Cobra Killer by Peter A. Conway, Andrew E. Stoner Read Free Book Online Page A

teen becoming legal. However, given the genre Kocis had tapped into, the dangerously-close-to-illegal-age references in some of the video descriptions could have been just salesmanship or marketing to attract a devoted audience of gay porn video buyers.
    In similar fashion, an online posting boasted that actor Ethan Armstrong was “a newly-turned-eighteen guy” and was “the first real poster boy for Cobra Video” starring in Ethan’s College Buddies. (9)
    Another early film, Outdoor Boyz released in 2001, wandered briefly into kink by featuring one actor using a corn husk as a dildo (a variation not repeated in later Cobra releases). (10)
    In his notes on the production of Outdoor Boyz, Kocis revealed some of the control he would later be accused of exercising over his actors with a heavy hand. He noted that “I will admit I was a bit ticked off about (actor) Ashton getting his skinhead haircut right before this scene.” Contracts signed later between Kocis and Sean Lockhart would reveal Cobra requirements that the actors not dramatically alter their appearance before or during taping. (11)

    Bryan’s friend Robert Wagner
    Robert Wagner met Bryan Kocis in the fall of 2000 when he was still a computer science major studying at prestigious Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, although Wagner is originally from northeastern Pennsylvania, not far from Kocis’ home.
    Wagner said he first met Kocis at the Steamtown Mall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a location Kocis preferred and continued to use because “it was a nice, neutral location where he would determine if (young men) were cut out” for making porno videos, Wagner said. (12)
    “Initially it started out that I was a model and then it grew into a friendship,” Wagner said. “I made a few videos early in college, then we just became friends.” (13)
    Even after moving to New York City after 2004, Wagner remained in close, daily contact with Kocis via e-mail, phone, texting, and frequent visits to his Midland Drive home. For Cobra Video, Wagner said he did a lot of “second camera work” and helped Kocis in organizing model applications and reviewing applicants for the porn videos.
    Wagner said he managed and organized the 2257 forms for Cobra Video, assisted in checking IDs at model shoots, and picking up actors from the airport and delivering them to video shoots. (14)
    Wagner, in fact, spent the last weekend of Kocis’ life at the Midland Drive home visiting his friend and helping organize IDs and 2257 forms for several hours. Wagner said he was scanning hard copies of the 2257 forms into a back-up computer and making sure all records were in order.
    Kocis wanted to digitize and backup the records, Wagner said, because he had heard a rumor that federal authorities were opening new investigations into porn companies. “Investigators were coming, making sure all the reports were in order, so I wanted to make sure that everything was in perfect shape,” Wagner said. (15)

    Enter Sean Lockhart as “Brent Corrigan”
    Bryan Kocis’ ambitious efforts to build Cobra Video continued and a string of new videos followed, with the 2002 release Charmed nominated for “Best Specialty Video” at the Gay Adult Video News Awards. The 2003 release A Boy’s Raw Urges stripped away all pretense about whether safe sex practices were in use—the video ventured freely into raw porn territory with bareback sex, including the highly risky practice of reinserting a penis into the anus with ejaculate still present. (16)
    Cobra’s most popular titles were still to come, however, and coincided with the arrival of Sean Lockhart in 2004, always cast as “Brent Corrigan” in Cobra productions. Lockhart wrote about his earliest days working for Cobra Video in a four-part “guest column” titled “A Siren’s Tale” posted after Kocis’ death on the popular gay blog, www.jasoncurious.com. In it, a poetic Lockhart declared that “at the heart of every shipwreck is a