One particular studio-shot project starring Dante Colle neatly summarizes the unique position the sexually fluid leading man now holds in adult entertainment. He toplined a “boyfriend experience” virtual reality fantasy for VRFanService.com specifically designed to be enjoyed by straight women, gay men or “anyone interested in an erotic experience with a male star,” the company enthused. The action was filmed “in a gender-neutral style, so all genders can appreciate it with full immersion.”
Although a small number of male performers have notably filmed in various genres at different points in their lauded careers — notably Lance Hart and Wolf Hudson — Colle has quietly broken barriers with the help of XBIZ Award-winning directors like Kayden Kross and Ricky Greenwood by simultaneously working in gay, bi and trans genres as well as big-budget, high-profile features intended for the straight market. XBIZ couldn’t help but take note of Colle’s career moves and advocacy for his male colleagues.
A few months ago, the performer penned a candid op-ed for XBIZ World that explained his point-of-view. “Because I’m able to express my sexuality by filming with both men and women, I truly believe there should be no reason why other guys can’t accomplish the same feat,” he wrote. “And if other guys joined me in this, I believe we could expedite eliminating stigmas and hate and make this industry a much safer place to express your sexual interests, which is what this is all really about.”
It was Colle’s extraordinary genre-defying career track and his boldness in challenging long-held biases that led to him being named the inaugural “Performer of the Year” at the 2021 XBIZ Awards. The all-inclusive laurel was created to honor an individual who has set a new standard for excellence and community-minded activism.
Several weeks after the worldwide broadcast of the XBIZ Awards, Colle is still pleased, if somewhat confuzzled, by the honor. (“Thank you so much,” he says when we connect over the phone for this interview. “I’m quite thankful for it. I wasn’t expecting it at all.”) He tells me that he’d just wrapped a high-profile bisexual title the night before, and I note that several recent releases featuring Colle include gay, trans and straight titles.
Along those lines, his remarkably diverse slate in 2020 included “A Killer on the Loose” for MissaX (a straight dramatic, dialogue-driven feature); “She Wants Him” for Adult Time (straight, all-sex); “Bisexual, Volume One” for Evil Angel (bi, all-sex); “Men Bang!” for Men.com (gay, comedy); “Scared Stiff 2: The Amityville Whore” (gay feature, comedy); “Trans Superstar: Khloe Kay” for Evil Angel (trans, all-sex); the XBIZ-winning “Drive” for Deeper (straight feature, dialogue-driven); and “At Large” for Raging Stallion Studios, a dramatic, dialogue-driven, all-male feature in which he plays a blind man and also that man’s murderous twin.
“There’s some diversity there,” he chuckled.
There are many performers with diverse talents in the industry, and Colle is one of them. But XBIZ noticed he was doing something that no other male performer has quite managed until now, which is to smoothly cross genres all at the same time, including the straight side.
I asked him about a boxing-themed scene released in late 2019 for Deeper with Dillon Diaz and Haley Reed that looked, in its pre-release hype, like it was going to be a bisexual scene, but it wasn’t. It was straight.
“Initially, when we were [discussing] the scene, it was supposed to be bisexual,” he recalled. “But there were some production changes, and they said, ‘Are you guys down with pushing the boundaries?’ And we said, ‘Fuck, yeah!’ Dillon and I have worked together on four or five Deeper movies; he’s fucking great.”
That eager desire to push the envelope did not go unnoticed as Colle moved on to higher-profile, big-budget straight features even as he continued to rack up credits in gay, trans and bi genres. And in doing so, he normalized the efforts of colleagues like Dillon Diaz and Pierce Paris — the 2020 XBIZ winner for “Gay Performer of the Year” — who followed closely behind him.
Colle acknowledged that his win for “Performer of the Year” was a signal to the industry that male performers who cross genres simultaneously carry no risk whatsoever.
“That has been my goal this entire time. Once someone shows something is possible, then everybody starts doing it,” he said. “I think it’s called the ‘Four-Minute Mile Effect.’ Everyone thought the four-minute mile was impossible to run, but then [Roger Bannister] did it and now you got high-schoolers that can do it. That was my idea. If I can do this, hopefully that will [inspire] everybody else to start doing it.”
It seems to be happening.
When I ask Colle if he started out in adult with this kind of activism in mind, he takes a moment to form a thoughtful reply.
“Even when I first started doing porn, almost eight years ago, I was still mostly interested in women,” he said. “But you just want to express your sexuality and whatever your interests are. We were always told, ‘You can’t do that! Going from gay-to-straight or doing both simultaneously?!’ It’s kind of stupid. So when I started getting out there, especially in the past two years, I thought, ‘Maybe this is possible.’ I kept pushing for it. It’s something I do actively push for. It didn’t just fall into my lap.”
He praised XBIZ-winning directors Kayden Kross and Ricky Greenwood for their mentorship.
“Honestly, without either of them — and other directors like Joanna Angel — I couldn’t do it,” he said. “Ricky actively tries to [cast] me. He’ll get a list of available girls for a movie and he’ll say, ‘I want to get Dante into this. I’m going to find a way to get him in.’ He makes me a priority. He doesn’t want someone on his sets who won’t [film] with a male performer because of their sexuality. The fact that someone is actually fighting for a male performer — I’ve never heard of that. To have somebody do that for you is fucking incredible. He puts me in as much stuff as possible – all of his trans, gay and straight stuff.”
“And they’re pretty well-made movies,” he continued. “‘A Killer on the Loose’ was a big movie and to get that kind of exposure is really, really helpful. Same thing with Kayden Kross. Her brand is on another level. The fact that she is willing to work with me and do the same thing as Ricky does — I wouldn’t be able to do it without them. Most of my straight work comes from both of them.”
It’s a function of Colle’s fundamental decency and humility that he so readily gives credit to others. But let’s be honest: He shows up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad Dante Colle performance and I tell him as much. Although he undoubtedly has experienced moments when he climbed into his truck at the end of a long day’s shoot and thought, “I don’t think I really captured the ‘horny plumber’ vibe today” — most actors feel that way at one time or another — his consistently high-quality work is another reason he earned the “Performer of the Year” accolade. He explained that he tries not to over-think his pre-shoot prep.
“I don’t really have a specific ritual. I try to work out beforehand so I have those endorphins running through my body,” he said. “And [last year] I went cold sober. It was interfering too much with my life and how I want to handle myself, mentally and physically. Going out and partying — I never let it interfere with a shoot, but it was getting to the point where it could. It was definitely interfering with my fitness.”
“Do you mean completely sober?” I ask. “From everything?”
“Completely sober.”
“It seems like this past year, during the pandemic, a lot of people did that kind of reassessment,” I reply.
“Yeah. I don’t think I ever had a problem, but habits were being created. I was using drugs and alcohol to fix my boredom. And eventually I thought, ‘This is going down a road I probably shouldn’t be going down. Let’s nip this in the bud.’ I’ve seen friends and other people take a similar route and I thought, ‘Let’s not let that happen [to me].’”
It takes serious, dedicated inner work to recognize when a destructive pattern might be forming (“COVID really escalated all that, just being at home doing nothing,” he noted).
I wonder aloud if I’m taking a leap in assuming that Colle is somebody who has so much creative energy swirling around that his brain needs to be intently focused on something. People like that don’t do well with boredom; it’s not an uncommon effect among performers.
“I’m definitely not an artist, so I wouldn’t say I’m creative in that sense, but I agree with you that I definitely need to be doing something,” he replies. “I feel weird if I’m not doing anything. Having something to do, whether it’s riding, or skydiving, or managing different kinds of work, like OnlyFans [admin] and working with analytics and numbers. I like the stimulation.”
“Does that answer the question?” he asks, ever-mindful.
“Yes. One of the reasons I brought it up was because the last time we were on set together, we were looking for a place to safely park the trailer where you lived,” I tell him. “At the time, you talked about living a minimalist lifestyle. Is that something you still follow or has it evolved?”
“I still stick with all that. I really enjoy it,” he revealed. “I like consolidation and efficiency and having my entire life in one box that I can move around [easily]. It just makes sense and feels good not to have the weight of things on your shoulders. That mental freedom of being able to say, ‘You know what? I don’t like this [situation] so much. I’m gonna go somewhere else’ and not have to deal with contracts and moving shit. I can literally, in an hour, just pick up and go.”
How does he resist the temptation to put down roots and collect things and have a closet full of clothes? “I don’t feel it,” he tells me.
“My mind is wired in the opposite direction of all that,” Colle notes. “I look at my closet and think, ‘Goddammit, I wish I could get rid of some of this stuff!’ But I can’t, because I need to have some kind of a variety in my wardrobe for work. I literally made a post a couple of days ago for Instagram because the director said, ‘All right, we need bright colors and this-and-that.’ I made the video and showed my closet, which is a tiny little thing, and said, ‘You either have grey or black. Choose wisely.’ If I didn’t have to have a variety for work —”
“Grey or black,” I quip.
Colle laughs. “Some people have the desire to collect,” he states. “I have a desire to not have as much. It feels good to just get rid of shit.”
He explains that he grew into the minimalist mindset when he was discharged from the military after it was discovered he’d been shooting gay porn for Corbin Fisher.
“I got my first apartment and just went big. I got a two-bedroom to myself in Chicago,” he recalls. “Over time, I thought, ‘I don’t need this.’ Within the same complex, I moved to a smaller apartment and within a year, I [thought] ‘I don’t need all this space.’ So I moved into the smallest unit they had and I needed to get rid of stuff to fit in there. And I realized, ‘Ooh, it feels good to get rid of shit.’ So I got rid of more, and a little bit more. Then I [figured out] that I wanted to move to California, but also be mobile and have the ability to hop around. So I bought a trailer and got rid of more stuff and not even a year later, I downsized again to the trailer that I’m in now. I’m happy with that size; I don’t think I’d go any smaller. Just being able to fit everything I need in here, and only the stuff that’s needed, is perfect.”
Colle, who has lately been racing bikes with an eye towards the professional circuit, happily explains that when it’s time to travel — an activity that has been largely curtailed by COVID over the past year, to his dismay — he simply loads his bike into the bed of his truck and hitches up his trailer and hits the road. It’s a neatly efficient system that provides a crucial sense of agency.
Colle has been a performer for about eight years, but his prominence and influence skyrocketed in 2019 and ’20 — and shows no signs of slowing down in ’21 — so I ask him how he’s grown and changed, particularly as a male performer who is blazing a new trail for his colleagues.
“From an evolutionary standpoint, I feel like it’s mostly been about my sexuality,” he shares. “Porn really gave me an outlet to express my sexuality and explore comfortably without worrying about being judged or self-conscious about it. I’ve had somewhere to go to explore. And the people around me want to explore it, too, or they’re cool with it and don’t judge me or whatever. I’ve been able to open up and be okay with who I am. That all happened pretty quickly — finding new things that I like with different people.”
“As you mentioned before, people like Lance Hart and Wolf Hudson were doing this first and they caught the brunt of [criticism],” he says. “I never really had people give me shit for this. The only shit I get is [from] female performers not wanting to work with me. It is what it is. The fans who give me pushback are very, very minimal. On the straight side, it’s the agents and directors who give you crap. On the gay side, the fans are very, very opinionated and aggressive but there has been a very small number who have been hateful about it. It’s not a big deal [to them]. Most people are like that.”
“Well, to see this shift in attitude in such a short time is really amazing,” I note.
“That’s a big piece of it. It’s happening so quickly,” he says. “People always want to say, ‘Isn’t is frustrating that you’re having trouble with this?’ And I keep saying, ‘Well, yeah, but it’s changing really fast!’ It’s working out pretty well and I can’t be mad at it.”
We discuss common assumptions often made about him and his experience in the adult industry. Colle admits to being puzzled about “needing to categorize.”
“You know, I’m [just] a male performer,” he states matter-of-factly. Nevertheless, he is aware of his particular spotlight.
“When you’re doing this [job], you feel like you can’t give anybody a reason not to hire you, other than the obvious reasons why they wouldn’t,” notes Colle. “It forces you to always be on your toes. You always have to have a really good reputation because if you just fuck up once, they’re never going to hire you again — or anyone like you. It’s a lot to have to think about, but I’m grateful for that because it’s forced me to be the best that I can be.”
I wonder if he ponders the impact of his work.
“On my fans?” he asks.
“Your fans, or the industry.”
“From what I’ve noticed, for the most part, I think the majority of fans don’t know all of the complications from the industry that you and I know about, or know what I’m trying to do,” he says with customary humility. “They just watch one of my videos and jerk off and think, ‘Hey, I like that dude’ and that’s pretty cool. But I appreciate you asking these questions. Let’s get this information out there.”
