|
"Horner does his best work when handed a script and a character of substance. His best recent acting comes in Justine: Nothing to Hide 2." (AFW 96D.) Born in February 1955, Horner spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1978, "I was a college boy who wanted to get laid and experience life. I was already a dancer and singer and taking my first film class. I had lots of incentives to do my first movie. "I started out a week before my 22nd birthday doing a still shoot and proceeded to do hundreds of loops shot on 8 or 16mm film, most of them without sound. Once I started working, it was evident to the directors and women that I would function and be nice and normal and sane. It paid badly, as low as $40 a sex scene. I might come in and leave within the hour." Mike's first sex film was Tangerine. Robert McCallum directed. Milton Engley, Juliet Anderson better known as Aunt Peg, Holly McCall and Mike all made their feature debut. All four persons racked up many on-camera sex performances over the years but Mike, a life-long student of modern dance, is the only one still pumping on screen. Porn did not provide Mike's primary source of income until the 1985. Before then it was a side activity for him while he was going to school and appearing in straight art films and San Francisco plays. Horner first used the porn name Don Hart but changed it so he wouldn't be confused with Veronica Hart. He moved to Los Angeles in 1991. "For many years, the Los Angeles Police Department would come up with a way to prosecute porn, and so the industry would move north to San Francisco for a year or two until different cases went to the U.S. and state Supreme Courts which threw out the charges from the LAPD." In his younger days, Mike was known as a guaranteed hard-on kid. Later, he became known for his acting ability. Horner has more AVN acting awards, including four Best Actor Awards, than anyone. Ashlyn Gere ranks second. "My private sex life was limited compared to my movie sex life, and so until the mid '80s I was in the business mainly for sex. That gradually changed." Never married, Horner finds it difficult to sustain a relationship while performing sex with dozens of different women. "You're not regarded as husband material." Though Mike's dated women in porn, he's been most serious about a couple of females outside the biz. Horner's family knows about his work but they don't discuss it. Mike has a sister a couple of years younger. "She used to be the black sheep of the family and I was the nice boy. Since I've gotten into porn, we've reversed roles. "I'm getting weaker in my older age. I've done a lot [of sex] so it doesn't interest me as much. It doesn't have the same emotion and excitement that it had years ago. I'm 41 and my body's telling me some things. That's been a gradual process over the past five years. I've had some problems [performing sex]. "There are hundreds of women [in the industry] I'd like to have sex with me, but there are also women with whom I don't think it's such a great deal anymore. "I like some things about the industry and dislike others. The politics can be difficult and confusing. There are far too many people I don't trust. "I love being an actor and having sex with beautiful women. I love that little extra thing about being a movie star...my few minutes of fame. "Some aspects of what I am and what I do I'm proud of and other things I'm insecure about. If I were totally secure, I'd march up and down in a T-shirt saying who I am, rather than hiding it from a lot of people that I talk to on the street. "Porn shares some things with the mainstream industry. There are false ego problems. "Performing is really a trivial talent. But that's the nature of most work. "I've never made a large amount of money. I've always been lower-middle class." The most cerebral of the male studs, Horner spends much of his time watching and studying movies, which he's done since he was 15, along with taking singing and dancing classes. "I do yoga several times a week. I bike and kayak. That covers 90% of my spare time." With his own money, Mike made two superb features - Tangled and Dreams of Desires. "My interests are in the high end. I don't want to do gonzo. The artist in me wants to make movies. I want to reconnect porno to art, and make product with value. "I'm seeking funds for some unusual projects. But if I don't make material sexually arousing, than I've failed as a filmmaker." The veteran stud wrote, produced, directed and stars in Tangled - "a hilarious allegory about a naked man entangled in a net who roams around in search of someone to free him when only he can free himself. "This trippy throwback to the '60s avante-garde cinema is a stunning success. The situations are inventive, the direction sure and smooth, and the production values topnotch. More art film than porn flick, Tangled is a must see for fans of offbeat material." (AFW 1996 D. p.181) "Dreams of Desires is pornographic ballet. Mike Horner creates a graceful adult film that is as spiritual as it is physical." (AVN 4/96 p.88) Horner gave his film Dreams of Desire to Ona Zee to distribute but she failed to pay him, says Mike. He got a judgement against her but has not yet been able to collect. Horner stars in Wesley Emerson's In Search of the Perfect Blow Job. "Mike Horner, once one of porn's most watchable actors, seems to be degenerating towards the unbearable pathos of the sad clown all too desperate to entertain. His collection of stock comedic reactions and feigned lust are starting to ring as unconvincingly as...T.T. Boy's attempts to walk erect without scraping his knuckles on the ground. "Horner frantically tries to bring life to this irritatingly rote fairy tale in which he protrays an accidental john, who, upon receiving the blowjob meant for someone else, falls in love with hooker Tiffany Mynx and goes searching through the back pages of SCREW magazine trying to hire her again. Tiff, meanwhile, confesses to fellow Sally Layd that Horner "had the most perfect dick" and, for the first time, she came with a client." (AFW 97) Horner regards 1999 as the year he'll decide whether to stay in porn or move on. He wants to concentrate on directing rather than performing but has had trouble getting enough paying gigs.
|
|
|
|