Oct
25
David Awards Dust-Up: Chi Chi LaRue Speaks Out
October 25, 2007 | 11 Comments
The David Awards controversy continues to rile up various factions here in GayPornLand. Scroll down for the two previous stories and background on what’s been going on since the 2nd Annual David Awards were presented last Friday. They unspooled in conjunction with Hustlaball and the Venus Erotic Expo in Berlin. And Chi Chi LaRue, who won Best U.S. Director for the second year in a row, is at the center of the controversy. We spoke briefly via email earlier this week, but Channel 1 Releasing still wanted to clarify things.
I spoke with an exhausted Ms. LaRue soon after the directrix touched down in Los Angeles upon his return from Berlin. Although he was worn out from a week of personal appearances, DJ’ing and pressing the flesh at the Venus Erotic Expo, he was eager to speak on the record about the events at last Friday’s David Awards.
First up, "I did not hear anyone say ‘fuck you’ to me," Ms. LaRue said. "If they did, Oh well. I don’t care. They can feel whatever they want about me. If they said it from the microphone, I didn’t hear them."
Second, he returned his Best Director trophy. "I gave it back to them when I walked off the stage. Here’s how it happened. I was supposed to DJ at the Hustlaball between 11pm and midnight. The David Awards were supposed to start at 10pm. I got there at 10pm and the awards hadn’t started. I went to [the green room] and talked with people for awhile. 10:15, 10:30 came and went and the awards hadn’t started. The music was bugging me so I got up on stage at the Hustlaball and just started DJ’ing and playing songs."
Eventually, he says, a David Awards representative came running over to fetch the directrix as the show had finally kicked off. The first category was Best U.S. Cover, which Ms. LaRue’s Channel 1 Releasing won (for IN HIS DREAMS). "I got up on stage, thanked the David Awards people, thanked Berlin, got off the stage, called Todd Alan, our art director, and congratulated him, and went back to DJ’ing."
Again, some time later, Ms. LaRue tells me, a David Awards rep rushed over to tell her she was winning an award. "So I left the stage and hauled myself over there just in time to hear them announce the nominees for Best U.S. Director. It was me, Joe Gage, and [Treasure Island Media's] Paul Morris. I won, and this is what I did: I went up onstage and I acknowledged the boys in the audience from Channel 1, from Titan, from Hot House, who have chosen to work for condom companies. I thanked them and told them I was proud to be nominated with some of the nominees."
He left the stage and was immediately asked to stick around to help present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Titan’s Bruce Cam. Ms. LaRue was standing backstage with Titan VP Keith Webb when the nominees for Best U.S. Studio flashed onscreen. "It was Hot House, Titan Media and Treasure Island Media. Treasure Island won. I turned to a David Awards person and said, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Are you kidding me?’ I said some other choice things that I’m sure made his ears burn. I said, ‘Bruce Cam’s award is next. Do you still want me to go up onstage with that microphone? Because I’m just gonna say everything I said before.’ They sheepishly said, ‘No.’ Just like that. So I handed them back my Best U.S. Director Award. I said, ‘Take it. Thanks, but I don’t want it.’ And I left and went back to DJ’ing at the Hustlaball."
Ms. LaRue says no one from show organizers GAYeLINE Magazine or the David Awards, or for that matter any of the nominated bareback companies present, approached her afterwards or have been in contact with her since last Friday.
[Photo © Channel1Releasing.com.]
Contact JC Adams at JCAdamsXXX@aol.com
Comments
11 Comments so far
Oh-my-god. This is too much. Can’t we all just get along?
Not when you’re at least partially responsible for more young people than ever contracting HIV, no.
I applaud the honesty in Miss Larue’s actions.
I have four words for all the anti-bareback porn people:
You can’t save the world!!!
Enough said.
-Nick
So you’re saying we should just give up trying, Nick? That it’s all a case of “I’m alright Jack” and everyone who’s not you can just go to hell? What a nice human being you are.
So if Chi Chi was so repulsed and horrified at winning an award at a show that honored barebackers and she gave it back, why does the channelonereleasing.com website still proudly proclaim that CHANNEL ONE RECEIVES TWO DAVID AWARDS and has a big article up on them winning the awards?
Where’s the consistency to match the words? Very interesting
I applaud Chi Chi for sanding by his/her principles. It is the easy way out to have unprotected sex. It’s “quicker”, “better feeling” and all of the other excuses you care to listen to. You say you can’t save the world, but it doesn’t stop the people who care for trying. It would be nice if we could have the “comic book fix” where you could get all the senseless people to wise up. All of the obituaries haven’t done it(what, 15 porn deaths in the last year and a half, how many were HIV/AIDS related? How many more are to come? Joe Romero died of AIDS complications, yet he filmed his last scene(knaown anyway) in 2006. If he had barebacked in the last few years, how many more bodies could we be adding to the death pile?
I apologize if I sound harsh but I’ve had two of my best friends I could ever hope to have die from AIDS complications, and the pain of losing them was great, and still felt to this day.
Remember this when you have unprotected sex: You could be looking into the eyes of the person who could kill you or that you could kill. If that doesn’t get you to take 10 seconds to put on a condom first, you are already lost to the world, if still drawing breath.
I’m a UK director who has also only ever shot with condom porn
There is currently a news story, broken by Boyz magazine in the UK about some alleged HIV transmissions on a UK gay bareback shoot.
Myself and a number of producers are trying to start a campaign against barebacking in the UK, but its the big European companies who are doing the barebacking films who really need to set an example for us smaller companies. Too many people have dies period, for us to put profit in front of people’s health. A news story in today’s Guardian Newspaper reports that rates of HIV infection in the UK are now some of the highest in Europe with one of the biggest increases being in young gay men.
Here’s the link to my letter and the new story in Boyz which suggests one of the inected models is going to take legal action.
Yjis isn’t a witch hunt against the companies who are doing bareback…but there is still time to put the genie back in the bottle if the Industry really cared
Christian marshall
Corolo
http://www.boyz.co.uk/pdfs/847/pdfs/02_BOYZ_Contents.pdf
http://www.boyz.co.uk/pdfs/848/pdfs/04_BOYZ_In_The_Know.pdf
Condoms are not 100% safe from HIV or AIDS, we all know that the virus can fit through the pores in the material and plus, condoms can always break. Anyone who has sex in a porno movie should be aware of the fact that no matter what they do, they are taking a risk (though using spermicide along with a condom will actually diminish the the risk), and I think its a little silly to point fingers away from yourself if you chose to be in this situation. I feel for the young men who now have HIV, but they are the ones who chose to be in a bareback porno film, for pity’s sake. I would never be in ANY porno film, condoms or no, for this very reason, though I would be a liar if I said I didn’t watch them and enjoy them. I am not AGAINST pornography by any means, I just think people should be a bit more willing to take at least SOME measure of responsibility for their own actions. Anyway, this is just my opinion, feel free to disagree.
Good for Chi-Chi! She may be into some wild things, but she’s not stupid — BB porn is WRONG.
And as for the poster who asked why Channel 1 Releasing had the news on their site — well, they DID win those awards, but I am sure that if it hasn’t happened already, Chi-Chi will have a statement addressing her choice to return the awards on the site.
Bareback porn should come with a sergons general warning like cigarettes, dipicting the high risk of HIV/AIDS transmission. They glorify BB and yet dont state the risk of it. You may argue that BB’ing is a choice but so is smoking and the goverment makes ALL tabacco companies print warnings! I also believe that if they do not put a general warning on thier movies they should be fined. In the long run this becomes the tax (U.S) payers problem as we will be supplimenting HIV/AIDS victims in our hospitals. We should try to save lives NOT take them.