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CENTAUR FILMS LEGENDARY DIRCTOR CHIP DANIELS CHATS
WITH PAUL GOLDBERG

EXCLUSIVELY ON JRL
Post Date: 11-10-09 9:30 a.m. PDT







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Paul Goldberg: JRL Fans, he's back...the director who brought you such classic hits as Hotter Than Hell [2003], Man Academy [2001], and the mega blockbuster Navy Blues "Deeper in the Brig" [2003]. Yes JRL fans, please welcome to JRL , the one, the only Chip Daniels.

Paul Goldberg: Chip thank you for taking time out to do this interview with us here on JRL. How have you been?

Chip Daniels: Thank you Paul, and everyone at JRL, and also please accept my heartfelt appreciation all you wonderfully loyal fans who have continued to support my production efforts by buying each and every Centaur movie I've produced. If you don't buy them (or at least rent/download/stream), then I won't have the moula to make more of what you love. And speaking of love, I still live in southern Florida and love the laid back lifestyle. Work is demanding, yes, but I love it. You might even say it's a labor of lust! HA!


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In answer to your question, Paul, I must confess to being happy and well. My home is tremendous, my partners are terrific guys to live/work with, and the job of a gay porn producer, director, videographer, photographer and editor is the most challenging, exhilarating and unpredictable job you could ever have. Plus, I get to look at hot, hot naked sweaty men all day! Doing it! Kind of gives new meaning to the term "working hard."

Paul Goldberg: You've just released a Re-Release classic entitled Hard Corps Recruits [2009] through Marina Pacific Distribution and your production company Centaur Films. What made you Re-Release this one which by the way JRL fans, Stars the sensational Brett Winters! And were there any surprises or new footage in Hard Corps Recruits [2009]?

Chip Daniels: Funny you ask me why this movie and mention Brett Winters to all the JRL fans in the same question. Because the answer really begins with Brett. Brett Winters has always been, to me, one of the sexiest gay performers to come out of 90s era porn. I personally must admit that I always had a huge crush on this superstar. So when I had an opportunity to hire Bret for the original project (then entitled Raw Recruits,) well, I just had to, umm, have him! Working with the eternally gorgeous and super nice Bret was truly a delight.


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Now. Fast forward to 2009, and Raw Recruits is the only title in my entire production library that has not yet been re mastered and released on DVD. Why? Well, truth be told, we lost my original edit decision list, and because of technology changes, my new Media Composer editing equipment wasn't completely compatible with what we had used back then, so in order to release Raw Recruits on DVD I was facing an enormous (and I usually use that word with a good meaning, but this time I'm not), editing conundrum.

Either use the Analog BetacamSP Master tape and copy it onto a DVD, which would make it probably the lousiest product ever released, certainly by my company, or, my other choice, the right choice, was to completely remake the whole movie from the original 20 hours of source footage we had shot.

Most people don't realize why it is that our (and a few other companies’) movies always look so much better than everyone else's, both in quality of the image and in the content you see. Well, in a nutshell, it all cum's down to how much source footage is shot. The more time we spend sucking and fucking our little hearts out for you, the better it'll be in the...er....end! We typically shoot 10 to 1, much closer to mainstream movie making ratios. Most of our competition shoots at most 3 to 1, and most of the “crapola” we all have to wade through on internet sites, like X-Tube is 1 to 1, source footage compared to used footage.


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This is where Brett enters back in to what was getting long winded and technical. You see, I have a lot of extra footage of Brett that I didn't get to use in the original release (alas, cost issues at the time limited how long I could make the movie,) and I figured fuck it! I'm gonna completely remake the damn movie, give the fans an hour longer viewing experience, and get to work with Brett all over again! So, this movie isn't just a re-release.

It is truly a different movie. Every scene longer and better. I dare say I've gotten much better at editing since the first time!

A full hour a action never-before-seen spread out through all the scenes. Add to that much better color correction technology, sound engineering and video encoding, and I am able to give you a completely different movie.

Which I realized also needed a new name, to keep from confusing it with the original 90 minute VHS movie with the shorter scenes. Thus was born Hard Corps Recruits. And anyone who even glances at Brett's abs and thick throbbing cock dominating Jake Cannon’s beautiful hard ass, will understand.

Paul Goldberg: As you know the industry has been going through what some would call a meltdown with sales. Have you noticed any difference in your numbers for www.CentaurFilms.com?

Chip Daniels: Oh, Paul, it's horrible! Awful! Terrible! Well, okay, that might be just a little too dramatic. But sales have dropped throughout the industry, and some companies have even gone out of business. As a matter of fact, any company in the adult business world boasting increases in profit should also be closely scrutinized when they boast about the size of their star models' cocks.

Common! I know we are in the business of providing you wonderful viewers with fantasy fucks, but you want to actually get what we say we're gonna give you, right? Right! Centaur ALWAYS gives it to you right. At www.centaurfilms.com our sales are, although slightly affected by the economy, mostly still right on track! Because we give you the most realistic fantasy with the most mentally accessible men in the business, doing the hottest, nastiest, most vividly in your face action you can ask for.

All beautifully shot and professionally produced for you at the most reasonable prices in the industry for top notch product. Some sales pitch, huh? he,he! Butt seriously, guys! The cream always rises to the top (or hits you in the eye! ouch!) And since the Centaur brand is synonymous with the best quality in gay adult movies, our sales have not been affected as much as others. After all, if you have 50 bucks budgeted to spend on porn this month, which would you do:


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1. Buy 2 or 3 short length flicks with bad image quality, questionable sound quality and boring models and even more boring action; all which you will probably watch/skim through once and never again, or 2. Buy 1 top quality 2 hour feature movie with action so engaging and so intensely nonstop with models uber hot, hung hard and fuck hungry that you can't do more than maybe get through one scene before you need, yes I said Need!, to pop you load!? Which are you gonna spend your money on? Luckily for little ole Chip Daniels and company, the answer is 2!

Paul Goldberg: Tell us about the fabulous CentaurFilms.TV web site?

Chip Daniels: Sure, Paul! We pride ourselves with the quality that goes into our movies. And that translates every step of the way. Now that the industry is moving much more heavily into the digital realm, namely using internet streaming and/or downloadable titles or scenes as the way to deliver adult content to you, I have also needed to find a way to give you the creamiest, dreamiest quality fuckflicks you've gotten used to in a 'medium' that isn't very conducive to detail and quality.

Hell, up until the last year or so you could not even get a movie to play in your computer's player at normal speed without dropping frames (jerky motion) or reducing the viewer window to half
or quarter it's normal size. Who wants to get off while squinting? I know I don't! So we have spent much of the last couple years researching, beta testing and equipping our lab with the latest and best tools to implement superior internet encoding and delivery.


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We are now proud to say you can go to our CentaurFilms.TV we site and use the browser to download and enjoy our fanfucktastic films the way you want to get it...as much of it as you can take....just the way you like it! Seriously! Do you want to download the whole movie? Just a scene? You can rent it either way, for a few hours or for several days. Everyone gets the studs they want in the movies they want in the quality they want in a format they want, because we truly want you to enjoy our sexsational movies.

Paul Goldberg: Featured in the CentaurFilms.TV web site is Eddie Stone. What's going on with Mr. Stone on CentaurFilms.TV?

Chip Daniels: CentaurFilms.TV features movies for all of the major studios, not just Centaur Films. As a result, we’re constantly featuring stars from other studios, right along with their movies. A CentaurFilms.TV you can get our, and all the titles of the major studios.


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Paul Goldberg: Are you currently in production for a brand new gay porn feature film?

Chip Daniels: As you know, this business slows down during the Holidays so we’re busy looking for new talent and compiling some of the scenes from our past titles into films that feature a particular star or genre, such as Cops, Military, Cum-Shots, Bottoms, Tops, etc. CentaurFilms.TV is currently featuring some of the best scenes from our military movies. After the holidays we’ll return to production with a sequel to one of the best titles we ever made, “Time Cops.”

Paul Goldberg: Have you tapped into the Iphone explosion with Centaur content yet?

Chip Daniels: No, I haven't even considered encoding to Iphone. I think it's corporate hype in advertising aimed at trying to convince industry content providers and reviewers that consumers actually want to watch movies in a size equal to a business card.

It's ridiculous really. the Iphone is perfect for Johnny wanna get laid to show himself in action, or even just naked, but at least moving, to Tommy trick, etc. Not for real movies you want to spend some time watching! Think of how small everything is on your Iphone. In our fantasies we want bigger, not smaller, and especially not teeny weenie!


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Paul Goldberg: Everyone is talking about VOD as of late. Some feel that it's now doing the same thing as wholesale. In other words, it's taking months to get your royalty checks. Is that just a rumor and is there any validity in what some people not all...but some are saying about the problems right now with the VOD market.

Chip Daniels: Paul, your question reminds me about one year, when as just a wet behind the ears producer, and traveled with one of my biz ness partners to Italy for the Venus film festival. We were there to find a wholesale distributor for Centaur's movies in Europe. Almost to a man, every distributor was like a snake oil salesman. They each tried to render our emphasis on our movies' superior quality completely irrelevant and instead a liability for them.

Then each would be distributor then went ballistic when we admitted we were talking to other possible clients. Same bullshit everywhere. You need to give me all of your movies, and MY company must have the rights for 'x' number of years if I am going to enlist my resources in promoting your line. (By the way, 'x' years meant 13 to 99 years!) That's seriously what they wanted. And for that, they were willing to give me a much undeserving $2,500 per movie.

They wanted to compensate me $2,500 and give them exclusive rights to deliver my movie to all of Europe for at least 13 years, and some of them for the rest of my life, and my grandsons if I had any! Ridiculous!

Spend $50,000 or more to make a movie and sell the rights to the most lucrative market for $2,500? Insane! And that's the VOD market now!

A number of people correctly bet on the internet becoming a tremendous delivery medium (unlike the guys who will be kicking themselves in the ass 5 years from now for buying into the Iphone fad,) and those lucky guys began, a company at a time, convincing companies (remember companies are simple people with 800 numbers who have to pay extra taxes) to let them push their product on the internet for some kind of split. At first, it was more like a 50/50 split, after expenses.

And that wasn't too bad at first, but these individual/companies soon began to enjoy a larger share of the production companies who wanted to sell on the internet. So now they figure they can force you to make a bad deal, cause where else are you gonna go?

Unfortunately, most video producers are in and out of this business so fast they don't have the means to market for themselves, so it's easy to be a sell out. After all, some is better than none, yes? I say no!

I said no to those jerks in Italy at the Venus Adult Film Festival, and I said no to all of these internet content providers every year since they first tried getting me to give away my movies for next to nothing. If more producers would just hold up for a better offer like I did, no matter how long, then we are all better for it.

Why? Because like I said at the beginning of this interview, I, Chip Daniels needs to make enough money to be able to continue making the movies you, JRL and Centaur Films fan, want to be able to buy and watch, whether on DVD or through the web.



If I give 70 or 80 percent of the money you the customer are paying away to the middleman, the only one who is enrich in any way is the middleman, not the greater number of the rest of us.

That 'profit' is my operating costs. Contrary to some accounts (usually by those same people who make crapola and tell you it's a Rembrandt!) it is costly to pay for and coordinate 10 to 15 or 20 guys plus film crews, post production teams, facilities and locations, not to mention full time employees for order fulfillment, customer service and DVD authoring and replication. There's more, but you get the point.

We’re supposed to spend all that money, dedicate all that time (mind you, I personally only deliver around 2 titles a year), and accept as compensation a fraction of our own production costs? You are right, Paul, it's a problem! The answer, guys, is bring your content to my www.CentaurFilms.TV site, and I'll make sure you get a decent deal! It took me, as most know, several years to make this work right. But it does just that. It works right. For everybody.

Paul Goldberg: What kind of goodies do you have for Centaur Films fans for the holidays? Any specials exclusively on CentaurFilms.com?

Chip Daniels: We’re putting together our Year End/Holiday sale now. Our customers buy every title we make, so it has to be attractive.

Paul Goldberg: Any hot new models coming out of the Centaur stable in 2010?

Chip Daniels: Absolutely, and I definitely recommend to everyone to go to our web site at www.centaurfilms.com and simply do the quick account creation at the login screen. It will provide us with your address and email so we can keep everyone up to the minute when new faces....who am I kidding....new dick and ass is available to watch.

Please take note, dear loyal fans, that I'm very worried in one way, and that is about how I'm going to be able to continue providing actual full color printed brochures to you as my advertising for the movies.

Most people have computers and email accounts now. And it costs me much, much less to send you an email with the brochure you can look at online than it does to pay for the printing and shipping of thousands and thousands of heavy coated stock full picture quality paper brochures.



Two or three 'mailings' to my 50,000 name prospect list and I've had to spend the money that could have paid for the models for another movie. If you want more movies out of me, then please just give me an email so I don't have to spend all the money trying to market the movies! I promise I won't give your names to anyone else.

Paul Goldberg: Chip, you are known to produce high quality gay porn films and...with all of the amateur in the marketplace these days, do you feel personally that the cost of making a big budget film has died out? Or, do you think there is a still a major market for Six-Figure budgets?

Chip Daniels: Well, Paul, that's a very good question. Certainly I have built a reputation and a livelihood out of the belief that for the most part gay men have a higher developed since of style and sophistication, and that that also relates to what men want in the movies they enjoy. Sure, many a company has thrown together badly made movies and somewhat successfully sold them, usually at what we call in the movie distribution business 'movies by the pound prices'.

These are the same companies that are among the first to go when the market gets more congested (more movies produced each year by different producers.) Then, on the other end, there are the individuals who somehow or other manage to get their hands on six figures, as you put it, and finally get to become a gay adult movie producer, their dream since before they could even walk!

These blessed fools are quickly taken advantage of by everyone every step of the way in the effort to make, edit, market and release a movie. And they, if lucky manage to just squeak by, wondering how long it will take to make back the investment, or daring to dream about profits in the future. And these 'producers' are usually one shot wonders (maybe 2 or 3 depending on how long it took certain so called directors to go through their money for them, then they're out.

Or, like presently, the economy takes a severe downturn and anyone, no matter how much they spent who didn't see far enough ahead to start making hard decisions and budget cuts in the right places, (ex: pay models as well as you can, but maybe use just one cameraman, not two. Or choosing to let go of an expensive business headquarters and rent cheaper space in a less dazzling environment.

Pinching pennies on all the little stuff. (i.e. buying all generic and no more name brand for the duration), only the companies doing this are still able to stay in the business, at any level. And as long as you are providing consistent top market quality product, the sophisticated gay gents we are shall continue to support your efforts. You'll just have to find ways to lower some costs of production but never cheat the customer on quality. Chuck Holmes, original owner of Falcon, taught me that. It was his business philosophy. And it is mine.

Paul Goldberg: New patrons to the gay porn industry may not know the exciting history of Chip Daniels and Centaur Films. Tell them about yourself...how did you get started in our great industry?

Chip Daniels: Well, Paul, you may not know this, but I knew I wanted to make adult movies when I was just 13 years old.

I saw my first porn on an old 18mm mini film projector inherited from an upperclassman at the boarding school (a seminary actually) I attended.

I was given the responsibility for my next 4 years while at the school to provide viewing opportunities to my fellow classmen and to, at all costs, hide our small library of a dozen reels and the precious film projector from the school's staff, which mostly consisted of priests.

The thrill of the risks involved, not to mention my inborn ability to already know what was wrong about each of the scenes that were shot and how to fix them, led me to desire more and more to make really good movies.

Of course, I wanted to showcase the men. Imagine my surprise and elation several years later when I discovered that there really was a market already in existence looking for what I wanted to make. But I had no professional experience in filmmaking. So I took extra classes at night in filmmaking. Worked a series of rather mundane to outright boring jobs over the years during the day to pay my bills and tuition.

And, when I eventually was successfully wooed by Falcon to be a model, I jumped at the chance. Here was a chance to work literally from the bottom up in this business! And, believe me, I did. With gusto! I was quite the handsome little devil when I was younger and I took full advantage of that, and worked for only the best in the business. And I would drive them crazy on the sets constantly asking questions.

Why use that light? What type of camera? What is that man over there doing? Why? What? Why? Give me details! I explained to every director I met that I wanted to launch my own company and produce the best gay adult movies ever made. Most scoffed at me, and almost none of them took me seriously. But I learned something from all of them. From some I only learned what not to do. From a couple that at least humored me, like Steve Scarborough and Chuck Holmes, I learned a lot.


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Then one day in 1993 I finally caught my big break. Already I had enjoyed quite a lot of success as a porn model, even being the cover model for every 'rag' of the day, but that wasn't what I wanted. And when I met Jack Hazzard, after being convinced to star in a movie for a man who had always wanted to produce a film, was a huge fan of mine, and had just lost his own lover to AIDS six months previously, something in my heart responded, and I said okay.

Not at all my usual move, but the one that it turns out was the best decision of my life. I was flown in to LA for the shoot, and during my stay, Jack and I just clicked. He told his story to me, I to him. And he surprised me by suggesting we go into a business partnership together. For some reason I to this day don't know, Jack believed in my ability to direct and edit movies without me having shown him one single minute of my own work.

The rest is history, Centaur Films was officially launched in Oct. of 1994, with our first title, the one he paid me to perform in, but put under our new label, entitled “Please Don’t Tell.” Shortly thereafter, my directorial debut release of Hot Cops took the industry by storm, and Centaur Films was an overnight sensation. Since then, the little company that thought it could...has!

With over 30 movies now in our library, and usually 2 a year added. I continue to insist on quality over quantity, and over the last 15 years have received literally thousands of letters of appreciation from other gay men, who just like me, have had to suffer through entire scenes of crapola just to finally discover a half minute of actual good clear, hot fucking action they could get off to.

I understand that, and, to you reading this now, I still understand what you want me to give you. And I promise that from me, you're always gonna get the goods!

Paul Goldberg: Chip, thank you again for hanging with us here at JRL.

Chip Daniels: It has been my pleasure, Paul! I love you guys so much! You are always exciting to purview and are so nice to work with, each and every one of your staff! Please give me best to everyone at JRL, And to all my fans, thank you from the heart of my bottom, er, ummm, the bottom of my heart for your continued support. You are why I am creating this library, my legacy to gay culture.

For you and for every gay man who wants to maybe see what it's like to have crazy hot sex, or, even for men who are alone surrounded by a straight world with no one to teach them the gay facts of life. I do this for you, too. Centaur Films' movies are both entertaining and instructional. But most importantly, they are really, really good, because you deserve the best!

Paul Goldberg: Now as promised, check out the full length movie trailer form Chip Daniels and the Centaur crew and see why, this is going to be one of the biggest Re-Releases of 2009. Yes, Hard Corps Recruits [2009] is just that damn good! Now JRL fans, check out the full length movie trailer of Chip Daniels Re-Release of Hard Corps Recruits [2009] which is now shipping nationwide right here on the JRL Movietron and then, contat Marina Pacific Distribution retailers to place your order for the must stock of the holiday season from Chip Daniels and Centaur Films.

Make sure to keep JRL locked in for the latest Info and Entertainment on the Gay Adult Film Industry Daily...right here on Relocation.