'Nuff Said

The Weird and Fucked up World of Treasure Island Media.

Fleet Week 2008

A couple of weeks ago was Fleet Week here in SF. Balmy evenings, legions of young sailors in their summer whites. Here's a link to one of Paul's descriptions of a Fleet Week from a few years ago.

Ian Jay

Ian Jay took a break to visit the Austin City Limits music festival.

Liam Cole interviewed by Susan Donam,

Liam Cole, director of BAD INFLUENCE, was recently interviewed by Susan Donam. The article was published in The Evidence Autumn 2008.


Treasure Island Media (T.I.M.)is the most controversial gay porn studio in the world. Based in San Francisco, its raw documentary style videos present promiscuous unprotected ("bareback") sex between men. This goes against the safe-sex message that has been targeted at the gay community for more than twenty years in the fight against HIV and AIDs.

T.I.M.’s stated aim is to "document male sexuality in the 21st century", but critics claim that titles such as Dawson’s 50 Load Weekend put actors at risk and encourage reckless behaviour in viewers.

Liam Cole recently joined T.I.M. as a director and his first video, Bad Influence, is scheduled for release in autumn. I met Liam in London, where excerpts from the video were recently screened at Elevator Gallery and The Whitechapel Gallery.

Susan Donam: How did you get into making porn?

Liam Cole: I wrote fanmail to Paul Morris [founder and owner of T.I.M.]. He said I should try making porn, so that afternoon I made a tape of a man jerking off and sent it over. He liked it.

SD: Morris is notoriously reclusive. Is it true that he never appears publicly in connection with the studio and there are no known photographs of him?

LC: As far as I know, yes. He’s a faceless villain.

SD: He also has something of a personal mythology built up around him; that T.I.M. is as much a cult as it is a porn studio [many of the models are tattooed with the studio’s logo, which Liam drew on his forehead, Charles Manson style, while I was photographing him] and that Morris is the charismatic maverick at its centre, attracting devotees to his sexual philosophy.




LC: That’s not a myth.

SD: Is Morris’s a philosophy of excess?

LC: What do you mean?

SD: For example, the standardisation of condom-use in 90’s gay porn established a limit on showing physical intimacy. Paul Morris defined T.I.M. by exceeding that limit, focusing on the exchange of semen in a way that was more extreme than anything even from pre-AIDs porn.

LC: I’m not sure I agree that T.I.M. is defined by that, but in any case the arguments made against bareback porn revolve around the idea of excessive risk, not excessive intimacy. The premise is that unconstrained sexual intimacy is of limited value and therefore not worth risking too much over. Paul raised the stakes on that by setting a higher value on sex. Then there’s the general attraction of risk itself. The "fuck it, I want this" effect. Why do people drive too fast? Or have affairs? Danger is fun.

SD: There is also a logic of excess, a pattern of exceeding precedents, evident in T.I.M. videos: Dawson’s 20 Load Weekend is necessarily followed by Dawson’s 50 Load Weekend and then Loaded in which the load count goes up to about 75.

LC: Right, more each time. But those videos show Dawson’s sexual appetite as it really is. It’s not a concept that Max [Sohl, the videos’ director] thought up and forced onto Dawson. There’s no script. Nobody says, "in this video you’re going to have to play the part of a man who wants 75 strangers to cum in his ass". Dawson is that man.

SD: It sounds like the antithesis of "gay-for-pay".

LC: Forget "gay-for-pay". Any man you see getting fucked in a T.I.M. video is there because he wants it, and there are plenty of others who contact us requesting to be gangbanged – more than we have time to shoot. These men have a compulsion. If there is a logic of excess, it comes from them.

SD: If that’s the case, why did you recently feel it necessary to send an 18 year old man to a hypnotherapist to encourage him to be fucked by a group of men on camera? That seems excessively manipulative, and deliberately so. A parody of the pornographer as exploiter.

LC: Tommy Haine already wanted to be fucked by a group on camera. The hypnotism was an extra little experiment, because he was interested in giving up control. The first time I shot with Tommy was a 1-on-1. Afterwards he told me that it had been too vanilla, and that he wanted to go further, be treated like an object, get used by a group. He asked for it.

SD: Did you grant that request?

LC: I shot more with him, yes. He’s been fucked a fair bit. I don’t know how much of it will be in Bad Influence because this video’s not a huge gangbang type of thing, and it’s still being edited. Alot gets shot, alot gets cut, and nothing gets released without Paul Morris’s approval.

Get Off Now - New Download to Own titles from TIM!!

Check out the following Treasure Island Media bareback, fuckvids now available for Download to Own at TreasureIslandMedia.com. Choose from individual scenes or download the movie in it's entirety. Head over to TreasureIslandMedia.com and check 'em out.

Animals
Anarcocks
Breeding Mike O'Neill
Bones for Cumpuppy
Plowed
Cumsloppy Buttholes
Eat it Hot
Fucking Crazy
Knocked Up
Plantin' Seed 1
Bruthaload 1
Bruthaload 2
Dawson's 20 Load Weekend
Deeper
Drunk on Cum 1
Drunk on Cum 2
Feed Me
Fuck Holes
Latin Loads 1
Sperm Bank
Swallow.

TIM at the Gay Erotic Expo NYC 2008

Max, Nate, Christian, Dick Damonson and Jack manned the Treasure Island Media booth at the Gay Erotic Expo in New York City last weekend.




The TIM booth.



Christian and Dick on stage.






Rabid TIM fans.












The infamous poster of Dawson and the Dog.






Max - "No pictures please."

Liam Cole's BAD INFLUENCE

BAD INFLUENCE, the first bareback, fuck-flick from our new London director LIAM COLE is filled with fresh-faced young men entering the notorious cum-cult that is Paul Morris's Treasure Island Media. Check out the trailer here. Now available at the introductory price of $49.00 until October 29 Treasure Island Media website.

BAD INFLUENCE Trailer

Coming soon from Liam Cole - BAD INFLUENCE

Gay Erotic Expo 2008

TIM will be at the Gay Erotic Expo in New York City this weekend. Stop by the booth and pick up your favorite TIM fuck flicks including the latest from Liam Cole - BAD INFLUENCE.
BAD INFLUENCE is not yet available on the Treasure Island Media website.



TIM exclusive Christian will be on hand to sign autographs and promote his latest films.



Also making an appearance will be one of our newer guys - Dick Damonson.




Gay Erotic Expo NYC 2008
Saturday, October 11
3pm - 10pm
Sunday, October 12
12pm - 6pm

311 West 34th Street
Grand Ballroom
Manhattan Center

Christian at the TIM office

A random shot of Christian hanging out at the office after Folsom.

Folsom 08 Shoot Stills

Folsom is a crazy weekend for us and this year was no exception. The city is flooded with sex-crazed, bareback fuck-fiends for Gehno and the boys to use. Check out a few stills from one of the shoots.

More of TIM at Folsom 08

Dawson and a fan


Brad McGuire and James Roscoe


Dan Fisk


Derek Anthony


Jesse O'Toole

TIM at Folsom Street Fair 08

Some pics from the Treasure Island Media booth at Folsom. Once again the booth was filled with a cadre of sex-crazed TIM models and ravenous fans.