Rob Ragan, and I both got into the adult business in June, 1986; so, in that since we’re bros. Ragan started out with Western Visuals collecting money for Elliot Segal. Me, I went with AVN, though someone else collected the money. Collecting money has always been the hard part of this business.
"When I first went to work for Western, that’s what I did," Ragan laughs.
"But I didn't walk around with a baseball bat or gun or anything. We used to call it GTFM- get the fuckin' money. We didn't have the stereotype of the collector. That wasn't the case back then. Then you didn't have 7,000 to 10,000 titles to chose from. There was only a handful of production studios [such as Essex, Caballero, Western Visuals, Cinderella, Vidco, Arrow, VCX] and quite frankly we couldn't put it out quick enough to fill the demand."
Ragan, who also sold for Lynton at VIP, left California about six months after he left that company and is now firmly planted in the deep woods of Maine - Stephen King country - where he began heading up All Boys Distribution and has now formed his own gay production company, Cram Entertainment [Short for “Craig & Rob’s American Men”.]
The Acronym, no need to tell you, is quite descriptive of the genre. Before he could even think about starting his own company, however, Ragan had something more serious to contend with. At the beginning of this year, he was diagnosed with Malt Lymphoma stomach cancer. It left Ragan bed ridden for months.
"I was shocked when my doctor told me what it was,” he recalls.
“I was having terrible pains in my stomach area. They were near the middle of my abdomen area. I had to do Chemo, which really sucked, but now I'm feeling a lot better, and I hope to be rid of it, although I'm still having a little trouble. But the worst seems to be behind me now, so it's back to work, slinging porn. At least I’m still alive."
During his period of convalescence, Ragan really found out who his friends were in the industry.
“There was a lot more than I thought there were.”
Why he’s elected now to start a porn company in this lousy economy makes sense- at least to Ragan.
"Back when I came into the business, selling adult was easy,” he recalls.
“There were few studios, we all sold direct to stores, there were no distributors, no VOD and certainly no internet. Today, everything is just so diluted, everyone seems to be chasing the same money from the same accounts...mostly distributors. The business has been tough and reverting back to what it used to be.
“The day of the distributor is all but gone," Ragan feels.
“The people that are going to survive this industry over the next five years are going to be those that start selling direct to stores.”
Ragan’s company is spread out over seven acres of property, and, thus, he’s been able to keep his overhead low.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, bumfuck Egypt,” he laughs. “And that’s easier to find than this place.”
Ragan explains why he no longer wanted to raise his kids in Los Angeles.
“I didn’t want to have to explain the gangs and that you don’t walk into this or that neighborhood unless want to get shot. Crime here is, if you don’t pay a traffic ticket, they put your picture on TV. They’re pretty serious about no crime. But the cool thing is they’re voted in a casino- a full scale, Vegas-style casino/resort, 5.5 miles from my retail store.”
“The porn market is tough now,” Ragan reflects, noting that he’s opted to produce and shoot gay porn in Maine, only wishing that he might have started sooner.
“I didn’t do that. Maybe it was a little arrogance, but I could kick myself in the ass all day long on things I didn’t do.”
Figuring that Maine would be the ideal place to shoot manly-men-in-the- backwoods features, you’d figure wrong. Instead, Ragan's choosing to shoot parodies.
“New England Cum Sluts 1 & 2 were our first self-produced titles,” Ragan notes.
“I was able to finagle special cameras out of Japan about the size of a computer speaker. They might weigh an ounce, two-ounces tops, but the picture quality is un-fucking-believable. Though we had to go through a bit of a learning curve on lighting.”
Besides producing, Ragan’s also buying films and is Blu-Ray capable.
"CRAM has to be the be all and end all for me in this industry,” he goes on to say.
“We’re getting fresh faces, shooting in hi-def and I’m buying great content.”
According to Ragan, the gay market’s alsop changed considerably.
“At one point it was all bare back-twink stuff. Right now what’s hot is the fetish and hardcore stuff with models in their late Twenties, early Thirties that are willing to go that extra mile. Even the major studios are starting to put out more and more fisting titles.
“For some reason there’s no problem with fisting in gay,” Ragan continues.
“I don’t know why. With the gay market fisting and pissing are huge, but I won’t film any of that. I want to do parodies and do more along the lines of productions people are going to want to see and cut down the ability to pirate scenes. In that sense I think we have a better than average shot of doing well.”
Cram Entertainment will be releasing steadily throughout 2011, according to Ragan.
“Another difference is I will be releasing like Evil and Exquisite by making everything a Cram Entertainment film...although I do have Cram Films, it too will be released the same as any other film under the Cram Entertainment label.”
“I’m very optimistic about 2011 and beyond."
Ragan can be reached at [email protected] or by calling 1-877-525-5269.
