Christian Owen is no stranger to the lure of hot athletes bursting out of their jockstraps. In his days as a performer, one of his highlights was appearing in “Bottom of the 9th,” the third entry in All Worlds Video’s “Little Big League” series — a quartet of baseball- themed films that were smash hits for the studio, drawing on fans’ lust for uniformed jocks.
“It was a bunch of boys in baseball uniforms, and we actually even got to go out to a baseball field and play. But nobody really could play at all,” says Owen as he starts to laugh. “It was kind of joke. Even Tyler Saint, who was our coach … you didn’t want to see him throw the ball.”
It’s not always about having guys actually play the sport; a lot of it is just them having sex in hot sexy sports gear… -Christian Owen, Hot House
But they fooled the fans — proving that when all is said and done, it’s the fantasy that matters most. And for Owen — now a director and producer at Hot House — when the opportunity arouse to start something new, he jumped at the chance to enter the sports world once again.
“We used to have the Backroom line, which basically was like the ‘junior’ Hot House; we could cast younger guys, and we shot scenes all over the place: in a bedroom, in a living room. We produced up to #30 and decided to re-launch the line,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to take a new line, direct it and kind of gear it towards a sports theme, and that’s how we came up with it.”
The Gym Dudes line was launched in March with “Good Sports,” soon followed by “Champs,” “Jockhole” and “Dream Team” — with two more entries scheduled to debut before year’s end. The films follow in the cleated footsteps of the two-part “Score!”, a hit for the studio in 2011 (which Owen designed the set for). It’s also a relief for fans in need of more sporty sex after Falcon replaced its iconic Jocks line with the Guys Like Us brand in April.
“It’s not always about having guys actually play the sport; a lot of it is just them having sex in hot sexy sports gear … it can go all the way from sneakers, socks and hats to cleats, arm bands, facemasks, helmets, full-on catcher’s gear, football pads, balls and baseball bats. To me, I feel like the sports fetish is kind of the new generation’s leather fetish,” says Owen, admitting to his own fascination with the material. “I have a huge shoe fetish, so that comes into it — for this line, we put them in high tops or cleats and high socks, and try to do baseball hats … I love to shoot up with the shoes in the foreground of the camera where you see a big shoe, and then shoot right up into the guy’s crotch. Those are some of the really good shots I get in the photos as well.”
Owen notes that he aims to cast youthful, athletic jocks — the guy you can look at and think, “He goes to the gym.” He also views the line as a great opportunity to introduce fresh new faces (and other body parts) to fans — noting that while the Backroom series started off that way, many of the main Hot House models would cross over. He plans to limit that with Gym Dudes, saving special appearances for things like coach scenarios. The new line also allows the studio to play more with color — and an overall lighter tone, something that filters over into marketing.
“A lot of our main line, the Hot House line, we do a lot of darker films. We film what I consider to be ‘operatic’ movies, and a lot of those are when we float a set in the middle of a black space where the whole background disappears,” Owen says. “I’ve tried with Gym Dudes to introduce a lot more color — it’s more American, more youthful, more fresh. And not necessarily having a lot of color, so it doesn’t really distract from the models… but we’re just trying to make the background look a little more unique and interesting, and hopefully sporty, new age and fresh.”
Owen — who still designs the sets — has made effective use of the simplest of objects (watch Bobby Clark drip the spit from an athletic cup into his mouth, then spit it back down on his own body in “Dream Team”), and has been pleasantly surprised with some of his models: “The “Champs” series where they were boxing, it was kind of hot to watch the guys who could get into the boxing part. They came here with experience from it, so it’s not always about watching the guy sit there and be in the gear. When you can get some guys who are into a sport, it’s kind of fun to see the other side of the model — actually rough it up and be a little bit more sporty.”
The studio plans six to seven entries a year, and Owen is anxious to take the costumes up a notch with more aggressive options — like lacrosse gear and more helmets (“a little bit more how it was in ‘Score!’”). And if common sense is any indicator, the fans will be eating it up.
“I think it’s part of our hygiene … when you get around all the sweaty men at sports events or in the gym, it excites us. And I think on the gay side, a lot of people may have been held back from the sports side of that part of our lives just because we’re gay,” says Owen, who is anxious to get fan feedback on what kinds of sports fetishes they’d like to see on screen. “There’s so many other styles of fetishes beyond jockstraps and sneakers that people have related to sports; the cup is a simple little thing, but it’s very sporty and it’s hot — especially thinking about somebody on a real sports team who wears the same cup over and over … that definitely turns people on.”
He adds that a quick look at social media activity is all you need for proof — citing the frequent picture postings of real athletes with their sacs peeking out of their shorts or their cocks outlined in their spandex (an infamous shot of the U.S. rowing team on the podium at the 2012 London Olympics being a popular example) as proof of human desire and the fetish fascination at work. “That’s definitely my favorite thing,” says Owen, “when you have a guy wearing shorts and you can see that bulge going through it.”
You’re not alone, Christian … play ball!
