Picture it. Chicago. 2003. Gay porn agent David Forest is given the Grabby Award (which are kinda like the Golden Globes to the GAYVN’s Oscars of gay porn) for Best Non-Sex Role for the film Brad’s Buddies. Good old Michael Lucas, who was presenting an award right afterward, took the opportunity to express his disdain for Forest. He said from the stage, “It’s very sad for me that we are putting ourselves, once again, so
low in society by giving an award and supporting such a scum-bag as
David Forest who, for years, has taken advantage and destroyed people
with drugs…This industry will never gain any respect unless we will
stop promoting this evil pimp, and those of you who are booing me should be ashamed of yourselves,
because there’s not one word that I’ve said that isn’t true, and you
know it.” He exited the stage and was the talk of the (then-burgeoning) blogs for the next 4 days. David Forest had a rebuttal, Michael had a clarification, every columnist weighed in with their 2 cents. The general consensus within the industry was that whether or not you agreed with Michael Lucas (and there were plenty on both sides) all agreed that it was an inappropriate venue to air those opinions. In fact, Michael Lucas has pretty much been persona non grata at the Grabbys ever since. In fact, this year, after Michael Lucas’ La Dolce Vita swept the GAYVN awards, it was completely shut out at the Grabbys, not receiving a single nod. Michael claims that they are still holding a grudge from 2003, they claimed that they did not receive his screener in time to be eligible for consideration (and two of his other films did get nominations).

That’s pretty much it for that saga (it boiled over in no time at all), but another thing (which ties this story into the Johnny Hanson post) is that, after Michael Lucas left the stage, Matt Sizemore announced that he had just shot a bareback video. I think the poor BAFFLED (see I am using that word already) crowd didn’t quite know who to react more to. I hope you enjoyed this little trip into the recent history of gay porn. Hopefully we won’t need to revisit it again.