You could be forgiven for being surprised that Treasure Island Media's new release, Slammed, isn't receiving more media attention. I suspect, knowing that's what TIM are looking for, media outlets are refusing to play their 'outrage' game. That certainly seems to be the case over at The Sword (NSFW).
The latest film from San-Francisco based bareback studio Treasure Island Media (TIM) is directed by their British Director Liam Cole, and shot in London. According to The Sword (NSFW, trailer also available), it depicts men shooting-up Crystal Meth before then engaging in bareback sex.
Crystal Meth is not the same issue in the UK as it is in the States (thankfully) and so whilst the documentary argument of Cole (i.e he's just recording the sex that is taking place around him in London), doesn't make sense for a US-based studio like TIM. If it's so important to document this, why haven't they done it before in the States? Why not record the same group of men shooting meth and having bareback sex over three or five years? Show the impact of the drug on their sex, bodies and mind. I suspect the films at the end of that series wouldn't sell as the men's bodies increasingly show the ravaging effects of Crystal, but if it's all about documentary, that would have been a logical argument.
You might think it's just a predictable behaviour tactic from TIM. I don't agree. I recall (I hope, rightly) studio honcho Paul Morris financially backing a US documentary on Meth, designed to highlight the negative consequences of Meth. I recall him being concerned about the impact of Meth on communities of men. Is that position incompatible with releasing Slammed? It's perhaps a moot point but it does raise questions. Not least, where is TIM going?
It certainly seems to be a studio that feels a bit lost at the moment. A website and social-media overhaul has made the online presence slicker and more professional looking, but it has also stripped the studio of a lot of soul. Nothing more so than the painful use of social media. Fake Twitter accounts which seem more an attempt at satire than arousal are an awkward miss-step. The Sword (NSFW) also reported on these fake accounts, singling out the account of Ethan Wolfe. It's embarrassing and hasn't improved since the story, continuing the dull, almost humorous updates. I've never been aroused by the tweets, but I've laughed quite a lot. I'm not sure that's usually the intention of a porn studio. Contrast this with the genuine account of Jackson Taylor (depicted as a TIM exclusive on their site NSFW), in which his account manages to appear erotic, sincere, and interactive. That's how you do it boys.
Where would I go? Well, I think there's still a lot of scope for TIM to document the patterns and flow of sex lives. This could be done in a conscious longitudinal way, recording the way that individuals frequenting venues/locations transcends the anonymity we often associate with random hook ups. These hook ups are rarely random, and I think it would be interesting to document a journey into bareback sex (as 'Ryan Sullivan' did from the production point of view), to document the desire of bareback as well as the act. Then again, maybe I should stick to the day job.
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Treasure Island Media Gets Slammed
Posted by Chris Ashford on 09:14 in commercial Identity internet Media Pornography treasure island media | Comments : 2
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Paul Morris is a nihilist. His paper "No Limits: Necessary Danger in Male Porn" http://www.managingdesire.org/nolimits.html shows it. The interesting thing is how the paper written in 1997 and addressed to the World Pornography Conference in 1998 shows how Mr. Morris believes that self destruction is the point of 'Queer' life. I do not believe that Mr Morris has any understanding of the word Queer in either the historical or current politics of homosexuality. In the paper he claims that skateboarding and bare backing are the same actions and happen for the same reason. In later articles his running theme is 'as gays don't reproduce their only purpose is self destruction, the ultimate in gay creative expression'. As AIDS didn't kill us all off Paul has taken to showing drug use- nothing new in TIM videos only this time it is the star. There is speculation that there really is no Paul Morris, or that he is one of the old studio heads from William Higgins. I have lived my whole life in SF and I have never heard of any one seeing him. Even when he speaks at engagements it's always an assistant never him. Among the younger crowed it is believed that Mr. Morris is actual a main stream porno house and he reps their fetish line. Only TIM doesn't have any fetish titles. I think that "Slammed" was just hype that never made the steam. It certainly isn't a documentary and it is not a very good porn, selling way below what they expected.
Oh and the 'Documentary' on meth and it's impact- saw it, more like an infomercial for TIM actor and films, not even close to anything resembling a documentary.
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