Meet the gay porn star bringing back kink and passion one scene at a time: ‘Porn is art’
Manuel Scalco. (Provided)
If you watch gay porn – which, it turns out, quite a lot of people do – you might have seen some of Manuel Scalco’s videos.
He started his working life as a carpenter, but he later became a dancer. That led to him being spotted by porn producers who told him that his tattoos would make him a hot commodity in the industry.
Since then, Manuel Scalco has starred in porn videos for some of the industry’s biggest studios. More recently, Manuel realised that he wanted to venture out on his own – that he could explore his own fantasies and love of kink by setting up his own studio.
That’s how Dirty Minds Media was born. The studio is all about fetish, passion and – most of all – good, natural acting.
“We search for people who really enjoy the situation – we don’t want people who only want to work for the money. You need to have a passion,” Manuel says.
PinkNews caught up with Manuel Scalco to talk about feet, OnlyFans, and the straight men who just can’t get enough when it comes to gay porn.
PinkNews: How did you get into the porn industry, and how did you get to where you are today?
I started in the world of porn four years ago. Before that, I was working as a go go dancer, so I was meeting a lot of performers, and exactly four years ago in Barcelona at one party I met a couple of porn actors and I started talking with them, and they said, ‘Hey, you look so great. What do you think about entering the world of porn?’ I was really fascinated by porn, but before talking to them, I had never thought about it.
Manuel Scalco. (Provided)
I started working with Kristen Bjorn in Barcelona and then after that I started doing porn in all parts of the world. I filmed for Falcon, Raging Stallion, some of the big names in the industry. And then after building my experience, I decided just last year to do my personal studio. I like porn, but I want to show what’s in my mind – my fetish, my fantasy – so I decided to enter the industry as a producer by founding Dirty Minds Media.
Where did the idea for a production company like this one come from?
The first step was that it was my dirty mind, but then I thought, maybe I need to make it “dirty minds” because it’s not only my mind, it’s the mind of all the audience. In Dirty Minds Media, we try to explore a lot of fantasies. The big fetish at Dirty Minds Media is socks and feet. We have all the models wear white socks because it’s one of my best fantasies.
People have a lot of different fetishes and they have a lot of fantasies. We’ve done videos with fisting and pissing too, and role play scenarios like men at work, or the delivery man comes your house – that type of situation. We discovered that people like that, but that they also like more natural sex. They don’t like bad acting in sex scenes. For models, we search for people who really enjoy the situation – we don’t want people who only want to work for the money. You need to have a passion for it.
Manuel Scalco. (Provided)
How did you get into kink and fetish?
It started when I was a really shy kid and I was still at school. Every day my mom would pick me up to bring me home and we would walk through the streets. I was around 10, 11 years old, so I was really young, and I saw a guy in a shop wearing sporty things like Nike sneakers and socks, and I started watching him without a t-shirt in the street cleaning, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I don’t know why, but I started to fixate on his sneakers and socks, and I found him really hot. It’s the same as with straight men who love women with high heels – I think it’s the same fetish but a gay version. So my fetish comes from when I saw that guy cleaning, and it’s on my mind every time.
Is it difficult to come up with original story ideas for the scenes?
Yeah, sometimes it’s difficult to come up with new ideas, but our difference is eroticism. A lot of companies, they have a lot of hardcore porn, but everything is really cold. I work in clubs too, and when I talk with people they tell me that they love passion. People don’t like static guys or really fake acting, so I think our secret is about creating passion between partners, making the situation really real.
You’re on OnlyFans as well – what’s that experience been like for you? Have you enjoyed it and would you recommend it to others?
I don’t really have a good opinion of OnlyFans. I started OnlyFans when I started doing porn, and I started because it was a new platform. I felt that it wasn’t a pleasure or a fantasy for me to do one video in front of the camera for the money, so I stopped. I still have my OnlyFans account because sometimes I post videos from my movies. Today, everyone wants to do OnlyFans. It can be really boring – I prefer porn from studios, I like to make something professional. I meet a lot of people who are on OnlyFans and sometimes they’ll tell me that they find it really stressful because they need to create a lot of content to make money.
Manuel Scalco lying in a bathtub. (Provided)
The reason I prefer a real studio to OnlyFans is because I focus on passion with my studio. I tell people, ‘Don’t worry.’ I set the cameras and I tell them to be natural. Enjoy the situation, enjoy the moment, and don’t think about the camera. But then another guy, when going on OnlyFans, is thinking at all times about the camera, looking at the camera, posing for the camera. For me, this makes a difference. At least 80 per cent of the reason you should be doing this is for pleasure.
For me porn is a form of art, especially the eroticism. A lot of people tell me, ‘I love when I’m watching your movies, it’s real, it’s 100 per cent real’, and that’s because I have chemistry with the other guy. But today people doing OnlyFans or JustForFans can end up getting really frustrated because they’re filming all week, every single day, to generate content to make money.
There’s still a lot of stigma out there about porn – even quite recently Billie Eilish said that porn had “destroyed” her brain. Do you find it frustrating that those conversations are still going on?
I’m not frustrated. Today, sexuality and porn are starting to be really normalised, but a lot of people continue to talk about porn as a really big taboo. I’m really proud of my work. When I’m talking with some guys at the gym, they say, ‘What is your job?’ I say, ‘I’m a porn actor,’ and they say, ‘Oh really?’ I see people acting like, ‘Oh my God!’ But me, I’m acting really normal. My family know I’m a porn actor – all my family, and we are Italian, and Italian people are really conservative.
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I think the truth is that people who talk s**t about porn consume a lot of porn. I talk to all kinds of people about my job, and some people start to act strange but most people are curious. I talk really easily and normally about it. I think people need to be more relaxed about porn because there’s nothing wrong with it.
You’ve built a really loyal fanbase through your work – what’s that been like?
I am famous in the gay community, but I’m starting to understand that it’s not just in our community. A lot of guys in the gym, they start to talk to me and say, ‘I know you,’ and I say, ‘Oh really, where from?’ They say, ‘I watch your movies.’ A lot of the guys who tell me they watch my movies aren’t gay, they’re straight, and they like watching my movies with their wives. A lot of my friends and a lot of people I know, they know about my porn career because they search porn and they discover my videos. A lot of them are straight.
A lot of straight guys are watching gay porn. Last year, I did a show in a club for straight people. In that club, everyone was supposedly straight, and a lot of the guys when I started doing shows in that place knew me – ‘Oh, that’s Manuel Scalco’ – so I discovered straight couples and straight people love watching gay porn. For me, it’s nice to know that.
