Entertainment :: Television
Porn Again :: Adult stars return to the screen with Here! TV’s "The Lair"by Brian MoylanNext MagazineTuesday Sep 2, 2008 If you’ve ever loaded up an old porn DVD and thought, "I wonder whatever happened to that guy," your riddle may be solved-for a few stars, at least-on the latest season of here! TV’s The Lair. The supernatural soap opera returns to the gay cable channel with nine new 30-minute episodes starting Friday, September 5, with two retired gay porn stars and one who’s still going at it.
Returning from season one are Colton Ford and Dylan Vox (better known to some as his naked alter ego, Brad Benton), while the new addition to the cast is Frankie Valenti-who’s still breaking hearts and inspiring fantasies as Johnny Hazzard.
Vox was initially cast on here!’s other sultry horror/fantasy show, Dante’s Cove, but everyone loved his vampire character so much that they spun him off into his own show, The Lair, about an all-male sex club infested with vampires. Ford was cast in season one as earnest Sheriff Trout who hunts down the coven of bloodsuckers with the help of hunky journalist Thom (David Moretti).
Along with the main storyline about the oversexed undead, season two adds yarns about a werewolf that comes to town and a man-eating plant that tries to get the best of the botanist, played by Valenti.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, between the monster story lines, graphic love scenes and cheesy setups, everything is a bit campy in the world of The Lair.
"I think soap operas by definition are silly," says Vox about the show. "But you can’t go in and be like, ’This is stupid.’ You just have to think, ’Cool. This could happen.’"
Valenti takes a similar tack when it comes to his story. "I think the silliness will just come across whether I’m conscious of it or not," he says. "The writing is no-brainer. You can’t try to be too serious, cause you’ll look like a fool. You just have to know the vibe and go with it."
When asked for his motivation on the upcoming season when his character is rendered temporarily blind, Ford laughs, "Helen Keller." Clearly, he-and the audience-is in on the joke.
But all three men are excited to flex their acting muscles, rather than their love ones.
"For me, the only difference is penetration; [otherwise] it’s the exact same thing," says Vox, who left a career as a lawyer to try his hand at law, about acting in adult movies as opposed to the more family-friendly variety. "It’s pretty much the same. You go and eat craft service and do your scene and then leave."
Valenti seconds that notion. "You have to be able to do what you have to do in front of a bunch of strangers and memorize lines and get into a character and know where the camera is and continue the mood when you have to do it over and over," he says, likening the two experiences.
Ford, who dyed his signature grey hair brown for the role, is anticipating the dividends. "Hopefully, like when Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for that role with the prosthetic nose, people will say that I was really brave to do it," he quips.
But on this creature-centric show, Vox is the only one of the three who gets to play with prosthetics-as in vampire fangs-as part of his makeup routine. On that note, Ford says he usually finds vampires really sexy. "On average, in most of the vampire films there is an eroticism and I think that I look at it [as] more titillating than scary," he says. Citing an exception, he adds, "I recently saw 30 Days of Night and I would be terrified if those motherfuckers showed up."
Vox doesn’t mind such antics, however. "I’ve always loved horror movies," he shares. "It’s just an emotion that you don’t get to have in real life. You watch a drama and you think, ’I’ve felt like that before,’ but rarely are you chased through the woods by a psycho killer with a machine gun. That’s not an emotion you get to have!"
Valenti, who had to go out and buy a television just so he could watch his own series, is happy enough to play a regular Joe. "What I’ve learned is if you are a monster, you’re going to die at some point," he says. "I’d rather stay a mortal and I’m happy not fighting any of the monsters. I’m happy staying in the background and surviving. My only goal is to stay alive."
And thanks to The Lair, they all have a chance to keep their acting dreams alive and well.
Return to The Lair Friday, September 5 on here! TV.
 Copyright Next Magazine. For more articles from New York's hippest gay guide, visit www.nextmagazine.net
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