Legendary, Controversial “Gay Porn Madam” David Forest Has Died

One of the most controversial figures in the gay adult industry, David Forest, talent manager and founder of “Meet the Stars”, a service which connected porn star escorts with clients, has died at age 66. According to the obituary, the cause of death was a side effects of diabetes.

Somewhat fitting in light of the recent Rentboy shut-down, Forest harkened back to a different era. A flamboyant Hawaiian-shirt-clad showman, he was endlessly promoting his various escort “connection services” until the end. Despite suffering a massive heart attack and broken leg earlier this summer, Forest sent out a number of his trademark “colorful” emails touting his 35th anniversary in the gay porn industry alongside the 5th and most-recent incarnation of his escort service IWannaMeetAPornStar.com. (the last email I have from David in my inbox is dated June 5th.)

In this interview with GayPornBlog from 2013, he talked at length about his fascinating career with Mike while shopping around his autobiography, tentatively titled “From Rock to Cock”, chronicling his career from mainstream rock promoter to pimp. Born in 1948 in Long Beach, CA., he started booking bands to earn some extra money while attending Stanford University. Soon his burgeoning career as a talent manager took precedence over his academics and he moved back to LA in 1969 where he booked musicians like Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, Grateful Dead, the Moody Blues, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, The Carpenters and many more big names of the time.

According to Forest, it was in the summer of 1981 that he made his first “adult connection”, connecting porn stars Leo Ford, Lance, John King, and Jamie Wingo for “private meetings” with johns. Around this time, he began to work with Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes (Forest appears in Seed Money, Mike’s doc about Holmes’s life). 

Soon, Forest began his first escorting service, first known as “Brad’s Buddies”, booking porn stars like Kip Knoll, Jon Davenport, and others. After spending two years in prison for pandering in 1996-1998, he returned, to booking porn stars for live appearances, movies, and escorting, this time around calling his service “Forest Meetings”, which later became “The Premiere Artists”. He was best known for managing the careers of gay porn mega-stars Ryan Idol, Ken Ryker, Zeb Atlas, Mark Dalton, Billy Brandt and Stonie, who later became transsexual porn star Britany Coxx.

Known for his trademark Hawaii-print shirts and multi-colored emails from timestamped from the middle of the night, Forest lived the party lifestyle he liked to promote. His GayVN Award afterparties were legendary, and he was frequently criticized for lying about the models he represented. He could also be notoriously difficult to deal with. In 2014, he contributed a two-part op-ed to GayPornBlog about the advantages and disadvantages of signing an exclusive contract. In February of 2015, str8upgayporn “catfished” David for saying he represented Bel Ami’s Mick Lovell.

Forest’s collegue, Howard from Fabscout Entertainment, posted the following on his Facebook this morning:

We were enemies, we were friends, we were competition, we were still people, people loved you, people hated you…..I will miss you RIP DF

Information on his memorial service, can be found here.

— Jack

Tags: BIlly Brandt, David Forest, escorts, Ken Ryker, Kip Knoll, Mark Dalton, Meet The Stars, Obituary, Rentboy, Ryan Idol, Stonie, Zeb Atlas