NEW YORK, NY — Can porn ever be perceived as more than overacting and contrived plots to the general public? It must if it's going to survive in today's marketplace, according to Jake Jaxson, an Emmy Award winning producer and a gay filmmaker who stumbled into the medium a few years ago. Jaxson is owner and director of New York based CockyBoys.com, an adult film studio that recently made international headlines after one of its stars was linked to the Royal Ballet.
"Adult films always seemed stale and somewhat repetitive to me," says Jaxson, "I decided early on that if I was going to film sex, I wanted to work with performers who had that ‘it’ factor and shoot them in beautifully creative and unique ways that blur the lines of sex and entertainment."
The result is RoadStrip, an explicit feature film that plays out like a reality series. This weekend, RoadStrip will have its world premiere at Philadelphia's QFest film festival, one of the leading LGBT film festivals in the world and a launching pad for many of Queer cinema's most noted films.
RoadStrip centers around the real-life love-hate friendship of Max Ryder and Jake Bass, two adult film actors who emerged as gay celebrities and bonafide porn stars after appearing in Project GoGoBoy, one of the most commercially successful and awarded releases of 2012.
After Project GogoBoy, Jaxson wanted to do a film that showed the engaging dynamic between Max and Jake. Rather than give the boys another grueling project, Jaxson gave them a vacation — of sorts. He rented an RV, put them in the front seats and filmed RoadStrip, a gay road trip across the United States that contains a steady stream of hook-ups along the way.
RoadStrip debuted online exclusively at CockyBoys in May and quickly became a hit while garnering much attention on mainstream gay blogs where it caught the eye of Erik Schut, a special programmer for QFest who immediately noticed something different.
"It heralds an entirely new genre in gay filmmaking," says Schut. "[RoadStrip] creatively fuses gay pornography along with experimental art, cinema verite and raunchy reality."
In addition to working with QFest, Schut has been managing director of TLAgay.com, a 30 year-old independent film distribution company and online DVD retailer based in Philadelphia. He calls RoadStrip "one of the season’s most visually arresting and exciting experiences."
Bradford Mathews of the leading adult blog Fleshbot goes even further. “CockyBoys” he recently wrote, is "revolutionizing the way we watch porn."
Perhaps that’s because Jaxson’s formula owes more to the art house than it does to the San Fernando Valley.
He’s not alone. In the past few years, filmmakers like Travis Mathews have been using sex to talk frankly about gay men's lives. But where Mathews is introspective, RoadStrip is loud and brash. Part of the art of Jaxson’s formula in RoadStrip is it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
“I love reality TV,” Jaxson confesses. “But I love Chelsea Girls too. I think Warhol managed to capture a time just by pointing a camera at interesting people. That’s what I’m hoping to do as well.”
But if Jaxson's focus is on filmmaking and the models, the industry is increasingly focused on the director himself. In the last few months Jaxson has swept multiple industry awards shows, taking home both Best Director and Movie of the Year.
This summer, as RoadStrip hits the festival circuit so does Jaxson, with Max and Jake in tow. This weekend they'll kick off at QFest, for the film's premiere and after party where they’ll meet fans, promote the film and maybe let Jaxson capture more of the gay zeitgeist for which he is becoming known.
“There’s another sexual revolution happening,” he says. “And I want to be on the front lines with a camera.”
