2020 GayVN Awards: Emotion-Filled Event Highlights Historic Eve

Above, red carpet host Christiana Cinn, trophy boys Nico Leon, Riley Finch, Rhyheim Shabazz and Brock Banks, AVN CEO Tony Rios and co-hosts Nicole Byer and Alec Mapa. Photo by Jeff Koga As he stood on stage clutching his 2020 GayVN Award for Best Group Scene in NakedSword’s hit Five Brothers: The Takedown, Nic Sahara couldn’t help but let the emotion of the moment get to him. Of the five men in the scene, he was the only one there to accept the award—and deeply missing the one we lost last year. “Jay [Dymel] was a great friend of mine, and unfortunately he’s no longer with us to accept this award. It has a deeper meaning to me because of everything that has transpired this year, and the journey I’ve been on for the whole year. That’s kind of where it hit home. Jay was so funny. He was always smiling, sometimes forgetful,” Sahara shared with an emotional smile backstage. “And if there was a bad situation, he made it into an enjoyable one.” mr. Pam and Nic Sahara; photo by Rick Garcia Director mr. Pam was happy for the win, but the sense of déjà vu was a little overwhelming backstage. Last year, she had to give a similar tribute to Dave Slick, who passed away before his performance helped secure a Best Three-way Sex Scene trophy. “That day of the group shoot was actually Jay’s birthday, so we were baking a birthday cake while they were doing the sex scene,” she shared. “I miss Jay so much. He was just so sweet and loving, and just took everything by the balls and just went for it. He was just such an inspiration, and he did everything 100 percent. I was just starting to work with him, he was literally my muse—and then all of a sudden, he had an overdose. I literally held him in the hospital as he died. It was probably one of the most moving things I’ve ever experienced. And I just want everybody to watch out for their drug use and be safe.” Nic Sahara and Alex Riley; photo by Rick Garcia It was one of many emotional moments at the 2020 GayVN Awards Show presented by ManyVids at The Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas—and Sahara was soon backstage for another one, a huge smile across his face as he picked up his second trophy of the night in a tie for Best Newcomer. “I’m so shocked. It’s so euphoric—it’s such an honor,” he said backstage. “I was a trophy boy at this show last year, when I remember just soaking up the entire experience and being so happy just to be a part of it. And now it’s full circle tonight, and to have another GayVN Award is very surreal.” He then gave a hug to the equally jubilant Alex Riley, the Helix star who shared the honor—and was just as happy for Sahara as he was for himself. “He’s so hot! When I saw him on stage the first time he won tonight, I was telling the boys at my table, ‘Well, I’m not gonna win,’” Riley laughed. “This is so fucking cool, man. I don’t even know what to say. It has not sunk in for me. I’ve been with Helix for eight months, and in that short amount of time, they’ve given me the best partners, the best photo shoots—they’ve done everything to promote me and throw me out there. I’m so grateful. I’m seriously so blessed. This is crazy. It means a lot. My mom came to the Stra8UpGayPorn Awards, and it was so cool. She’s not here tonight; she’s in Texas. I’m supposed to send her all these vides of this tonight anyway because I knew I was presenting, but this is ridiculous. It means a lot.” Cade Maddox; photo by Rick Garcia They weren’t the only winners struggling for words. Falcon exclusive Cade Maddox—who had seven nominations on the night—won the prize for Performer of the Year. His teary-eyed smile wouldn’t leave his face backstage, where he seemed stunned. “I’m shocked right now, so I don’t really know what to say. This means a lot. It means I’ve been doing something right, right? I was not expecting this. It’s amazing. I was trying not to cry on stage, but it’s so cool,” he said as his eyes watered up. “Falcon pushed me to this spot. I think it just takes a little bit of experience, as well. Because your first year, you’re shy, you’re trying to get in the industry, you’re trying to understand how it all works. So this past year, I’ve been growing, I’ve been learning, and then I had Falcon—which is such a huge studio—behind me, and they just gave me that push to make me that much better. And it inspires me for this year. I just gotta step my ass up, man. I can’t do it like I did last year—you have to do better. So it’s pushing me to do better in my work. This is really going to give me a kick in the butt when I do my scene in a few days for Falcon. I would like to thank all the producers who took a chance on me and put me in front to their camera, because without that, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have the chance to shine.” DeAngelo Jackson; photo by Rick Garcia The night also belonged to DeAngelo Jackson, who won the prize for Best Actor for his role in Icon Male’s Blended Family. “First African America male…,” he said as he accepted his trophy onstage, holding up the award and soaking in the extended applause. “This is what I really wanted.” Backstage, the vocal Chi Chi LaRue was equally jubilant, having directed Jackson in the project. “Blended Family was a script that Dana Vespoli wrote for me, and I said give it to DeAngelo for an acting part, but I freaked out because I was like, ‘He doesn’t ever say a word! He doesn’t talk!’ And he took that script and acted up against Silvia Saige—who is a freaking dynamite actress—and Nic Sahara, who is also amazing, and we did this freaking movie with amazing dialogue. And when he was doing it, I was blown away.” Standing next to LaRue backstage, Jackson smiled as he remembered his own fear of the project. “Even thinking about it now, I was so apprehensive. I never had to learn dialogue before, but Chi Chi—she put her neck out there for me, and I went through it back and forth. I knew everyone else’s lines. I wanted to kill it, because it was a really important opportunity,” Jackson said. “Personally, it’s way bigger than me. This right here, I’m just opening up the door. I finally got the door open.” Chimed in LaRue: “This boy has been in the industry for a long time, and he’s finally now getting to the place where he deserved to be 10 years ago. He’s now with a great company, Noir Male—and working for Men.com—and hopefully soon a little feature for Falcon possibly, and it’s going to be awesome. What I’m loving right now so much, is that back in the day when I first started, we held on to our exclusives, and it was so territorial; it was really actually kind of gross. Now we are interchanging, we are borrowing, we’re swapping, and it’s like a family. DeAngelo is very humble. He’s a sweetie, and he’s got a heart of gold. He’s not a diva, which is awesome.” Jackson smiled, saying the win “is very humbling. I think that porn stars, we are so much more than what you may see on screen. We have so much untapped potential. And so for me to be the first black male to win this category is just very, very humbling, and I’m very grounded about that. But I’m also looking at who’s behind me; I want this to mean that you can aspire to something more if you want to. And like I said on stage, an award for Best Body and Best Butt … that’s great. But this right here, Best Actor … I can take this with me. My body is going to fade, and so for me, my five-year goal is to move on to more serious mainstream acting. So this right here is validating a little bit for me, and it’s awesome.” Dante Colle; photo by Rick Garcia Dante Colle was another man of few words onstage as he won the first prize of the night, Best Supporting Actor. His role as a blind man in Raging Stallion’s thriller At Large for director Steve Cruz was career changing. “This entire awards season, this is the single award that I wanted to win. I’m so fucking happy. Thank you so much,” he said onstage. Backstage, the honor was still sinking in. “I’m feeling overwhelmed. I’ve been nominated for Performer of the Year across five awards shows this year, and Supporting Actor is the one I wanted to win. It’s the one I feel like I deserve, because I feel like it’s the one I put the most work into. The response I got for my performance is the one thing that I’m most proud of that I did the entire year,” said the wide-eyed performer, noting it was his first award win for a solo effort. “I really have to thank Steve Cruz, because he gave me the opportunity. I’m overwhelmed that he handpicked me, so I knew I needed to really fit this role, and I was super proud of what I did,” he said. “I could say so many things about this porn community, especially the gay community. It has allowed me to open up sexually, with my insecurities—literally everything in my life, and I will never be able to thank this industry enough.” Armond Rizzo; photo by Rick Garcia Armond Rizzo—who had an emotional win last year for Best Duo Sex Scene with Max Konnor for Noir Male—was a winner again, this time in the fan-voted category of Social Media Star. “Besides showing that my fans are extremely loyal and super supportive, the fact that they take in and they listen to what I speak about—and the fact that they’ve stuck by me because my turbulences and how I deal with them has resonated so much with them—just shows what the power of social media is and how you can use your voice for more than just making money. You can use your voice to save lives, to help people that feel alone—young gay men feeling like outcasts, dealing with depression…we’ve all been there. There’s always someone out there that needs to hear what you wish you heard when you were going through it,” Rizzo said. “I get to hear the stories of people saying, ‘You saved my life, I was on the brink of giving up, and just hearing your story is what I needed that day.’ It’s all about the right timing. The fans voted for this, so it’s special, but just the fact that this is them saying, ‘Your voice matters, and we want to hear more of it’ is what makes it extra special.” Helix's Kyle Ross, Dylan Hayes, Max Carter, Keith Miller, Taylor Saracen, Cameron Parks, director Alex Roman; photo by Jeff Koga Helix picked up the Best Feature honor for its hit Vegas Nights, with much of the cast and crew taking the stage—where performer Kyle Ross announced his on-camera retirement and a shift to a role behind the scenes at Helix. Backstage, director Alex Roman received hugs from his peers and credited his cast and crew for the triumph. He praised Taylor Saracen's “amazing screenplay. She wrote 70 pages of dialogue, which was a pain in the ass for all of my guys—because as you can image from the title, that means we were watching the sun come up every fucking day for like two months,” Roman marveled. “My style of directing is, I don’t like to say ‘Action!’ and I don’t like to say ‘Cut!’ So a lot of what you see is just them fucking around. I try to avoid the over-rehearsed nature of acting, and they delivered. My guys are awesome, and I’m really lucky to have them.” Roman shared he is always inspired by mainstream films when he creates his work. “I’m trying to make it like a Hollywood movie. I don’t pay attention to porn; I pay attention to movies and directors like Martin Scorsese. If I’m up here accepting something like this, that just makes me super happy, because that makes me feel super validated. Because I feel like this is sort of an aspect of the business that is a little bit overlooked.” Co-directors Jake Jaxson and RJ Sebastian with performers Sean Ford, Ben Masters; photo by Jeff Koga CockyBoys owner Jake Jaxson picked up his second consecutive win for Best Director along with husband/co-director RJ Sebastian—this time for Le Garçon Scandaleux. “This one was exciting for me because it was a co-production with PinkTV, and it was one of these adventures where they’re like, ‘Come here, shoot here, use French models and let’s make something great.’ And they really were incredibly supportive. But as I said on stage, co-directing with my husband of 20 years now, it’s so wonderful. Some people say how couples complete each other’s sentences, but we complete each other’s shots … we just have a way that we work now. Every now and then I think about what it would be like not working with him, and I get so depressed; I don’t think I could,” Jaxson laughed. “For me, it’s funny. I had a movie in Tel Aviv that was not a porn movie, and someone asked me, ‘Why don’t you just make a ‘real’ movie?’ And I was like, ‘No, I make real movies. It’s just a different kind of storytelling—it’s sexual storytelling.’ And the reason it’s important is because when I was a kid in southern Louisiana trying to figure things out, it wasn’t until I found and stole a porn VHS and watched it that I was able to understand that what I was thinking and what was in my mind … I wasn’t a crazy person. I’m a firm believer that porn has a purpose, so when you have movies where you can tell a studio puts effort into them, they’re respecting the actors. They want the actors to shine beyond just an internet clip, and make sure that the movie does not seem disposable. And if that movie doesn’t seem disposable, then people do not think the performers are disposable. So for me, that’s why I always choose to make one or two big features a year.” Director Steve Cruz; photo by Rick Garcia Steve Cruz, who picked up GayVN Awards as a performer in 2008 and 2010, won his first directing hardware at the event (for Raging Stallion’s Outta the Park!, which earned him Best Director Non-Feature). “You just have to keep getting better and better, right? I mean, I’m surprised it’s still going on, frankly. I’ve been in the industry 12 years. It’s a long time. It’s my first director win for GayVN … ask me about it tomorrow when it’s finally sunk in. Right now, I feel like I’m dreaming.” Cruz shared that drawing the stellar performances out of his cast (the film also had noms for Best Non-Feature, Best Duo Sex Scene and Best Three-way) is a natural result of his process. “I pick all my guys, I write my own stuff, so I kind of write with the cast in mind. These are just all of my favorite guys of the moment. I knew what they could deliver, and we all just had the most fun we could possibly have. They just kind of unleashed and made it a big party,” he said backstage, adding that he always makes sure he gets to know everyone before he films. “I just know a little bit about their backstory, what they’re going through, their personality, and then I kind of take it from there. Like any writer, they’re sort of my inspiration.” Cruz—a multi-nominee over the past three years for his dramatic films—shared that the comedic ones are a little easier, and a refreshing change of pace. “I do like the dramatic and the dark. I’ve been with Raging a long time, and actually that’s going to be changing soon because I’ve been promoted to Falcon, so I’ve made my last Raging. So (my films) might be lightening up in general. I just love the reality genre, too. I really had a lot of fun with this movie.” Skyy Knox and director Chi Chi LaRue; photo by Jeff Koga Cruz was one of the people LaRue thanked on stage when accepting the trophy for his Falcon film Love and Lust in Montreal, which won Best Non-Feature. The director had performer Skyy Knox join him on stage, gushing “this movie would never have been what it was without this man right here.” Backstage, LaRue continued to sing Knox’s praises—and shared the initial struggles of putting the film together. “I’m just so happy. This is the (win) I wanted, because (the film) should never have happened. I should have turned around and not went to Montreal. But it was like, I’ve triaged before, I’ve gone through things. I was freaking out. The star of the movie was going to be in three scenes, and when he dropped out Skyy became the star of the movie—but it was only supposed to be two scenes. That’s when Trent King had to drop out because his house got robbed. I called Falcon the night before and was like [mimics sobbing voice], ‘Please let me do a three-way with these guys, please!’ And they were like, ‘Okay, do it!’ And it was the best. It was the cherry on a beautiful Canadian cake.” That resulted in Knox’s third scene of the film, joining fellow GayVN nominees Devin Franco and Steven Lee for a memorable three-way. “I worked overtime in this project, but I’m so happy that we came to Montreal—where I live—and created this beautiful movie. The scene a Stock Bar, a strip club in Montreal, was also great. At first, we didn’t know what we were gonna do, and it turned into such a sexy scene [with Ethan Chase].” Michael DelRay; photo by Rick Garcia Michael DelRay took the stage to accept the award for Best Fetish Scene for his extreme encounter with Alex Mecum in “My Brother's Discipline” for Kink.com. “I knew Alex was hella fab, but you never know what to expect with scenes like this sometimes. Some people are huge fucking bottoms, some subs, some huge doms, you never know. Then I’m doing this scene with him, and he brings his own 22-milimeter gauge silicone sound that gets bigger, and I’m getting off shoving this up his dick,” DelRay recalled backstage—adding that the win held special significance for him. “I’m often typecast as twink, so to have me be a big face on Kink.com as a dom is a huge deal,” he shared, thanking director Sebastian Keys for bringing him on. “What it means to me is that I can finally be outside of the twink typecast, and we are finally getting to a place in porn where it’s just all coagulated and making sense.” Ricky Larkin; photo by Rick Garcia Other winners of the night included Jack Harrer, Peter Annaud and Marcel Gassion for Best Three-way for Bel Ami’s Offensively Large 4; Ashton Summers and Pheonix Fellington for Best Duo Sex Scene in “Fellington’s Flip-Fuck” from Helix; and Ricky Larkin, Wesley Woods, Natalie Mars and Ella Nova for Best Bi Sex Scene (“Free for All” from WhyNotBi.com). In the fan awards, trophy boy Rhyheim Shabazz won Hottest Newcomer; Calvin Banks picked up Favorite Cock; Beaux Banks won Favorite Butt; Blake Mitchell won Favorite Body; Austin Wolf was Favorite Dom; Rocco Steele won Favorite Daddy; Joey Mills won Favorite Twink; Teddy Torres was picked as Favorite Bear; Favorite Cam Guy(s) were Callum and Cole; Favorite Top was Zilv Gudel; Favorite Bottom was Rourke; and Favorite FTM Star was Billy Vega. Tim Valenti; photo by Rick Garcia NakedSword founder and Falcon Studios Group President Tim Valenti also took the stage to be inducted into the GayVN Hall of Fame. “Those of us who work in this gay adult industry know just how important the work we do is. That, for millions of people across the globe, we are the only positive version of gay sexuality that they see. That for millions of people across the globe, we are the only outlet they have to feel alive and whole. That for millions of people across the globe, we are the only connection to a broader gay world,” shared the streaming pioneer. “What we do is entertainment, yes. But it’s powerful, it’s good, and for so many people … it’s revolutionary. So to the models, the producers, the directors, the bean counters, the editors and the designers—keep doing what you’re doing. Keep producing films that are authentic. Keep producing films that are fun and sexy. Keep producing films that you want to see. Because those are the films that truly resonate. Those are the films that show our culture. Those are the films that change lives.” The audience was also entertained by returning host Alec Mapa, who headlined a crowd-pleasing opening video that featured trophy boys Shabazz, Brock Banks, Nico Leon and Riley Finch—and also introduced co-host Nicole Byer. Previous co-host Shangela made a special performance appearance, and the crowd was also entertained by singer King Princess and drag star Alyssa Edwards. The ceremony also opened with a tribute to those we lost in 2019, including Dymel, Casey Jacks, William Higgins, Mark Nagel, Greg “Spanky” Shearer, John Tegan and Harlan Yaffe. Musical act King Princess; photo by Rick Garcia Alyssa Edwards, who was on the bill for the GayVN Awards, announced a suprise appearance by Shangela, a two-time GayVN Awards host; photo by Rick Garcia