NEW YORK — This week, Jake Jaxson released RoadStrip, an original reality series, on his CockyBoys.com adult entertainment site. Jaxson cautions those who might dismiss it as just another excuse for sex.
"The sex is how we pay to do the rest of it," he says. "What I really wanted to capture is the outrageousness of Max and Jake."
Max Ryder and Jake Bass, known as JAX by their fans, are two charismatic gogo boys turned porn stars whose friendship is by turns sweet, vicious and hilarious. According to Jaxson, it's the humor, as much as the sex, that he was eager to record.
"Max and Jake are the new generation of gay men — guys who come of age with Grindr and Modern Family and marriage equality. There's a confidence in their sexuality and sense of self that blew me away, and it was something that, as a filmmaker, I really wanted to show. So I put them on an RV with some cameramen and a lot of Red Bull and let them go at it for a few months."
What he got back he edited into RoadStrip, a reality series that follows the two CockyBoys as they cross the country looking for R&R and sex.
This isn't the first time that Jaxson has used his lens to move beyond sex; last fall he launched The Haunting, a gay porn trilogy now being adapted into a novel and screened at gay film festivals later this year.
RoadStrip follows Max and Jake in the weeks following Project GoGo Boy.
While the series concept isn't any less of a set up than other mainstream reality shows, the result aims to show a more frank side of gay life than what makes it to television.
"We showed a reel at more than one network," Jaxson says, "and they were interested." The financials offered couldn't compete with what Jaxson could do on his own site and with a lot less freedom, however.
"Even with the less traditional networks, people get awkward when dealing with gay sexuality,” he adds. "I would rather enjoy complete and total freedom to construct entertaining stories and non-judgmental depictions of gay sex. On top of that, my web platform and that of my producing partner studios provide a direct to consumer viewership that many niche market cable networks would envy.”
Perhaps it helps that Jaxson's own sexuality is a bit unconventional. He and his two lovers were profiled in a NY Mag feature. As the piece reveals, Jaxson is the fulcrum of a "throuple" who doesn't see a problem in thinking beyond traditional sexuality.
"To be honest, I think that Internet porn has had a really important effect on the generation of gay men that's coming out now. It's given them a more nuanced sense of sexuality than I had at that age and they are less conflicted. These are guys who have known what they want — and have known how to get it — for a long time."
