Aussielicious

George Duroy, creator of Bel Ami and no doubtedly very rich man, has given a very interesting interview discussing things such as HIV and the future of porn. Given the internet rumours swirling a couple of weeks ago about Bel Ami going bareback, George offers his perspective on that topic.

Bel Ami started doing bareback films a while ago. Some would call this irresponsible for encouraging viewers to do it, others would point out it takes risks with the health of the models and others don’t care—they just like it. What do you think about the various reactions to barebacking in porn, and what precautions does Bel Ami take on bareback sets?

I guess we’ve released no more than twelve to fourteen condom-free episodes in all these years. But this question requires a more elaborate answer, even though I have tried to explain my position many times with negligible effect. But let’s try it again:

Bel Ami is the only company in this business which (in seventeen years) hasn’t had a single case of ANY STD on the set. I have the good luck to work in a country where, in the first twenty-five years of the AIDS epidemic, only eight people died of HIV infection as compared to 400,000 in the U.S. If I lived in California, I certainly wouldn’t shoot without condoms, but I see no special reason to stick to the same rules here. Eight deaths in twenty-five years doesn’t constitute an epidemic—many more people die of ordinary flu here. Therefore, I think that while in the U.S. bareback equals Russian roulette, it is here merely condom-free.

To put it another way, we also don’t keep a hurricane watch here, just because the Gulf of Mexico has that problem. I also don’t think that not using condoms is a single reason for the AIDS epidemic, otherwise everybody in Slovakia would be dead already. I know very few people in this country who use condoms, and all the rest are perfectly healthy. I suspect that it has something to do also with alcohol, drug abuse, promiscuity and the whole gay party/club culture—that’s what creates a really deadly mix.

I’d also like to say that I carefully followed the situation for twenty years before coming to this conclusion. It doesn’t mean, of course, that something can’t happen tomorrow on my set. But the chance a model would die in a car accident is about a thousand times higher.

As for encouraging the viewer: I don’t encourage and I don’t promote. If I did, I’d be much richer now. I promoted condoms and healthy sex for seventeen years in my films. In exchange for my goodwill, I lost about thirty percent of my customers at one point. I am unaware of a single case of somebody paying for my films simply because I was promoting safe sex. But I got a lot of hate mail for being “vanilla” and “boring”.

Read the rest of the interview at Towleroad.