Page 68 - AVN Januray 2017

GAYVN
Brent Corrigan (con’t)
lasted for three to four months. It would lead to a fateful dinner
in Las Vegas of January in 2007. While at AVN’s Internext Expo
that year, Grant and I also agreed to meet with Bryan Kocis on
neutral ground. For several days Bryan, Grant and I sat with
a legal mediator to work out a settlement. The noose was
loosening and I was breathing easier.
At the convention while not in meetings, Grant and I
spent time with the other studios, producers and models.
Collaborative interests abounded. Optimism was in the air.
Harlow and Joe were elusive in Vegas. We met with them
twice—once on the convention floor at AVN and once at Le
Cirque. The two came dressed up and treated us to a five-course
five-star meal. Nothing seemed out of sorts about our dinner
company. They were a very flashy couple and wanted to be seen
as sophisticated and successful. Little did I know it was their
lack of understanding and sophistication, and a lack of success,
that would lead to their downfall.
On January 27, 2007 (one week after the civil suit with Cobra
Video was settled out of court and agreements were signed), I
received the worst call of my life.
It was Joe. He instructed me to go to WNEP.com. I
complied. I hadn’t spoken to him in almost a month. At the
top of the news website covering the Back Mountain region
of Pennsylvania: “Body Found in Home Set Ablaze.” I clicked
the link. Fire at 60 Midland Drive. I’d spent two summers with
Bryan in Dallas, Pennsylvania, staying in his home. Bryan lived
at 60 Midland Drive. My stomach lurched. I flashed back to a
seemingly “off color” remark made by Joe while at dinner at
Le Cirque: “Harlow has a client that will do anything for him.”
I would spend more than two years trying to understand why
and how Harlow and Joe could insert themselves into my life
so briefly, yet cause so much catastrophe. Joe told me then, “I
guess my guy went a little overboard.”
an entire year after the murder. Grant wore a wire one day. The second day, we went to Black’s
Beach. There, concealed in a GM key fob, was the recording device. It sat right on Grant’s key chain,
positioned in the middle of the beach blanket. Joe let Harlow spill all the details of the crime. Eight
months later, both were apprehended. A trial found Harlow Cuadra guilty of murder. His partner in
life and crime, Joe, had pleaded guilty upon being captured and arrested.
Grant and I went on to produce a successful string of DVD releases together. We swept at the
GayVN Awards in 2009 and 2010 as producers. At 23, I was given the award for directing the Best
Professional Amateur film as well as being named Best Bottom. Once a pariah—uninvited and
ostracized in the gay porn world for all the infamy and controversy I’d endured—by 2011 I was
“accepted.” I went on to direct and star in LGBT non-porn films. Brent Corrigan is credited in the end
credits of Gus Van Sant’s Milk, one of James Franco’s best credits in a long string of gay roles.
After four years as a filmmaker and actor in mainstream media, I’d lost interest. Everything you’d
expect to happen did. Producers wanted to meet me because they were curious about my story and
ON JANUARY 27, 2007 (ONE WEEK AFTER THE CIVIL SUIT
my background in adult media. They almost never took a chance on me. In the end I was content to be
relegated to LGBT indie films where my porn roots and equitable name were a commodity. The roles
in non-porn media came few and far between. The pay, even less so. LGBT media was like making gay
porn without the penis, basically. I went back to porn, where I could at least get a decent blowjob at
work every once in a while.
WITH COBRA VIDEO
When I returned to porn I knew I was coming home. Adult media, as we all know, is what you
make of it. We have so much control over our own path in life. Our destiny is two parts decision and
WAS SETTLED AND
personal actions and one part fate. However when it came to Hollywood and me it always felt ... well,
not that way at all.
AGREEMENTS WERE
In the summer of 2015, weird voicemails started filling my inbox. Random filmmaker friends from
SIGNED), I RECEIVED THE WORST CALL OF
my minor era in LGBT media were coming out of the woodwork, telling me someone was making a
movie about me. When director Justin Kelly and manager Thor Bradwell cornered me in June, I was
very suspicious.
MY LIFE. IT WAS JOE.
Ten days before principal photography was slated to begin, the producers of King Cobra delivered
their screenplay to me. Half-heartedly offering me a position as a consultant on set, they didn’t
HE INSTRUCTED ME
seem to know where I would fit into the equation. They suggested I take a small part with two to
three scenes. It wasn’t until I finally was able to read the screenplay that I knew I would have to
TO GO TO
decline involvement. Key players in the story don’t exist in their movie (Grant, for instance). I felt
WNEP.COM.
uncomfortable with the material as a viable representation of what I went through. It felt cheap,
SEXPLORATIONS | By Brent Corrigan
unfinished, totally rushed and downright broke.
It seemed as though the producers were scrambling to fix a major mistake that August. They
needed me but insisted they had virtually nothing to give. They’d developed an entire film and feature
without permission to use the Brent Corrigan name. And now they were going to set.
I am unapologetically, fiercely protective of my story and my right to tell it my way. I lived it. I
navigated the troubled waters and came out whole, more human, at the other end. Some might argue
that the events (the underage controversy, public feud, murder of Bryan Kocis, the investigation into
the circumstances related to his death, and the trial of Harlow Cuadra) are public domain in a sense.
There is so much more that occurred that people have no clue about. There is an emotional reality and
a mental state of mind (reflection, observation, internal narrative) that outsiders looking in (like the
writers of the book Cobra Killer) could never even begin to broach the surface of understanding.
There lies within what it means to come out on the other end of something so harrowing that it
leaves you looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Beyond all that, as a writer myself, I
am protective of my story and the truth I have lived. I’ve spent the last decade writing a book called
Incorrigible that I wanted to be the bookend to the events that I lived through.
(Continued on page 114)
It no longer mattered who Bryan was in life. Grant and I
committed to the efforts of the FBI and the Luzerne County
investigators and district attorney to bring Bryan’s murderers
to justice.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s what everyone was thinking
when Bryan turned up dead on the heels of a nasty feud. Bryan
and I—we had our differences. I was hurt by Bryan’s efforts to
humiliate me. That being said, I never wanted him dead. The
civil suit left us frustrated, broke and scared. When we finalized
mediations with Cobra/Bryan Kocis, all of those fears had
dissipated.
We spent two days in San Diego with Harlow and Joe almost
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