Almost exactly one year ago, XBIZ profiled filmmaker Jasun Mark about his varied career in adult. The technical whiz and artistic polymath had just joined fellow filmmaker Anthony Duran at Ducati Studios, the production company founded by entrepreneur, activist and XBIZ’s 2013 “Gay Performer of the Year” Trenton Ducati.
The trio offer a variety of production services to outside companies like Falcon/NakedSword, and shoot their own content for several paysites, among them a comic parody series TrailerTrashBoys.com.
It’s really easy to produce porn now. It used to be really physical; you would have to have a supply chain and a distribution hub and a lot of money to buy the gear and a whole lot of technical know-how.
Within days of our interview, the pandemic shuttered the industry. Nearly 12 months later, XBIZ decided to check back in with Mark to discuss how a boutique company like Ducati Studios has pivoted during a year of unprecedented challenge.
“I had finally landed [at Ducati Studios] with Trenton Ducati and Anthony Duran,” Mark recalled. “We were doing all sorts of really great stuff and excited about the future. I was just about to go into production on two big, over-the-top orgy movies with Chi Chi LaRue. And, yeah, suddenly everything shut down.”
XBIZ: One of the last things you mentioned in that article, a year ago, was this new gig with Ducati Studios. You guys were just beginning to experiment with a new website called TrailerTrashBoys.com. And that’s the reason for this interview; we wanted to check in with a smaller, boutique studio about how they’ve pivoted and adapted to the challenges of the past year.
Mark: Trenton and I are still directing for Hot House and shooting with Tony Dimarco. Tony, Trenton and I are the Raging Stallion team. That’s been an incredible experience. It’s like going to Disneyland once a month. And Trenton directs Fetish Force and I wind up doing a lot of the camerawork; I actually cut [a] Fetish Force movie, too. But, yeah, like all of the other studios, we got our [COVID safety] protocols from people who knew what they were talking about. Everybody on set is masked. We stay as distanced as we can; we get tested all the time. I’ve had so many swabs stuck inside my head [laughs]. We test a lot.
XBIZ: That’s how you shoot in the age of COVID.
Mark: I earned the name “Spritz Queen” because I walk around with this bottle of sanitizer and I’m constantly spraying myself or my hands or anything I touch. People come up to me and say, “Hey, spritz me!”
XBIZ: That’s funny because one of the most infamous quotes from our past interviews was your story about having to smear mud on Francois Sagat on your first day of work for TitanMen. And now you’re the “Spritz Queen.”
Mark: That wasn’t technically the job [laughs].
XBIZ: One of your duties, then.
Mark: Yes, it’s funny that I walk around with this spray bottle. At the beginning of the pandemic, everybody had trouble finding isopropyl alcohol. Well, I’m a vinyl collector. I literally had gallons of it because I buy it in bulk to make my own record cleaning solution. I called up my friends and said, “Do you have [sanitizing] alcohol?” They all said, “Nope.” I ended up giving away 80 or 90 percent of what we had and I still had enough to get us through the shortage.
XBIZ: Well, if that happens I know who to call: record collectors.
Mark: Call record collectors, absolutely. Here’s something else that’s kind of funny: one of my good friends works for NASA. And they had organized [drills] related to long-term survival. I think it had something to do with a trip to Mars for astronauts, but it gave us the idea for an “Apocalypse Party.” We made lists of everything that we’d need for a survival kit and then we broke up into teams and drove around Los Angeles looking for first aid kits and everything else. Then we got back together and pooled everything and we ended up with these crazy survivalist kits sitting in our closets, ready to go. So when everything shut down, we had masks and rubber gloves and disinfectant and all of that stuff. Go figure.
XBIZ: That’s amazing. When I set up this interview about how a boutique company adapted to the pandemic, those weren’t the answers I was expecting. I would imagine the only thing you didn’t have was pasta. All of the dried pasta disappeared in the early days of the lockdown, too.
Mark: I’m married to an Italian. We’ve got lots of pasta.
XBIZ: I should have guessed. So you were able to ride out the early days of the pandemic.
Mark: Yeah. And now here we are.
XBIZ: I know all three of you are now based in Palm Springs, right?
Mark: Yeah, within a couple of months this past year, we all ended up out here as neighbors.
XBIZ: A few months ago, mr. Pam talked to XBIZ about living and working in Vegas now. And you aren’t the only ones. There seems to be a new migration underway to the desert. That junkyard location you guys use for TrailerTrashBoys is great. Very authentic.
Mark: [Laughs] It’s a very industrial area. You hear a lot of trucks and construction [nearby] and that totally lends itself to what TrailerTrashBoys is. We’ve all got a thing for that type of look; I think it’s why it feels so real and genuine because it’s what we feel comfortable in. Does that make sense?
XBIZ: Absolutely. I also think one of the things that sets TrailerTrashBoys apart is there isn’t a lot of comedy in gay porn anymore.
Mark: There really isn’t.
XBIZ: There used to be a very robust sub-genre of sex comedy in gay porn, parodies and that kind of thing. I wonder if audiences, especially after this past year of constant stress and drama, found something appealing about that.
Mark: Well, a lot of the parodies wound up not really being that funny. You know? And I’ve done stand-up comedy; I’ve written a lot of goofy, funny stuff. Even when I’ve hosted leather contests or award shows, I’ve ended up writing a lot of my own material. When I was in film school, we didn’t have professional script-writers. We had to learn to write dialogue. Trenton and Anthony are good at it, too. We will get together and tell each other the story or set-up and laugh our heads off and keep going. I’ll pitch some stupid idea and they’ll say, “Oh, my god! That’s funny! Do it!” If it makes us laugh, we’ll do it.
XBIZ: People seem to think that sex and comedy shouldn’t go together these days. Any theories on that?
Mark: First of all, doing comedy is not easy. It’s easier to be dark and it’s easy to be sexy, if you understand what “sexy” is. But comedy is different. I’m gonna say we throw out three-quarters of our ideas. I’m sure this happens to you, too — anybody who works in porn will get friends or random followers on Twitter who come up with some wild idea. I must have been pitched Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin —
XBIZ: Stop right there. Please don’t do that.
Mark: I look at people blankly and say, “Would you jerk off to that?” And they always say, “But it would be funny!” My response is always the same: “Would it be funny to the point that it would be a turn-on?” So, yeah. I wish I had a better answer.
XBIZ: No, that’s perfect. Porn is just Very Serious now, in capital letters. I’m always taken aback these days when guys are smiling in their photos.
Mark: Anthony Duran and I have been working together since 2009, I think, when we were put together on CocksureMen — their [attitude] was in the name. And Trenton worked for Jake Cruise, who was fucking hysterical. He always encouraged us to try and be funny. So that’s where we cut our teeth.
XBIZ: Something else I wanted to talk to you about is GentlemensCloset.com, which is a Ducati Studios paysite. That was distinctly a walled-off fetish when Trenton launched that site; Michael Lucas was shooting that kind of content for Lucas Entertainment, but that’s about it. How would you describe the site’s content? Because we’re starting to see it pop up randomly. Especially this past year, as more models turned to generating their own content.
Mark: Yeah, and it’s funny because now GentlemensCloset is slowly morphing to add more suits and more distinguished-looking clothing. It’s not all about what it was originally, which was a lot of elegant undergarments, which some might describe as “feminine,” juxtaposed on super-masculine men. And it explored a more elegant way of shooting scenes, not rough or edgy, but more smooth and beautiful. You’re right. I love the fact that a lot of people have started to copy that and emulate what Trenton was doing with GentlemensCloset.
XBIZ: It’s interesting to see how something that used to be walled-off into a room called “Fetish” is now what porn is all about. It’s not a recent phenomenon but this past year, it’s exploded.
Mark: Especially since anybody can produce it now. It’s really easy to produce porn now. It used to be really physical; you would have to have a supply chain and a distribution hub and a lot of money to buy the gear and a whole lot of technical know-how. And now anyone with a cell phone can have an OnlyFans. And, listen, some of the OnlyFans content I’ve seen is really good! I’m actually really impressed with some of the stuff I’ve seen, even from performers who don’t really know what they’re doing, but they know what they want to see. I think you have to be a fan to make good porn.
XBIZ: I think you’ve identified the heart of the issue.
Mark: Do you remember when you and I talked on set about coming up with this idea of shooting “cell phone porn”? Do you remember that? I think this was way back when I was with Fratmen. God, maybe 2007? That was back in the days when we had Razrs. You remember those? Unbelievably low-quality stuff. And I said, “If we did a porn site that was nothing but guys going into public washrooms and glory holes and shooting video with their Razr phones, it would be incredible. Everybody has a video camera now and the quality is only going to improve.” Well it did! And now we’re at the point where the last movie Trenton and I did for Hot House, called “Towel Boy,” has iPhone footage in there. I defy anybody to point it out. There were a couple of shots we wound up grabbing with an iPhone — I’ll tell you what they are when you stop recording— and people would have absolutely no idea because the quality was pretty spectacular. I had bought an Osmo [holder] for super-smooth tracking shots. We did this one shoot with the camera we usually use and then Trenton said, “Try it with the Osmo.” And the shot came out better! The color was so spectacular. Anybody can do it now if you light it well and you know how to frame a shot.
XBIZ: It’s interesting to hear you say that. One of the other things we’ve noticed this past year is not only the vast increase in self-produced content, but the super-accelerated evolution of how that content is produced.
Mark: I think a lot of us knew that was going to happen. And I honestly believe it’s not going to be long before a couple of OnlyFans creators are going to start winning awards, the big ones. Anybody who doesn’t [adapt] and take this seriously, does so at their peril.
XBIZ: It seems like Ducati Studios is positioned right where you need to be.
Mark: The magic between me, Trenton and Anthony is that all three of us are very good directors and photographers, but we all come from different areas. Trenton has an incredible business mind and he’s really good at making connections; I’m the technical guy. They’ll be in the middle of a shoot for a studio I’m not even part of; they’ll call me and say, “We can’t get the such-and-such to work in the whatever-thing.” I’ll get in my car, drive to the set and walk in the door, press three buttons and leave. I’ve done that a few times. And Anthony has this great creative mind but he’s also good at planning and organizing shoots. Each of us brings an important skill set to the table and that’s how we’ve been able to adapt and survive. We don’t have mega-budgets, so we do rely on distribution networks for streaming and licensing; we wouldn’t be able to survive without sites like NakedSword and AEBN to help us generate revenue. But they also require a lot of content from us, the same way Netflix would not survive if they didn’t have a whole lot of smaller studios creating content for them. This is not new.
XBIZ: No, not at all. NakedSword just celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Mark: Yeah. It’s not new at all. But it has definitely evolved.
Image source: TrailerTrashBoys.com
