Chris Roma, founder and CEO of San Francisco’s Pantheon Productions, launched a website called HotOlderMale.com in 2002 “as a hobby, and also for political reasons, to say that guys over forty are sexy. I didn’t see many mature men on gay sites or in gay movies.”
The 34-year-old massage therapist had been teased by his young friends at New York University for preferringolder men. “But I found San Francisco more down-to-earth and relaxed, not as ageist. My first models were acquaintances from the gym or around town. Whatever subscription money the website brought in, I was putting back into hiring models, site improvement, and especially buying photographic equipment. I shot most of the photo sets, learning as I went. My first movies were videos of solos and a few couples, for the site.”
In 2004, “having gotten comfortable with the movie thing,” he decided to make a DVD for sale. ”I really didn’t know what I was getting into. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a DVD-replicating company that will accept a job pressing erotic stuff, even these days. And I had to negotiate with someone to print up the boxes, all of that. The first movie was the hardest. After that it got a lot easier.”
At last he managed to get product in hand, Real Men Volume I, scenes of over-40s couples and threeways, which sold well over his website, although by the time it came out in 2004, he had lucked into a very satisfactory distribution deal with The French Connection. (Pantheon is now seeking international distribution.)
“The first Pantheon movies were shot in friends' homes, but I started to rent other locations including space from Raging Stallion Studios, where Kent Taylor and his associates have been so friendly and helpful. I wish I had known them earlier, to show me the ropes that I went through such a nightmare learning!”
He was slow to begin videoing his own older/ younger fantasies for three reasons. “One, I enjoyed being surrounded by the older models. Two, the HotOlderMale site was associated with older guys and I didn’t know if the market would go for something different. Third, I had no source of the younger models. I’d also had some experience with younger guys flaking out.”
In 2005 he finally made Daddy Hunt and was amazed by how many younger men wrote in wanting to model. “In the Daddy Hunt movies I show older and younger men in all sorts of situations, pick-ups (with both older and younger men the aggressors), relationships, sex clubs, and even scenes that allude to hustlers. I want to break the negative stereotypes that in younger/ older relationships the older men are predators and the younger men are victims.”
A second, principally personals website, DaddyHunt.com, has over 40,000 members, “younger guys looking for daddies, daddies for younger guys, and daddies for daddies. My new line, Real Couples, features interviews and sex scenes with couples including mixed ages and races, eroticizing relationship sex. It's hot to watch a real couple going at it.”
The future? “I’m watching the development of HDTV. I probably won’t go for it until the market is established enough to justify the expense. I plan to expand and enrich the DaddyHunt site with community services like apartment and job-hunting ads, as well as stories and articles.
"Pantheon produces about ten titles yearly, each personally handled. I direct them all, and shoot ninety-five percent of the stills. I try to play match-maker with the models, to make sure there’s some interest and chemistry. I shoot with two or three cameras to cover all angles so that the models can relax and go with the flow and not worry about whether they’re in good positions for visibility. I direct the cameramen more than the models. When I do direct the models, it's often to tell them to make noise, to express what they’re feeling. If the guys are having sex with someone they really want to do it with, I usually don't need to tell them how to do it. I want to capture sex that is spontaneous and real. I also have a superb editor (and head cameraman), Javier Romero.”
Roma really believes in his work. “I met my partner of two years, Armistead Maupin, on our personals site, so I know there's at least one happy couple out there as a result of the sites."
Ordering Info: Distributed by The French Connection, 800-962-0992; nick@frenchconnxxx.com; retail: 800-837-6007; 415-845-0110; PantheonMen.com.
