No one was more surprised than owner Kyle Majors when CockyBoys became a force with which to be reckoned on the adult Web. "It was supposed to be a hobby," he said sheepishly of the site known for discovering new talent with an "in-your-face" attitude.
Majors acquired CockyBoys two years ago from friend Derek Vinyard, a Falcon Studios exclusive for whom the hobby had lost its luster. A mainstream Hollywood insider, Majors immediately set about re-conceiving and redesigning the online destination, calling on friends to help him add back-end technology and content and find new models. From there, the part-time project "sort of mushroomed" and took on a life of its own, he said.
His primary goal remains to make CockyBoys erotic, fun and diversionary not only for the behind-the-scenes workers - all eight of whom are part time and became involved because Majors twisted their arms in a friendly way - and the models, but also for users. Apparently, the effort is working. Within the year since its re-launch, CockyBoys suddenly appeared on the gay adult industry's radar, seemingly out of nowhere.
It's nice when everyone seems to enjoy your hobby as much as you do, Majors admitted, but somewhere along the way it became a much bigger endeavor than he initially intended. He's not complaining, however. Running an enterprise that releases 104 hardcore scenes a year, many of which introduce the world to a hot, new boy seeking fame and fortune, leaves him smiling through the exhaustion, he said. He's proud of what CockyBoys has become, and he's proud of the underlying philosophy that puts models first.
That attitude, Majors said, is part of what rocketed CockyBoys to stardom. Over the summer, the site attracted attention when it signed to an exclusive contract megawatt DVD star and former Jet Set Men exclusive Jesse Santana. Santana, who said he left "traditional porn" for life on the Web because he thinks digital content is the wave of the future, was the first in what Majors hinted will be a succession of similar defections. Santana and his real-life boyfriend, Guy Parker, are only two of CockyBoys' exclusives, all of whom believe in what the company is doing and honestly enjoy working within what Majors described as a family.
In addition to Santana, Parker, Sebastian Young and brothers Bobby and Seth Clark, CockyBoys expects to announce several new exclusives within the next couple of months. Most of them sign on because they appreciate the CockyBoys way of doing business, Majors said. "We're very pro-model, and we want to make sure models are taken care of" financially, emotionally and physically, he noted. "We pay competitive Web rates, which in some cases is more than the DVD companies pay. You know, I really think migration to the Web will continue. I'm surprised more DVD companies haven't done it already."
Despite his reputation as "genuine" and talent-friendly, Majors describes himself as a bit of a slave driver. "I'm my biggest critic," he said, adding that he demands quality in everything CockyBoys does. It's often challenging to round up models, make the technology work and find time and energy for shooting, but Majors and the friends he jokingly says he shanghaied into service keep one guiding principle in mind: "We try to have fun with [what we're doing] and not take ourselves too seriously," he said. "At the end of the day, it's still porn. We're not curing cancer or solving global warming. If the day ever comes when it's pure drudgery, there are plenty of other things we can be doing."
Even in the midst of having fun, though, Majors and company take some aspects of the porn biz very seriously: Safe sex tops the priorities list at CockyBoys. "We're condoms-only," Majors said with resolve. "It's the responsible thing to do. A checkbook can have some coercive power, and with that power comes tremendous responsibility" to ensure performers are protected and the public is educated.
Is public education what all those "straight guys seduced" scenes for which CockyBoys is known are about? Not exactly, Majors said, chuckling. Those are more about fantasy fulfillment for both the audience and the performers. The "gay-for-pay" scenes that have attracted so much attention represent only a small portion of CockyBoys' content, and although users enjoy them, "the feedback we get is more about how viewers like the way we approach scenes than about ‘gay vs. straight,'" he said. However, he did admit "our two biggest scenes to date have been gay-for-pay guys bottoming." The scene in which RC Ryan topped notorious straight bad boy and mixed-martial-arts fighter Brodie Sinclair earlier this year remains the most popular scene in CockyBoys' library. By the way, he noted, "We don't make up the guys' sexual orientation. We present them as they present themselves."
As for the future, Majors said CockyBoys plans to expand its market to Europe. The company intends to host a European model search, to be judged by Santana, in October. "There's a whole market out there in Europe," Majors noted. "There are beautiful people over there, there's no two ways about it."
In addition, he said, he wants to find some way to make his hobby pay for itself. "I never imagined it would cost what it costs [to run a website]," he said with a laugh. "I could be collecting expensive sports cars or something."
GayVN
- By
