Cobra Killer (7 page)

At the conclusion of taping for
Schoolboy,
Lockhart described a new ritual Kocis employed, asking each performer to hold up, on video, a copy of his driver’s license or other legal ID and to say, “I am at least eighteen years of age” and then state his date of birth. “This was not something (Bryan) had asked me to do on the first shoot,” Lockhart said. “I was caught completely off guard, and I panicked when Bryan finally requested to see my driver’s license. I tried my best to pretend I was looking for it in my baggage and could not find it.”
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Kocis grew impatient with Lockhart’s inability to produce an ID upon demand and so settled for a called up image of Lockhart’s ID on his laptop computer and taped Lockhart making his “I am at least eighteen years of age” declaration next to the laptop. But that didn’t satisfy Kocis. As Kocis drove him home that day, Lockhart said he ordered him to obtain a California driver’s license that showed he was eighteen years old, and to send it to him in Pennsylvania immediately.

Lockhart said he remained in constant worry that the truth about his age would become known, “but it was still only an abstract possibility,” noting that the real worry was his family would learn of his porn activities. “That was there and then, in my face, I was living it every day,” Lockhart said.
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Still, Kocis pushed forward with production.

“(Bryan) just wanted to make more movies,” Lockhart said. “He didn’t want me to tell anyone the truth. He had too much to lose if I did. I trusted him about a lot of things, including when he told me that I was the one who was going to go to jail over all the lies, not him.”
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Lockhart moved to keep things from “unraveling any further” and set out to obtain exactly what Bryan Kocis wanted: An ID that indicated he was eighteen years old.

Making a promise many a regretful porno performer has undoubtedly made
after
the filming stops, Lockhart said “I promised myself I would do the work to get where I needed and then turn my back on the industry until I felt my bad decisions could no longer haunt me.”
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For $200, Lockhart said he bought himself an ID from a man in a Los Angeles park that showed him to be eighteen a year
before
he actually turned eighteen in October 2004, and sent it to Kocis. Forging ahead to “do the work to get where I needed,” Lockhart had signed a rudimentary one-year modeling contract with Kocis in July 2004 that promised to pay him:

• Monthly Sprint cell phone payments of $75 per month (with any charges over $75 each month deducted from a monthly “monetary payment” promised);
  
• A monthly “monetary payment” of $150 per month;
  
• An undisclosed “signing bonus”; and
  
• The “usual fee for all modeling engagements for Cobra Video LLC.”
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Lockhart said, at least initially, his relationship with Kocis was based in trust. The 2004 contract reflects that: Nowhere does it specifically state what Lockhart must do in order to receive the reimbursement promised in the document. It was later reported that Lockhart claimed he was paid $3,500 for his first scenes for Cobra in
Every Poolboy’s Dream
and
Casting Couch IV.
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“I did not have a strong father figure in my life,” Lockhart said. “My stepdad was no longer there. Bryan knew that I was in a very vulnerable, exposed state and that it was very easy for him to slide in there and assume the position. It started as something of a mentorship but all it takes is to get someone’s trust before you can hook them and get exactly what you want out of them.”
⁽⁴⁰⁾
Lockhart would go on to star in other Cobra videos, including several titles legally filmed after he turned eighteen, such as
Creamy B’Boys
and
Naughty Boy’s Toys,
both released in 2005.

In July 2005, Lockhart signed another one-year exclusive modeling contract with Kocis and Cobra Video, one he later described as “shoddy.” Although the second contract between the two men was somewhat more “lucrative” for Lockhart than the 2004 version, it still reflected the personally complicated relationship between the two men. In the new version, Kocis and Lockhart agreed to list Lockhart as “an independent contractor” and specified terms the latter had to meet in order to get paid $20,000, almost all of the money tied to the transfer of title for a 2002 Volkswagen Jetta from Kocis to Lockhart. In exchange, Lockhart agreed to six individual action scenes, one non-action scene (presumably a masturbation scene) and still photography to promote the video. The work was to be “completed to the satisfaction of the company” and “the type and amount of still photographs” to be determined by the photographer.
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The terms further called for Lockhart not to radically change his hair style or color or place any tattoos or piercing on his body without Kocis’ prior approval until the contract was completed.
It also specified that Lockhart would be “required to be STD and HIV-negative to complete work” and would submit to “regular testing” at “regular intervals.” Kocis added a line that Lockhart’s compensation would be reduced if he contracted an STD that rendered him unable to complete the terms of the contract.
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The contract included terms that would later prove critical in the fight that was about to erupt between Kocis and Lockhart: “The Model will be exclusive to Cobra Video…(and) the Model will not perform in any adult work (nude) with any other Adult company and will not pose for any nude photographs for any other person or company.”
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A contract amendment entered at the same time as the second deal in July 2005 indicated Kocis immediately transferred the Volkswagen Jetta to Lockhart and paid an insurance premium immediately, acknowledging work completed to date.
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The same month Kocis signed his new deal with Lockhart, Kocis registered the website domain, www.brentcorriganxxx.com to combat use of the “Brent Corrigan” character on other websites, and to maximize his profits from the growing popularity of “Brent Corrigan” among gay porn customers.

Only a month later, however, unknown to Kocis, Lockhart was back in San Diego with his now-lover Grant Roy and began in earnest to try and make a break from Kocis, or at least to recast their relationship as strictly one of business, with no expectations of personal intimacy, which Lockhart alleged Kocis often pushed. After several angry phone calls, e-mails, and texts between the two, Lockhart said he told Kocis of his plans to go public with the news that he had performed in adult videos for Cobra while he was only seventeen years old. Kocis surely knew Lockhart was slipping from his control and intended to go out on his own as “Brent Corrigan.” In addition, friends and family reported Kocis finally had to face the reality that Sean Lockhart was planning to betray him.

The battle reveals “the” secret

Once back in California, Lockhart enlisted Roy to participate with him in an online chat on a porn fan site known as www.juicygoo.com. In that chat, Lockhart confirmed he planned to produce and release his own content under his now growing stage name, “Brent Corrigan.”
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The Internet would become “ground zero” for the Kocis-Lockhart battle, with Kocis posting scathing online statements about Lockhart under the screen name “King Cobra,” and Lockhart’s version being represented in posts created by Roy under the handle “Cobra Killer.”

In response, Kocis got serious and filed a U.S. Trademark and Patent application for the name “Brent Corrigan”(a trademark that was never granted). He intended to stop Lockhart and Roy from profiting from the identity of “Brent Corrigan,” an identity he believed he created and owned.

By September 2005, the Lockhart-Kocis fracture
really
went public, and Cobra’s run of luck in producing extremely popular gay videos was about to hit a landmine. Lockhart broke open the Cobra Video empire with his voluntary public disclosure that he had performed in adult videos for Cobra and Kocis when he was only seventeen years old and a junior in high school.

News of Lockhart’s possible illegal performances first broke in the
Adult Video News
publication,
GayVN,
when Chad Beville, a Tempe, Arizona-based attorney, told a reporter he was in possession of Lockhart’s legal birth certificate listing his date of birth as October 31, 1986. This meant any videos produced before October 31, 2004 would be illegal under unforgiving federal law that not only held producers and distributors liable, but also customers.
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Beville told
GayVN
in an e-mail that “four titles…appear to have been produced before (Lockhart) turned eighteen. There may be other titles he appeared in after he turned eighteen…Anything made before (October 31, 2004) would be, by definition, child pornography.”
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Lockhart’s goal, Beville said, was to get the illegal videos off the market. The four videos in question were listed as
Bareboned Twinks, Casting Couch IV, Every Poolboy’s Dream,
and
Schoolboy Crush.

If Kocis was prepared for the allegation, it didn’t appear so in his response. He told
GayVN
that “these are just allegations” and referred any further questions to the Pennsylvania attorney who had defended him in his earlier criminal trial, Al Flora, Jr.
⁽⁴⁸⁾

The scandal-sensitive porn industry wasn’t waiting to see if Lockhart’s claim held any validity. The Free Speech Coalition (a trade association for the adult entertainment industry) issued its own statement saying that it recommended “until the facts in this case are clarified, all (affected titles) and promotional materials should be immediately removed from circulation and distribution, and all content, online and offline, that contains the performer named Brent Corrigan should be removed and sealed for attorney review and consultation.”
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Kocis needed to act quickly to control the damage, including potential damage to a valuable distribution arrangement he had in place with Pacific Sun Entertainment, a giant, industry-leading wholesale adult video distributor based in North Hills, California. Kocis assured everyone that Cobra Video has “color copies of the three state-issued forms of identification that Mr. Lockhart presented, including a birth certificate, all indicating a birth year of 1985.” Cobra also apologized to all retailers and customers “for the inexcusable hardship and disruption in business that (Lockhart) has caused.” Kocis singled out his undoubtedly nervous distributor, Pacific Sun Entertainment, noting they had handled “a difficult situation in a very prompt and effective manner.”
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Cobra Video’s news release said that all of its requests for an original copy of Lockhart’s birth certificate had been rejected. Cobra’s statement said the issue was further complicated by the fact that the state Lockhart was born in Idaho, a state that did not make birth certificates available under public records law, and could only be requested by the individual or an immediate family member.
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At the same time, Lockhart’s attorney complained that Kocis continued to “harass Sean with e-mails and phone calls” and that Lockhart would not cooperate with producing an original copy of his birth certificate until Kocis ceased his contact.
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Beville would later confirm to a reporter that Lockhart had presented Kocis a forged ID before performing in the adult videos produced for Cobra. If Lockhart’s claims and statements to the FBI about his underage status were having an effect, Kocis wasn’t letting on. He claimed that he had not been contacted by federal authorities about any alleged violations of the 2257 codes and said that he planned to release additional scenes Lockhart filmed for Cobra after December 2004 and that those would be distributed in later videos (later pasted into the
Brent Corrigan’s Fuck Me Raw
and
Take It Like A Bad Boy
DVDs).
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The strict federal law known as the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, most normally referred to as the “2257 law,” typically resulted in a disclaimer posted on all adult content by producers that:

This video contains explicit sexual  material which may be offensive to some viewers. You must be eighteen years or older to enter this content. All models, actors, actresses and other persons that appear in any visual depiction of actual sexual conduct appearing or otherwise contained in this adult content were at least eighteen years of age at the time of the creation of such depictions. With regard to the remaining depictions of actual sexual conduct appearing or otherwise contained in this video, the records required pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2257 and C.F.R. 75 are kept by the custodian of records of (company name) at (company address).

Lockhart and Roy hit a roadblock

By October 2005, Lockhart’s new partnership with Grant Roy, a former Texan transplanted to sunny San Diego, California, resulted in the formation of LSG Media, LLC, and a registered domain name, www.brentcorriganonline.com.

Kocis reacted strongly to the bold move by LSG Media, launching a federal trademark lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Southern California against Lockhart and his partners.

The suit sought damages and injunctive relief to stop Lockhart, Roy and LSG Media, LLC from releasing new titles using the name Brent Corrigan. The latter issue addressed a long-simmering argument over the Corrigan stage name. Lockhart claimed in interviews and court documents that he selected the name Corrigan from a phone book because it sounded Irish. Kocis claimed that he chose the name in early 2004 “to be used in the creation of a series of premier adult content DVDs/videos for Cobra” and that he was the owner of the trade name, and had invested time and money in the promotion and creation of the character name Brent Corrigan.
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The suit repeated Kocis’ claims that Lockhart had used forged documents in order to work for Cobra Video in four productions and had “misappropriated (the Brent Corrigan) name to compete in bad faith against Cobra Video.”
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