Interview by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine- November 2001
I first met Michael Brandon on the morning of San Diego’s most recent Lesbian/Gay Pride Parade, when he was walking by the Shelter from the Storm/H.EA.L. It’s probably appropriate that I met him at the Pride occasion, because if there’s one impression you get from Michael at an interview, it’s an exuberant sense of pride in his physical health, in his stamina, in Monster (his nickname for his penis), in his professionalism and his skill. Michael and I met again on October 10 while he was in San Diego for a four-day business trip. He sat down with me for an interview which pretty much speaks for itself. Michael Brandon can be reached at
Zenger’s: Michael, I think my first question would be, if someone were to come up to you and say, What do you do for a living?, how would you explain it? What would you say?
Michael Brandon: I’m in the adult entertainment industry. If I’d elaborate a little bit, I’d tell them I do the dancing, and I do the video work, and I do fundraising, and the escorting, all levels of adult entertainment.
Zenger’s: How did you get involved in it?
Brandon: As a kid I was fascinated with Peter North and how far he could shoot his load, halfway across the room. So I spent a lot of my time, and a lot of my money in bookstore cubbyholes watching him. Then, when I came out of the closet, the opportunity was presented to me by my reading an ad in the Frontiers magazine, XXX Sex Models Wanted. It had been a fantasy of mine, so I put the phone call in and I went in for the interview.
Zenger’s: How long have you been involved in adult entertainment?
Brandon: Since 1987. I got involved in the late 1980’s and then I basically went into what I call a retirement, which was actually drugs. Now I’m clean. I haven’t had any drugs or anything in my system for about two years, and I’ve been back in the business full-on, full steam ahead.
Zenger’s: How did you get involved in drugs, and more importantly, how did you get out of them?
Brandon: I got involved in drugs by the lifestyle I was leading. When I came out of the closet, I fell in love with a bar manager, so that should tell you right there. I was surrounded by the drugs. It started with the alcohol, and then with me being as vulnerable and naïve as I was back then to everything, I mean fresh just coming out of the closet. I was 17 years old. I was susceptible to it very easily. I was introduced to the drugs in a bathhouse one night, and boy, it just took me on a fucking roller-coaster ride from hell. In order to get out of it, it’s just been two years now, a little over two years. Since then I’ve been clean. It took a program, a very, very rigorous, structured, almost brainwashing type of program. But it was a good brainwashing, just pointing out that I’m the problem. It’s not the world. Stop running, because the only person you’re running from is you, and you can’t run from you, you know what I mean? You are there all the time.
Zenger’s: One thing that I noticed when I read the newsletter on your web site was you mentioned that it was a major boost for that you finally got to work at Falcon Studios after they had told you, during your drug days, Come back when you’re clean.
Brandon: It just makes me feel very proud to be able to go to Falcon. As a matter of fact I just came off of a Falcon/Mustang shoot this week. I was up at the Russian River, and I gave them one hell of a fucking scene. Right at the beginning of my drug usage I was brought to San Francisco to be introduced to the powers that be at Falcon- I don’t remember their names and they turned me away. They were very nice, but they turned me away, and they told me, When you get healthy again, give us a call. And I have.
Zenger’s: You said on your web site that you’ve bisexual. Have you done any videos with woman, and have you done any escorting with women?
Brandon: Actually, I’m 31 years old and I had never traveled until March of this year. The Nob Hill Theatre (in San Francisco) kicked off a traveling spree of mine, basically a tour, what I call the Monster Tour. I’m going to different cities and different states, but you have to understand that I’m Southern California born and bred. I don’t ever see unless it’s an act of God- ever moving from sunny California. I love it, sunny Southern California. It’s just amazing to me, the different lifestyles and the different cultures in different cities. I mean, you got to Atlanta and even the people look different. You go to Texas, and then the buildings are architecturally different. It’s just been one experience after the next.
Zenger’s: And yet I’ve heard from Gays who’ve done a lot of traveling that Gay communities tend to be pretty much the same in any city you go to; that if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
Brandon: Basically, I agree. You’ve got your bars, you’ve got your bathhouses. Especially because of the circles I travel in, you know. You’ve got your Gay what do you call it? Boys’ Towns, Gay ghettoes, whatever your want to call it. So I agree with that. Some of them though, I must say, depending on where you go, have less attitude.
Zenger’s: How would you compare attitude in San Diego with that in L.A.?
Brandon: Santa Monica Boulevard is definitely image/attitude. WeHo Boys’ Town in West Hollywood is definitely image/attitude. You’ve got to have the tank-top on. You’ve got have the SUV. You’ve got to walk the 2.2 dogs down Santa Monica Boulevard, all that crap. I don’t see so much of that in San Diego. The weather down here is different. It’s a bit cooler, because you’ve closer to the water than we are. I don’t know if it’s the salt air or what, but you guys seem to be a little bit friendlier down here.
Zenger’s: I’ve heard that shooting a porn video is just about as boring as any other sort of filmmaking. There are longs waits between takes, and it’s not as much fun as it looks in the finished product. Is that true?
Brandon: It’s work. It’s definitely work. I go onto a set, and I’m paid a day’s salary, and it’s eight to 10 to 12 hours, depending on hard-ons, depending on how much of a Francis Ford Coppola the director has going on, depending on how much dialogue they have which, of course, falls back on the Francis Ford Coppola part. There are some directors out there who just really, really make the dialogue tedious. And for Christ’s sake, I’m not paid to act. I’m paid to fuck. You know what I mean? That’s what I get paid for! Not to say that I can’t act. I don’t know. Some people say, Oh, well, you act really well. I don’t know. My head tells me I don’t. I get all clammed up. I’ll tell you, you put me in front of a group of people and tell to talk about myself, and I get nervous as a whore in church. You tell me to take off all of my clothes and get a hard-on and blow a load all over those fucking people, I don’t give a shit how many people are out there, it’s just like that. Any type of functions that I MC like I just got finished MC’ing an All Worlds Hot Male contest, or Hot Nude California, or something like that. I had never done anything like that, and I was really, really nervous about it, because I had to keep the crowd going. So off came my clothes! Off came my clothes. And the more experienced I get, though, and the more acceptance I get from people I mean, I’ve had floods of e-mail, and I had floods of people coming up to me and say, Oh, my God, you did such a good job. Part of the reason why I believe that I did such a good job is because when the microphone was first put in my hand I started, well, like Bluh bluh bluh I started flubbing all over myself I turned around to the crowd and said, Do you know it, you all? I am nervous, nervous, so please bear with me. That broke the ice. I’m not afraid to raise my hand and say, Hey, I’ve got a problem. You know what I mean? I’m nervous. I still get nervous on sets, right before the camera starts rolling, because I’m inside my head, and that’s really dangerous place to be. Am I going to get a hard-on? What if it you know, all that crap that goes on with other models. I’ve seen it happen with other models, you know: the hard-on problems and all that stuff. And I know damned well that I’ve done, what, 70-plus videos and I don’t think I’ve ever had a hard-on problem.
Zenger’s: Would you ever want to direct videos, and if so, what would you do differently from the way you’ve been directed?
Brandon: I’m going to tell you, I’ve started my own production company in association with Raging Stallion Studios. It’s called MB Productions, Monster Bang Productions. There are directors who have been models before, and there those directors that are tune with what the models’ needs are. And that would be where I would in under both, actually. A happy model gives a good scene. You put him into a fucking position where he’s uncomfortable as all hell, and you tell him to perform, and then it’s just not natural and it comes out in the video. The camera picks up everything. Good moods, bad moods, good chemistry, bad chemistry. So first of all, as a director, I would make sure that the chemistry is there. I mean, it’s not to be there all of the time. There’ve been many times when I have walked onto a set and thought, Oh, my God. I really have to become an actor this time! But I would just be more in tune with the models, as a director. Stay more in tune with the models, and understand that they’re not actors and actresses, you know. And also I would understand that a lot of people don’t give a hoot what the person is saying. They’re fast-forwarding to the fuck scenes. When I use to rent videos, and watch the videos, that’s what I use to do. I fast-forwarded to the fucking fuck scenes! I didn’t give a shit what they were saying. I couldn’t care less what they were saying. I’m exclusive with Raging Stallion right now, and they are all of the same philosophy, which is one of the reasons I fell in love with them. There’s only a minute, minuscule amount of verbal, and that’s just basically to set up what’s going to go on throughout the whole video. And that’s just at the beginning of the movie. There’s not a whole bunch of shit going on between fuck scenes and all that stuff. It’s all about man-to-man, hot, sweaty, piggy sex.
Zenger’s: Do You have any preference in terms of whether the performers should undress themselves on camera, undress each other on camera, or just appear naked?
Brandon: I definitely think that the transition should be as natural as possible. And I don’t know if that answers your question like you want me to. For me to be sticking , tongue down somebody’s throat for, like, two minutes, and all of a sudden he’s butthole naked and my cock’s in his mouth, I don’t think I’m O.K. with that. As natural as can be, I think, is the best way. In a lot of the market out there right now, there seems to be a lot of attraction to almost amateurish stuff, you know, just let it happen. Don’t fucking stage it, don’t position it, just let it happen. That’s where I come in as a model, as experienced a model as I am, and thankfully I have the length I have on my cock, because I’m able to make it naturally happen. A lot of the models, because of their inexperience or because they just don’t give a shit, they’re just there for the paycheck, they just don’t understand that there’s camera angles and lighting situations and concerns and all that stuff.
Zenger’s: Have you ever done a bareback video, and are there any circumstances under which you would?
Brandon: When I first started in the late 1980’s, that’s pre-condom days, so yes, I’ve done bareback videos. But they weren’t called bareback videos back then, because it was just standard operating procedure. I have never done a bareback video in this day and age, since I’ve been back March of last year (2000) is when I came back. I have been involved in a shoot with Treasure Island Media. It was an oral scene, though. I have appeared in a bareback video, but it was just an oral. And no, under no circumstances would I bareback. There was a fundraiser AI was involved in just a couple of weeks ago, and when it was very first in the making there was a hint that some bare backer video companies were involved in it. And I Michael Brandon pulled out. I can’t I don’t endorse that. I don’t condone that. Marketing Monster and Michael Brandon as a whole, it’s working very well for me. Sharing Michael Brandon love with as many people as want it, wherever I go. Whenever I get booked for a dance gig or a fundraiser gig, in a different city or state, I always plan three or four days besides the days I’m booked for. That’s so I can share Michael Brandon love with whatever city and state that is.
