Sunday 27 April 2014

FROM THE TDB ARCHIVES: AN AUDIENCE WITH PORN LEGEND TOBY ROSS



 

This interview with famed porn director Toby Ross originally ran in Three Dollar Bill on September 25, 2008. It has been updated. Ross has also just published his hugely entertaining Toby Ross and the 70's: An Erotic Memoir as an E-Book on Amazon.

I love porn and longtime readers know I believe porn is healthy. Over the years I’ve interviewed many of its players, old and new, from directors Chi Chi LaRue to Flash Conway, but few as insightful as director Wakefield Poole, whose 1971 film Boys in the Sand is generally considered to be the first widely available gay porno.

Porn legend Toby Ross, circa 1976
Photo courtesy Toby Ross
“What changed, what I did, was the marketing,” Poole told me some years ago. “We marketed Boys like a legit film. We put an ad in The New York Times. My God, it was unheard of. I think the Times didn’t know what they were putting in the paper because later on they refused us.”

Turned out Boys is also the only X-rated porn film reviewed by The New York Times, not to mention the first porn film to include on-screen credits for its cast and crew (though many were assumed names). Boys was also the first porn film to parody the title of a mainstream movie, 1970′s The Boys in the Band.

Then came Toby Ross, whose 1975 classic Cruisin ’57 is one of the great porn films of all time.