The term “Porn Star” gets thrown around a lot. All someone has to do is film one scene, and de facto you can start bragging to your friends that you’re officially a “porn star”. The list of legitimate gay porn icons or legends, however, is short: if you were to ask any gay porn fan who belonged on such a list, I would be willing to wager that most would include Ryan Idol
This week, Idol — aka Marc Anthony Donais — turned 51 years old. Even if your birthday suit is an orange jumpsuit emblazoned with the word “Corrections,” I didn’t want you to think we totally forgot. Unless you are a devotee of vintage gay porn – or are a gay man of “a certain age”, you might only know the name Ryan Idol from some rather tragic headlines of late and forgot that from 1991-1996, he was one of the original gay porn megastars along the likes of Jeff Stryker and Joey Stefano.
Ryan Idol had the hair, the looks, the glutes, and the dick. He made the G-string de rigueur in 1990’s. Despite starring in iconic titles like “Idol Eyes” (1990) and “Idol Country” (1994), Ryan remained a wanton heterosexual. For better (or more likely for worse), our birthday boy could arguably considered the Godfather of Gay For Pay as we know it today. Sadly, in reality and hindsight, even that proved to be one of his lesser crimes.
In 1996, Idol was in “Idol in the Sky” and two years later, he literally fell from the sky when he jumped out of his NYC apartment window because, “The drugs and alcohol took over.” Five years later, apparently God took over and told him to resurrect his porn career – but alas, there was no actual second coming. Five years after that, he got entangled in a fraud scandal with the homophobic mayor of Birmingham, Alabama Larry Langford. Then, things literally went into the crapper.
In September of 2009, according to Ryan’s ex-girlfriend, she allegedly broke up with him because our wanton heterosexual was bisexual and moved out of their West Sacramento condo. Apparently, the Idol didn’t take rejection well, went to her new place and purportedly said, “I came over here to kill you.” Ryan said he thought she had a knife and claimed his response was in self-defense. That response was trying to bash her head in with the lid of a toilet tank. He was charged with attempted murder. Two years later, a judge said, “no” to a new trial and, “yes” to a twelve year sentence.
Since it’s too late to bake him a cake with a file in it, if you can’t wait nine more years for his release, you can console yourself by checking out these three Ryan Idol vintage classics playing on NakedSword:
A Trifecta of Titles from When Ryan Was Still an Idol:
The Road Home from Hot House
The Best of All II from Huge Video
Score 10 from Matt Sterling