CYBERSPACE—Today is Trenton Ducati’s birthday, and together with business partner Anthony Duran, he’s given himself a heck of a present: the brand-new membership site NastyDaddy.com. The two men both talked with AVN today about their new project, and how they came to work together.
Ducati, a well-known adult star, went into business with director/photographer Duran a couple years ago. “We co-own Ducati Studios, which is a production company, and Ducati Studios owns GentlemensCloset.com and NastyDaddy.com now, so we have two sites,” Ducati said.
He elaborated, “Basically what we have is one website that is fetish-based, and we really listen to our customers and basically shoot what they tell us they’re into. And NastyDaddy is completely the opposite—it’s sex-driven, all about sex, men having sex, bareback.”
Duran added, “We work together on production, casting—we do it all in house. We definitely co-direct. Trenton has the crazy ideas and I make it happen.”
In the business for more than six years, Ducati did his first shoot on a big Titan Media title: Incubus, which was released in 2011. Since then his résumé has grown to include movies shot by just about every major adult gay studio. He says modestly, “I’m lucky, I think.”
Duran, on the other hand, has “been shooting for 20 years. I started with Catalina, as a cameraman. And I directed for them for eight years under the name Peter Romero. And then I started directing for Falcon for three years—I directed the Jocks line. I was mainly a still photographer, so I freelanced throughout the industry, working for all the studios.”
Their joint venture started a couple years ago, Ducati explained. “We bought GentlemensCloset.com, which was already a successful fetish site, from Fernando, who was the previous owner. I was a model for the site, which is how that happened. ... Anthony and I became partners and we went 50/50 on the site. And then GentlemensCloset became more successful than it already was, thank god.”
Next they set their sights on a genre that, coincidentally, has been red-hot of late.
“Anthony had a site called NastyDaddy years ago,” Ducati said. “It had wonderful videos and photos from the past, and we started shooting current content and merged it together and built a really killer, user-friendly site, so it’s easy for people to access.”
Duran explained, “I started NastyDaddy six years ago by myself, and I started shooting daddies because that’s what got me going, and now all of a sudden they’re trending. We keep hearing that in the industry. Daddies are trending. OK, we have a whole shitload of daddies.”
Asked whether the focus will be on older men or on daddy/twink match-ups, Ducati said, “The idea is going to be a combo [of daddies and twinks].” He even threw out the possibility of “daddy boys”—two young guys doing daddy-flavored scenarios.
Duran concurred: “It’ll definitely be a combo of whatever we’re feeling that week. The daddy might want to be with a younger guy, or with a same-aged guy.”
As for the performers they’re casting, Ducati said, “We’re really trying to find quality guys who fit our ideas—they’re bearded, or they’re a little older. And we also have Angelo Marconi. He’s a really famous Falcon superstar.”
He paused, savoring the revelation: “He did his first bareback scenes for us. So that’s a big story. They were really amazing scenes.”
Ducati added, “That’s already on the site right now. And I myself have some things that will be coming up soon. I will be doing bareback scenes exclusively for NastyDaddy.com.”
Duran mentioned another hot bit of news: the debut of brand-new performer Hoyt Walker, “who has not even shot a video” but has the NastyDaddy look—beard, piercings, ink. “He’s all tattooed and rough-looking, but he really takes care of his appearance. He really cares about the way he looks,” Duran said, adding that he “takes care of himself, he works out every day, he eats right, he’s drug-free, he looks great.” That scene will be going up in the next couple of weeks.
As a team, these men are truly a two-man show. “We’re a great match,” Ducati said. “And the reason we’re a good company, I feel, is most of the production is done in house and we’ve learned how to do most aspects of it, from photography, videography, editing, photo editing, casting, directing, newsletters, the whole thing. We do have a great graphics guy that I have to mention. His name is Mike. He’s amazing and he’s really helped us. Before Mike I was literally YouTubing how to blend pictures together for our site. So we’d stay up all night doing that. But our success comes from being in house, I believe.”
He added, “We have some people who are helping us. Kink.com is a partner of ours, basically. You’ll notice their banner on the bottom [of the home page]. ... They’re helping us with the email newsletter—they have a large mailer that goes out. So they’ve been really good to us.”
In turn, Ducati Studios is looking to be good to the people who work for them. Duran said, “We feel that if you come to shoot with us, work with us, you’re part of the family, you’re part of the team. We try to respect everyone and treat everyone with respect.”
Also a high priority for both men is listening to fans, which was vital in their first venture. “GentlemensCloset is built by our members because we listen to them,” Ducati said. In particular, the outfits, the look and the feel has been driven by fans. “Literally, we have had one of our strongest supporters fly here to the studio. ... He came from Florida, was on set, brought the outfits—in fact, he wanted a model to be in it and he flew that model in from Europe.”
Duran said they already have gleaned some insight about what NastyDaddy fans will want. “Customers on Twitter really let us know what they want. ‘We want guys in suits, we want guys with sheer socks.’ Some of the fans on NastyDaddy don’t want the story. They just want the setup, the look of the video, to be the story, whether it was shot in a garage or with workmen, blue-collar guys, truckers. They’d rather have the look be the story instead of a bunch of b-roll. I’m not knocking b-roll—I love it—but ...”
Asked about how he likes working on the other side of the camera, Ducati said, “I am so thankful that the transition from performer to business owner is going so well. We have been working really, really hard to make this happen and it was always my goal to make the transition and stay within the industry, and it’s been really good to me. I like the creative side ... I’m really into it; I’m kinda tech-y.”
Duran underlines that statement with an anecdote: “When Trenton approached me about working together ... I was kind of wary about pairing with an adult performer because they don’t really like to do the work—they like to be in front of the camera. I worked with a couple of other ones ... they would just sit there and tweet and do nothing and take selfies while I was doing all the work. On our first day on a shoot, I literally just left the room and Trenton had set up the lights ... And I was, like, ‘Thank god. This guy is hungry.’ He even had questions—‘Why is this exposure dark, and how do I fix that?’ He was so in there. And then I left the room again to get some water, go to the bathroom after the shoot was over, and all the equipment was down and wrapped up. So I knew it was a good match.”
Ducati laughed, “I’m pretty over the top with business and creating stuff, and Anthony is a little more mellow. The combination has been really good, I think, because I have about nine million ideas a day and it’s good to have a balancing act.”
“And I do yoga while he’s doing his nine million,” Duran joked.
Find the new site from Ducati Studios at NastyDaddy.com. And follow Ducati and both studios on Twitter: @NastyDad, @GentlemensClost and @TrentonDucati.
