. He said you were a strong person. He said, “Ian is a great guy.” Of course Pierre has spoken to me about you before. I’ve never heard him say a negative thing about you.

IAN: Wow, thanks! He’s very cool. We’re not close friends but I see him around from time to time.

MATT: You have another site that I love, www.slimergames.com.

IAN: Hahaha, thank you. I put that up a while ago thinking it would make some money with advertising but it never really did. I haven’t given up on it. I love games myself. I love computer games. The new ones are so crazy, you have to spend an entire week full-time playing them because their so complex. I just miss these simple old games where you can take a break for five or ten minutes and play them at work or just to relax. So I put up the arcade that’s got like 4,000 something games on there. It’s a pretty crazy look because I just downloaded a template. I’m going to have William, when we have some time, re-do it so it’s very easy to use, a classy interface and simple to use. The one that’s up there is a little confusing. There’s stuff flashing all over and whatever. It is fun, there’s a lot of good games on there. I have a Twitter page for that too. I’m trying to build up a following for that, so we’ll see. Maybe it’s going to be a success too.

MATT: You made the decision in 2006 to step away from being in front of the camera. What led you to that decision?

IAN: Mainly, I don’t like to see myself on camera. I didn’t think I looked nearly as good as our other models. I was like, OK, I gotta just pack it in. Also, our models, we’re focusing on 18 to 25 for the most part and I’m 33 now. When I stopped I was in my late twenties. It was very fun for a long time. We did our live shows for three years and then I did just a few movies and I had a great time doing that. It changed my life for the better. It gave me a lot of confidence and I met a lot of guys I would have never met otherwise, and for a while it was my only sex life. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it but after a while it was like, OK, let’s just focus on the new guys, the new faces, better looking, in shape guys. I really like to be behind the camera ’cause I’m a bit pushy or a perfectionist with the camera, and when I’m in the scene yelling at the guy doing the camera work, “make sure you do this, make sure you get that, get that angle, get this,” it doesn’t work very well. The last one I was in was a disaster. It didn’t turn out very well at all. It took weeks to repair the footage from it because the camera guy did such a horrid job. It was just so bad. After it was fixed it wasn’t too bad and I don’t feel too bad about it now, but I wish my last movie had gone out with a big bang, something really spectacular. But it’s OK, it’s no problem. I like to be behind the camera because I want to make sure it’s going to look as good as it can. Everyone here has their own skills. Jeremy is good at editing, William is good at marketing, design, programming, Kinsey is very good at dealing with the models, they all love him. He’s very relaxed and friendly and he’s very good at doing interviews. He gets very good stories out of these guys. I’m better visually. I studied photography in high school and that’s what I wanted as my career for a while, so for me it’s just a visual composition. That’s why I do the sex scenes, because I try to get the best angles and all that stuff. And I’m good with the models. I’m not shy to tell them this doesn’t work or that looks bad, put your leg there, do this. Not in a bossy way, but in a way where they are still having fun, but they have to realize it has to look good. Doing porn isn’t real sex, it’s stop and go, stop and go. Sometimes the positions are very uncomfortable, but I tell them the worse it feels the better it looks. If you’re comfortable, you’re not doing it right, hahaha.

MATT: Then I’ve been doing it wrong all these years!

IAN: Sometimes I push a little too hard and they say, “you know what, I’m not going to do this. It’s not going to work.” And I’ll say, “OK, forget this, we’ll try something else.” We’ll just try, but I don’t come in and say, “OK, you’re doing this and this and this and this.” We have a check-list of things we need. We want them kissing and sucking and fucking of course, and a good cum shot, but the positions, you know, we’re open, and sometimes they have favorite positions they want to do, and we’ll ask them what they really want to do. Sometimes they say, “oh, I really want to do this,” or, “I’ve always wanted to try this,” or maybe something I saw in a video just the other day I may say, “let’s try this for a change.” It’s not very rigid; we have to get it done and there’s things we need, but there’s a lot of flexibility in that too. We just want them to have fun, just move along quickly and get it done. By the time they walk in to the time they walk out it’s about two hours, or maximum three if they need to take a break. So, it’s pretty good. We work pretty fast and get everything that we need. And they’re very happy working with us it seems because the keep coming back. We have a line up of guys waiting to work with us now. I wish we just had like $100,000; we could film fifty scenes in a row. There’s so many people waiting. Right now it’s a very bad economy so we just want to stay afloat right now. I think everybody’s hurting right now. Sales are bad everywhere. When I look at the graphs of traffic for so many big sites that we’re competing against, they’re just going straight down and ours is going straight up. We’ve had a 3,000% increase in traffic in just the last year alone. So, I think we’re doing something right that people really like. When we redo the site design to make it more user friendly and more attractive and grab their attention quicker and guide them towards joining and give them something worth while, so they don’t feel ripped off. They want to feel like this is money well spent and they want to stay here as long as possible. That’s our goal, treat people very well and give them something they will be happy with, and they’ll keep coming back. It’s like with our DVD sales, when we were selling those directly I was handling all the orders, so I would see the names coming in and I would see one guy order one DVD, I would ship it out and two weeks later he would order every single thing we had on the list. Now it’s happening all the time. They would just give us a try and they liked it so much that they would buy every single thing we had. That was the best feedback we could get.

MATT: It really is very high quality work, from the models to the camera work to the video quality, it’s really good quality.

IAN: Well thank you. We’re trying. There’s a lot we need to learn. Now we are trying to learn photography lighting, which we’re having trouble with, but we’re getting better. We find that in small rooms it can look really nice but in larger rooms we’re having trouble getting it to look good. With video it’s easier. It’s grown a lot over the years. We still haven’t switched to hi-definition yet, but a lot of people don’t seem to care from what we’ve heard, ’cause once it’s compressed down to the internet you can’t tell a big difference anyway. I’m not for sure that people want to see too many details on these guys, haha. Sometimes a little less looks better, you know? Everyone is saying it had to be HD, it had to be HD. We’re going to have to buy an HD camera at some point, although, a lot of the people we know use HD, like Bel Ami, everything’s a little orange and there’s a lot of clipping. We want the scene to look as close to life-like as possible. We don’t want a color take over. We’re looking for a camera that will get a more realistic tone, that’s why we’re waiting for that. We also need progressive scan. I don’t care what anyone says, the hi-res pictures are wonderful for promotional stuff but for a gallery I like to catch the action; and you can only do that with a progressive scan screen shot, which will give you a pretty good quality picture for a screen capture, because it’s very clear. So, we are going to wait and find the camera that works for us. When we were doing movies with actual acting and stuff I would go through every second of the movie and I would color correct and make everything look as good as possible. We don’t know how long the DVD market is going to last. We expected it to be dead by last year, but our DVD sales keep increasing all the time in a dying market which is surprising. We’re grateful for that. I think our distributor love’s working with us because we are very accomodating for them and we’re not too proud. If they suggest a change we’re going to do it because we know this is their area of expertise. They know how to market something, if they say it’s going to work better by having someone else on the cover, we’re going to do that. They’re working really hard to sell our DVD’s and they are guaranteeing to buy so many a month from us for now. I don’t know how long it’s going to go ’cause I don’t know what will happen with DVD’s, but we’ll milk it for as long as we can.

MATT: If you’re DVD sales are going up while everyone else’s is going down, you’re doing something right.

IAN: Yeah, it’s weird. Our site traffic has skyrocketed while everyone has hitting rock bottom, and our DVD sales are going up while everyone’s are dying, which is really good. We’re not getting rich at all but we’re staying afloat when a lot of people are going out of business. That in itself is a pretty good sign. It would be nice to live up to the image people have of porn producers rolling in millions of dollars in cash but that’s just not the case. I don’t know anyone like that. It’s really difficult. There’s so much competition, there’s so much free stuff now. If you don’t do bareback you’re going to sell less; all these things. You just have to change with the market as it changes. Not a lot of people are getting rich at the moment. There’s a few, but after twelve or thirteen years we’re still waiting for that moment to happen. I think we found the formula that works for now and we’re going to keep working on that the best we can.

MATT: We’ve talked a lot about the business and the sites. Let’s talk more about you. What do you do when you’re not working?

IAN: Well, that’s not very often. We work almost seven days a week here just trying to keep up with it all. Especially on a filming day we just want to crash and relax, watch tv, eat something. We’re not party people here, which is rare in this industry too. We have the four guys who work here full-time, me, Kinsey, Jeremy and William. Jeremy and William went down to L.A. for one of the big conventions and everyone was drunk out of their minds, everyone was on cocaine. We don’t do drugs, we barely drink at all, so we’re very unusual in this business.

MATT: The Video Boys parties were really, really popular in Montreal. Almost legendary.

IAN: Yes, they were invitation only. Sometimes we would get some people crashing the party, like some hustlers and stuff. We had a place that was very good. It was four suites at a bed and breakfast. They were beautiful, beautiful suites. Some of the people that came to the party were staying in them so they rented them out and actually through the party for us, because we had shut Montreal Boys down and this was like their fair well party for us, and oddly enough it was better than the parties we had but it was because the location was perfect and they opened up all the suites so people could just wander around. No neighbors to complain about the noise, no one could see the terrace, it was total privacy which was nice. Amazing food. They prepared everything for us. We had to restock the bar like three or four times ’cause people were drinking so much. The party got a good reputation. We looked forward to it every year. We really want to get that back. I think it would be good. We just need to find a good location. The problem is there’s a lot of good locations around town but at some point in the party it descends into clothes flying off and sex happening and people jumping in hot tubs. It has to be certain kind of place where you can get away with that sort of thing. I don’t know, we’ll figure something out. So, for the next one for sure you’re going to come?

MATT: I will definitely be there, you just let me know when. Well Ian, I really appreciate you’re time. I know you have a lot of work to do and I ran out of tape about a half hour ago.

IAN: You ran out of tape? Well, that’s just me. I just go on and on and on.

MATT: Just kidding. I switched tapes, haha. Thanks again for you’re time. I have really enjoyed it.

IAN: Oh, you’re welcome. Any time.

Rocco Giovanni is full of talent and ready to explode in a big way. Being in the business for less than a year, he is already making substantial waves and catching the eyes of some of the biggest names in the industry. Behind the exotic good looks and devilish grin there is a very talented and goal oriented guy with a lot to offer. Rocco was kind enough to grant me this interview the night before flying to L.A. for a shoot.

MATT: Hey Rocco! How are you?

ROCCO: I’m good. How are you?

MATT: I’m good. Thanks for calling.

ROCCO: No problem.

MATT: How was your class tonight?

ROCCO: Intense. I let them have it because I’m going to be gone for a while.

MATT: What kind of class was it?

ROCCO: It’s called Strike, but it’s kick-boxing based. It’s pretty rough.

MATT: You practice martial arts, don’t you?

ROCCO: Yep. Kravnaga is my main focus, which isn’t really a martial art. It’s the Israeli defense force’s hand-to-hand combat. So, it’s pretty much how to kill with your hands and get out of there, obviously. They developed it around 1920 and it’s still evolving into what it is, and now the NSA and FBI are trained with it.

MATT: You started just this year in porn, didn’t you?

ROCCO: Yes and no. I had done two videos with BG East in 2002. They weren’t anything major and I looked completely different. So, last year was the first major, major release that I did with Raging Stallion.

MATT: That was Ink Stain?

ROCCO: Yeah.

MATT: What has the last year been like for you?

ROCCO: It’s been different. People around here, in Ohio, once they found out treated me a little differently. But it really hasn’t affected me personally yet so far as the way that I treat everybody or anything like that. I thought the reviews were kind of funny when I read them, but other than that I got a lot more offers from photographers around here to model for them – legit modeling. Obviously working with Justin Monroe helped a lot with that. And, actually working with him… those are the pictures I sent to Raging Stallion and that’s how they picked me up.

MATT: You modeled for a number of years before you went into porn full time.

ROCCO: Yeah, the big one, like I said, was with Justin Monroe who released a book last year. It won a bunch of awards. He found me on Myspace then asked me to come out because he wanted to shoot someone with a lot of tattoos. I worked with him and got a six page spread in a German magazine, and I’m staying part of the week while I’m out there [Los Angeles]. He’s become a really good friend.

MATT: You really do have quite a few tattoos. Is it a tattoo obsession?

ROCCO: Ha! Well, they say the body is a temple. Why would I want a normal church when I could have a cathedral which is decorated. That’s kind of my spin on that. It started with just a normal teenage angsty psychosis that evolved. When I was eighteen I was able to get tattooed and I did. Now eleven years later and there’s forty-six of them.

MATT: Do you have any plans on quitting?

ROCCO: No, but I have a couple of appointments lined up.

MATT: I guess the analogy would be that even Michelangelo had a chance to paint the Sistine Chapel.

ROCCO: Exactly. I asked my tattoo artist what’s going to happen when I stop. She goes, “you’ll turn to drinking.” Eventually I’ll stop. There are places I don’t want tattooed, like I don’t want my neck tattooed, I don’t want my face tattooed. So, I’ll stop eventually. Until that point, there’s still appointments that have to be.

MATT: Something that is really interesting to me is your fight against cystic fibrosis.

ROCCO: I’m glad you brought that up. My best friend, who is an Emmy Award winning choreographer and who lives in Ohio, has four children. Two of them are living with cystic fibrosis, and I, over 2007, got to spend every weekend with them, so I really got to learn what it is that she as a parent has to go through, but also her kids. It really, really just hit a chord with me. The charities that I choose a lot of times has to resonate with them. And here was this woman who is an amazing choreographer, and amazing dance teacher, and her children have this condition which is fatal. It’s inevitable fatal. The medium age right now is thirty-five. When her first child was diagnosed with it the medium age was twelve. So, you know, you could potentially die at twelve. But, they’re living their lives. The son is an all-star athlete and he’s actually phenomenal. The daughter is also extremely athletic, an all-star athlete as well as an incredible ballet dancer and she’s only seven. To see that and just how much sacrifice goes into it from the parent’s standpoint and the children’s standpoint…. in Ohio the weather is really jacked up. There are days if you have any breathing condition they will tell you not to go outside because it will effect you with the ozone and everything. It really struck me. I realized there are a lot of other things I could probably worry about or I could donate my time and money to, but that one is not something anyone chooses. You can’t make the wrong choice and all of the sudden have cystic fibrosis. You can’t smoke and get cystic fibrosis, you can’t play out in the sun and get cystic fibrosis. It just happens. I learned that now they test for it prenatally because it’s genetic. Since Bill Clinton did the genome map they found the genes which facilitate developing cystic fibrosis. And the amount of people who give their children up for adoption after they find out that their child has cystic fibrosis… the sad thing about that is that the child probably won’t live past the age of three because in that setting they’re not going to get the care that is necessary. So, that’s really why I took that up and why it means so much to me. I actually donate 10% of every film, even though I’ve only done one, to cystic fibrosis research.

MATT: I’ll be honest. I don’t know a lot about cystic fibrosis. I know that it’s a respiratory disorder.

ROCCO: Partially, partially. It not only effects the lungs but it also effects the pancreas. They don’t produce the enzymes necessary to digest food so they don’t take in the amount of nutrients necessary for them to sustain living. At the age of seven her daughter has to consume upwards of 4,000 calories A DAY in order to survive, and every time they eat they have to take enzymes that assist them in digesting their food. The average male requires 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day to sustain everyday life, imagine this little girl, seven years old, having to eat 4,000 calories a day. On top of that, because it’s a respiratory condition – it does affect the lungs – they have to go through breathing treatments two to three times a day, so for approximately an hour a day they have to sit with a mask on and a protective vest which rattles their lungs to stop the mucus in their lungs… it hardens.

MATT: I commend you for doing this. I wish more people had that attitude and would contribute, whether is be cystic fibrosis, AIDS research, cancer research. I think health research and medical development could go a lot further.

ROCCO: I agree, but not everyone’s at that place in their life.

MATT: You were a psychology and sociology major in college. Why didn’t you pursue a career in one of those fields?

ROCCO: Yeah. I was a dancer first, so growing up I danced. It’s hard to make a career as a dancer, although, I was a boy and a classical dancer, which meant I would have had a job, I also new it wouldn’t last that long. And low and behold I turned eighteen and got injured which stopped that career. I originally just wanted to major in psychology but then I had to take sociology and I really liked how they went hand-in-hand. I was kind of an outcast anyway, so it was interesting to see the psychology of the sociology, if that makes any sense – looking at groups of people and why they act the way they do; cliques, even outcasts. If you look at a typical high school you have the jocks and you have the nerds and you have this, that and the other. So that’s what interested me in that. I didn’t stay in school for it because I didn’t want to stay in school for sixteen years before I would have a career. And then I went into fitness, which is what I do now, which, kind of combines all of those because I am able to use my skills in martial arts, anatomy, all of those, as well as psychology and sociology of individuals who are A: healthy, or B: unhealthy and are motivated to become healthy – why are they doing that, eating disorders and things of that nature. Working in fitness, that really tied it all together. Modeling and porn, that’s just something I’ve always wanted to do, even when I was young. I know that sounds weird. I am thankful that I got into it later as apposed to some eighteen year olds do, and they’re like, “oh, yay,” and they make bad decisions, I think are bad decisions, as apposed to waiting until they are almost thirty;I’m twenty-nine; where I can say I’ve already been through this, this and this. I can make a decision and I can say “no.” I can turn things down because I’ve learned that skill.

MATT: I’m glad you brought that up because you did start in porn later in life. I guess your age and wisdom, without making you sound old, because you’re not, has allowed you to make better decisions as to who you choose to work with or associate with.

ROCCO: Absolutely. That’s an industry where there’s a lot of stuff that goes on the is not necessarily positive. I am old enough to not succumb to any of that pressure. I see it, it’s around me. I choose not to do it, and because I’m older I get respect for that. People are like, “oh, OK, that’s cool, we dig that. Good for you. I wish I could do the same thing.” So, maybe I can be an inspiration to them. Who knows? But I definitely am glad I waited as long as I did. I didn’t really choose to wait. I tried, don’t get me wrong. I’ve received a lot of rejection for this, that or the other, especially because from ‘98 to about 2005 all you saw were cookie-cutter guys. I was never that. That’s why I got rejected. Everyone was muscly, blond and tan. I was like Gia… do you remember the model, Gia from the late seventies and early eighties? At the time all of the supermodels were like Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley. They were all blond and she had dark hair and dark eyes. She broke a mold. Not that I’m breaking a mold, but there are other molds I can be in.

MATT: As far as your background, you are half Chinese.

ROCCO: I am. Chinese and Scotch-Irish.

MATT: Is there something that you take away from both cultures that you feel makes you who you are?

ROCCO: I would say that because I am a halfbreed Chinese person… I know I shouldn’t say “halfbreed.” I know people are going to get offended.

MATT: Nah, the Cher fans will love it.

ROCCO: The genes that I took, you know, you think of an Asian person and they can cook and do math and martial arts and they can play the violin, you know, all of the stereotypes. I didn’t get the math gene, but I got the other three. I am a martial artist. I’ve actually studied upwards of five martial arts, and if you put a weapon in my hand I instinctively know how to use it. It’s the weirdest thing. I can cook and I’m very musical. I can’t play the violin, but I’m very musical and I think it helps with my dancing. From the Scotch-Irish side I got a bad temper and I was raised Catholic. I didn’t take the drinking gene because I can’t drink to save my life. Two drinks and I feel like I’m drunk. Heritage wise, when people ask me to identify myself I say that I’m Chinese. I don’t say that I’m white. I don’t say that I’m Scotch-Irish; because the culture is very rich. I don’t have a good relationship with my dad, but I have a good relationship with my heritage and the history of Taiwan, which is where my dad is from. His father left Taiwan in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek…during all of that. I took it upon myself to research that and learn about the history and religions of Chinese and Taiwan. Things like Chinese New Year and why you would wear red but you don’t write in red ink, stuff like that.

MATT: You are an avid reader. Is there a particular genre of books that you are drawn to?

ROCCO: Typically… right now is the exception. I’m getting ready for the Bruce LaBruce film (a zombie/horror/porn movie), so right now I’m reading four books about zombies, so my dreams are really interesting right now, haha. Typically, and any given time I’ll read a piece of fiction, I’ll read a book on some sort of spirituality. I’m very into religious studies and spirituality. I’ll usually read a biography and a book that is based in fitness. I could be about eating disorders or any number of things that are based in the fitness industry; food, nutrition, anything like that. Those are the four kinds of books that I will read. The fiction usually tends towards horror because I like that. And then the biographies are typically about women, strong women. I recently read a biography about Eva Peron, I read a biography about Neferatari and Neferatiti, and every time there’s a biography about Madonna I read one. It’s the same story. I don’t know why I keep reading it over and over again, but I do. Very few about men. I did read one about Chiang Kai-shek, but then I turned around and read one about Chairman Mao’s wife and the Communist regime in China. So, very strong women. They usually turn out political.

MATT: What is it about Madonna that fascinates you? Is it the strong female presence?

ROCCO: Personally, it’s because she doesn’t apologize. She’s not afraid to do what she wants and really doesn’t care if anyone accepts it or not. Then what’s funny is that several years later she may do something that people thought was a flop, but people will look back and say, “oh, that makes sense,” or all of the sudden the music sounds like that two years later but it just didn’t work out when she did it. She struggled… especially this day and age when you can go on American Idol and get a record deal. I mean, she was nobody, and she started out as a dancer as well, which I can relate too, and a contemporary and classical dancer, which I REALLY can relate too. She was raised Catholic, I was raised Catholic. So there are a lot of parallels that I can definitely see there. She’s influenced by a lot of stuff, as am I and it just happens to be that a lot of times they’ll parallel each other; like she’s influenced by Asian culture, I’m influenced by Asian culture. She reads about religion and sites religion as being a driving force for her, whether it’s Catholicism or Hinduism or Judaism. And I get the same thing because I’m fascinated by world religion. She doesn’t like to get stuck in any one place and neither do I.

MATT: You mentioned the upcoming movie with Bruce LaBruce. How much about that movie can you tell me?

ROCCO: Well, there’s a website (www.lazombie.com). I think I can give you a lot of it. It’s about zombies and it’s a very extreme portrayal of zombies. Francois Sagat, who is the star of the film, is an alien zombie who goes through several different iconic scenes. Like, I get to be a surfer who dies and through the miracles of zombie sex comes back to life. So, I get to be a zombie for a minute. My chest is all open and I get to be gory, which I feel so horrible for whoever is doing the makeup because they’re going to have to figure out what to do with all these tattoos. There are some really big names in it. Matthew Rush is in it. Wolf Hudson is in it. Erik Rhodes is in it.

MATT: From what I have read and heard it sounds amazing. Is this going to be a hardcore porn?

ROCCO: An art film. I would say an art film. With all of his movies they are like that. They blur a line. I would say like Andy Warhol but darker and more perverted. So, yes and no. Some people will look at it as hardcore porn. Some people will look at it as an art film. It’s going to blur a line, especially since a lot of the interaction is with someone who is supposed to be dead. It’s not something you would necessarily see in the back room of your local video store.

MATT: Well there’s no sex like sex with the un-dead.

ROCCO: I guess not. It’s like they say, when does CPR become necrophilia?

MATT: What is something that something that people would be surprised to know about you?

ROCCO: What is something that…. uh, I don’t know. I used to be a Prince impersonator. I love Prince as much as Madonna actually. I was a little tall, actually.

MATT: How tall are you?

ROCCO: 5′ 10″ and he’s only 5′ 4″. And I had to wear heels, so I was even taller. I did it in the bar as part of a drag show. About once a month I would go in and do Prince. I even traveled with it a little bit, I mean around Ohio. Actually it’s funny, Chi Chi LaRue came to the bar that I worked at for their anniversary and her and I had a conversation for about two hours. She grew up in St. Paul and she was in that whole First Avenue when Prince was just making it big. She was in a scene of Purple Rain that got cut. So, it was quite interesting. Her and I sat and talked all about Prince. She remembers it too. The next year she came back and there’s a picture of her and I and the drag queen who was the host that I gave her the next year and a CD of a huge one hour mega mix of Prince music. I Twittered her not long ago and was like, “do you remember me?”, and she was like, “yeah, first time I met you was in Ohio.” So, it was kind of funny.

MATT: To have just done one movie with Raging Stallion and then to be cast in this Bruce LaBruce movie along side these other big names, you must be doing something right.

ROCCO: I’m really like a nobody. My first thing was with Ricky Sinz who has won every award imaginable, Raging Stallion man of the year, and I’m a nobody. The only way I got the role in the Bruce LaBruce movie is because he Twittered about it and I responded to him and that’s how that all took off. I can’t say that I’m playing my cards right, but there is something out there that is playing my cards for me and putting me where other people would really like to be.

MATT: To be in Ohio and to have only done one movie, that is significant.

ROCCO: I’m thankful. I’m really thankful. I’m grateful.

MATT: I think there is a lot to come for you.

ROCCO: I hope so, but if not, I love my day job. I love what I do. I love fitness and I love seeing people change, I love helping. And would still probably be doing it if I were to obtain porn star status. I would definitely work in fitness.

MATT: I heard some dogs barking in the background. Are those your dogs?

ROCCO: No, I hate dogs. They’re my neighbors.

MATT: I definitely won’t put that in the interview.

ROCCO: I was scared of dogs as a little kid and I think it turned into hatred as I got older. I don’t try to run them down in the street, but I still try to avoid them as much as possible. You can even put this in the interview. I don’t care.

MATT: I just don’t want people coming up to you on the street saying, “you’re that damn dog hater.”

ROCCO: Oh, I know. Someone will come up to me and throw paint on me or something. I didn’t say I skinned them. I just said I don’t like them.

MATT: If it’s a phobia, then it’s a phobia.

ROCCO: Right, I think that’s where it comes from. But now I’m bigger than most of them. They’re so needy. At least with a kid, after they are a certain age they go off and do their own thing. Dogs never do that. Cat’s go off and do their own thing. I’ve had snakes, they’re like the best pet ever. You feed them like once every other month. But dogs; they’re so needy, they bark, they smell. They’re man’s best friend… well, diamonds are a girls best friend and those are cooler and worth more. Everyone’s envious of you if you have diamonds. No one is envious of you if you have a stray dog.

MATT: Thank you so much for the interview.

ROCCO: Yeah, we’ll Twitter the hell out of it. People are going to be like, “dammit!”

MATT: Yeah, it’s going to be like Twitter spam.

ROCCO: Exactly. They’ll get sick of it.

MATT: I know you have to pack for your trip to L.A. in the morning so I won’t hold you up any more. Thanks again.

ROCCO: Thanks Matt. Good night.

Rob Romoni is one of the most multi-talented porn stars working today. Behind his enormous muscles and wicked sense of humor is a warm and generous Jersey boy with a heart of gold. Now living in Los Angeles, Rob has had a long and rewarding career in the adult industry with no sign of slowing. He is the undisputed king of Twitter and the court jester of the porn industry. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/robromoni, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/robromoni, and on Myspace at www.myspace.com/robromoni.

MATT: Hello Rob!

ROB: Hey Matt. Where are you from?

MATT: I’m from the South.

ROB: I’m from Jersey.

MATT: You’re from Jersey?

ROB: Yep, born and raised. I’ve lived all the way from North Jersey to Atlantic City.

MATT: I’ve probably driven by your hometown a few times on the New Jersey Turnpike.

ROB: You’ve probably passed my hometown a lot. It takes literally three or three and a half hours to go through the whole state.

MATT: So now you’re in LA.

ROB: Yeah, there are a lot of good places. It just depends on where you think is the safest between the earthquakes and forest fires. But where I’m from, it’s like in the center of where everything is. I do not even need a car; my bank, my gym, the supermarket, all the places where everybody goes out to eat. The only thing I would need a car for is to go to the beach. Everything else is right here. Everything. Anything you could think of, I could just walk to it. Melrose is a couple of blocks away, Sunset is a couple of blocks in the other direction. All the things you see on TMZ I could head right down the street from me.

MATT: You really are in the perfect location.

ROB: I know, it’s funny. I could tweet about it forever, but more people would hate me if I did.

MATT: I don’t want to hold you up too long. I know you’re anxious to get back to Twitter.

ROB: Haha, I have taken the stance to where I am doing it 50/50 now. Before, it became like a chat room type of thing and I wanted to curb that a little bit. People know me in the industry as more like the funny guy, besides being a performer. I like to make jokes, I’m always the jokester, and I’m the go-to guy for behind the scenes type of stuff stuff. That’s why my shit is so random, as far as talking about the industry to personal stuff, just making stupid one-liners, talking about the gym, and obviously talking to people. I always feel… and this is the problem that I ran into… people don’t realize that if people take the time to talk to me I can do the same thing back. I can’t get to everybody but the good percentage, 90% or above. Because I like that one-on-one type of thing with people. I’ve had people who have come in and had just seen my first movie, and that was out like five or six years ago. And I’m like, if you’re just getting that now; one, wow, and two, I’m grateful that you are acknowledging the work. I’m very humble. I’m not like one of those people who are like, “can’t you just send an email?”

MATT: Well thank God you’re not like that. I really appreciate you doing this interview. I had stopped doing interview a while back when the platform I was using shut down all adult oriented sites. Then a couple of weeks ago Jesse Santana called me and we did an interview, so I guess I am officially back in the interview business.

ROB: It’s like that line in Goodfellas, once you’re out they drag you back in.

MATT: I made that exact comment to a friend just the other day.

ROB: It’s true though. It’s really true, because I was taking a little time off just for myself, and when I started going back into the mainstream people were asking me what are you doing, what’s next, what’s going on? I’ve done mainstream independent film work, acting, stage work, to XXX work. I did a music video a couple of years ago.

MATT: I didn’t know you did stage work. That’s interesting.

ROB: Yeah, I did two different plays. Do you know Matthew Rush?

MATT: Yeah.

ROB: Well, me and him used to go out, and during the time we went out we did a lot plays together. We did a play called “Making Porn” and another play called “My Boyfriend’s a Stripper.” And we went to Chicago, Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, LA, Dallas, and we played all those venues for like a good year. It was a lot of fun. Great crowds, great people, funny stuff. I mean it was hysterical. It was a great cast. It was a lot of fun.

MATT: I would have loved to have seen that.

ROB: I don’t know why they’re not doing it any more. The writers and producers of both of those plays don’t do it any more and I don’t know why. People took over, it’s the same as Broadway, new people take over from the old people, then they just stopped.

MATT: Maybe it’s because you’re irreplaceable.

ROB: Well, I don’t know. It started with Matthew and me. It was Matthew for the name, me for the funny and the cast rounded it out, and it worked out really well. And you know, we did a lot of signings at bars in Fort Lauderdale and Dallas and Chicago. It was a great time. It was a fucking really great time. It was one of those ‘feel good about yourself’ type of moments. You know what I mean? It was like you were going out doing what you love and people were loving what you were doing. It was really like a bond or a mold was being created, and when that stopped, for a while I missed it. So, hopefully something will click and they will start doing it again, because I would definitely do it again. I even talked to Matthew in May when we were at the Grabbys, and I said I would love to start doing the plays again. Even if we had to buy the play, and we had to do it ourselves, I would do it. That’s how much I loved it. There was never I time when we didn’t sell out. It’s not a big ensemble, there was maybe six of us. There was four of us besides me and Matthew, so it would work out fine. So, we’ll see.

MATT: I found out recently that you have a business degree.

ROB: Yes. If I actually went back one more semester I would have my masters degree in business administration.

MATT: So if you were not doing porn…

ROB: Yeah, I would probably be doing that. When I got my degree I was still taking classes, and this is when I was back in Jersey. I worked for a couple of restaurants up there that were pretty decent names, and I was rising in the ranks very quickly. What turned me off was a female that I was going out with at the time. Obviously I’m gay now. But she kind of burned me by taking my ideas and using them as her own, and it kind of turned me away from the business world. I was really working my ass off, working fucking seventy, seventy-five hour weeks. And while I was doing that she was trying to fuck her way to the top, and I was one of those people she was trying to do that with. So she took my ideas like a black widow I guess. After we had a huge meeting in Philadelphia she took all my stuff, so I was like, I’m not sure if this is really what I want to do; made some changes, decided things need to be different… obviously, because I started going out with guys. And the guy I was going out with asked me what I thought about the porn industry. I was like, “what about it?” He was like, “would you do it?” And I’m like, “yeah, yeah I would do it.” Obviously there needs to be a little bit of thinking about it as far as family and friends and judgment and whatever, and then, you know, I was like, I really don’t care about it. Because people who are around me and know me knew I was making a decent decision, that’s it’s not half-ass, that it was well thought out and I know the pros and the cons and all that, so that’s exactly what I did. But if I, even a few years back, if I had not gone into the porn industry I would have gotten my masters degree. I don’t know how I would go back to a reunion at the college. I mean, how do you explain going from a bachelor’s degree in business to going porn? I mean you can always use the business aspects.

MATT: You are a very business minded person. It is a business; like how you helped Jason Ridge start Ridgeline Films and worked as a production coordinator.

ROB: There’s a lot of things I was helping him with. He’s a great guy and he was doing what he needed to do for the company. I was glad I could be there to help him with the model recruitment, the paperwork, the law. You become like a paralegal and production assistant and working with the camera. It was a lot of fun and it gave me a different view of my industry, because I was always in front of it. But when you step to the side or even behind it’s like I understand what they went through, you know what I mean? Like how frustrating it can be to get a shot and how frustrating it can be if a model is late or a model doesn’t show up, and how great it can be when they do come and when the want to perform. I was the type of person… I don’t over-analyze, but I’m a realist. I don’t expect more that I expect from myself, so if I know I can do it, you should be able to do it. I don’t think that you are going to become a star overnight. I think that you need to, you know… there’s a difference between a porn star and a porn actor. I think there’s a website out there that lists people as porn actors and porn stars. I feel that a porn star is a person that shows up ready, performs, is very easy to get along with, has a great motivational performance with them, and has the ability to have great chemistry with somebody, and doesn’t think they are more than what they are. And that’s why I am so grateful. I’ve worked with 99% of the people that literally let me be who I am, always wanted the most from me, and it’s visa-versa. I just found out the other day that I had won all these awards and didn’t even know it.

MATT: Really? Like what kind of awards?

ROB: Well, someone sent me a link to go to, www.imdb.com, and I didn’t even know I was listed there. I thought I just won one award for Best Ass at the Grabbys like four years ago (2004 Grabby Awards) but I didn’t realize that I had won two other Grabbys and a Gay VN. I didn’t even know that.

MATT: Oh, you are kidding.

ROB: No, I swear to God, I didn’t know that. The Gay VN award was for the 2005 release, Bolt, which was a Channel 1 release and Chi Chi [LaRue] directed that, and I didn’t even know. I didn’t go to the Gay VN’s so I guess it’s a little bit on my side, but I didn’t know.

MATT: No one picked up the phone and said, “Oh, by the way…”

ROB: No, no, which is funny. Well, it was a group award. I think that’s why. It was a best group scene for a movie. I’m obviously not the only one on there (adult star), but someone put me on it. So hopefully that answers some of what you were asking.

MATT: You have been doing this for quite a while. What is the secret to your longevity? What keeps you in demand?

ROB: I was never a problem. I was always reliable. I’m always the last one to leave, I’m always the first one to get there. I love to be in front of the camera. I used to make the joke that I would give myself scoliosis to get the shot, just to get the shot and make people happy, to make my scene partner happy. And I always had faith that if someone hired me to do a job, that one, I’m in my A-game, because I am very religious when it comes to performing as far as work-outs, eating, tanning, looking good; because I’m huge into promoting my movies. And that’s what they love too. When I did a couple of movies for Colt I went all over the country for their Pride just to promote Reload for when John Rutherford started the company all over again. I went from Portland to San Jose to LA to Dallas, Phoenix, Albuquerque; I did all the Prides just to promote that movie, and it became huge and won an award. It’s not just because of me. It had a great cast and it was the first one after John Rutherford took over the company. I didn’t start the industry in my twenties. I think because of going through life’s trials and tribulations and then entering it in my thirties, I was really able to connect with the directors. I wasn’t walking in like there was something I needed to fix. I was just ready to go. And like me with ADD, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go. I have gone for like this incredible scene for Massive Studios and they have automatically wanted me to go to photo shoots just because they can’t get the photo guy there the next day. And I just did it. I was like, OK, that’s fine. Just give me some magazines or whatever. And I’m grateful for that and that’s what I want all the directors to know, from people like Chris Fields to Chi Chi LaRue, John Bruno, Anthony Duran, Jett Black, all these directors I have worked with. I’m grateful. Chi Chi started my career. I have sat down with her and gone from laughter to sadness and back to laughter just to know the industry. I can laugh about it some days and I can be down about it some days, and then I can laugh about it some days. It’s cyclical. It’s good, it’s bad. You just work with it and you just make it better. That’s of the things as I get older and my performance needs to step up a little bit, I want to make sure the people around me are in the same boat, in the same frame of mind. I think there’s a little bit of a void as far as innovation, as to where to take this industry now since there’s such a change with DVD sales, and everything is going straight to internet, you need to step up the game a little bit just to be able to compete. You have the Randy Blue and Sean Cody and Cocky Boys, all that stuff. The race will be on the internet now. When you have to do the graphics and the music and the covers and all the distributing and stuff like that it can be very expensive. There are movies that I know of where the budget was like $100,000. If you don’t make that back… if you don’t have five years, you won’t make that back. Then if you have some bad PR along the way, that doesn’t help it either. There’s not anything bad I would say about my experiences with big companies. They’ve always been very cool with me, and I think that’s why there’s not one company that I’ve worked for that I haven’t worked for more than once, and I’m grateful for that. I’ve worked with Chi Chi more than once, Massive more than once, Titan more than once, Red Devil more than once.

MATT: There are a lot of newer models out there now. Who are some of your favorites?

ROB: Some of my favorites would be, well, Leo Giamani is one, obviously Adam Killian is one; he just started. Mitch Rock is one. Bobby Clark, Jeremy Bilding. We all just hung out a couple of weeks ago at Mickey’s. Scott Tanner did a signing there so the who crew went over there. It was me, Jeremy Bilding was there, Adam Killian, Chi Chi LaRue, Unzipped was there. It was a good crowd. I’m trying to think of some of the other ones. Obviously Lucky Daniels.

MATT: You are really close to Wolf Hudson.

ROB: He’s like a little brother to me and another rising star, or actually, he’s a star already. We became friends on a Ridgeline set and I adopted him like a little brother. He’s a good guy.

MATT: Something I’ve noticed about you is that you are always willing to help someone out, whether it’s someone you work with or someone on the street. You’re very empathetic.

ROB: There’s a lot of times with certain people I say “call me” automatically. This is pertaining to their situation, I’ll say “DM me or email me ASAP.” If I see someone in trouble and they are in a situation or in a bind… I’ve had people come stay with me for a couple of days, I’ve given rides to people. That’s just me wanting to do that because someone did it for me. I don’t think that I’m better, I’m just huge into karma and stuff like that. You can be the bad boy and still help somebody out, and you can be funny and still help somebody out.

MATT: You have an outstanding sense of humor. I sit here reading your posts on Twitter and laughing my ass off. Where does that come from?

ROB: I feel that it started when I was in college. When I had to pledge my fraternity we had to do skits. So I had to come up with things on the fly, so I would come up with these skits and things. I was always big on trying to make funny things about commercials on TV, so if I would see something funny I would twist it to make it crazy and put my flare on it, and that’s what I do now. There are people who are like, “oh my god, why didn’t you do Saturday Night Live, why didn’t you do this stuff?” Obviously you couldn’t do that stuff now. Let’s be real about that, but I’m glad that I can do that now. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Brad Benton, but he did a lot of stuff with me around 2003, 2005. We also did a soap opera together called “Wet Palms” with Jetset. We used to do all the sketches and things like that and it made huge behind the scenes news and it was so popular that they made us do this documentary of the whole thing for like two hours. We would just go back and forth and talk about the cast and ad-lib. It was just so much fun. That’s why I think I’m able to take pop-culture, for one, industry, two, and personal stuff, three, and make it a nice little tweet with under 140 characters. It’s funny. I wish all conversations were like that sometimes, like people on the street, you have to keep it to 140 and move on. I mean, just think of how much more of your day you can get back, right? That’s so funny because what if we started talking like we were on Twitter; you would go up to someone and say, “@robromoni, or did you see @luckydaniels69?” It would be so funny if we started talking with the @ sign in front of everything. We were talking about that with Scott Tanner and Adam Killian. We’re like, that would be funny. You know, people are like Myspace what? Friendster? Are they still around? I can’t complain. I still love Myspace. Those are my big three, Myspace, Facebook and Twitter because between those three I have 16,000 – 17,000 people. So, I always make sure that I’m commenting, accepting, requesting from fans. I want people to that it’s not just me taking it all in. I’m also requesting people. I am also asking them for their friendship.

MATT: You actually requested my friendship on Facebook.

ROB: Well, see, there you go.

MATT: Which really shocked me. That was really sweet and a nice surprise.

ROB: That’s the way it should be and I appreciate you saying that. That’s the way I think those network things started. Obviously you don’t want it to become a chat room, but it is a social networking thing which gives you every right as a member or account holder to do that and to enjoy it the way you know how to enjoy it. I can’t go anywhere… you can’t do it on Myspace or Facebook because it would take up too much time…. where I can literally talk to four different directors, six different performers, a couple bloggers and six different fans all at the same time! How great is that? Christmas comes early for me I guess because I have only been on Twitter since April and I love it, like huge. I hooked up my phone to it so I can update from a hot spot or the gym or whatever, plus I give shout-outs to people and thank you’s to other people. If you take two seconds to contact me, I’m like 90% plus with being able to get back with people. You don’t have to sit at your computer all the time. I am huge for late night. I talking to my fans, I’m talking to my fans, and that’s my time. I love it, love it! There’s been a couple of times when I’ve done a ‘Ask Rob Romoni Anything’ late night, and I would have people ask me about what was going on with me and I would talk about Mickey’s and the Grabbys and stuff like that, and how much fun I had seeing everybody again. I’m a very talkative person.

MATT: On a more serious note. You went to Michael Jackson’s memorial with Wolf Hudson. That really had to be an emotional experience for you.

ROB: It was pretty emotional. When I found out that we had tickets for it I was for one shocked, two, how can I respect the situation and handle it and really grasp that 2.4 million people wanted to go to this event and only 18,000 were able to. We got up early, like 6:00 the morning of. We took the train down there. It was a very quiet… we were trying to figure out where to go. It was an eery feeling, kind of like what is going on? What was really good is that along the journey down there we started seeing other people that had the wrist bands on, because you needed the wrist band and the ticket to get in, so people that were wearing the wrist bands were starting to become friends, and they started to talk about Michael Jackson and they started to talk about his songs and the industry and what he meant to them… because we actually saw his body fly over our house when they took it to the coroner’s office, and that was a little bit much to see. And we finally got down to the Staples Center; we started to feel the warmth of the morning and the sun was breaking through and we realized that we were probably like 12,000 in a line of 18,000. The line was moving pretty quick. Everybody wore their favorite costume. There were signs. You know, kids getting upset. We finally got in there and they gave us our programs, and we got something to eat, and I guess it was a little after 9:00. We went to find our seats. Little did I realize how far up we were because now I realized that I had vertigo. I was scared shitless. I’ll admit it. I was scared shitless because it was so far up, but I realized I would have to suck it up and be a man about it and just sit there and deal with it and respect the moment, and that is exactly what I did. So it began with the pastor saying something, then there was dead silence. Then Wolf and I looked at each other like, is that it? We didn’t know what the public knew, that they were bringing Michael Jackson’s body in, because there was a good ten to twelve minutes of silence and no one said anything on the PA. When they brought his body in there was this roar, there was this loud hurricane of a roar of emotion and crying and clapping. Everybody’s up, 18,000 people were up withing two seconds when his body came in, and it lasted until they moved it into the middle of this little white flooring that they had down at the bottom by the family. Then it began with Mariah Carey coming out and singing. With the people crying next to you and the people talking about everything and their reaction… when it was over, the two hours that we were there, when it was over you actually felt one, that you were a family member, and two, that you went through an extremely historic service. We felt drained. We felt like, mind, body and soul was just like, wow, I’m tired. We took the train back. We saved our programs and tickets and wrist bands, and we put them in this frame and stuff and we just talked about it. The next day we listened to his music, because, you know, that was just very hard on Wolf. That was his idol. I grew up with him as a child, but that was his idol. It was one of those things that out of all of the people on the planet… you might not be a fan. I was a fan. I don’t hold no judgments. I don’t know everything that had to do with him, but I was a fan. And if you know that you were one of 18,000 that was selected to be in that environment, you need to respect it. And that’s what I’m about. It’s just respecting the situation that someone has put you in. And that’s exactly what I did.

MATT: As far as work goes, what is the next thing for you?

ROB: Well, after I went to the Grabbys I talked to a couple directors. I was trying to get a feel of the situation and the best way to do everything. One, I had to do the best thing for myself and get myself into the best shape that I can be, because if you need to come back, you need to come back better than the way you were before, if you do want to call it a comeback. I mean, I’ve seen movies out there that I didn’t even know I was in so it didn’t even look like I took a break. There are movies out there that I guess they had footage and put in during the three years that I took off. So I was a little taken aback by that. I can’t name the directors yet because things aren’t finalized, but there is talk about a couple projects in the works with studios that I have worked with before and directors that I have worked with before. If anything is going to happen, which I hope it does, it will begin in mid to late August and go into the fall. The people that I mentioned, I want to work Adam Killian, Mitchell Rock, Leo Giamani, I wouldn’t mind working with Hot House, I wouldn’t even mind working with Matthew Rush because they’ve talked about having a reunion type of movie with us again. That wouldn’t be so far fetched as well.

MATT: You started a little later in life in the business than most people. There are a lot of people trying to break into the business. What are some of the obstacles that you ran into, or really took you by surprise about the industry?

ROB: Well, when I started there was no Twitter or Facebook. My way of doing it was through emails or going to the studios, which you can still do. The biggest obstacle I had was getting my name out. It’s easier, a little bit, to do it now, but the biggest thing is to make sure you have your shit together, OK. With so many people trying to flood the industry or make a comeback you need to be at your A-game all the time, to be available all the time. Make sure everything is current as far as pictures, as far as… everything needs to be current. I’ve gotten calls for movies like two hours before time to shoot because somebody skipped out and they needed me to fill the spot. You always need to be camera-ready. It’s a hard life to live, but you always need to be ready. Always be ready on a moment’s notice, and be flexible. You need to have a window of flexibility. That’s the way to be a good business person. I would strongly suggest not to be so cut and dry. Be a little bit gray in your thoughts. Keep it a little bit open. All of the obstacles are with yourself. What are you willing to do? Do you know yourself as a person? Do you know yourself sexually? How much do you want to do on camera? Be true to it, own it. If you do it, you better love it. Don’t be fake. No body likes anybody to be fake. If you’re bisexual say you’re bisexual. If you’re gay, say you’re gay. If you’re gay-for-pay say you’re gay-for-pay. Don’t try to twist words around if that’s what you are. And don’t try to become scandalous, because the quicker you’re in, the quicker you’re out. People are going to read it, they’re smart. People don’t give the adult industry much credit. They know what the fuck’s going on. There are icons like Matthew Rush and Dean Phoenix, that are still around, because they are true to the art. It is what it is and they are great performers. You have to find your niche that’s going to stand out with some people. That’s another obstacle. I didn’t find my niche until I had done a few movies, as far as am I going to be a top or a bottom? And I’ll be either. My favorite thing to do is a flip-flop because I think it shows extreme chemistry and it’s fucking hot. I swear, if you get me in the room with the right person, I swear to God I can do two scenes with that person in the same day.

MATT: You have a very positive outlook on everything. What keeps you so positive and upbeat and energetic?

ROB: This goes to my personality as far as humor. My thoughts are like, everybody has that line where they think they are a big dork. Well, I think that way about myself, but it’s in a funny way where it’s like, if I’m able to laugh at myself and I can let people make jokes about me and I can laugh at it… it’s like I feel a karma. And this may sound hippy-like, but I feel like if you bring that energy into a situation, you can keep it there if you want it to be that way. I’ve worked with a lot of directors, and it’s like we you can make it tough for four hours or we can be out of here in two. So, I think you get more out of somebody and more out of a situation if you keep positive attitude. When I was in college I had this line, put me in every situation that will test me, because if I don’t get challenged, I’m going to be the same person for the rest of my life. That’s why I remain positive. I search for those, it’s my hunger. It’s to remain a lighthearted, funny, positive performer who makes great movies.

MATT: It comes across in your movies. You can tell when a performer is into it and when they are just there for a paycheck.

ROB: Oh, you will know, you WILL know. It’s because they are there for a paycheck, but they have other things to do or other people to fuck. And there are always going to be a couple, and you know what? In five years they’re not going to be here. But, you’re going to get one out of ten that are good and will be around for a while. They might have their things, but they are still good people. There’s good in everybody, but not everybody sees it. Like not everybody sees me 24/7. They don’t see me go from one to ten and back to one again. There are times when Rob Romoni needs down time. There are times when I need to relax. I can’t be on all the time. But it’s when you show those moments to other people, that’s when people think that’s your personality. So I would rather show a funny, lighthearted personality that this hard-ass. You know, that’s just me. I’m grateful for that, and I’m blessed for that. I wouldn’t have this same personality if people didn’t let me do it. I’m glad they did. I’m glad they let me make movies and I’m glad they let me make them laugh, and I’ll do that as long as they let me.

MATT: I hope you’re around for a very long time to come.

ROB: Me too. I have no plans to go anywhere.

MATT: Thanks for the call, Rob. I loved it.

ROB: Thanks, Matt. We’ll have to do it again.

Jeremy Feist is one of the newest stars on the scene in Montreal, Canada. Only having done his first shoot in March of 2009, Jeremy is on his way to becoming a big name in the world of gay adult entertainment. I’ve known Jeremy for almost a year and have personally witnessed his dreams become a reality. I had a conversation with Jeremy to discuss his new career move and the exciting things it has in store for him.

MATT: What made you decide you wanted a career in porn?

JEREMY: I don’t know. For the most part I didn’t want to end up as one of those cubicle jockeys who have to throw on a shirt and tie every day. And… its just something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I wanted to have some fun with my job. I didn’t want to end up going to my job every day and saying, “Oh fuck, I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life.” So now I’m doing something I actually I like doing and I can’t complain.

MATT: Tell me about your first shoot.

JEREMY: It was kind of uneventful. It was a solo after all. I mean, it was just me giggling myself for like an hour or so. You know, just me having fun with myself with guys taking pictures and videotaping it and shit like that.

MATT: Wasn’t that a little awkward for you?

JEREMY: A little bit, yeah. Its not like its something that I haven’t done before, but its the first time for money while someone videotaped it, so that was a little awkward.

MATT: And that was for www.squirtz.com, wasn’t it?

JEREMY: Yeah.

MATT: So then after Squirtz you went on to work with www.videoboys.com and do a scene with Jeremy Roddick. How did that go?

JEREMY: Actually pretty well, all things considered. Its not like I had a whole lot of practice in the area before, so I was like a relative newbie to it. It was a little weird going from that one guy that had a really, really tiny penis and was really bad in bed to getting railed by Jeremy Roddick. So it was kind of a big step up, you know. It would be like going from a nice walk to a bullet train or something like that.

MATT: You were dancing for a while at Adonis in Montreal. What was that experience like?

JEREMY: Actually it was a lot of fun. I mean, I was a little nervous at first. I’m actually a terrible dancer and not once did I ever go to a high school dance except for prom, but then again, that’s not really a dance. That’s more like people getting drunk and all that. I’m not much of a dancer at all so it was a little bit awkward because I wasn’t really sure what to do. I was like, “Ooookay, do I just wriggle around up here?” But people are pretty forgiving as long as you take off all your clothes and start shaking your dong in their face.

MATT: I have to admit. I was there, and I thought you did one hell of a job.

JEREMY: Oh, whatever. It was OK.

MATT: It just sucks what happened the next night after I was there. Why don’t you tell me how that went down.

JEREMY: I don’t know, there was a rumor going around for a little while that the place (Adonis) had gotten bought out by the guy that used to own the Stock bar (another strip club in Montreal), and the manager was like, “no no no, that’s just a rumor. It’s not true at all.” Then a couple of weeks later I go in and they call all of us up on stage, and their having a big party, and we’re all naked, and their like, “Oh, by the way. We got bought out by the guy from Stock and you’re all fired. You don’t have a job anymore. Get the fuck out.”

MATT: Your parents found out about your new career in an interesting way. Do you want to tell me about that?

JEREMY: Oh God, I’m still not entirely sure how that happened. Someone must have seen me at Adonis or something. My aunt found out. She works at this huge company in Montreal and about 10% of the people there are gay anyway. So she must have found out somehow and she pressured me so I told my parents and, I don’t know, at first Dad was like the really chill one about the whole thing and Mom went all apoplectic about is and turned into a super crazy bitch, like Glenn Close in that one movie where she boils a rabbit alive. Then after a while she sort of went with it, like, “OK, I don’t necessarily approve of what you’re doing, but you know what, I support you and love you, and all that.” I think Dad, at one point, went just a tiny bit completely and totally fuck-nuts. So, all in all, they’re pretty OK with it now.

MATT: I think things have been going a whole lot better recently.

JEREMY: More or less.

MATT: After your first couple of shoots with Squirtz and Video Boys you had a little lull and you were getting a little frustrated. Recently things have started to turn around. So tell me what you have been up to recently.

JEREMY: What have I been up to recently? Some how people have started to find out about me. I did another interview recently, actually two interviews. Then I got fan art from one guy which was pretty cool. I’ve never gotten fan art from anyone at all. That was pretty trippy. Then the guy from Pornducer invited me down to Toronto for a couple of shoots. That was kind of like the first time I’ve ever traveled for business. It was a lot of fun. I really loved that. I was upset when I had to come back to Montreal because I really liked it in Toronto. It was fun. I had like my own apartment. People were paying to put me up in a hotel and taking me out to dinner and shit like that. It was really cool.

MATT: You also had a chance to go to Goodhandy’s and meet Mandy Goodhandy. Tell me what happened there.

JEREMY: Actually it was a weird story. They (Pornducer) regularly introduces their models over at Goodhandy’s. Sometimes they do performances there and all that. So he took me over there the other night to introduce me to Mandy and Todd and all them. So he went to get a drink and as soon as he left Mandy just looked at me and said, “Oh look, a Pornducer model. Get up on stage.” I was like, oh fuck. So I get up on stage and the first thing she tells me was you have to be naked. So I took off all my clothes and got to spank this guy named Trevor. So that was kind of trippy.

MATT: Did you have wood there on stage.

JEREMY: I had a chubby, yeah.

MATT: Who are some of your favorite porn stars? Like your top 10 in no particular order.

JEREMY: Oh, fuck-socks. Shit. Pierre Fitch, because if I don’t say his name he will come to my house and beat me. Julien Cox, Jeremy Roddick, Matthew Rush, Ricky Sinz, Rocco Giovannoi, Erik Rhodes, Rob Romoni because he gave me my nickname “Bacon”, Wolf Hudson and Roman Heart.

MATT: You are a total bottom. What do you think the chances are of you ever topping?

JEREMY: I’m a shitty top actually. I have no rhythm. That’s what I get for having my totally sexy slacker genes is my complete inability to maintain rhythm.

MATT: So no chance at all?

JEREMY: Um… if the right model came along and they gave me a Scrooge McDuck money bag full of $100 bills, I’ll consider it.

MATT: You have two blogs, Notes on Bar Napkins and your newest on Pornstar in the Kitchen. Tell me about those two blogs.

JEREMY: Recently I celebrated the first anniversary of my first personal blog, Notes on Bar Napkins. So I’m pretty happy about that. I think I started that because I’m a fan of a blog call Pajiba. I’m not sure what Pajiba is really, but I’ve been a fan for a while and it inspired me to start my own blog. And Pornstar in the Kitchen is a new one. I’m not really sure what inspired me to do that, but its one of those things that you think is a great idea until you realize that someone else is doing it. I think as soon as I did it I realized that Johnny Hazard was doing pretty much the exact same thing, and I was like, oh fuck, now people are going to think I’m copying Johnny Hazard. I probably am, but I really love baking, so figured it would be something fun to do.

MATT: When did you realize that you love baking so much?

JEREMY: Well, the first thing I ever baked was a coffee cake for my dad’s birthday. I think he was turning 39 or something. I kind of use baking as a therapy, like a way of taking my mind off of things and kind of like get my head straight. Then it became something I was good at and something I could do for fun.

MATT: What are some upcoming events or shoots that you have scheduled?

JEREMY: Well, I’m not going to go too far into details because I don’t want to jinx myself, but I know right now Goodhandy’s has booked me for August 12 in Toronto, so I’m really excited about that. I got into contact with the guys at Dixter, so they’re thinking about shooting me too, and if I play my cards right I may be doing a test-shoot for You Love Jack. So, knock on wood for that one.

MATT: What is the most embarrassing thing to happen to you while you were either dancing or on a shoot?

JEREMY: You enjoy seeing me suffer don’t you? You miserable bastard.

MATT: Yes, yes I do. You’ve been shot in the eye twice with cum.

JEREMY: On the shoot in Toronto we were doing the whole facial thing and he tried to shoot one over my eye my eye so I would have like a semen monocle thing. Actually Jeremy Roddick did the same thing, so I think that was the second time I was walking around with a semen eye patch.

MATT: Is that the most embarrassing thing to happen to you?

JEREMY: Oh, not by a long shot. I think on my first day at Adonis, and I had bought new shoes because I’m a model and I have to buy things to make myself feel better as a human being. And it was my first time getting up on stage for my audition, and my shoe managed to catch the very edge of the stage when I was getting up and I fell face first onto the stage. So that was fun.

MATT: Hahahaha… sorry, I just got a mental picture of that.

JEREMY: Oh, fuck off. I will destroy you in the face.

MATT: A year ago when I first met you, you were incredibly shy. I remember the first time I talked to you on the phone, you didn’t want to talk. You preferred to chat online. You have come a very long way from there. What do you think the turning point was?

JEREMY: I don’t know. I still retain some of that shyness. I’m not going to say I’m a huge social person, but I’m not shy about it now. I don’t know. I don’t see the whole being naked thing as a huge deal. It used to be that I couldn’t even take a shower naked. As soon as I was done I would wrap myself in a towel because I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror. I guess, somewhere down the line I figured it was no big deal.

MATT: Now, you’re about to move into your first apartment, so tell me about that. What plans do you have for that? And don’t be afraid to mention who found the apartment.

JEREMY: Yes, you found my apartment, and I love you for that and I thank you for that and all that shit. Right now as long as I have a TV and WI-FI and some place to sleep and a kitchen I’ll be fine for now. But eventually I would like to be in a place where I have TV’s in every room and a toilet made of solid gold and shit like that.

MATT: And your own stripper pole in the living room?

JEREMY: I kind of want one of those. Yeah, I really do. Oh God I miss it. I really do. I’m putting it on my list of shit I need to buy. It’s literally on my list right under my Scrooge McDuck money pool.

MATT: What are your ultimate plans for your career?

JEREMY: Oh, fuck, I don’t know. I’m still getting into the biz right now, so would like to still like to be doing this. I would like for people to not be hating me in five years. But eventually, I would like to start writing. I guess I could do both at the same time. Its a possibility.

MATT: Well, you’re a talented writer. Anyone who reads your blogs can tell that. As someone who is fresh into your career, is there anything that you have experienced that you were not ready for?

JEREMY: No. For the most part a lot of it has been winging it really. I guess a lot of people think I have my shit together, but really I’m a total mess just like everyone else. I’m not about to say I’m the smartest person in the room and I’m completely 100% sure of myself. I’m really not, but whatever, what’s the worst that could happen at this point.

MATT: For others who are in your same situation just starting out, or thinking about starting out, what advice would you give them?

JEREMY: Set your expectations low. I mean, you’ll probably find some work, but don’t think that in your first year you’ll be eating caviar and you’ll be invited to banquets and you’ll be wearing top hats and canes and monocles. You’ll have to work your way up.

MATT: Jeremy, thanks for the interview. I know you’ll be a big success.

JEREMY: Thanks Matt. I’ll talk to you later.

I just spoke with amazing Jesse Santana. You may remember my interview with him from last year. If not, please check it out. He is one of the hottest stars in the industry today, but he is not content to be just another pretty face in front of the camera. Jesse has some big ideas, and he was excited to share them with me. Here is our phone conversation:

MATT: Hello

JESSE: Hey Matt.

MATT: Hey Jesse, how are you?

JESSE: Good, sorry I didn’t call you back sooner.

MATT: No problem. I was looking at your new site, www.jessesboys.com. Tell me about it. Is it like a talent agency?

JESSE: Yeah. Right now a lot of the guys we have a local from Texas. We have a part of Jesse’s Boys that manages dancers for appearances and just regular dancing also. We’ve opened up in Houston and Austin, and also we’re booking guys out for porn shoots also. So like the first guy did Cocky Boys this past weekend and at the end of August we’ll have a guy doing Jetset.

MATT: I was looking at the models you have on www.jessesboys.com. They are very hot! Are you looking to expand and take models from anywhere?

JESSE: Oh yeah, definitely. The models that are on there now… were actually going to have a photo-shoot on Monday and add five more guys, actually maybe like seven more guys and we have a lot of model applications coming in, so within a month we should triple the number of models.

MATT: What gave you the idea to start this business?

JESSE: It may sound cheesy, but I kind of wanted to give back to the industry, you know. I wanted to give back by giving quality models that look good and work good.

MATT: I don’t think that sounds cheesy at all. I think that’s good that you are trying to bring good models into the business. There are a lot of good models out there that are not getting the work and the recognition they deserve.

JESSE: And I want to build it up to be high profile models. Once we get enough models we are going to split it up to have general and elite models, so we can work on quality better that way.

MATT: So then other agencies or studios can come to you to hire models?

JESSE: Yeah, that’s how it works.

MATT: That’s a sweet idea. I’m going to talk to my fellow bloggers and get them to link to your site so we can get the word out about www.jessesboys.com. I’ve already got it linked on my blog.

JESSE: It’s definitely keeping me busy.

MATT: Well, it shows that you are thinking ahead. There will be a day when you will not be in front of the camera any more. You’re really building something for yourself.

JESSE: I’m going to stay in front of it as long as I can, until I reach my peak I guess.

MATT: Well, you have a long career in front of you. You’re only 23. Are you still with Cocky Boys?

JESSE: Oh, yeah.

Matt: I have a good friend in Montreal, Jeremy Feist, who has just started modeling. I’m sure he’ll be applying with you.

JESSE: That would be awesome.

MATT: Did you go to any pride events this year?

JESSE: Jesse’s Boys did Houston Pride and we’ll be doing Dallas Pride of course. Other than that we haven’t gotten out of Texas.

MATT: I hope this takes off for you.

JESSE: It definitely will. By next summer I’m sure we’ll be hitting up a lot of events like Pride and stuff.

MATT: Good deal. I’ll do what I can to help spread the word about Jesse’s Boys.

JESSE: Oh great. Thank you, Matt!

Matt: Oh, You’re welcome, and thanks for letting me know about Jesse’s Boys. Have a good night.

JESSE: You too.

So, if you are interesting in a modeling or dancing career look no further than www.jessesboys.com. It’s professionals like Jesse Santana that bring innovative ideas to the adult industry to keep us all entertained and engaged. Be sure to visit Jesse’s Boys. You won’t be disappointed.

Originally posted December 2008

MATT: You were born in Moscow, but left Russia in 1995 to live in several places in Europe. What was your reason for leaving Russia?

MICHAEL: Obviously, I couldn’t take the anti-Semitism nor homophobia.

MICHAEL: Escorting.

MICHAEL: Actually, I founded Lucas Entertainment, which I’ve been running for 11 years. I started appearing in porn movies in 1995, which makes me one of the longest running performers, as a recent article in AVNOnline highlighted. The early days were obviously challenging. There were many mistakes, but it was a great learning experience.

MATT: In Moscow you majored in law in college. Why did you decide not to pursue a career in law?

MICHAEL: I moved to the West and didn’t have time to study again.

MICHAEL: I talk about everything from porn to politics.

MICHAEL: All of those celebrities are dear friends of mine.

MICHAEL: No, of course not, and I was very humbled to earn the most awards for any single film in the history of the competition.

MICHAEL: A great storyline and great cast. And, of course, great sex.

MICHAEL: My favorite is Gigolo.

MICHAEL: My movies were much cheaper back in 1998, and I could afford producing just a few movies a year. One movie’s return paid for another. Now I produce at least two movies each month.

MICHAEL: It’s my home and my lover’s. It’s filled with the coolest people on earth and I just don’t want to live in L.A.

MICHAEL: I was always aiming for the top.

MICHAEL: My discipline.

MICHAEL: New York City.

MICHAEL: Please use a condom for penetration and you will be just fine.

MICHAEL: I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs, and try to stay away from the sun.

MICHAEL: I started my blog in 2005. Unfortunately, time does not permit me to write as frequently as I’d like to or used to. I’m a very busy person But I still often write about politics.
MICHAEL: You can watch entire movies if you subscribe to LucasEntertainment.com. You can also view lots of galleries with XXX pictures and ask me your questions with a guaranteed answer.

MICHAEL: We just released our beautiful film Return to Fire Island I’m incredibly proud of this film — it has goregous cinematography, hot sex, and a top-notch cast.

MICHAEL: Maybe