Yup. The first vids (VHS) mostly had the 'justification' element in them. This made it all more palatable for everyone involved, and somehow suggested that the guys were by all means simply str8 fellows like EVERYONE else, trying to get a release of their pent up energies.

Somewhere in the mid-80s, the porn industry started abandoning the old justification cliche, step by step. Think of Falcon Studios' Splash and you'll recognize that the guys are openly enjoying each other, and planning for it, too. The girl talk was on its way out.

Yet, the dudes used to be familiar with each other or at least believed that 'discretion was a matter of honor', so that the stories would not be spreading...

Some, if minimal pretext courting invariably took place.

All of that is out of the windowthese days.

KD

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I confess, I honestly don't have time to watch porn anymore although I did quite a bit back in the 1980s. It almost seems like I've seen everything already and nothing is really new unless there's a new context, story, or characters that seem compelling. Otherwise, it's more of the same.

Back then I really liked the Joe Gage type of things with realistic guys like I might actually encounter somewhere. I'd be driving back and forth between Texas and California and imagining I was in "LA Tool and Die." And in fact, a few times I did re-enact a couple of those scenarios. Al Parker and Surge Studios were also favorites.

My ex also showed me "Boys In The Sand" -- that was sheer sex on the beach -- and some pretty raw hardcore stuff from the New York '70s porn scene. A lot of this was in the old Bijou Catalog. He had several boxes, I have no idea how many tapes, but he was a collector of Betamax porn that he later donated to the UCLA library gay collection along with a Betamax and the Bijou Catalog. We used to joke that some cataloger at UCLA would be having fun with all that.

Anyhow, I dropped in here while reading my email this morning, I get newsletters from our affiliate and advertiser sites about their products, including new porn releases. This one out today is "Hard Drive Daddy" from Dylan Lucas, a studio which is part of a group of studios and sites marketed together.

The scene summary reminds me of some of the early '80s "cable repair" or "cable installer" porn tapes we used to have:
There's also a free video clip which the Message Board probably can't handle the embedding code (or at least I can't spend the time right now to work on it). Here
is a link to the clip instead

Side note: You may or may not have seen me mention that CRUSING for SEX has been losing money this year. From the summer until recently I tried using more embedded videos and links to paid porn sites as an experiment to see if that would generate additional revenue. It has not, at least not directly.

However, I've discovered that showing their clips alongside clips and links to the CRUISING for SEX Theatre that Keith set up has increased revenue for the Theatre somewhat. It had dropped to almost nothing following a change in the reimbursement formula by the provider in January, but now is recovering. I'm planning to rebrand it as "CRUISING for PORN" with a more contemporary design as one part of the larger overhaul of the CFS-related web sites.

There's a lot of other changes and upgrades I hope to do -- really need to do -- but my time is very limited. I'll be posting separately soon, I hope, about possible new funding options and asking for feedback and opinion from CFS Members.

Bob

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I remember when I first went to an adult bookstore back in high school -

The gay section was divided into "Gay" and "Anal" like fucking was extreme even in gay sex. Each booth in the back had a choice of 2 movies to pick from and a switch so you could change them. Thankfully there was always a straight movie playing with a gay movie as I would have been too afraid to go into a gay booth.

What was funny was when you came across a movie that was obviously shot on silent 8MM film and they had dubbed in sound and music. The people not even talking and the soundtrack going "oh yeah suck my dick" - LOL

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Few years ago, a major sex club in San Francisco, CA, (SoMa) showed a number of those 8mm movies, John mentioned above. I was quite amazed. Mostly because, neither my buddies nor I had seen any of those in our time and day. We go back to the Betamax and VHS but the 8mm gay movies have never crossed our radars. (Somehow, the str8 ones did make it into our part of the world, but were deemed totally 'old fashioned' even then...)

Very few of the guys who belonged to our m2m sex coterie actually admitted to having any gay porn. This was a bit too risky to start with, and far too expensive in those days, for most of the college kids living on their rather meagre allowances.

The very few guys who owned the original VHS cassettes of mostly Falcon productions guarded them with their lives. They also made few illegal copies that were given to the guys whom they 'owed' something. Sure, a full-feature gay movie was a valuable asset in an age that did not know of internet, free clips, torrents, etc. The story had it that every good party, i.e. a threesome or a foursome had to start by watching one of those flicks: 'to get the guys going'. Having such an option in your video collection made you a most desirable host who usually had the first pick of the guys, and who usually controlled the play to some extent. Not a trifle thing in those days...

KD

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Take a look at Wikipedia's story about 'Boys In The Sand. It was released in 1971, prior to 'Deep Throat' and was a milestone for all porn movies, not just gay ones.

Made on an $8.000 budget and filmed on Fire Island, it was theatrically released in New York City grossing nearly $25,000 the first week. After being reviewed in 'Variety,' not just 'The Advocate,' it grossed over $140,000 in the first six months and was released nationwide and in other countries. IMDB said it was the only X-rated film reviewed in the 'New York Times." That seems hard to believe, but a quick Google search did not show an NYT review of 'Deep Throat.'

Quite a few of those New York 8mm porn movies did get transferred to VHS and Beta at some point. I remember some of them being especially sleazy, uninhibited, and hot. As for 'Boys In The Sand,' it was sort of a visual poem, meant to be artistic, yet it was also sex-sex-sex.

Bob

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Thanks for the tips & suggestions.

This is where the partial cultural disconnect must have kicked in.

Living in Europe at that time, there was only so much of the commercial porn that made it over to us in the eastern Med.

Naturally, we were the 'new kids' and the 70's stuff sounded and probably must have looked 'old' and rather undesirable to us. The new VHS with bright colors, and very graphic scenes ruled out porn market needs.

KD

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When I first saw the 70's stuff in the mid-80s, some of it was really grainy or poor-quality when transferred to tape. Some things were better, especially if they had been at least a little bit remastered. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the poor quality went right along with the sleaziness and basic primeval sex of many of those films and added to their appeal for me.

Some of the other studios back then were Bijou Video (like the catalog), Jaguar, and P.M. Productions. I also recall one called "Old Reliable" that typically had straight guys being interviewed and then jerking off on camera. All of this product is a real contrast to the contrived stories that started appearing in the 80's. Some of the bareback and fetish studios (Treasure Island, Dick Wadd, etc.) have scenes or movies that recall the old style, but generally things have moved on.

There was also the increasing abundance of muscle-bound gym bodies. Porn moved on to show a standard of physical appearance that many or most guys couldn't realistically achieve. I suppose gay men have always had some degree of body-image and self-image issues, but it seems accentuated by the way first porn and then the wider culture emphasize more and more "perfect" bodies in advertising, TV, movies, etc.

Anyhow, Jack Wrangler was another big star who work in gay and straight movies then, later worked somewhat in theatre and especially as a producer for his wife, singer Margaret Whiting. Again, the Wikipedia article is fascinating. Wrangler always considered himself gay but not part of what he saw as the "gay lifestyle."

This is a really interesting discussion to me and I wish I had time to write more. There's a gold mine of people and topics here.

~ Bob

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