RIP William Higgins
27 Dec 2019.

William Higgins has passed away at the age of 74, in Prague.

For those of us who consider gay porn culturally significant, this is sad news. Higgins, who made his debut in 1974, had some of the sexiest men in the business perform before his cameras. He was the founder of Catalina Video and worked mostly in Florida, but in the mid '90s he up and moved to Europe, eventually settling in Amsterdam where he ran a club. On IMDb, he is credited with 337 titles! That’s a lot of gay porn.

I met William Higgins once, at Brian Gillis’ gaycondo Pride party around 2000. I told him I grew up admiring his work. My favourites, and there are many, include Brothers Should Do It, These Bases Are Loaded, Leo & Lance, The Pizza Boy: He Delivers, and The Young & the Hung. But he wasn’t that interested in compliments, because there were so many near-naked guys walking around. The man had work to do.

With Higgins death, so also is the role of the ‘gay porn director’ dead. Sure, there’s still tons of porn being produced, but most of it is uncredited internet content. Lots of internet porn doesn’t even have a director. The guy giving head is also shooting with two cameras on tripods in a hotel room. The likes of Christopher Rage, Wakefield Poole, Joe Gage and Chi Chi LaRue are history now. No wonder almost every single gay sex clip online looks exactly the same. We could use a new William Higgins right about now.