Less than four months after Noir Male opened its doors in the summer of 2018, a new performer named Dillon Diaz filmed a trio of scenes for the label—and the experience made an impression on more than just his new fans.
“We had a big beautiful house, there was a lighting director, a camera director, there was just tons of people. Chi Chi (LaRue) was doing makeup, there was wardrobe…it was a lot going on,” recalls Diaz of the experience. “It felt like a big budget movie—I felt like I became a Hollywood actor.”
For all intents, he did—and little did Diaz know at the time how important that initial experience would prove to be, years later helping shape the trajectory of his career.
A New Opportunity
Four months after his debut, he was named the studio’s Man of the Month in April of 2019. Diaz went on to regularly perform for Noir Male as his star grew, performing in more than 15 scenes for the label (and counting)—including a role in its first-ever feature (Sin City), which earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at this year’s GayVN Awards (one of eight total nods he received in combination with the AVN Awards).
Now Diaz is set to take another huge step as parent company Mile High Media recently announced that he would be taking on some writing and directing duties for Noir Male—and also become the label’s first ever brand ambassador.
“At the beginning of 2020 when we were all on lockdown and you saw the rise of cancel culture—where lots of performers, directors and studios were being called out on their racism—Noir Male decided to have a roundtable with some of their regulars, the guys who have been doing scenes with them for a while, to discuss how we could make things better,” Diaz says. “They wanted to talk about the experiences that we’ve had at Noir Male, what our criticism was, how we could make meaningful change.”
Diaz says that one of the ideas from Mile High Media VP Jon Blitt was having the performers do guest directing spots once Noir Male went back into production. The performer was at once excited and scared.
“I was nervous,” recalls Diaz. “I had no education or experience in directing other than seeing what people do when I’m performing, but I felt like this was a good opportunity and I should take advantage of it. I felt that if I wanted to see more directors that looked like me, I had to go ahead and do it myself and not wait for someone else to. And if I wanted writing that reflected who I am or what I appreciate or find sexy, that I have to go ahead and write it myself instead of waiting for someone else to do it. So I took the opportunity that Jon presented and ran with it.”
For the studio’s last filming cycle in December, Diaz wrote two scenes and directed one of them (also appearing in one of the scenes that he wrote).
“I didn’t have any training and education in any of that, so it was very scary, but I was working alongside people that were not going to let me fail,” Diaz says. “It’s kind of the best situation to come into—our house director Ricky Greenwood was there to supervise and make sure that I wasn’t making any huge mistakes, and he gave me some great advice.”
But when he found himself behind the camera with no training, it took Diaz a moment to overcome his fears and insecurities.
“At first, I was a little bit timid about it. These guys have been doing this for years and do beautiful work, and here I am on my first project. Who I am to tell them what I want or what to do? So when I first started, I was a little bit intimidated, like, ‘They have the script, let them do it!’” Diaz laughs. “Then I realized what my place was. And now that I’ve done one and I’ve worked with these guys, I feel like I’ll get more and more comfortable asking for what I want. That’s part of the job—the camera guy and the lighting guy, they’re waiting for me to tell them what to do, so I have to grow into that position really quickly and tell them what to do.”
Finding His Voice
Diaz quickly learned the ropes—and also relied on his valuable experience in front of the camera to help guide his decision making.
“As a performer, I’m more of a collaborator—I walk in and say, ‘How about we try this?’ or ‘Maybe I can say this?’ As a director, you have to have a very clear vision of what you want, you have to present it to your team, and you have to get them on board with it. You have to get them working toward that exact vision. And if there’s a problem or the vision is changing and you have to compromise something, that’s okay,” Diaz says. “So right then and there, I had a to rely on my collaborate personality and say ‘This is what I want,’ and just make it happen. It went really well. I enjoyed the process and I definitely want to do it again. It was a great opportunity to grow, and I learned a lot.”
And he’ll get his chance—Diaz notes he will be involved with another round of writing and directing in March, still working on individual scenes before he hopefully graduates to a bigger project like a feature.
“I’m a fast learner. I already got it by the second script. Then we cast our guys—we had the dates and location set. I was working with Nick Fitt, who is the production manager for them, and we spoke about the props we needed, what wardrobe we needed,” Diaz says. “And then when everyone arrived, we started going through the script.”
Diaz also had to work through a bump in the road as a director for his scene called “The Gayborhood” starring Zario Travezz and August Alexander.
“We had someone else lined up to play the role that Zario was in, but they had to cancel at the last minute. Zario did a great job. He came in, he had his script down and delivered it. We read through it and I gave him pointers, notes and direction on how I wanted it to be said and how I wanted to see the scene progress—where there should be a little bit of humor, and where there should be a little bit of coyness. They took it and made it their own. And it was a lot of fun to watch the process from that end of it,” said Diaz, who relished his time working with the cast.
“That was the part that I was looking forward to the most and the part that I enjoyed the most—working with the actors, maybe because I’m a performer as well. I liked being able to sit with them and give them ideas about how to make the characters real, and then watch them add their own flair, their own personality to make it comfortable for them. That was the best part of it.”
Word Play
Diaz also embraces the opportunity for writing, and learned from the feedback he received from Blitt and Greenwood on his first few scripts.
“Writing is definitely something that comes natural to me. I’ve done that for a while—not professionally, but if I had to choose one way to communicate with people, it would be through writing. I’ve always known how to get my message across using that medium, so that wasn’t necessarily difficult for me,” he says. “I looked at a couple of the scripts that I was given back, and I was like, ‘Okay, you tear it apart, you figure it out and you put it back together.’ I had actually written a few scripts before this; they were produced at Noir Male, and that was like a learning experience.”
So when Diaz started to write his scenes for the filming cycle in December, he had an idea of how the scenes should progress.
“There should be a little bit of a challenge—you don’t just jump right in. Somebody’s got to put up a little bit of a fight,” he laughs. “So because I had a little bit more experience with the writing part, it didn’t feel weird to me.”
Diaz notes that he draws on various inspirations when he writes, including his own experiences and tastes. He frequently asks Blitt and others at the studio what resonates with the fans, then tries to combine all of those aspects and make it into one perfect scene.
“For me, what I really want to do is celebrate the sexuality of these characters, these men of color. I want to help out the young me—the little kid in me who didn’t get to see it when he was coming of age and watching porn. I want to make sure that these characters are comfortable with their sexuality, they are proud of who they were, and they are happy. They are well-adjusted, enjoying their bodies and enjoying the bodies of other guys,” Diaz says.
“So that immediately eliminated anything DL. I wanted there to be no hiding or shame with their sexuality. It was just out there and they were happy to be doing what they were doing. And I also wanted to make sure that I wasn’t playing into any of the stereotypes.”
For Diaz, that means even simple things like conveying that the characters in the scene own property and have beautiful homes. In the first scene he directed, Diaz casts Travezz as a house flipper.
“At some point he’s going to sell it and make a profit. So I wanted everything to be on a certain level. I feel like there’s a lot of porn where there’s a lot of stereotypes. Sometimes the little things that seem irrelevant are still kind of sexy, and sometimes they’re offensive. I like the whole idea of the plumber coming in, fixing the pipes and they end up having sex. That stuff is still hot. I think there’s a place for that, but I think there’s a way to do it where we’re not playing to stereotypes,” Diaz says.
“I didn’t want to draw attention to their race with their backgrounds, I just wanted them to live their life. And I wanted you to see that they had happy lives, that they were successful with their lives and that they enjoyed sexuality. I think a lot of the times we make the mistake of actually drawing attention to the characters’ race…you don’t have to do that. You can see that that is a person of color; you don’t have to say that this person of color is about to ‘fuck this little white boy.’ It’s obvious. Let’s just take them through their story of how they got to that place and watch what they do.”
As he speaks those thoughts out loud, Diaz comes to a realization.
“I guess I didn’t get to see that as a kid. And I think when you’re young—and I still do it—you kind of spend a lot of time in your head. You spend a lot of time thinking about things and internalizing things, and they start to make an impact and you don’t really realize it. But little tiny things make a very big impact. And as an adult, you have a chance to analyze that. Maybe you’ve been through some therapy, maybe you figured things out as you’ve gone along. You realize that a lot of the stuff that you thought you figured out when you were a kid might not really be real.”
And that has given Diaz a purpose beyond just learning the technical aspects of working behind the scenes.
“It’s just important for me to send out a message or provide an image that was different than what I got, make these kids today watching porn feel okay about themselves. And I definitely hope that really started long before me, because if you look at a lot of the kids today, they’re a lot more open-minded about sexuality. There’s a lot more fluidity in their sexuality—like gay, bi, trans…it’s not as much an issue to them as it was to the older generation,” he says. “So I definitely feel like there’s a change that’s happening, and that I want to be a part of that…I want to do my part to push it forward.”
Agent of Change
And with this new opportunity sparking a fire in him, Diaz will get the chance to do that.
“I want to spend some time getting to know the business from the other side of the camera. I want to do more writing, I want to do more directing. I talked to Jon about wanting to be a PA (production assistant), so I can just be on set and see how things work and figure out how all these moving pieces fit together. Because like I said, in this last phase of directing that I did, there was nothing to be lost—I was there with another director who kept me on track, made sure everything was going the way that it was supposed to,” he says.
“I would love to get to the point one day where I don’t have the training wheels, I’m just doing it myself. I don’t expect to perform forever. I haven’t had any thoughts of leaving yet, but I don’t expect to be able to do it forever. And if I would like to be able to stay in the industry, I maybe would like to be able to transition into writing and directing full time.”
Diaz’s work as a Noir Male brand ambassador will help. His first order of business is learning different ways of promoting the scene he directed, and working on different initiatives with the studio and fans (like his “Twitter Takeover” of the Noir Male account on Feb. 3).
“We want to make it really interactive. We want people to be able to get involved and get excited and be heard. I want to take some of the ideas from the fans and the members in terms of directing scenes. Maybe I can get an idea from them that they want to see, and then I can turn that into a script. Maybe I can get an idea of who they would like to see together, and try to make that work,” Diaz says. “We want people to feel like they’re involved and they’re being heard, and that we’re making changes with their input in mind.”
And Diaz won’t be the only one doing it: He notes that other performers will assume guest directing spots and the role of brand ambassador.
“It’s going to be a collaborative effort. We want a lot of guys to be involved. I want to see the input from other guys, and I can’t wait to see what they’re able to do as well.”
Diaz is thankful for the opportunity from Mile High, one that brought him out of his own comfort zone.
“I think it’s great what they’re doing. I think for a little while I also had my head buried in the sand. Looking at Noir Male, I would just come in, do my job and go home. And I realize a lot of the people I was booked with were men of color, and I was like, ‘This is great! It’s nice to see other men of color.’ But for some reason, I wasn’t looking above the surface and seeing that the only color at Noir Male was in front of the camera. None of the people writing or directing or anybody on any of the teams was a person of color. And I realized, ‘Wait. You know what? That is a problem,” laughs Diaz. “I think they also realized that that was a problem, and so they started taking steps to correct that.”
And that’s when the company called the roundtable, prompting Diaz to become part of that change.
“They were like, ‘We want to make it better, we want to live up to the expectations of the people who were excited about this from the beginning, and we want to get some of the people back that we’ve lost.’ And it was great, because it was at a time when everybody was saying ‘Black Lives Matter, blah blah blah,’ but not everybody was putting their money where their mouth was. Not everybody was actually making changes, and Mile High decided that they wanted to actually follow through. It was really nice to be part of the discussion, to have your ideas heard, to watch them grow and for them to say, ‘Here is what we want you to do, we trust you to do this.’ Everyone was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you do?!’ Alight, well if you trust me, then I have to do a good job, because I don’t want to lose your trust,” Diaz says.
“It’s been a really good to see them actually support us with a project—and support each other through this strange time. I feel like a lot of the studios are starting to book more men of color, and I think that’s a great thing in and of itself—just the exposure. I’m glad to see more men of color working with studios that they might not have worked with before. But in some ways, it doesn’t feel completely genuine to me; it almost feels strategic. And with Noir Male and Mile High, it doesn’t feel as strategic. They’re not just trying to appease anybody. It feels like they realize that there’s a problem and they’re trying to correct the problem—and that’s great to be a part of.”
