You have to feel bad for the screenwriters of gay porn. It’s bad enough that they’re the butt of more jokes than your mama, but when you consider the effort they put into creating narratives for an art form where plot is about as necessary as a third nipple, it just breaks your heart.
If anything, I’ve always considered decent acting and writing in porn to be a nice added bonus more than anything. It’s like the studios’ way of showing they care.
Which is why I’m happy to see the return of the gay-porn serial drama. While Kristian Broadkast’s Cocktales and Chi Chi LaRue’s Raising the Bar are bringing the genre back into style, the gay-porn serial drama originated with Jet Set Men’s Wet Palms, a series about a group of men in a Melrose Place-style setting dealing with deceit, blackmail and lust. Despite critical acclaim, the series was cancelled during its second season because of budget and scheduling conflicts.
Six years later, creators Jack Shamama and Michael Stabile are back with Naked Sword’s Golden Gate, a series about San Francisco and the smart, savvy, sexy people who inhabit it, featuring such big-name stars as Chris Porter, Kennedy Carter and Cameron Marshall.
Why another serial drama?
“With Wet Palms, we may have been a bit ahead of our time,” says Shamama. “No one was releasing their content online first. Everything was released to DVD first and then slowly put online much later (almost as an afterthought), so as to not ‘interfere’ with DVD sales. Now, with DVD sales being what they are, the majority of content is released online first.”
With Golden Gate, Shamama hopes to combine mainstream film considerations, such as an ongoing story, three-dimensional characters and multiple seasons, with the dirty, raunchy, manly sex we all know and love.
“We did feel that something has been missing from most web series,” says Shamama. “Which is a high production value and a narrative that’s deeper than ‘straight guy sucks his first cock,’ ‘straight guy takes his first dick up his ass.’”
Naked Sword has already released Season 1, wrapped up Season 2 and is working on Season 3.
While some would say that porn on its own is enough and everything else is just a distraction, Shamama and Stabile seem to be trying to elevate porn to a more high-minded place, while still retaining all the cock-sucking and ass-fucking that made it great to begin with. Think of it as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: two great tastes that taste great together.
Jeremy Feist is a Toronto pornstar. Porndoggy appears in every issue of Xtra.
Season 1 of Golden Gate premieres on HardTV April 29, 10pm EST. HardTV is available on digital cable and satellite TV carriers across Canada. Call your local provider or visit hardtv.ca for information.
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