For most teenage boys, getting hold of some porn is the beginning of a good weekend. For Pierre Fitch, it was the beginning of a career. Now one of Canada’s best known gay porn stars, Fitch saw the potential for profit from his early days of surfing the internet as a randy adolescent.
“If those guys are going to be naked, I’m going to be naked,” Fitch told himself as a kid.
And, to the delight of his legions of fans, Fitch has since bared all on dozens of websites and countless DVDs. At 26, he has proven himself a shrewd entrepreneur, having built a thriving business around his red-hatted, tattooed image.
Once the darling of Falcon Studios, a mammoth US producer of gay erotic entertainment, Fitch spurned the glitz of California for Montreal — but not before using it to make his name. Now he’s working at his own pace, shooting his porn his way.
In fact, things have been going so well that Fitch many soon be bowing out of the red spotlight. When Capital Xtra sat down with him recently, Fitch let it slip that, in a year or two, he’ll stop starring in movies in order to concentrate on behind-the-camera work and running his business. By the time he’s 40, Fitch plans to be retired and living the high life.
So how did a kid from Cornwall, Ontario become a prince of porn?
“I just always looked at porn. I checked porn sites and said, ‘This looks like a nice moneymaker,'” says Fitch. “So when I turned 18, the day after, I sent out pictures of myself and I got my first job at HM Boys.”
He bounced from gig to gig in Canada, including one that saw him living at a vermin-infested Toronto condo, where horny users logged on to watch the boys at play. He even spent a year in our city, using Ottawa as a base to send out pictures.
In the highly competitive world of adult entertainment, Fitch knew he needed the power of a big organization if he was going to make a name for himself. It wasn’t long before he found that power in Falcon Studios. After putting on a bit of weight to make himself more marketable, Fitch was off making movies for Falcon in Los Angeles. But he didn’t let himself get swept away by the glamour of life in the big leagues, always keeping his eye on the prize of owning his own business.
“I thought, ‘I’ll get myself a name and tell them to fuck off,” he says.
But it wasn’t that easy. At Falcon, Fitch kept a gruelling shooting schedule and the stress mounted.
“With Falcon, if they’re paying you money, they’re going to push you in the ass and get you to do everything they can for their money.”
He did manage to pick up some tricks of the trade while wandering around Falcon’s offices — enough to help him launch his own websites after he pulled the plug on his contract.
“Everything that they were doing, I taught myself. I thought, ‘It seems pretty damn simple; I can pretty much do it myself. Why should I do it for someone else?'”
In the tradition of American entrepreneurship, Fitch pulled himself up by his jockstrap. He studied the competition from the inside, created a brand, and then broke off to go it alone.
“I’m living the fun life in Montreal but I look at myself as an American businessman,” he says. As head of his own company, Fitch spends his days corralling models into work and doing heavy-duty online marketing.
“It’s a lot of stress,” says Fitch, describing the typical travails of a shoot. “The model can’t get hard, so you’re there waiting for the fucking model. You’re hard and you have to lose it and get it again — but I love it.”
Like many businesspeople, success took a toll on Fitch’s personal life. His marriage to fellow star Ralph Woods ended in divorce after the stress of living and working together got to be too much. His current beau is not in the biz, and although Fitch convinced him to shoot one scene, he’s since learned to keep business and pleasure separate.
Throughout his rise to stardom, Fitch has remained close with his family, who he visits often. He came out as gay and a porn star in the same day. And after that, his folks were supportive.
“My parents just say, ‘As long as you’re happy.’ Maybe they’re not being super honest and telling me that they don’t like it, but what are they going to do?”
Fitch has the kind of success that all parents want for their kids. Aside from the fact that his work involves sex with dozens of hot young men, he is the picture of a typical hardworking small businessman, complete with life insurance, a financial planner and a retirement nest egg. With most of his customers in the US, Fitch is using the name he made at Falcon to cash in on a huge market.
Gesturing around his well furnished home, he says that most people who go into the porn business will never see that kind of prosperity. While Fitch used the big porn industry to reach his goals, he says that most porn actors he knew ended up on drugs with nothing but a mattress on the floor, their career fizzling out after a few years.
Now that he is the boss, Fitch prides himself on being easier to work with than his former employer, but has little patience for porn actors that don’t set goals and save money.
“I’m paying them. They’re making me money,” he says. “Whatever happens to you in a few of years, it’s not my problem. That’s your choice — I’m not going to teach you how to save,” he says.
This may seem like a harsh dose of capitalist reality, but it comes from a guy who’s made it in a tough industry. He is joining a growing demographic of porn producers who are breaking free of the mainstream studios to produce their products independently. His career proves that, for the ambitious, there is upward mobility in making gay porn.
Visit Fitch online:
pierrefitch.tv.
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