An Interview with Adult Industry PR Executive Saul Austin

Saul Austin, PR for Treasure Island Media

I hope this blog is beginning to make one point clear - the adult industry is about more than being a performer.

Here’s another important point - a lot of porn is gay.

Here’s another point - it’s not what your country can do for you, it’s what you can do for your country.

Saul Austin handles PR for one of the most controversial companies in porn. Treasure Island Media make hardcore, bareback, gay porn. Bareback, which doesn’t include a condom, is considered highly controversial by a lot of people in the gay community. Despite that, it accounts for a significant chunk of the gay market.

I talked to Saul about gay porn, the bareback controversy, Lesbians, poetry and the realities of the jizz bizz.

If you’ve been patiently waiting for me to mention the gay market, your wait is over.

Sam Sugar: What exactly do you do at Treasure Island Media and how did you get there?

Saul Austin: I got here by answering a Craigslist ad with the heading "Nasty and growing all-male porn company needs PR rep."

They asked for a poem detailing why I’d be the right man for the job. I was tired of waiting tables, and I figured I had nothing to lose. I wrote a poem referencing, among other things: Machiavelli, clown-midget couplings, heroin, and aphasia. Two days later I went in for an interview, and two days after that they hired me.

SS: Do you remember the poem? Care to share it with us?

SA:

I can spell aphasia,
Cunnilingus,
Candidae,
And Erasthmus,

And I know what they all mean.

I know from Machiavelli
And strap-on butt-plugs,
Craigslist personals,
And sperm-splashed mugs,

But you’ll never see me squeam.

I’ve been paid in dirt before,
And written haikus for faulty service.
I can sell coffee to a tweaker
Or talk a junkie out of horse.

My references back me up.

I’ve been all across the country,
I’ve seen quite a bit of porn:
From S&M horse-cocked clown-midget couplings
To "holy shit you can see the corn!"

(and basic softcore with a large-sized cup).

SS: Wow. I need a moment… I promised myself I wasn’t going to cry….Okay. What are the cornerstones of Treasure island’s business?

SA: I wrote in our blog that "Treasure Island thrives on spontaneity, risk, and an underlying but pervasive sense of humor." On the webpage it says "Documenting Male Sexuality for the 21st Century." I think either of those sum us up pretty well.

Our films are essentially documentaries - of the kind that are archived at the Kinsey Institute. Our models fuck in our films the same way they fuck off-camera.

SS: Treasure island deals in bareback porn. As I understand it the gay porn industry doesn’t test performers for STD’s. How do you explain the decision to make such high-risk material?

SA: Treasure Island Media does not use condoms in our films. There seems to be a huge swing toward conservatism in the world of gay porn.

While that sounds kind of idiotic (gay porn and conservative in the same sentence?), it seems to be true. The bulk of gay porn is overwhelmingly scared of being judged by a few extremely vocal and usually undersexed men who are obsessed with how all the people who aren’t them are fucking each other.

There are porn films where the action is getting hotter and hotter, only to be interrupted by a totally condescending "this-is-how-to-put-the-condom-on-the-banana" routine. I’m going to go out on a limb and call that bullshit.

Saying you hate condoms is like saying you hate answering machines, or Mondays. It’s a  cliche. While there is a time and a place for condoms, that time and place is not in my fucking porn film.

Our models are tested, our shoots are safe, and our porn is hardcore. Asking us to place preachy bullshit as bookends on either side of our fuck scenes is demeaning to everyone involved.

SS: Does being bareback cause you any problems within the industry?
SA: Totally- the anti-barebacking bias runs deep enough that a number of sites won’t even respond to my emails, much less review our films.

Some places will cover our all-oral films, but other than that we might as well not exist. In a number of cases, this is more an issue of fear than anything else. I get so many emails from review sites, industry magazines, and journalists that say, "I personally love your films, but we aren’t set up to deal with the political backlash."

This is overwhelmingly bad business, considering how popular our films actually are. Our new releases are regularly in the top five rentals on the JRL charts (the Billboard Top 40 for the gay porn industry), meaning that the general public wants bareback porn as much, if not more than, ‘condom-fetish’ flicks.

But there’s a kind of "Jim Crow" law that’s been put in place by some of the big boys (and one big drag queen) where they try to blacklist any performer who has ever done a bareback film.

Here’s the thing, no matter what anyone says, it’s a form of censorship. Some people want to limit what other people can watch, for whatever reasons. People who try to force their beliefs on other people tend to ultimately end up looking like assholes.

SS: Do performers work both sides of the condom/bareback divide?
SA: Sometimes. Sean Storm’s been in a few of our films, as has Jacob Scott, Dick

Wolf, Max Holden, Steve Parker, Mike Nichols, Matt Sizemore, Will West, and a few others.

SS: Are you aware of any of ‘gay-for-pay’ performers working in your productions? What do you think of the whole ‘gay-for-pay’ phenomena?
SA: There’s a number of "straight" guys in our solo masturbation films. As for men fucking each other, I’m going to go back to Kinsey and say everyone’s a bit bisexual, with most people simply having a preference.

No matter who you are or what you’re thinking, an orgasm is a sincere thing. You can’t cum without getting into the moment, people can tell.

Girls in straight porn obviously fake orgasms with a regularity that’s kind of insulting - but you can’t fake an erection.

The industry has turned straight guys into a bit of a fetish. I’ve seen movies where the supposedly straight guy isn’t just gay, he’s stereotypically, over-the-top, three-shades-of-lavender, queenie-gay, and he’ll lisp things like, "Oh Daddy, I thware I’ve never thucked a cock," it’s ridiculous.

It’s not entirely a media thing. I think people feel more comfortable with black/white, gay/straight polarities than they do with the gray area of bisexuality, so we wind up with awkward concepts like "gay-for-pay."

SS: What’s the health record for bareback at Treasure Island (the porn company - not the Casino, the VD’s airborne in that hellhole)?
SA: No way anyone’s caught anything. We’re rigorous about testing. I’d say we’re more careful about screening and safety than most straight studios.

SS: How does the size of the bareback market compare to the gay porn industry as a whole?

SA: Bareback is still essentially a niche, which is a little odd.

I’d say that bareback is to the entirety of the gay porn industry, what girl-girl is to the entire straight porn industry. 13%? 26%? I’m basing those numbers on scientific polls that I just made up.

The niche is based entirely on not using a condom. Which seems weirdly natural to me. It’s the only niche market that exists based on a lack of something, rather than the addition of something (leather, smoking), or an emphasis on something not usually focused on (feet). If porn were about breathing rather than fucking, we’d be a niche because our models don’t wear gasmasks.

SS: What would you say to a guy interested in getting into gay porn (aside from "Work out a lot)? Are the challenges different than for straight performers?

SA: As you’ve mentioned in your blog before, guys in straight porn have their work cut out for them, because the industry isn’t about them. It is much, much easier to be a performer in gay porn.

Start sending those stats and naked pictures to your favorite studios, or, if you live in South Dakota, to whatever studio is geographically closest to you.

Everyone is always looking for models. Also, don’t use the word "hot" to describe yourself. Unless you actually have a fever. "Hot" has been thoroughly played out by the adult industry. We need a new adjective. Moist? Catastrophic? I don’t know. Be creative.

SS: What would you say is the best thing about working in the adult industry?

SA: My favorite thing is the conversations. You know that annoying question at parties, "So… what do you do?"

It’s a bullshit question that people ask because they want to pigeonhole you based on their idea of your income demographic. I used to say, "I work at Wendy’s," despite the fact that I never have, because fuck you, right?

Now I say, "I do PR for bareback gay porn," because it’s fun to watch people squirm. They usually don’t know how to deal with that information.

SS: The worst thing about the jizz-bizz?

SA: Fear. We’re already pornographers, we’re already tainted and we’ve already been blacklisted by Jesus Christ and Santa Claus - quit fucking being so concerned with what everyone thinks of you as a person.

I hate people crawling all over themselves trying to be politically correct so they can point their fingers and condemn someone else. In for a penny, in for a pound, no?

SS: There’s a huge divide between straight and gay in porn - why do you think it exists?

SA: There’s not a whole lot of crossover potential in porn.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. A friend of mine runs a rental shop in the Castro (San Francisco’s gayest district), and straight porn gets rented by a decent-sized swathe of the gay community because they get off on the guy and the fucking.

Like, you know how straight porn assumes that the viewer is getting off to the half of the screen that doesn’t actually contain cock? It’s exactly the opposite.

Even so, it’s hard to get a straight guy to sit down and watch two guys fucking each other on film. The only exception to that that I can think of offhand is "The Luv Generation" by Black Mirror productions. It ends with an all-guy orgy that sort of comes out of nowhere.

SS: Are gay performers who perform in bi-sexual movies (which contain male homsexual acts as well as ’straight’ sex) stigmatized the way women are who do the same thing?

SA: Women are stigmatized for that? I had no idea. Has anyone pointed out that that’s kind of a dumb thing to be stigmatized for?

No. I’ve never heard anyone say, "I am so over Mikey Horsecock. I heard he fucked a girl."

SS: Straight porn seems to be getting more extreme - double and triple anals, creampies, slapping, choking, piss and vomit have all started to appear. Are there similar trends in the gay market?

SA: Gay porn has had things like water-sports and fisting, but not in the same sense as straight porn.

I’ve noticed the trend in straight porn towards "extreme," but I think "extreme porn" is simply a polite way of saying "humiliating rape-fantasy porn".

I personally don’t think there’s a whole lot of Eros in watching a girl cry while being forcefully throat-fucked by a guy who is calling her a dumpster, but I’m not really one to judge.

I’m not sure what demographic that market is aiming at, but I don’t imagine that that audience is a charming one to spend time with. I’m betting that it has something to do with men who have a desire to see women punished based on their own lack of confidence around them. Who actually fucks like that? I mean, outside of institutions. No one, that’s who.

SS: There’s no ‘lesbian’ porn market to speak of. Is that because lesbians watch girl-girl porn aimed at straight men or is something different happening?

SA: Have you seen the porn that’s made by lesbians for lesbians? It tends to be really love-y and stars plus-sized girls emphatically not shaving each other’s legs.

It feels more like a political statement, which, come to think of it, I guess it is.

However, all my lesbian friends that get off on movies want hot amateur girls fucking each other, they want the cast of "The L-Word" to strip down and go at it.

This basically leaves them with the for-men girl-girl stuff.

If you want to defy all conventional porn classifications, there’s always ‘Trannyfags‘ -F2M transexuals who fuck each other (and "bio-men") with strap-ons in the ass, making it a movie about, to paraphrase Blur, "Girls who want boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys."

SS: If you could run porn for a day what would you do?

SA: I’d probably become a monster from movies about the porn industry in the 70’s. I’d wear garish clothes, refer to everyone as "baby," and throw parties that involve people skiing down mountains of cocaine (rather than snorting it, I would be that wasteful).

I’d have sideburns, and I’d surround myself with beautiful afro’d boys and girls who would know both kung-fu and how to make a perfect Bloody Mary.

SS: Where do you see the adult market in five years?

SA: I can only cross my fingers and hope it’s still around. I mean, there will always be porn- I just hope it doesn’t have to go underground.

SS: Is someone wanted to watch a single piece of your companies work what would you recommend?

SA: Not to give the typical, "our current film" answer, but "Plantin’ Seed 2", which just came out, has everyone’s favorite models (Dawson, Jesse O’Toole, Damon Dogg), fucking and sucking each other like crazy. It’s a solid film, and everyone loves it.

SS: What’s next on Treasure Island’s schedule?

SA: Right now we’re working on kind of an art film by these sexy Swedish skinheads, Pierce and Massimo, who call themselves "Anarcocks". They are part of a collective of performance artists called Black Sun Productions. It’s a dark, industrial, edgy film.

We’re always working on new bareback and oral films, and we’re talking about starting a line of solo films.

SS: Who should wannabe performers contact at Treasure Island and how (or shouldn’t they at all)?

SA: Wannabe performers should get in touch with our casting director, Nick, he’ll take good care of them.

SS: Anything else you want to plug right now?

SA: Well, I already plugged "Plantin’ Seed 2", so I’m just going to invite people to get in touch with me if there’s anything I can help them with. Oh! and the Treasure Island Media blog.

SS: Thanks Saul.