A peek inside adult video with Mickey Skee

The nominations for this year’s GayVN Awards are in, and not surprising, Channel 1 Releasing has 33 nominations, with 15 going to Chi Chi LaRue's Link: The Evolution for categories including best picture, best all-sex video and best director. That's the most-nominated film of the year, and Raging Stallion’s Grunts was the second most nominated, nabbing 13 nods.

Michael Lucas' Gigolo and his Intern title each received a dozen nominations. It was nice to see Doug Jeffries' Bottom of the Ninth: Little Big League 3 get nine noms including best sex comedy, best screenplay and best director, as well as a long-missing nonsexual nomination for Sharon Kane, who was an annual nominee (and most of the time, the winner) for much of the 1990s.

LaRue gushed, “I couldn't be happier that Link: The Evolution has received 15 nominations—including best picture. Everyone that worked on it went above and beyond to make this the best Link film ever. And now we have 15 reasons to celebrate our achievement.” LaRue recently bought All Worlds Video, the company that had the other award-winning raw and nasty Link titles LaRue directed.

Raging Stallion and Lucas Entertainment, often at odds with each other, tied with 27 nominations each. Three Raging Stallion exclusives are up for performer of the year: Steve Cruz, Jake Deckard and Roman Ragazzi, and one exclusive for best newcomer, the irrepressibly cute Steve Cruz. Jake Deckard was nominated for best actor for his portrayal of Sergeant Houle in Grunts and Ricky Sinz picked up the best supporting actor nod for his work on the film. Directors Chris Ward and Ben Leon were nominated for best director (Ward also was nominated for best director for Mirage, a film released earlier in the year). JD Slater was nominated for best music for Grunts and so was Mirage, making Raging Stallion the only studio in recent memory to have two nominations each in the best director, best sex scene, best videography and best picture categories.

Studio head Chris Ward was excited, saying, “I knew we were going to do well during this year's award season—we made some pretty good movies this year—but the number of nominations we received has blown me away. Of course being nominated is not the same as winning! We are up against some serious competition. Grunts was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us and I think it is the movie that Raging Stallion will be remembered for.” I hope that he will be coming home with an armful of awards, and he's told me personally, he'd like to win a big one this time.

Lucas himself was up for best actor and best director, which he took last year, and performer of the year, which he has always been nominated for, but never won. “I'm honored and thankful. It was a landmark year of breaking through into the mainstream for me, my company and for the gay industry as a whole.”

Last year, Lucas’ La Dolce Vita broke records by winning all 14 awards it was nominated for, and undoubtedly that increased the quality overall for all the companies.

TitanMen's very hot water-logged title H2O got six nominations and Gunnery Sgt. McCool got five nods, while Joe Gage's Campus Pizza got a deserved nomination for best sex comedy.

It was nice to see the Athletic Models Guild get nine nominations, particularly for its spectacular Amazonia: Capture & Release, filmed in Brazil, and a nod for Dennis Bell as best director.

So, what were the most overlooked? I thought Michael Brandon's Trouser Trout, Colt's Hawaii and Falcon's Long Board as well as Oh Man!'s Beast and Hot House's Verboten should have been up for big awards.

The biggest tragedy is that Jerry Douglas’ Brotherhood, for Buckshot, was snubbed except for a screenplay nomination, and the late Danny Roddick wasn't nominated for anything.

Other forgotten titles this year were Kristen Bjorn's El Rancho, Studio 2000's Kickboxer, DaVinciCode 2: Electric Bugaloo by PZP Productions, Red Devil's Dante, Andrew Rosen's clever The F Word and more nods for Roland Dane's Casting Couch, Gino Colber's Hungry 4 Sex 2 and Jett Blakk's Dare. This year, the judges didn't get around the table and argue for nearly a week like we usually do, and new GayVN editor Harker Jones sifted through the nominations himself. Usually, when we all get together, the titles tend to be spread out a little more, and such titles as the ones above are not forgotten.

The full list of nominees for the show at the Giftcenter in San Francisco on Feb. 16 can be found at www.gayvnawards.com.

Mickey Skee has covered the adult entertainment industry since 1986, and his latest porn fiction book, F.U., was released by Alyson.