The twins entry counts as one, the two entries with couples count as two apiece. I am offering a ranked Top 40, and the rest are in alphabetical order - while I felt confident justifying my Top 10, 20 and 40, beyond that, deciding who is #84 vs. It's not science, so please don't flunk me. That said, I've also gone out of my way to give props to guys working today who I think have already made enough of a mark to warrant inclusion. The upper part of the list is top-heavy with classic performers, and I think that is as it should be this is not a snapshot of who's hot at the moment, but an attempt to catalogue the men who've made the industry over the past 50 years.
In choosing which guys to feature and where to feature them, I'm using my own taste my impressions as a former gay-porn industry professional (I worked for Torso, Honcho, Inches, Playguy, Mandate) as to each actor's overall impact during his career each performer's observable longevity as an icon and each performer's groundbreaking status, if any.
Image at R: Matthew Rush (Image via MySpace)
With all of that out of the way, what follows is my highly subjective list of “History's 250 Greatest Gay-Porn Stars.” (Note the hyphen, because I have no way of knowing which of these guys were/are gay-for-pay stars, I just know I've seen them in at least one dirty movie targeted to gay men.) The clone and only Al Parker (GIF via GIPHY)
Perhaps those two observations help to explain why we take our porn so very seriously, why we could probably talk for hours about specific scenes that opened our eyes to new activities of which we'd previously never dreamed, and why we are so madly in love with certain familiar faces (and other parts) who seemed to teach us how to do “it” and gave us permission to stop worrying our parents would find out so we could simply enjoy being pigs - at least on occasion. Two: For gay men, with no societal instruction on what happens when two guys fall in love or even just lust, pornography was for decades the primary means by which we could find those answers. We can sometimes treat our partners like crap while still holding our heads up high, yet can wax nostalgic about unbelievably satisfying sexual encounters, revering them as if they were religious experiences. But if that's true, then men definitely mythologize it too much for our own good.
One: Generally speaking, it's thought that women probably emotionalize sex a bit too much for their own good. It's unfortunate that Netflix canceled this underrated show after just two seasons.Gay-listers (Images via respective studios)
The joy of the series is in the updated casting, DeWanda Wise's Nola beams with wisdom, fear, artistic knowledge, and carnal desire, while the men and women in her life are fleshed out and… fleshed out, allowing the many sex scenes to play to the senses while reaching for something deeper. Lee's signature, syncopated style-bright colors, up-close-and-personal confessionals, jolts of pop music and album art, Bruce Hornsby's melancholy piano filling the gaps-is intact, tracking Nola through the gentrifying brownstone labyrinth of Fort Greene. But who is she? Spike Lee made his directorial debut with 1986's She's Gotta Have It, and 30 years later, expands the character study into his first TV series, a rhythmic exploration of sex, Brooklyn, and Black life. Nola Darling is an artist, an activist, a Brooklynite, and a sex-positive polyamorous pansexual with three emotionally volatile boyfriends.
Campion's direction is dangerously erotic, while Benedict Cumberbatch gives one of his all-time great performances as a man so uncomfortable in his own skin he inflicts his pain upon others.
He is similarly inclined to do that to her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who arrives at the ranch on summer holiday from college studies, but instead decides to take him under his wing, figuring he can mold him into the kind of man he thinks is worth being. He worships a rider named Bronco Henry and calls his softer brother George (Jesse Plemons) "fatso." When George marries a widowed innkeeper (Kirsten Dunst), Phil makes it his mission to mentally torture her. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Phil Burbank, a rancher who prides himself on the dirt under his fingernails and his ability to live with as few amenities as possible. The Piano director Jane Campion's return to feature filmmaking after more than a decade away is an absolute triumph, a chilling exploration of a man driven to cruelty by the pursuit of a masculine ideal in the American West.