I’m A Porn Star (DVD Review)

I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but lots of people enjoy watching one person inserting one of their body parts into the body parts of other people. Even more shocking is that some people enjoy it when two or more men are engaged in such activities, without any women there at all! This is apparently known as ‘gay pornography’, and this arcane, esoteric subject is what the documentary I’m A Porn Star is all about.

Ok, maybe I have heard of gay porn before. In fact I may even have seen some of it – purely for research purposes, of course.

Interestingly the man behind-the-camera is Charlie David, star of such non-porn gay films as Mulligans and Judas Kiss, who’s keen to look behind the curtain at the men who star in porn with this doc.

The main subjects of I’m A Porn Star are Brent Everett, Johnny Rapid, Rocco Reed and Colby Jansen, who will be familiar faces to many of you from their on-screen oeuvre. The film smartly picks four people who come from different backgrounds and have different ideas about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.

Rocco Reed started out in straight porn before seguing over into the gay side of the industry, but has no hang-ups about what he does and sees no need to spend his interview time ensuring we know how 100% straight he is off the set – although he is keen we should know you get paid more for gay porn than straight, which he seems very happy about. Also straight is Johnny Rapid, who’s in it for the money and is fairly business-minded about what he’s doing, even if there are times he comes across as being as egotistical as certain stereotypes of porn stars might suggest.

Brent Everett meanwhile is gay and married, coming across as a smart young man who knows how to extend his porn popularity across social media and into a career that goes beyond on-screen sex scenes. By far the most interesting is Colby Jansen, who is intelligent and thoughtful, with a laidback yet astute attitude about himself and his sexuality. He’s a former marine and rugby player, who was ‘straight’ until he started dating transsexual porn star Gia Darling. The fact that at that point she was still anatomically male began to broaden his horizons, and now while married to Gia (who has since had sexual reassignment surgery) he enjoys having sex with both men and women both on-screen and off, and describes himself as pansexual.

It’s an interesting story and Colby’s take on it is extremely thought-provoking, being both personal and exceptionally well-reasoned and articulated. If you didn’t find him hot beforehand, you certainly will after you watch the documentary (indeed, I think I might have to do some Colby Jansen ‘research’ myself).

I’m A Porn Star tries to fit a lot into its 81 minutes, not just trying to show us the four men, but also upend the stereotypes that all porn stars are desperate, probably drug-addled, soulless, disease-riddled man-whores who need constant attention (while suggesting that perhaps the idea that many of them got off the bus hoping they’d make it in mainstream film or TV isn’t quite so wide of the mark). The doc also gives a brief insight into the industry itself and how it’s adapting to the internet age, as well as the controversial rise of condom-free porn. On this last point, while the doc gives both sides of the argument it definitely seems unconvinced that the business case for not using condoms trumps the potential disease repercussions both for the performers and viewers.

I’m A Porn Star is never more interesting that in its first 10 minutes though, when it gives us a potted history of gay porn from the very birth of moving images and underground filmmaking, through the explosion of the industry with VHS and how its changed through the 90s and 00s. To be honest if they’d wanted to expand that out and make the entire movie about it, it would have been well worth watching on its own. It is a shame that the rest of the documentary doesn’t quite live up to the appeal and sheer sexiness of the first part, but it certainly gives it a go and keeps you interested.

And yes, it is sexy. As those first 10 minutes are keen to point out, the viewer is here to be entertained, so I’m A Porn Star ensures there’s a surfeit of buff blokes and nudity, along with plenty of glimpses of sex. While it takes porn seriously, it knows it’s about a titillating subject and it has absolutely no desire to shy away from that. So if you want to feel like you’re learning and being educated while also playing ‘spot the penis’, I’m A Porn Star is a good way to do it.

Overall Verdict: An interesting, entertaining and sexy look into the world of gay porn. I’m A Porn Star focus might perhaps have been sharper, but there are far worse ways to spend 81 minutes.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac