Porn Star Interview: Kurt Young

STORY AND BOTTOM PHOTO BY VINCENT LAMBERT

Porn director Jerry Douglas is sitting in the living room of his Upper West Side apartment recalling the first time he met Kurt Young. “We were in the offices of Image Video,” Douglas says, cigarette poised in midair, “and I thought, now there’s a possibility for the lead in my next film. After talking to him for 10 minutes, I was sure.” Two months later, porn’s leading auteur sent Young a script, and the results are currently on view in Flesh & Blood (All Worlds Video), a Hitchcockian tale of twin brothers gone wrong.

Across the room, the star in question sits nestled in an oversized leather chair. Dressed in ripped jeans and a white tank top, Young, 22, listens intently as Douglas continues. “Kurt Young is the most talented, intuitive actor I’ve worked with,” he says. “He’s the most dependable sexualist I’ve worked with, and I adore him as a person.” Douglas knows of what he speaks—his nine Adult Video News and Gay Video Guide awards glisten prettily on a tabletop in the next room. The porn veteran pauses long enough to smile at his leading man and ask, “Now, have I embarrassed you enough?”

For a porn star, the lanky Young embarrasses quite easily. “I’m the kind of person who won’t walk around the house without a shirt on,” he says, blaming his insecurity on a bout with chubbiness in his early years. The actor, who has appeared in such films as Handsome Drifters, Hot Summer of Sex and Tradewinds, has only been in the movie business for about a year. He says he doesn’t usually watch his films, except to fast-forward through them looking for his mistakes. “I look better than I used to,” Young says, “but I’m definitely not where I want to be.”

This unlikely screen stud was born and raised in Maryland. Young calls his childhood “predictable” and “normal.” He played sports and “liked anything dealing with water,” which may explain his current job as a lifeguard and swimming instructor. He attended college at University of Maryland, College Park, where he studied kinesiology. It was there that he first became aware of the gay scene. “I told my close friends, ‘At some point, I will sleep with a man,’ ” he recalls. “I was curious. After all, you only live once. If there’s something you want to do, you should do it.”

Something else Young wanted to do was leave Maryland. “The place was a trap,” he says. “I was being carried by my parents, and I was just taking advantage of it. I never really had to do anything on my own.”

So, after hooking up with boyfriend Matt Easton, he decided to move to Los Angeles. The lovers found an apartment in Santa Monica, and Young started working 60 hours a week as a lifeguard. But money was tight, and Easton began looking for an agent who could get him into the porn industry.

“Matt answered an ad and two days later did a scene,” Young says. “He came home four hours later with a nice check. I thought, if I did one, we could buy some furniture.”

But Young says it was also something he had been interested in for a while. “I always liked porn; I watched it. I don’t see a difference between watching it and being in it.”

He also found that sex on-screen was a big ego booster. “When someone like Jerry picked me for Flesh & Blood, that gave me some kind of confidence that I know what I’m doing and that someone out there likes me.” Young saw his dual role as twins Eric and Derrick in Flesh & Blood as a great opportunity. “I was really lucky to get it. And it was such a challenge. I’m in practically every second of the movie. I had to work really hard to make sure that people didn’t get bored with me.” Young’s mutual admiration for director Douglas was also a motivating force behind his performance. “I just wanted to do a good job for Jerry,” he says with a smile.

Although Young’s relationship with Easton ended several months ago, they remain friends and roommates. Young is currently involved with model/porn director David Thompson. Together, they have formed a dance group that tours around the country. Young says that it’s hard to maintain a relationship, but “I’m a trustworthy person. If the other person has a problem with my work, that’s understandable, but it’s something I like to do. It makes me happy, and it has nothing to do with sex.”

The actor hints that his future plans may include stage work (he’s read for the lead in the road company of Ronnie Larsen’s Making Porn), but for now he enjoys making movies. “I get to meet nice people, and I’ve made really good friends in this business. It’s like any other job—you go for your eight hours and do the best you can.”

Reprinted from HX magazine (1996)

Porn Star Interview: Dino DiMarco

BY VINCENT LAMBERT

He’s been called the “Delta Burke of porn,” but as Dino DiMarco sits before me in tight jeans, diaphanous black shirt and motorcycle boots, he looks anything but. Currently on the third leg of a 15-city tour for the film Night Walk, DiMarco has just strutted his stuff in a 20-minute dance routine at the Eros Theatre in New York. Although he’s been touring for several weeks, the dark-eyed, classically handsome star looks fit and trim. And he’s certainly eager to talk.

It’s been a long journey to the top of the porn world for 28-year-old DiMarco. Born and raised in Rochester, New York, he is the oldest of three brothers. At age 17, he moved to Manhattan, where he worked as a model for Elite. But DiMarco, who is of American Indian and Irish descent, actually failed at his original career goal: becoming a runway model. “They said I was too short and too fat,” he recalls with a laugh, “so I quit.”

When life in the big city proved overwhelming, DiMarco moved to Florida and joined the Air Force. After working as an auto mechanic for more than two years, he decided to pursue his education in the Pacific Northwest and received a degree in marine biology from the University of Oregon.

Upon graduation, DiMarco relocated to Los Angeles and started working as an extra on such shows as Baywatch, Dave’s World and Star Trek. “I spent a whole season as a bailiff on Picket Fences,” DiMarco says. “Oh yeah, it was real exciting. I got to sit in a brown uniform in the back of a courtroom for months!” He also did extra work in film, appearing in Three Wishes with Patrick Swayze and Crimson Tide. “I’m the guy who pulls out a gun to help Denzel Washington take over the sub,” he says.

But DiMarco’s stints in showbiz were strictly part time. He soon landed a job as a phlebotomist in an AIDS clinic, where he drew blood. So just how did he make the transition from doing lab work to porn work?

“Well, my roommate at the time was Coy Dekker, and he was a porn star,” DiMarco says. “When he asked if I’d be interested in working in the industry, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. So I called my mom—she’s known I was gay since I was a kid—and I said, ‘Mom, what if I did Playgirl?’ And she said, ‘That would be cool.’ And I said, ‘What if I did gay magazines?’ She said, ‘I could live with that.’ And I said, ‘What if I did a gay movie?’ And she said, ‘Well, would you be the boy or the girl?’ I said, ‘I’d be the boy.’ And she said, ‘I guess I could live with that.’ ”

But even with his mother’s seal of approval, there were still doubts. “Everyone said, ‘If you do it, you’ll never get a boyfriend,’ ” DiMarco says. “And I thought, well, I’m broke, I don’t have a boyfriend now, so I won’t have a boyfriend, but I’ll have the money. So I took the money.”

His first film was Matt Sterling’s All American, and he doesn’t recall being nervous. “I just remember it was a really long day,” he says. Several films for Catalina followed, and DiMarco’s career took off, along with any doubts about his new profession. “It’s stupid to lie about it if you’re gonna do porn,” he says. “You might as well have the balls to admit it because somebody is going to see it. I’ve had people I knew before I did porn come up to me in the grocery store and say, in a really bitchy tone, ‘Oh, we’ve seen your movies.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh really, which one? Did you like it?’ Listen, I take my clothes off and fuck people in front of other people. If they’re gonna try and embarrass me, they’re gonna have to do better than that. Besides, everyone who is important to me—my mom and my boyfriend—knows, so I don’t care.”

The boyfriend that DiMarco is referring to is his current flame, Sal. The two live together in West Hollywood, and they recently solidified their relationship with a commitment ceremony and domestic partnership papers. Although DiMarco says that his lover is the jealous type, even Sal is a fan of the movie that put this screen stud into a Christian Dior tux. “Night Walk was the hardest to make, but it’s definitely my favorite movie,” DiMarco says. “We worked really long days, sometimes from 9am to 4am. The sets were huge; it felt like the set of Batman or something. And there was rain and wind and a sports car and Art Deco furniture. It’s just a cool film.”

Although DiMarco has two new movies (Lost in Vegas for All Worlds and Idol in the Sky for Men of Odyssey) and Ronnie Larsen—writer and director of the off-Broadway hit Making Porn—is courting him for a play, he says that what he’d really like to do is return to school for a degree in animal behavior. But mostly he’s content with the quiet life he shares with Sal; their dogs, Sammy and Sky; and their six-foot Burmese python, Lucy. “People think it’s so glamorous, but my life isn’t that exciting,” DiMarco says. “Doing movies and touring and dancing is like a fantasy. But it’s really just a job like any other.”

Reprinted from HX magazine (1996)