[Editor’s Note]: COPBlog’s new feature series titled “What Does The Gay Porn Industry Mean To You?” has thus far showcased Seth Knight, Christopher Daniels, Kirk Cummings, Bryan Slater, Shane Frost, Casey Williams, JP Dubois & Lucio Saints. Bubble butt jock stud Devon Hunter is featured in today’s new installment.
So, Devon, what does the gay porn industry mean to you?
“I have had a very up-and-down relationship with porn (excuse the dick pun) and my feelings about it are decidedly ambivalent. I read the other replies models have given you, trying to get a sense of what I was “supposed” to say. All the guys gave thorough answers of varying lengths, but (to my knowledge) none have spent a great deal of time in the back end (if you’ll excuse the ass pun). So, I will turn some of my attention toward background technical issues.
First, the juicy bits: Do you get to have sex with hot models? Sometimes, but even the sexiest scene mates can be an utter turn off for a variety of reasons. Do the scenes portray authentic chemistry? Generally, no. Do I enjoy doing the scenes? Sometimes. Do I feel like there’s a porn family? Sometimes. Are there people in porn I love? Absolutely, yes. Are there people in porn I wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire? Absolutely, yes (but that’s not a fair question, since I’m not into water sports). Is porn exploitative? Sometimes. Do people suffer from being involved with porn? Sometimes. Do people live fulfilling lives as a result of being involved with it? Sometimes. Has it ruined my life? No. Has it been a fulfillment of my greatest joys, passions, and fantasies? No.
It’s just a job or career, like any other. There is fun and frustration. It has its own risks and rewards, just like any other job or career. Generally, porn isn’t anywhere near as exotic or fanciful as people presume. There are rivalries and friendships. There is drama and harmony. There are crises and periods of sheer boredom. In some ways it’s really just another incarnation of the corporate office I never wanted to work in (but at least it’s counter-cultural and subversive… kinda… porn is almost passé anymore).
It would be easier for me to be more clearly pro or con, if you asked me about escorting, cam modeling, or dancing in clubs (all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed since I got into Adult Entertainment in 1998). I have control over my personal branding in those environments. I create what is happening and I can shut anything down in an instant if I’m not happy (and I have, on occasion, done just that). I’m a perfectionist and a control freak (two traits that are awesome as an independent artist/entrepreneur, but which set me up for constant disappointment if doing porn on other people’s terms).
I have a very long list of what I will not do sexually and a long list of what I don’t mind being blatantly judgmental against. I don’t like straight models in gay videos AT ALL; I don’t like kink AT ALL; I don’t like fetish AT ALL; I don’t like homophobia as a trope for segueing into gay sex; I won’t do bondage; you can shove your fist up your own ass; I think peeing on people is the stupidest activity I have ever heard of; if you’re into scat, you need therapy; and if you presume to humiliate/punish/beat me for other people’s sexual pleasure, I will rip your lips off.
I won’t do any of it and that made the task of casting me difficult. I won’t apologize for maintaining my totally vanilla preferences: Anything I do in a video, someone might expect in person during an escorting session. Uh uh. No. I also don’t put up with bullying or abuse. All this together made me a ‘problematic’ or ‘difficult’ model for some sites: I cannot as easily be molded into any given fantasy or scenario, and I have a tendency to speak frankly about process (which further undermines the illusion happening in many scenes). In some ways that means I’m impossible to work with, given the trending paradigms of increasingly fetishized themes on many sites.
Fine.
So, let’s return to the back end (and the ass pun). I make my own porn now and I do it the way I want. I treat it like a form of performance art/reality documentary/educational outreach/therapy session. And I am much happier now in the role of director/owner/producer. That makes sense, given that I always said as a child that I wanted to be a choreographer, not a dancer.
There are still plenty of challenges in this role: Recruiting/coordinating models is akin to herding cats (Howard, I get it now!! XOXO); Final Cut Pro X is Satan incarnated as a computer program; taxes and accounting make me die slowly; performing a scene in place of a model who isn’t on set for whatever reason exacerbates my unhealthy body image issues; budgets = GAH?!; dealing with the tube sites is the purest form of joy I have never experienced; and NATS requires a Ph.D in program engineering just to change $25 to $24.99. But despite the onerous parts of being a one-man band, I am still happier within my porn skin now that I am the one who channels the chaos. Porn is finally rewarding to me in the way the other models on this blog say it is to them. I was never particularly pleased with my screen performances (I hate seeing me, and I disliked making several of the scenes for various reasons), but I am very proud of my work behind the camera and off set. I set out to create the modeling experience I wish I had had when I was modeling, and that has generated work that is very beautiful and gratifying.
So, what does all this mean to me? That gay porn is an industry that is very dynamic and is ripe with evolution and change (in terms of content, design, and interface). It is also a stubborn, monolithic behemoth that is set up in the background to work only one way with billing, affiliate programs and other technical issues. Porn is sexy. Porn is grotesque. It is everything. It is nothing. I want very much to make a mark in some way and to succeed (whatever that means), and yet I don’t understand yet why that would matter. It has the potential to hurt, but porn also has the potential to heal.
As I said, my feelings about gay porn and what it “means” are very ambivalent.”
Mr. Devon Hunter now operates Anteros Media.
Images © and courtesy Devon Hunter-Falcon Studios-Buckshot Productions-Dominic Ford
