Paul Morris (producer)

Charles Steven Key,[1] better known as Paul Morris, is the owner of Treasure Island Media, a San Francisco, California-based gay pornography studio that specializes in bareback pornography.

Career

Before being a pornographer, Morris studied composition. He holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College. He has studied with Robert Ashley, Philip Corner, Grosvenor Cooper, Terry Riley, and Lou Harrison.

Morris started Treasure Island Media, naming the business after his favorite childhood book (Treasure Island). In 1998, he filmed Raunch Lunch.[2] Alongside his own videos, Morris has expanded the studio to release videos directed by Damon Dogg, Max Sohl, Liam Cole, and the Mecos group in Mexico City, and independently produced videos by Swiss members of the Dark Sun Collective.

He is known to be a patron of independent filmmakers and has supported work by Vanessa Renwick, Bill Daniel, Todd Verow, Daniel Rabinowitz, Lee Krist, Ryan Sullivan and others. He has also funded projects by San Francisco's Artists' Television Access.[3] He was a primary producer of Todd Ahlberg's film, Meth, a feature-length documentary on drug abuse among gay men.[4][5]

In October 2007, Morris's Treasure Island Media (TIM) won the prize for Best US Studio at the DAVID Awards in Berlin. This caused controversy as TIM produces bareback films, filmed without a condom, causing Titan Media founder Bruce Cam to decline a Lifetime Achievement Award at the same event.[6] In 2008, Morris received a Best Director Golden Dickie Award for "What I Can't See 2" (which also won Best Video) from Rad Video and Treasure Island Media received the most awards of any adult company including Best Studio.[7]

Morris and his company have been repeatedly banned from consideration for most adult industry awards and events. In July 2009, it was announced that Treasure Island Media had been banned from participating in both The Folsom Street Fair and Dore Alley in San Francisco, and also International Mr. Leather in Chicago.[8] When asked for his opinion on winning awards, Morris states, "I don't pay attention to those things. Prizes are for kids. I'm a grown up now."

In his article "Unbecoming: Pornography and the Queer Event", Tufts University professor Lee Edelman discussed the role of Morris's pornography as work that "hopelessly heralds the future" of what Edelman calls the "posthumanous". In this function, Edelman wrote, Morris' pornography is similar to the film works of both Pier Paolo Pasolini and Michael Haneke.[9]

In May 2014, Morris gave his first phone interview in almost ten years to Australian journalist, Toby McCasker, on the topic of HIV as seen in the Treasure Island picture, Viral Loads.[10]

Morris has co-published academic articles with porn studies scholar Susanna Paasonen in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies[11] and The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media.[12]

References
  1. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-03-02. Retrieved 2016-01-30.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. Morris, Paul (2007). "Paul's papers". treasureislandmedia.com. Treasure Island Media. Archived from the original on 2020-04-12. Retrieved 2021-01-20.
  3. Staff writer. "Bios: Paul Morris". freespeechcoalition.com. Free Speech Coalition. Archived from the original on 29 February 2008.
  4. "Credits". babalupictures.com. Babal Pictures. Archived from the original on 6 February 2007.
  5. Rotter, Joshua (23 February 2006). "Film traces meth's destructive power". Bay Area Reporter. Michael Yamashita.
  6. "Titan’s Bruce Cam Declines DAVID Award", By Joanne Cachapero, October 23, 2007, XBiz.com. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
  7. Adams, J.C. (17 April 1008). "RAD Videos Golden Dickies (blog)". gayporntimes.com. The Adams Report by JC Adams. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015.
  8. Witchka, Keith. "Treasure Island Media banned for being "too hot" for leather event circut". jrlchartsonline.net. JRL Charts Online. Archived from the original on 18 June 2015. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
  9. Edelman, Lee; et al. (December 2006). "Eine umfrage zur pornografie" [Survey on pornography]. Texte zur Kunst (in German). 64.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  10. McCasker, Toby (May 12, 2014). "A porn director stirred up controversy by making a movie centered around HIV". Vice.
  11. Paasonen, Susanna; Morris, Paul (2014). "Risk and utopia: a dialogue on pornography". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 20 (3): 215–239. doi:10.1215/10642684-2422656.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  12. Paasonen, Susanna; Morris, Paul (2013), "Coming to mind: pornography and the mediation of intensity", in Vernallis, Carol; Herzog, Amy; Richardson, John (eds.), The Oxford handbook of sound and image in digital media, Oxford Handbooks in Music Series, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 551–566, ISBN 9780199757640.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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