Hard Choice Awards - The 14th Annual Hard Choice Awards (for films reviewed in 2007)
Onan the Vulgarian continues to put out his list of awards, though his home base magazine, X Factor has just morphed into
XX Factor. With these awards, though, he proudly proclaims, "No party, no fanfare, no shindig, no porn stars, no statuettes. No lifetime achievement awards, no drag queens, no envelopes, no acceptance speeches, no Ms. Congeniality. Just the year's best in all-male porn. Guaranteed to keep you hard."
In “Junkman’s Obbligato,†beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote that he yearned to go to a place “where turtles win.†I like to think of 2007 as the year that turtles won. Not to disparage the hares of the industry, it was gratifying (and I hope readers agree, whether or not their names or their favorites are on this list) to see so much variety in 2007. “Little guys†produced some mighty big results, and “big guys†who never won before surged into greater prominence.
Chief among the latter was
Raging Stallion. In a time when pundits warn of the demise of DVDs, producer-director Chris Ward and co-director Ben Leon had the cojones to mastermind a 6-disc, 20-hour sexual marathon called Grunts, and to sell it for over $100. It simply blew everyone out of the water; not only was it good, it was very, very good — and it sold like hotcakes. Grunts is now the War and Peace (War and Piece?) of gay porn, and it’s the line drawn in the sand for those who say the DVD is dead.
Kristen Bjorn is another perfect example of the turtle metaphor. To quote another poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Sheer plod makes plow down sillion shine,†or slow and steady wins the race. This director has been turning out masterpiece upon masterpiece, for twenty years. Perhaps it’s because people are accustomed to expecting nothing less than brilliance that not a lot gets said when Bjorn delivers it. In 2007, he gave us left-right knockout punch with El Rancho and Rocks & Hard Places.
Other studios and other directors continue to produce high quality films that are both art and erotica — something that cannot be matched by scenes shot for websites.
Lucas Kazan gives us lust and romance;
Michael Lucas gives us complex characters, whether tragic or comic, for whom sex and life are inseparable. If I don’t name anyone else, it’s not because there are none to name, but because there’s no way to properly acknowledge the value of everyone’s contributions.
Several performers galvanized attention in 2007, and deciding on a performer of the year really was a hard choice.
Jesse Santana got the nod, not only because of the variety of his work for several studios and online producers, but for his sexual versatility, a couple of fine thespian turns and the reliability with which he gave one compelling performance after another.
Steve Cruz was an easier choice for newcomer. The perfect physical foil to Santana, Cruz is a guy who openly relishes anything sexual, and who’s giving back to the industry and to the community with his own safer sex website and educational outreach. Visit him at
How I Roll.
Studios outside of the USA made such an exceptional showing in 2007 that I decided to give separate awards to Film, Director and Actor for films shot on foreign turf.
This is the first time the Hard Choice Awards have recognized work initially produced for Internet consumption, but if you’ve paid attention to the stuff the Bryan Ockert is doing with Chaos Men, you know that not only has he created new niches in a genre where you’d figure there are none left, but he’s put sex between the ears again.
Last year,
Titan Media founder Bruce Cam said farewell to the industry. This man is so formidable with a camera in his hand that anything in his viewfinder lays down at his feet and gives up its wonders. Cam has packed up his camera and director’s chair in favor of other pursuits, exiting grandly with Breakers, which will certainly factor into next year’s Hard Choice Awards. And Barcelona’s Private Man, which appears several times in the list below, decided to cease production of its gay film lines; that was disappointing.
XX Factor
LIST OF WINNERS AND RUNNERS-UP AFTER THE JUMP