SexHerald: What kind of fans do you normally attract or what types of people are watching your films?

Buck Angel: Mostly, it’s gay men for sure. I definitely would say 80-90 percent are gay men but I do see a huge women’s market coming along in the last couple of years. A lot more women are really starting to buy my work which is amazing ‘cause I really would love to get that market; it’s a very difficult market to get.

SH: So is it like the gay guys are checking you out, you got your clothes on, maybe your top off, he’s all man, then the pants come off and it’s like, ‘Whoa that’s a little bit woman?’ I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.

Angel: I consider myself just a sexual person and I’m open to people. It has nothing to do with their gender, and I think that when people lump themselves into this whole I’m straight, I’m gay, I do believe there are some people that are specifically attracted to one specific gender but I think more people are more open to things than they want to admit because the world and society makes us feel like we have to say we’re this way.

That’s why I think Buck Angel really affects people either really negatively or super positively because I hit that thing to where you’re like, ‘Well, I find Buck attractive but then there’s this vagina and I’m attracted to men and how can I be attracted to Buck when he has a vagina and only women have vaginas?’ And I’m saying that’s not true because I’m totally a man and I happen to have a vagina. It’s bringing all these kinds of questions to people’s sexuality and making them feel like you know they’ve always considered themselves gay but now they’re attracted to Buck Angel and ‘oh my god.’ For some reason, it makes them feel very, very uncomfortable about themselves. That’s too bad. In a sense, it makes me sad that people have to be so hard on themselves because they’re attracted to a guy like me.

SH: I think you’re just really giving this super-great positive message for all these people who are maybe kind of confused, or maybe just not feeling right about who they are. How do you feel about this almost inadvertent message that you’re giving out?

Angel: Well, first, I appreciate you saying that; thank you very much. When I first started to do it, honestly, I just did it because I really wanted to represent myself in the industry that I work in—that there is nobody like me and I’m thinking, ‘Jeez, you know I am a sexual person and I get hit on all the time and I feel like there is nobody representing who I am.’ There’s she-males out there and they get represented in a lot of different ways and a lot of it is very negatively, and I don’t want to be represented that way. So I’m going to make myself, I’m going to do my porn. I had no idea that it was going to turn into more than just porn; it’s become a political statement, it’s become all these, and now I’m the head, I’m the leader of the female-to-male transsexuals and I’m this and I’m that. That’s not really where my head was at when I started doing this. It was more like I just wanted to make some really kick-ass, cool, positive sex—you know, porn! [laughs]

Actually, it’s kind of cool because it’s really helped me to grow as a person in a sense that I feel like I have a responsibility—more than just my porn—I have a responsibility to show that there’s all kinds of people out there and there’s all kinds of sexuality out there, and genders and things. So, I think that it’s given me an opportunity to make a sort of positive spin out there for people

SH: I think you’re definitely, totally right about that. You’re starting a revolution, a whole second wave of opening up people’s minds. I think you may be the only person in the industry who is possibly doing that.

Angel: I am, and I think that number one, I think that’s why a lot of people in the industry are sort of, in a sense, scared of me in this weird way because I get props from the industry but it took me a long time to get props. I mean, you know people were slamming doors in my face in the beginning. ‘Oh my god, Buck, you’re a freak!’ And I’m thinking, ‘I’m a freak!?’ They have like clown porn and balloon porn and I’m the last person to judge about what turns you on, cause you know, I was getting a little pissed off.

They’re telling me that I’m weird and there’s like the most crazy stuff out there and I’m thinking [that] just actually helps me because I hate to be told that I can’t do something. So, I’m just saying don’t tell me that I can’t do this or what I‘m doing isn’t positive. They were so super negative to me so it was like I have to keep pushing, and I think because of that that’s why I am sort of a revolutionary in the porn business. I’m a total pioneer in the porn business and now I have the props from the industry and people do respect me in the industry, but they’re still, to be honest with you, a little standoffish.

SH: Have you performed any live engagements here in the U.S. or is that more of a Europe type of thing?

Angel: Of course mostly I perform in New York City because New York City rocks. I have a lot of friends in New York, and I come to New York a lot and New York is like Europe. New York is Europe; it’s not part of the America. [It] has its own way of thinking, own way of doing things, they’ve always been very ahead of everything—it’s just its own world. That’s where I perform. When I come to New York, I perform at The Box.

The Box is like Simon Hammerstein, kind of underground, burlesque; it’s super underground, super European, it’s burlesque and all the pop stars and movie stars go—very hip. I’m part of a burlesque show but I’m not going to tell you specifically what I do because you have to see. I do that and I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Black Party in New York City, which is a huge gay kind of leather event and it’s like 8,000 men and I performed there like three years ago and that was huge because I was like the first guy of my kind to ever perform in this event which is super hardcore gay men and it was groundbreaking what I did there. I got a huge amount of applause. When I do perform in the U.S., possibly the more I think about it, it’s only been in New York City. LA I tried but LA’s gross. I have tried to perform in Los Angeles but they so have their heads up their asses so much that like I’m too scary to perform there they say.

SH: When it comes to your films, do you prefer to perform with men or, because I know you kind of perform with everybody, do you prefer men, women, transsexuals and she-males, or do you not prefer anyone at all really?

Angel: I have no preference. I’m a businessman; I go where the money comes from. Bottom line is: gay men buy my films and gay men don’t want to see me fucking women and so that’s where I’ve been basically concentrating my efforts—to make more gay films. With that said, I do enjoy shooting with women and I am going to do a couple films this year with women, some more woman-type films geared specifically for the women audience. But prior to that, I’ve been mostly concentrating on shooting with just men and making hardcore gay porn. But since it looks like my audience is expanding to women more and more, I think they want to see me with women. I’m going to do a couple of projects with some pretty big women directors in Europe and do a collaboration with them. We’ll see how that goes.

SH: What is Buck Angel Entertainment all about?

Angel: Buck Angel Entertainment is about showing diversity and positivity in adult entertainment. This year, I’m hoping to expand my company to start shooting more female-to-male transsexual guys. I don’t want to be in front of the camera in another couple of years. I’d like to come out and use myself out and really start making some more transsexual men porn stars. There have to be some more guys doing this eventually and I think the best way to expand my company is to start shooting films with other guys because people might be interested in guys like me but they might not like me specifically; they might not like the way I look, I’m too hardcore looking, they might like some cuter, younger guys with hair and smaller bodies and no muscles and very twinkie looking. So, I think in the next year I’m going to be producing some films with a lot more different guys and really kind of expanding it to more transsexual men films.

SH: I know we’ve only talked about you in the industry, but is there anybody else out there?

Angel: No, it’s just me. The problem is there has been a couple of companies very underground, small, from San Francisco who tried to do it but their image and mine is just totally different—not really where I’m going at and they don’t care about being where I’m at, what level I’m at, and really putting me out there, which is more like the queer community and that’s perfectly fine. My idea is to blow it up in the world and really be the king of this genre; make it into exactly what she-male porn is—you know, exactly the same way but with guys and to really own this genre. I know there are a lot of guys out there now who are starting to want to do porn and I get tons of emails from them.

When I started, there were no guys like me who felt comfortable with their bodies like I do. That was the problem; guys thinking they need to go have penis surgery to become a man and I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, these people need to chill out!’ I think I needed to give that message to people as well as that I don’t have the opportunity to get a penis like a regular, you know, man’s penis. So I have to live my life the way it is and it doesn’t make me any less sexual or any less of a man. So I think now that I’ve put that message out, a lot of transsexual men are feeling comfortable with their bodies and feeling like, ‘Hey I want to do porn for Buck Angel.’ That’s how I’m able to start doing it now because I couldn’t do it before when no guys wanted to do it.

SH: When and why did you decide to go through with this life-changing transition?

Angel: Well, because my life sucked. [laughs] I hated being a female. My life was that whole cliché: ‘I felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body.’ It totally was that way for me. I was a tomboy; I grew up that way, always played with the boys. Then I started going through puberty and growing breasts and getting my period and it was like, ‘What the hell is going on? I’m a guy! How can I be getting boobs and having my period?’ It was really very devastating for me, and I think from that moment on my life was downhill.

I became very shy, I became very kind of just stick to my own self, drugs and alcohol became a huge problem, I became a female model. Somehow somebody saw me, took pictures, and got them to Europe. It was the 80s when that androgyny kind of porn was really happening. I had an opportunity to become a huge fashion model but that wasn’t where my head was at. I wanted to be a man; I didn’t want to be some fashion model—it was like weird. That event helped me get even worse into drugs and alcohol. There was a point in my life were I was literally homeless on the street just thinking, ‘I’m going to kill myself. I can not live this way anymore.’ Somehow, someone got me sober and two years into my sobriety I realized I could get a sex change. Of course, no one told me I could have a sex change. I had my sex change 16 years ago when people weren’t talking about those things. From the moment I found the doctor and started my hormone shots, my life was like a new life. I literally believe I was certainly reborn.

SH: How did you get into the industry in the first place?

Angel: I was married to a female dominatrix for a while and we had the idea early on. Before porn on the Internet was even huge, we just said why don’t we start a website? We started a website, we started shooting fetish films in this dungeon we owned in Los Angeles. We’re like way ahead of everybody else doing this stuff. That’s how I kind of got into doing the porn stuff and then I taught myself how to make movies; I taught myself how to make websites; we just totally focused on it, and I made movies geared around her. She’s a very famous, professional dominatrix, so we took her name and we labeled it and we made all these movies, and we were doing just really fucking amazing and then…she decided to have this crazy affair on me. A lot of her clients were very high-profile clients and one of them was a big movie director…

That’s just a whole stupid time in my life but I believe it happened for a reason; because of that, I’m doing Buck Angel. So from there, I just realized that I got to do my own thing, and doing what I have a vision of doing and that’s how I came from being behind the camera and making a site to being in front of the camera and inventing this whole kind of new thing on the Internet. It started on the Internet; I didn’t even start making Buck Angel porn until about a year after making my website. So, it started as a website and it went from there.

SH: Do you think America is slowly easing up to this idea of people like you. Is America becoming more open-minded?

Angel: Of course. It’s becoming the new gay. It’s because of people like us and my work and it’s getting out there and people are seeing me on television shows. I just did a television show on Women’s Entertainment Network called The Secret Lives of Women.

You can’t believe the amount of emails I got from women; just like, ‘I don’t watch porn but I think you’re the fucking most amazing person I have ever seen!’ I had a grandma write me dude! A 65-year-old grandma who said that ‘she couldn’t believe it, she thinks I’m so amazing, and god bless me.’

SH: What’s going on behind the scenes at Buck Angel Entertainment? Are there any future titles, anything exciting going on for the fans to look forward to?

Angel: I’m looking right now to start producing a new film with all transsexual men. And I’m going to do a new series, I can’t tell you much about that because I don’t want someone stealing my idea. It’s going to be very innovative, it’s going to be really hot, it’s going to be a new step for how I’m planning on bringing my company up in 2009. I’m working on trying to find some really hot guys cause I have a very specific image of transsexual men that I would like to have, so we’re casting these films. I’m traveling to Toronto to do some filming then I’m off to Amsterdam to shoot, to do a big show there. I’m starting to travel a lot again, in another month all over Europe to do sex shows. In Scandinavia, which I think is like Norway, Sweden, there’s some people there who are interested in bringing me over there to do some live sex shows, which is kind of cool.

SH: So, you’re international.

Angel: Oh, yeah. You become a star in Europe before you become a star in America for people like me. I think I really have to get myself a huge status in Europe, then America will see. Once they see me grow so much in Europe I think America will be like, ‘Oh Buck Angel…’

Last year, I did this amazing thing. I did a sculpture with a very big artist; his name is Marc Quinn and he flew me over to London and he’s making a marble sculpture, a full-length marble sculpture of me. That was one of the big highlights of my career. He’s very famous. He did the Kate Moss all-gold statue. I’m going to have a marble sculpture of me made, with my cigar, totally naked; it’s really awesome. It should come out next year and it’s supposed to tour around the world.

SH: Are you interested in making more of those big production, storyline type of films, similar to Buckback Mountain, or that simple let’s meet, let’s get it on type of film?

Angel: Okay, I’m going to be super honest with you right now. As an artist, Buckback is my favorite film and I had to hire a crew. That’s the most money I put into one of my movies. I had an amazing cinematographer, as you can see; he’s a professional in the mainstream Hollywood. He produced it, he directed it, he wrote it, he filmed it, and he edited it for me, and I got all my friends to help me out and it was this big thing. Financially, it was not a pay off for me. Artistically, I got amazing reviews; it’s incredible. But I’m not Vivid and I’m not Wicked; I’m just little ol’ Buck Angel Entertainment. I finance everything on my own, I do everything on my own; what I make goes directly back in to my business. With that said it’s really difficult for me to make projects like that, though I would, of course, love to and of course I am talking about doing another one but in between the big ones I have to produce the little ones to make the money, cause those are what makes money. I’m going to eventually do another sort of Buckback Mountain, a different thing. Who knows? Maybe a Buckback Mountain 2.

Financially, it’s much better for me to do Internet only but I love DVD and there’s a lot of little shops out there who like to carry my DVDs. There’s so many things I have to put in my head and, as a businessman, I have to evaluate where’s my money coming from. It sucks I can’t afford to produce Buckback Mountain-type movies. When I did it, because it’s so innovative still, a lot of gay shops won’t carry it; it’s just so weird.

It was up for a GAYVN Award for Best Alternative Release and everyone there thought for sure I was going to win, and some film called the Naked Singing Men won. That’s how I know it’s all a bunch of fucking crap because Naked Singing Men is an off-Broadway play with a bunch of naked men—singing—and they made it in to a DVD. I want to know how that’s porn.

It’s just an award but I really felt like I got gypped on that one. Again, it’s the gay thing. They’ve given me props by nominating me but they’re not going to take that extra step just because it’s securing me or them admitting that my stuff is gay. Lots of those gay men in the industry are still very freaked out by me.

SH: Regarding your image, you went from a woman to a man. You are like alpha male, big ol’ sexy man. I really dig your tattoos and this whole real, macho look about you. Regarding the look, was that always something that you felt you wanted to be when you eventually would become who you are? Or is this the Buck Angel image?

Angel: I always envisioned myself with muscles and not so much the tattoos; that wasn’t really my vision. I always loved muscle guys, I always had a fascination with them; to me, that’s a man, you know? I wanted to be a man’s man. I grew up around…my dad was very macho, he was a professional football player, we grew up riding dirt bikes. So that was sort of like my image of what a man is supposed to be and that’s what I envisioned to be. The tattoos came when I was still in the female form but the tattoos were more sort of like a way for me to, kind of, decorate my body that I didn’t really like. A lot of my tattoos were already here before my change.

I started the change a year before I started weightlifting. The testosterone shot affected my hair growth and I started going bald; I started having male pattern baldness, and it’s very ugly to have no hair on the top of your head but on the side of your face. So I said, ‘Oh my god, I might as well shave my head,’ and it worked. That’s how this image kind of came about; it wasn’t something that I planned other than that I planned that I wanted to be very masculine or I wanted to have a lot of muscles. It wasn’t so much the tattoos.

SH: Does any of the ink have any stories behind it or significance?

Angel: The majority of them were designed to make myself feel better. I have a lot of Celtic stuff, I have an Irish background, I have like a big pervert written across the top of my back; I always have been a big pervert. That’s why I feel like I’m so comfortable working in the sex industry because I’ve always been very sexually comfortable. But mostly, a lot of them are just designs I had made for me. My tattoos of my dragons on my chest I did have done after my chest surgery kind of like to emphasize my chest; after I started growing, I wanted to make my chest a center of attention; I was pretty excited to have my chest surgery.

SH: My last question: I think you’re just an absolutely positive person on so many great levels. What is your message for the people out there? I don’t care who they are—men, women, whatever—for the people that are maybe scared, confused. What’s the Buck Angel message for the people that you used to be?

Angel: Most importantly, you have to believe in yourself and you can’t let anybody else tell you how to live your life. You should be proud of who you are and what you are, whatever that is. If it’s your sexuality, your gender, the fact that you’re deaf, large, in a wheelchair, you know whatever the situation is, if you’re black—I mean gosh, we just got a black president! I think it’s the most amazing thing in the world. It’s going to change so much in this world. I hope that my influences have influence like Obama’s influence. He’s showing us that look—he worked to get where he’s at. I want to give that same message.