Yes. The
Jimmy Johnson/
Rob Ryder bromance was very cute.
My only regret (and probably Rob's too) was that it was never consummated on set. Rob certainly seemed up for the idea. Too bad they couldn't have done one on
College Dudes together. Or if it had been done over here, Rob (and most of us I think) would probably have much preferred a hyped up JJ/Rob "love scene" event, over Rob being paired up with
Kodi.
Clay had some weird personal agendas going on though that often times did not have the best interest and the most enjoyment of the paying audience as the highest of his priorities. That also applied to not giving much heed to what models might have preferred either. Even when what the models would have preferred would have also been in synch with what more of the audience wanted. Given a choice many times between what he wanted to do versus what he thought (or perhaps even
knew ) most the audience would like
more...he would go with what
he wanted to do.
Do you guys remember when for most of that first year that so many of us were asking Mark and other staff if Clay was straight?
I assumed when he first arrived here at
Broke Straight Boys that Clay was pretty much brand new to directing gay porn. Because I very much felt like for the first 6-8 months of him being here, that we members were training him. So we were constantly giving him advice on what he could improve on when he would (quite honestly) majorly screw things up in scenes...with some really bad decisions on choreography, horrible camera angles, sometimes abysmal audio quality, making the models say humiliating, degrading and demeaning things about themselves on camera, and so on. [That last bit, unbeknownst to us at the time, was actually a bit of a warning and a dark foreshadowing of the future.] God comfort the souls of the models he would later work with, or any earlier ones he did emotional harm to.
But when Clay first got here he acted like he was a total newbie to filming and directing gay porn. Many of us wondered if maybe his only prior directing or filming experience before
Broke Straight Boys was in filming some straight porn. We also quite honestly wondered if it was a situation where he was actually straight himself, but needed the job. So we members were suffering through it, coddling him, giving him advice and (for the most part) trying to be gentle and polite about it.
You can tell a director is struggling to connect with a gay audience when many in said audience are privately and publicly wondering, and even outright asking Mark in the forum...if the director is straight. That's
not a good sign! Let me tell ya.
haha
When Mark seemed to accidentally share with us after about a year it seemed, that Clay had been (and still was) the director over on
College Dudes for years... I was absolutely floored. And pissed! I mean how was it that he was actually gay and a decent director over on a gay site like
College Dudes, in position for a long time.... And then when he arrived over here he acted like he didn't know his a** (or the expectations of a gay audience) from a hole in the ground? It was mind boggling. Fortunately he did come around and get his act together and finally started acting like maybe he knew what he was doing. For all of his later improvement on the set though, his behavior off-set only got worse.
Sorry for the rant guys. I guess I got a little triggered for some reason. haha We can't change the past.
