Fame In 15 Minutes (More Or Less)

Vincent Kovar wondered how easy it would be to get naked on the Web. What he found out will surprise you.

I'm naked, I've got a camera pointed at me, and I am suddenly realizing that I'm not an exhibitionist. I've spent years coming to this mini-epiphany, however. I thought I wanted to be famous. It was a thirst for celebrity that began when, at the tender age of 11, I built a miniature radio transmitter. Powered by a nine-volt battery, my transmission made me a star from behind my bedroom door to three-and-a-half feet down the hall.

Years later, as an adult in the age of reality TV and 24-hour Web cams, I saw everyone else becoming famous--or at least infamous. Still, years of childhood rebellion had netted me more detention than fame, and forays into the theater were met with decidedly mixed reviews. I was getting left behind. With neither the connections to fellate a politician, the moral constitution to shatter an ice skater's kneecap, nor a childhood history with the clergy, television and tabloids were, and still are, closed to the average Joe like me.

But the Internet--ah yes, the Internet--and porn provide an always open path to near instant glory. My personal profile on mygaydar.com gets more hits in a month than the total attendance of all the plays I've ever acted in. And the accessibility of the Internet has opened up a broadband of opportunities for those of us who fall outside the traditional golden God porn rubric. The amateur look--unshaved and unfiltered--is in.

According to Bret Kelly, Webmaster of Gayselfpix.com, "the number of guys getting naked and showing their bodies off is totally on the upsurge, mostly because there's a distance between having your naked self on the Net, as opposed to going to a nude beach. I have my naked pictures on my site but I would never go naked on the beach. Strangely enough, I'm still shy. Even at the bathhouse I run for my towel when I'm out of the steam room. But I can sit here and whack off in front of my camera, and that's all I need. I put a few of the photos up and boom--I'm adored far and wide." Not just three-and-a-half feet down my parents' hallway but a global audience adoring me far and wide? Sign me up!

To view the pics on Bret's site you have two choices: You can either pay, or you can send in pictures of yourself. Dollar for dollar, the exchange rate is pretty good. "The photos that I receive from the guys are gratis, but I don't charge them to post either. It's kind of a strange arrangement, but it works. The guys that send me their photos do it mostly because they want to be seen and some are looking to be discovered. But mostly, it's the guy next door looking to trade pics with other guys who could also be next door or in another part of the world."

Did he say "discovered"? As in fame and--more importantly--as in money? Again, where do I go to get discovered?

Bret says, "Most of the guys that are on my site are freebies. I have a section on the pay side that is just stuff that I have photographed or videotaped myself. In that section, I do pay the models for their time. The first model that I photographed I found from a local IRC users site. I e-mailed him and approached him with the idea of doing a nude photo shoot. After a few phone calls he agreed. He said he did it 'for the experience,' and now he's done a few videos for Titan and Cazzo Films. From there, I basically put the word out and networked."

I was ready to network, too. Then, there it was: a link on Gayselfpix.com reading simply "Models Wanted, Seattle and Toronto Area: Nightcharm.com." The ad sounded professional. Contracts were mentioned; pay was mentioned; and the photographer clearly stated, "I don't want to have sex with you." A tangible temptation was born. A talented friend of mine with a digital camera and a knack for photographic flattery soon knocked out three nude photographs of me. We e-mailed them, and then we waited--for about 15 minutes. David K. of Nightcharm wrote back and asked for more pictures.

So what's the difference between exhibitionism and porn? Pay. "Five years ago, online porn was a whole different thing," David says. "Now what we call amateur porn is really pseudo-amateur because everyone discovered that there was money in it."

For me, the difference was the money shot. I chickened out when it came time to come. But even by liberally defining my dry photos as porn, did getting paid push me out of the "amateur" and into the "pro" camp? If this were an Olympic sport, maybe. Exact definitions are subjective and differ wildly, but all the producers interviewed for this story agreed that the real difference between amateur and professional porn is that amateur work involves the guy next door, the guy you see on the street. Cameras and editing equipment have also gotten so cheap that almost anyone can get himself up on the Internet. And suddenly I was there, too, minus a come shot if not minus clothes. But what to do with my newfound awareness of my own relative modesty?

I put it in the bank. David tells me that Nightcharm gets about 4,000 to 5,000 hits a month. If every one of those hits earns me a nickel, that's about how much I make from my naked pics. And there's even bigger money in video. Maybe I'm an exhibitionist after all.

I decide to blur the boundaries of objective journalistic research when I talk with co-owner of AMVC.com, Allen "The Colonel" McNulty. AMVC is the big daddy of amateur porn. They represent 1,100 small-time producers of amateur video, distributing their titles in addition to making original stuff. The meeting takes place in an elegant Victorian house--since converted to office space--on Seattle's Capitol Hill.

I ask The Colonel, "So, if I were a model who wanted to work with you, what could I expect upon coming in?" I clutch my notepad, pen poised, pointedly ignoring the video camera on the other side of the room.

"Well, first of all we would sit down, probably right here," he gestures to the futon where we are sitting, "and fill out the paperwork." Paperwork? "Copies of valid photo ID, model releases, tax forms, that kind of thing." Somehow I had expected something less--bureaucratic. "Then we would talk for a little bit about what kinds of sexual activities you are comfortable with, past history, etc. That's all documented, so that at the time of the actual shoot I can say, 'OK, we talked about doing this and this.' Then we do the screen test where you would watch a porn film and jerk off. During this whole time we're talking casually about real stuff, not scripted. Just real guys talking."

I strain my ears to pick up sounds in the building. Maybe, in a room much like the one I'm in, there is a guy groaning to unscripted orgasm while a camera records it. There isn't. We are alone. "Then, we would match you with another model. You would probably meet for the first time at the shoot, and then we would just let things happen. Amateur stuff is great for having real guys have real sex in real situations. People can't lie on camera. The raw footage picks it up immediately. The guys are talking to each other, talking to us. If the twink falls off the futon while getting fucked, we just keep rolling." It's cinema verité--very verité.

How much can an average guy make in amateur porn? Producers are reluctant to publish exact figures. The AMVC Web site says, "A quality model has the potential to make anywhere from $50 to $400 to much, much more." For a standard jerk-off video or still shots, the average rate across the industry is about $50 to $75 an hour. Precise sales figures are also closely guarded secrets, but AMVC says that it sells about $750,000 worth of tapes a year.

Making films is difficult, and the competition for customers has heated up as amateur producers increase in number. Independent producers like Richard Wagner of Daddy Oohhh! Productions (Daddyoohhh.com) are faced with a daunting challenge. A single film requires a financial outlay of approximately $10,000. Performer pay is the largest chunk of this. Performers at Daddy Oohhh! start at $150 an hour for solo scenes, and make more than $250 an hour for duo and group scenes.

Once the film is in the can, it takes another month of editing before it's ready to be sent in for duplication. Amateur films specialize in real-time sex without "looping" in clips to extend the scene. Still, a certain amount of editing is required if multiple cameras are being used or a less raw look is desired. This step creates a bottleneck for Richard, as he's able to make films much faster than they can be edited. While Daddy Oohhh! currently has its first film, BodyRocks, for sale, it has another five in postproduction.

Once the master copy is made, it costs about $5,000 to duplicate 1,000 copies on DVD--Daddy Oohhh! produces titles exclusively on DVD--then a varying amount of advertising and distribution costs are stacked on. Although Daddy Oohhh! isn't a multiproducer house like AMVC, sales are picking up. Even with only BodyRocks on the market, the site sells about 100 copies a month. At $39.95 per DVD, Daddy Oohhh! may never compete with slicker, pricier titles from companies like Falcon, but it's still a nice stream of cash.

Suddenly, I decide that though acting is fun, what I really want to do is direct. With a laptop, a broadband connection and a constant erection, I could become the next porn king. Easy riches with a minimum of work, right? Wrong. Perhaps five years ago Internet porn was a cash cow for lazy, decadent souls like myself, but today's producers are quick to teach me the cold, hard truth.

"The time I spent on the site is insane," says Bret Kelly of Gayselfpix. "I've just come off of a crazy period where for the last six months all I did was work. Besides sleeping I was working. The worst part is that, when you work from home, if you wake up in the middle of the night you find yourself working. When I started this site it was just a hobby. I liked getting the photos of the guys, and I liked receiving mail from the guys. My costs were minimal. The server was the biggest expense. Now that I've grown, everything has increased: more server expenses, technical support and other outside costs that really add up after awhile. I didn't have a lawyer when I started the site but now I do, as well as an accountant." The Colonel also spends at least a full week in the office, and David K. of Nightcharm says it is "easier to count my gray hairs than the hours I put into the site."

So where do they find guys willing to shake their booties on film? "The first guy found me actually," The Colonel says. "I was waiting in line at the drive-in when this cute boy in front of me turned around and said, 'You're cute. Take off your sunglasses, I bet you have pretty eyes.' Then we went back to my place, I told him what I was wanting to do, and he was totally into it. Now we mainly advertise."

While some producers sprinkle trails of bread crumbs on other sites to bring in new flesh--much like my own path to Nightcharm nudity--there is no shortage of guys looking to play. Bret told me that, "Recently, I ran an ad in the local paper, and from that there's a lot of interest from straight guys. When I tell them that it's for a gay audience they're still interested, so I guess 'wanting attention' is not just a gay thing."

Is amateur porn the new gay-for-pay avenue? I turned to the source: Doug & Jay's AmateurStraightGuys.com--billed as "all the straight dick you'll ever want"--for answers. First, I had to ask: Are these guys really straight or what? "Yes," Doug says. "When you put them on camera, you can just tell."

And figure that for every woman who responds to an ad for adult actors, producers get about nine men. The logical conclusion: Get those men busy. "For a lot of guys, it's their lifelong ambition to be a straight porn actor. We explain to them that, straight or gay, the clientele for adult entertainment is usually male." So to get the work in straight movies (Doug & Jay have a company for that, too) these midwestern straight guys jerk off for our gay pleasure. Do they go further? "The guys are aware that they are performing, and so aside from basic masturbation scenes, they often allow things to be done to them to help them get off."

Hearing this, I rushed to their site, and yes, there are a whole lot of herkin'-jerkin' straight boys on it. And though they sell videos, most of the AmateurStraightGuys.com revenue (about 90%) comes from its almost 5,000 subscribers. I wonder if I could write off a membership on my taxes. You know, research purposes.

Straight guys ostensibly do it to get to the girls, but--my personal fame fetish notwithstanding--why do gay men dive into amateur porn? One explanation seems to be that amateur films, or amateurs going into film, reflect a new gay aesthetic. Mounting numbers of gay men are finding that the chiseled, plucked, tanned stars of professional porn are a type that is not only unattainable for most of us, but often undesirable.

Amateur performer Wrestlercub of BearFilms.com says, "I wouldn't have done pretty boy porn. Amateur films are the everyday guy on the street, not manicured boys but men in their natural state. Men who you can have sex with. Still, the popularity was kind of a surprise." Wrestlercub says he gets about 10 e-mails a day from guys all over the country and has even been recognized in public a few times. Was his ambition to become famous? "Not really. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was walking by a booth at the International Bear Rendezvous in San Francisco, and these guys called me over and asked me to do a photo shoot. All my friends said I should do it, and by day's end I was in a hotel room filming a video. No fluffers, no makeup, no lighting guy, just us doing what we wanted to do." So if it's not the fame it's the money, right? Wrestlercub laughs, "I think they paid me 50 bucks and I never even cashed the check."

While the pay is somewhat low in amateur porn, showing your goods on the Internet does sometimes lead to discovery by bigger studios and, consequently, a lot more money. Zack Falconer was contacted by Catalina Video after they saw his home page. "I got this e-mail asking for more pictures, so I sent them a few. A day later they wrote back and asked for more nude pictures. It never even occurred to me that I had sent them shots of myself clothed." After a few weeks of exchanging e-mails with Catalina, Zack was still undecided. "Then all my friends told me not to do it, so I called and said I would. It's the rebel in me, I guess."

Suddenly, a man who claims to have watched only two porn films in his life was in Los Angeles with a hot light between his legs, a hot man on his dick and a sore jaw. While his paycheck for the film Night at the Rawhide clearly qualifies him as a porn professional, Zack still feels like an amateur. "This was a total anomaly. I have no other experience like this at all. They started telling me that I am their premier muscle bear, and I kept thinking: Are you looking at the same person I see in the mirror?" Yes, Zack, they are. "Now, everybody knows that I'm in a film but what's going through my head is: Oh, God, what if I make the cover?"

It isn't fame that drew Zack or Wrestlercub into porn nor is it the money--both are corporate executive types who make a lot more than certain writers. And neither of them seems like a stereotypical sex freak. So when it came to giving a reason, both of them say the same thing: "Why did I do it? Because I can."

With the abundance of Web sites and producers, and with the reach of the Internet, this has become true for everyone who wants his 15 minutes. Every body type is wanted. Every kink is desired. You can keep your day job, and you might become famous. Even me.

Even you.

Text by Vincent Kovar


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