Thairin Smothers can tell you all about male escorts on Santa Monica Blvd. – everything from how a John expects his cock to be sucked, to how escorts should dress to make the most money to their problems with homelessness and drugs. He can tell you what it’s like to hang out with Chris Crocker (”Leave Brittany Alone”) or where the best conferences are if you like to dress up as an animal and have sex. He’s also one of the few people to have nice things to say about Perez Hilton.

Smothers is a producer at World of Wonder, L.A.’s queer flavored independent production company. “We do subjects people normally won’t touch,” says Smothers. “They said there would never be a black drag queen on television. Then World of Wonder put Ru Paul on VH1.” Having worked on projects such as 101 Rent Boys, VH1’s Totally Gay!, and What Perez Sez, he’s experienced life in a way that very few people have – gay or straight.

“My first day at World of Wonder [we needed] to shoot some b-roll for this HBO show called Drop Dead Gorgeous and they needed [footage] of a young kid jacking off to this Penthouse magazine you had to simulate it you didn’t really have to do it because it was out of focus. So they asked if I wanted to do it. I was like ‘can I do it for real?’ – my first day on the job. It is so different around here. When people come here they can’t believe there’s Hitler was Gay posters on the wall. I’ve been in some other studio offices and I would kill myself. Here it’s just fucking crazy all the time.”

It’s easy to see how things could be mundane anywhere else after working at World of Wonder for eleven years. Smothers can casually recall bizarre situations like he’s talking about the weather. “Chris Crocker showed up at the “Just Brittany” art show and he was wearing this blue overall dress, he says ‘I’m Chris Crocker and I want to be know as the first male crotch shot.’ He lifted up his dress and he definitely was.”

While his official title is “producer”, Smothers calls himself an “anthroPopologist.” “You’ve got to capitalize ‘Pop’ because it’s the study of pop culture,” he says. “I made the term. I feel like I’m involved in all of pop culture. I love to explore it, so I’m an anthroPopologist. I told my friend who is an anthropologist he was dying.” He’s lives up to the title too. Ask him about anything from Tom Cruise to plushies (the subject of his first pitch with World of Wonder), and you’ll be astounded at his breath and depth of knowledge.

“We pitched plushies and furries to MTV and they thought we were joking,” he remembers. “then they picked it up. It was people in furry animal costumes having sex on MTV – so teeny bopper network. That really started our relationship with MTV. That’s the one that really made me realize you can take crazy ideas to Randy [Barbato] and Fenton [Bailey] [World of Wonder founders] and they’ll shop them. They really are great guys. They’re good gays. They’re like my parents.”

Smothers always wanted to be a filmmaker. Before he came on with World of Wonder he was just a club kid in Manhattan with no formal film education and a “cheap camera” he scraped together some money for at a RadioShack. “I went to clubs and told them I’d film people and put them up on the monitors and just went from there. People were like, ‘oh my God, I can’t believe you got that.’ I can’t even tell you how much I’ve seen between my wild days in New York City and now having the opportunity to work on interesting and crazy programming. When Mario Diaz started Big Fat Dick, I’d mix Joan Benet Ramsey runway videos with sex tapes or something, stuff you can’t show – but to see people’s faces…” His nightlife experiences led to an internship with Jerry Springer show. “I would work on the club kid, freak, transsexual portion. I videotaped a boy walking across the grass as a girl and stuff like that.”

Transgenderism and androgyny are a constant theme in Smother’s work. Despite the number of over-the-top projects he’s worked on, he’s quite proud of his work on a series called Transgeneration which provides a touching look at the lives of four transgendered college students. The series won a GLADD award for Best Documentary. “People sometimes think trans is a medical show but we make it into ‘look they’re college students.’ [World of Wonder] just takes it to a different level.”

Smother’s latest work has him working as a consulting producer for What Perez Sez and running the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery. “[Perez and I] get along and talk normal. We don’t talk about gossip. As funny and nasty as he can be about celebrities and as many people as there are that can call him bad names, I’ve never once felt like, ‘fuck that pig.’ We’ve actually had some really good conversations beyond, the regular [superficial smalltalk]. He’s definitely somebody that a lot of people hate but I definitely find somebody in there that I like and like working with.” As for the gallery – it’s been the home of several popular art shows including Golden Girls Gone Wild, Warhol: Dead at 21, and A Very Merry Titmas. Smothers enjoys it for now but he’s been spending lots of time thinking about how to make his next big mark.

“I have this love/hate relationship with the gallery. Hollywood needs something different than t-shirts and trophies. Sometimes you need to see Britney Spears in so many interpretations or the Golden Girls with their clothes off. I just wish I could explore more. I feel like as many crazy things as I’ve done, I’m hoping now that I’m thirty-five I can keep doing new things. I’m not out to make some great film that’s going to change the world but whatever I do I want to be sure that it’s something you’ve never seen.”

With all that Smothers has seen and done, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll disappoint us.

Tags:101 Rent Boys, Chris Crocker, Fenton Bailey, Perez Hilton, Randy Barbato, Ru Paul, Thairin Smothers, Transgeneration, What Perez Sez, World of Wonder

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Matt Falber is the Editor-in-Chief of Real Gay L.A. Matt was formerly an editorial assistant at Frontiers Magazine. He served as a regular contributing writer for Frontiers for two years and also wrote for IN Los Angeles, its sister publication. Matt has a flare for the arts and when we don't have him chained to his desk, he can be seen singing and acting in various L.A. venues.
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