I AM: PONY HUNTER

There’s an energy that Paul communicates through his voice and through his writing that I haven’t experienced with anyone else. It’s an energy that inspires curiosity about human nature. My interview with Pony ignited those same feelings. Pony takes delight in life and especially in capturing the sex of men on film, preserving their nature for all to see. It’s no wonder that Pony has become Paul’s protege.

Julian: Hey Pony!

Pony: Hey Julian!

J: Thanks for talking to me. I know that you’re busy.

P: Oh, it’s no problem.

J: Can you give me a quick bio?

P: Yeah, so I was born and raised in Oregon; I’ve been working for Paul Morris for the last two years; I moved to San Francisco from Portland; In Portland I was in art school studying painting, and I haven’t really looked back since.

J: As a casting director, what do you like to see in an applicant?

P: It’s crazy! You know, we get so many applications, I’m always sort of blown away by the amount of guys who want to work with us.

I fall in love everyday. You know, when it comes to casting men, it’s always something different that catches my eye, but generally I  find one person everyday that I fall in love with. At heart, I guess I’m a romantic. Charisma will get you further than a six pack.

J: What do you look for when you’re filming a scene?

P: It’s something that’s constantly evolving for me. I don’t come from a filmmaking background. I’ve never taken a photography class, I’ve always just been interested in the camera. I remember when I was a kid, I was like 11 or 12 years old, my family got our very first video camera. It was a big, bulky thing with the giant VHS tape in it, and it was so exciting to me that I could make something and watch it on the T.V. Capturing sex and sexuality on film was always a dream of mine, and now that it’s my job, I think that I tend to be a little experimental, which I like. I’ll watch something of someone else’s and I’ll like it, so I’ll try it on my own. Paul likes to say that the camera acts as another dick in the room, and in order for that to happen I have to let my conscious intellect occupy my subconscious mind so that I become more in tune with what’s happening in the room. A lot of times I’ll just sense oh, the guys are moving into a different position and I’ll feel the camera moving with them.

But in general I love butt holes. I think there’s nothing hotter than when a guy will show you his hole. I’m definitely pulled towards butt holes. I also really like the face. I love looking into a guy’s eyes as he’s getting pounded. That’s something I really tried to listen to when I was working on Bad Seed. There were times where I would literally grab a guy’s face and be like look into the camera, because there’s something very erotic and real about seeing those expressions on a guy’s face that can’t be faked.

J: You were saying that you’ll see things that someone else has done and want to try it out. Who or what inspires you visually? Like other directors at other porn companies or movies that you see?

P: You know, I don’t watch a lot of other producers in gay porn outside of Treasure Island. I do watch a lot of amateur porn, and actually I watch a lot of straight porn. I love straight porn, and I feel like there’s a lot we can learn from it. There’s no shame in straight porn. They do some crazy fucking shit. Like, I was watching this video the other night of this guy who is a double amputee in his 40s and some 18 year old chick was just riding his dick, and they had set him up in this chair. And she wasn’t even facing him and she was chewing fucking gum! She wasn’t interested at all, but there was something so fucked up and hot about it! There’s no shame in straight pornography, and I’m fascinated by that.

J: How did you get started at TIM?

P: Uh, Facebook, hahah. I was a late bloomer when it comes to social media. I think everyone had been on Facebook for two years by the time I joined. When I finally joined, this guy that I had hooked up with years ago was working at Treasure Island, and I was just like, oh that’s such a great job, how the fuck did you get that, and we started talking. Then he was on a production trip to L.A., and he called me one night and was like, we’re going to be looking for a full time production guy, you should apply, you need to make a reel and send in a letter. So I called up some friends of mine, a couple, and asked if I could come over and film them fucking. I went over that night and made a little video on my iPhone, I edited it on iMovie — it was kind of terrible — I wrote a letter and sent it all in. I honestly didn’t think that they would be interested, but I got a call a couple of days later saying that they were going to bring me down for an interview, and that was that.

J: You and Paul obviously have a close relationship, can you explain a little bit of your guys’ working and personal dynamic?

P: They’re probably one and the same. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it when I first started here because I had never been around a personality as strong as Paul’s. It was really intense. But I would say that over the last year, my second year working here, things have shifted a lot, and I now have a better understanding of Paul and how his mind works.

But in general, both professionally and personally, Paul is a teacher in my life. He has taught me the ability to fully be myself. The thing that I love about him is that I can tell him anything, any sort of perverted thought that I have and there’s never any judgement from him. As a faggot I feel like people like Paul are very rare. We lost a lot of people in the ‘80s and ‘90s to AIDS who would have been teachers to the younger generation, and I think Paul is one of those guys. I feel very honored and lucky that I get to work with him. Sometimes I forget how many people have never met him because I see him every single day and I talk to him everyday and often on my weekends, so it’ll be weird because I’ll go somewhere for work and people will be asking me who is he, tell us about him.

J: What has been your favorite scene to shoot?

P: Probably “Bad Seed.” The movie is Bad Seed, but the bunker scene is also called “Bad Seed.” That was probably my favorite scene to shoot because it was completely organic. The bottom in that scene, my friend and I had both gone over to his house a few weeks before we shot the scene and we both fucked him, and he was super fun and super hot and super sexual, and we had talked to him like, dude, you should totally let us film something with you. He works in the financial district, in finances, and he was kind of unsure, and we finally convinced him. We set the whole thing up and we decided we were going to go up to these abandoned bunkers and shoot something. It was really hot, because it was the first time I went off the beaten path of how we shoot here. Normally we just shoot in hotel rooms, and I was like, No, we’re going to shoot outside, and there was this whole element of risk, are we going to get caught, what happens if this happens, and all of these really complex questions. Even though we were attempting to shoot a scene, there was no guarantee it was going to work, so the guys knew that going into it. Like I didn’t have checks there for them, no one was getting paid at the time we were shooting. We were just going up there for fun! It was great. I felt really comfortable in that environment and the sex was really hot; it was so nasty and fucking hot. I couldn’t believe that I was shooting this. I came back, I showed Paul the footage, and he liked it. Ever since then I feel like I’ve had a little more freedom to do shoots like that. Yea, that was probably my favorite scene to do at this point.

J; What turns you on in a man?

P: I like guys who are confident, who are piggish, I’m totally versatile — I’m into both cock and asses. I like a guy with a good sense of humor.

Like I said earlier, I’m a romantic at heart. I want to believe in a world where anything is possible, that’s why when it comes to sex and people ask me what I am into I usually say I have no limits! For me sex and the imagination are very connected. Just because I haven’t done something before doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be willing to try it. And if I haven’t done it I have at least thought about it. I like guys who think the same

J: You grew up on a “survivalist commune” in Oregon, you lived on the streets with punk kids, and later on you became involved with the faeries. How would you say your experiences in such ferociously independent communities affected your philosophies on life and sexuality?

P: I definitely have a lot of gratitude for the radical faeries. I hooked up with them when I was, like, 20 years old. I was extremely lost and it was a community that was embracing of anyone that showed up. For a while they were my chosen family.

I’m a very private person sexually, and I think the faeries challenged me more than anything. I’m not an exhibitionist, I’m a total voyeur. I like to watch. I’m not the first person to take my clothes off and go running through a field naked. I was very judgmental of the radical faeries and what they represented when I first showed up. It challenged all of my conservative, fear-based reactions that I had to being a faggot — all of it was basically internalized homophobia. And the faeries really challenged me and pushed me in ways which required me to grow. They also proposed to me the idea of a larger cosmic reason for me being gay other than just liking to sleep with the same sex. More than anything I was spiritually lost, and the radical faeries provided me the opportunity and the space to do some soul searching and, ultimately, let go of a lot of fucking shame.

J: Paul and I once had a conversation about young men experimenting with the sexual energy of men without anyone to guide them and how they can lose themselves in drugs, or despair, or boredom. You’ve been open about your history with sex and drug abuse. Who or what was it that brought you back from that?

P: It’s not something that’s in history. It’s a daily thing for me to stay on my sober path. I don’t know if there is one thing or one person. I will say that three years ago I woke up in a tent in my friend’s backyard in Portland, Oregon. I was completely unemployable, and I had this moment of how the fuck did I get here? what the fuck am I doing? At that moment I really started to face my own personal demons. It was very challenging and very hard, and it is something I deal with daily. But I will say that the opportunity to come work at Treasure Island, to work with Paul Morris, to be the best, those are all big motivating factors at being clean and staying clean.

J: What do you like to do outside of the sex and porn worlds?

P: I like riding the bike that Mitch gave me. I really like taking pictures, that’s the deal. I really haven’t painted in two years, since I got here. I don’t really have the space and I don’t have the time. Painting takes forever. I love the immediacy of taking pictures. I love walking around with my camera and taking snapshots. There are a few people in my life I like writing letters to. I like watching movies, star gazing.

J: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

P: I think to be good at what you do, you have to fully commit. The best advice I ever received was to love what you do. I try to bring that everyday.

J: What was the hottest experience you ever had with a man?

P: This is probably the most pivotal moment in my entire sexuality. I was 17 years old. I went to a bookstore and I met this Latin guy. He was super fucking hot. I took him back to his house, and I began to fuck him. I started smelling shit and I was like, dude, you’re dirty, go to the bathroom, and what was going on was that I was repeating this behavior of shame that I had been taught around butt sex; that butt sex was only ever okay if there was never any reminder of shit. It wasn’t like he was really super dirty but I could smell something, and he just looked at me like, you’re going to stop? But it feels so good! And I was so surprised that he didn’t want me to stop, so I asked him again to make sure I understood, and I’ll never forget, he said, “no.” And I was blown away! In my head I thought, okay, what happens if I keep fucking him, so I kept fucking him, and and all of a sudden all these boundaries and everything that separated me from the guy I was with, they all went away and I was completely, 100% committed to being inside of him and cumming, and I had this over-the-top orgasm. It was just the hottest fucking thing. I loved that! I love being able to have that uninhibited sex with another person. There’s nothing hotter than that sort of connection for me.

J: When did barebacking become a way of life for you?

P: Ever since I found out I was positive. I would never say that I wanted to become positive or even thought that I would become positive, but, you know, that was the first thought that went through my mind when they told me I was positive, Sweet! Now I get to do what I want to do and have the sex I want to have, and I never have to worry about that again. For me, that was it. Ever since I found out I was positive, bareback sex is the sort of sex I’ll have, and I haven’t used a condom since.

J: Is there anything you want the readers to know that I didn’t ask?

P: Just that I’m commited to treasure island. I take what I do here seriously, like I lose sleep over it. It’s more than a job for me, it’s a committment and it’s an obsession.