YNOT – Todd Klinck defies pigeon-holing. On paper he is the owner/operator of Mayhem North, the noted Canadian gay porn studio. Klinck also co-owns Goodhandy’s, Toronto’s pansexual nightclub, and has worked as an escort.
But Klinck is also a successful novelist, newspaper commentator and all-around nice guy with a streak of integrity a mile wide. Again, he doesn’t fit the usual porn pigeonhole.
YNOT.com caught up with Klinck recently, to find out what makes him tick.
YNOT.com: Please tell us about yourself.
Todd Klinck: I am 34 years old and have a very free-spirited and creative sort of resume. I moved to Toronto at 18 to study theatre at York University, with more of an interest in film. I dropped out part way through as I realized I had more chance of getting work without a formal education and I was building up a debt.
I was always interested in writing and had an interest in sex work, so when I was 21 I ran my first ad to be a male escort. Simultaneously I entered the Anvil Press three-day Novel Contest and wrote the winning entry, which was published in August 1997. My book Tacones (high heels) received many good reviews, eventually sold out its print run and was re-released in 2008 as a 10th Anniversary Edition with several academic essays as well as the original novel.
How did you end up founding Goodhandy’s?
I continued escorting and was involved with cyber sex, as well, back in the pioneering days of the internet. I met my now-business partner Mandy Goodhandy around 1997 and we started working together in various capacities. She had a she-male website, I was her photographer. We were both interested in gay porn and started using our own escort earnings to finance solo jerk off videos.
Mandy always wanted to have a she-male bar, but the market was too young at the time. So she started holding she-male events — some were private sex parties, some were nightclub events held in local clubs. Mandy knew there was a growing market for she-males and their admirers, so she found a strip club in Mississauga that rented their basement party room and “the Lounge” was born.
I helped her open the Lounge in April 2003 for she-male strippers, and then in December we started doing nights featuring what we called “nude boys.” Our goal was to move people’s minds away from the old-school “strip-club” environment and into a different model — a model where eventually the only boys who were allowed to work at the Lounge were boys who also appeared on video for our company.
We started shooting a series of videos called “The Lounge After Hours” – basically the boys would spend the evening doing their nude stage presentations and making money doing VIP dances for gentlemen and then we would shoot a hardcore video after the club closed.
This is where Goodhandy’s came from. In December 2005, there was a Supreme Court ruling in Canada that made it legal for swingers clubs to operate. We consulted with some legal people and determined that it would be safe and legal for us to open a club for she-males and admirers, as well as a place for us to hold nights that focused on our male-for-male entertainment.
Goodhandy’s was a very versatile space, which allowed us to become truly pansexual over time — we now hold nights that cater to lesbians, fetish people, trans guys and even straights. We are very evolutionary and organic business people: Everything leads to something else and we experiment as we go.
Your primary interest is in gay content. What are you producing in this niche?
We now are primarily producing live gay sex shows in terms of our gay content. The Mandy Goodhandy Show happens every Wednesday evening at our club, and the format is as follows: Mandy comes out on stage at 11:00 pm, she monologues, does comedy, interacts with the audience and introduces any male models that are in the house. There is a short break and then we return with a pre-arranged live sex porn shoot. Our DJ mixes royalty free music live and we let the audience watch us shoot a scene right in front of them on stage.
Some weeks we bring in bigger named Canadian pornstars (past have included Pierre Fitch, Johan Lapointe, Sam Swift, and Johnny Maverick) and other times we use newcomers and local boys. The style of our shoots is amateur, but as the models get more experience, some of the more recent shoots come across as a bit more polished.
But we always shoot live, real time and we do very minimal editing. The shoots are all for our membership site AmateurCanadianGuys.com or for release on many other different distribution channels online, usually under the studio name “Mayhem North”.
What is it like to actually be in the adult business, versus people’s assumptions that it is all about non-stop sex?
The adult business is ridiculously hard. It’s really hard to make money at it — especially with the evolution of all of the free “tube” sites. You have to make a nickel here, a dime there and when you are a small company with no staff, this means that you barely break even.
As to the perceptions that people have about porn producers having non-stop sex, it’s kind of comical. It’s like this: If you are a coke dealer, don’t do coke. If you run a McDonald’s, don’t eat a lot of Big Macs or you’ll have a heart attack and die. And if you are shooting porn all the time, it doesn’t make all that much sense to “dip into the models.”
Seriously though, it’s a choice. People run their businesses in different manners. Me and Mandy have one rule: It’s all about the comfort of the models. We want the models to be comfortable not only because we are genuinely nice and compassionate people, both of whom have long histories in the sex business, but also because we feel we get a better end product if the models are comfortable. We like to get footage of “boys being boys.” We don’t like to push them too much. So to me, I don’t think it would be very comforting to a new male model if I was suggesting that part of their job is to have sex with me. And truthfully, I am surrounded by sex, nudity and porn all the time, but I don’t really get all that much action in the scheme of things.
So do you stay behind the camera or sometimes get in front of it?
I have gotten in front of the camera when appropriate. I have a series of videos that I made back in 2003-2004 starring me and a slave I had at the time. They are extremely low budget (actually no-budget) and they are intimate and non-conventional. I have also “lent my penis” on more than one occasion when a model has requested “inspiration.” But for the most part I stay behind the camera. Now that we shoot live porn shows even more so — I don’t have it in me to perform in front of an audience. I have a lot of respect for the boys who do it, though!
What are the biggest mistakes actors make when having gay sex on camera?
The biggest mistakes are probably acting. Porn is a very personal thing, so this is just my own take on it, but personally, I don’t like watching someone ACT like they are having sex. I like watching someone be themselves. Even if they are gay-for-pay, and that fact is evident, it can be hot to see how they behave in a sexual situation. I don’t like people who dramatize their sexual performance.
That said, in the new genre of “performance sex” (which is what we call what we do on Wednesdays) there have been a couple models who have introduced a slightly heightened form of performance to their sex scenes, which I do not mind. Johnny Maverick is an example of this. For connoisseurs of Maverick, they might be able to see through his facade a bit, but only for those who obsessively watch his every frame. I have edited his work and I’m present while it’s being shot, so I know this. But I love what he does — he is aware that there is a camera, he is aware there is an audience, so he is a little more heightened in his sexual displays. A little more saliva, a little more posing. But because the audience is REAL, then his performance is also real. He is feeding off of the sexual energy of the audience, so I don’t find it phony.
As for studio shoots, I think over-acting can be a turn off. But like I say — porn is very personal, everyone has their own take on what is hot, what is not, so it’s not really for me to criticize. If I don’t like something, I fast forward or skip to the next video. There is certainly no shortage of porn out there!
Where do you hope to be 10 years from now?
I hope that in 10 years I have figured out a way to make money off our porn and our club is busy every night and I can work a little more on creative video and writing projects. Something tells me that within 10 years we are not even going to recognize the existing models of porn -– there will probably be an entirely different way to experience it, involving artificial intelligence and all sorts of crazy robotic shit.
But I love producing porn and I love the nightclub business and I think I will still be involved right in the middle of it. I do not really have ambitions to become really rich – I’m the type that if I was making a lot of money, I would re-invest it into the club, I’d renovate, I’d get new equipment, I’d pay the models more. I’d like to own a simple condo in 10 years and be able to afford to travel a bit. But for now I’m content working like a maniac and barely scraping by every month.
If you had it all to do again, would you choose this career?
Absolutely.
