ROBIN SANCHEZ
28 Scene
I wasn’t too interested in porn per se. But I found a niche in the porn industry which allowed me to work doing something I loved; photography and later film work, plus being able to live where I wanted to. How did the AIDS crisis affect your outlook on porn and life itself? From 1982 to 1984, when the HIV virus was finally found, it was really a scary time. No one knew how the virus was spread. But once we learned that HIV infection could be avoided by using condoms, it made it much easier. When I made my first hardcore film in 1989, the models wore condoms.
KRISTEN BJORN: A LIFE IN PORN
In a rare magazine interview, legendary gay porn director Kristen Bjorn talks candidly to Scene magazine’s Jason Reid about starting out in porn in the 1980s, the evolution of the industry and how his own studio has had to change, surviving pandemics, hopes for the future, and much more ) I imagine most people will be wondering
how and why you initially become involved with the porn industry? Indeed, how anyone did in the 1980s. Back before the internet, porn did exist in the form of magazines and video tapes, which were sold in sex shops. In 1980, I was a university student in San Francisco. A fellow student told me about the films he was shooting, and suggested I try it. It took a year for me to work up the courage to actually call the telephone number he had given me, which was that of Falcon Studio.
magazine business. While I worked as his assistant, he introduced me to the editors of a group of magazines in New York called Mavety Media Group. At the time, it consisted of Mandate, Playguy, Honvho, and Torso magazines. The following year, 1982, I moved to Rio de Janeiro where I remained for eight years working as a photographer for those magazines, as well as another magazine called Advocate Men. In 1988, Advocate Men started a series of solo videos called Advocate Men Live, which they asked me to film for. This was my move from still photography to video.
My career as a porn actor was very brief. I only performed in two videos, and that only took three days. What did have an impact on me was my friendship with Falcon’s photographer, Fred Bissones. I had studied photography since the age of 15; my dream was to become a travel photographer. As my mentor, Fred taught me about the gay
What do you remember most vividly about those early years? I worked for six years as a photographer before doing erotic, non-explicit photography for magazines before I started directing videos. And the first videos I shot were solos. My approach to erotica was as an art-form. Although I was always a very sexual person,
There have now been two major global pandemics in the last 40 years that have seriously affected the western world, AIDS and Covid-19. Which was worse for the porn industry, and you personally? We are not out of the Covid-19 pandemic yet, but I hope that we will be in the near future. For me personally, the AIDS pandemic was far worse than Covid-19. HIV was a death sentence until 1995, and I knew many, many people who died from it, including close friends. As far as how the pandemics affected the porn industry, many people died of HIV in the ‘80s, producers and porn stars alike. But later, gay studios started filming with condoms, while the straight studios relied on testing. So, HIV didn’t change porn after that. Covid-19 seems to have had no effect upon the porn industry after coming out of lockdown. Most porn actors are fairly young and fit, so they carry on the same as always. They aren’t at high risk of getting ill from Covid-19. Do you think porn has changed for better or worse over the years? Porn has gone through different stages over the years. When I worked for Falcon back in 1981, the films were quite crude. They were shot on 16mm cameras without sound and were sold on 8mm reels. These were called loops, which were 15 minutes long. With the invention of VHS players, the studios started compiling four loops on to VHS tapes, which were one hour long. That is how scenes got started. In the years to come, studios started making more lavish films with much higher production values. And with the invention of the DVD, the films became much longer. There was also amateur porn, of course. But the bigger studios were making big, expensive productions until around 2008. The combination of the worldwide financial crisis, plus the advances in internet technology which made it easier to pirate porn were like the perfect storm to destroy the porn industry. So in my opinion, things are worse than they ever have been for the porn industry. How much of a threat are free porn sites to
