Why Vintage Porn Was Better (and What Killed It) with James Avalon

<v Speaker 1>You were listening to a pleasure podcast. For more from
<v Speaker 1>our sex podcast collective, visit pleasure Podcasts dot com.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, Welcome back to Holly Randall and Filtered. My
<v Speaker 2>guest today grew up Mormon in the seventies, moved to
<v Speaker 2>Hollywood in the wild West days of adult film, accidentally
<v Speaker 2>fell into shooting headshots, and somehow ended up becoming one
<v Speaker 2>of the most influential directors and editors the industry has known.
<v Speaker 2>This man has lived through every era of adult filmmaking
<v Speaker 2>and has the stories to prove it. Yes, my friends,
<v Speaker 2>I am, of course talking about the one and only
<v Speaker 2>James Avalon, and I'm so excited to welcome him to
<v Speaker 2>the show.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks. That was a great intro.
<v Speaker 2>Isn't it nice to hear all your accolades Like one
<v Speaker 2>little paragraph kind of makes you realize how much you've accomplished.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I've been around. You've been around, been here for
<v Speaker 3>what over forty years?
<v Speaker 2>That's amazing. I mean that kind of longevity in the
<v Speaker 2>adult industry is not very common. What do you think
<v Speaker 2>has kept you here?
<v Speaker 3>It's because I changed positions a lot. I started off
<v Speaker 3>as a stills photographer and then went into magazines, and
<v Speaker 3>we'd go on sets, shoot the production stills and interview talent.
<v Speaker 3>Then we put all that in the magazines and think
<v Speaker 3>got knowlan for that, And then moved into editing and
<v Speaker 3>did a little bit of publicity for a couple of companies,
<v Speaker 3>a couple of directors, but I wasn't really into that,
<v Speaker 3>and then got into writing and then directing later on.
<v Speaker 2>So let's start from the beginning. Because as you grew
<v Speaker 2>up Mormon, yes, which is, you know, a fairly conservative religiovative.
<v Speaker 2>So how did you move from that to working an adult?
<v Speaker 3>I guess it was more of a process. You just
<v Speaker 3>grow up. You're into this world and it's a very
<v Speaker 3>strict it's Mormons are kind of odd because they're already
<v Speaker 3>kind of odd Christians, so some Christians don't consider them
<v Speaker 3>actual Christian. They have, you know, very different storyliefs. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and so you're already kind of like out of it
<v Speaker 3>a little bit. And when I was going to junior
<v Speaker 3>high and high school especially, I pretty much just hung
<v Speaker 3>out with other Mormons because we didn't really fit in,
<v Speaker 3>although we weren't like out of it. You know, I
<v Speaker 3>was on a wrestling team, and you know, it was
<v Speaker 3>I was okay, and so people knew me. And then
<v Speaker 3>I was kind of a science nerd in school and
<v Speaker 3>so I was always kind of like a little odd anyway.
<v Speaker 3>But basically, you grow up when you become eighteen or nineteen,
<v Speaker 3>you go on a mission, and I went on a
<v Speaker 3>mission to France and Belgium, Northern France and Belgium, and
<v Speaker 3>you're just at that point, you're young, and you're exposed
<v Speaker 3>to a whole different culture, and you know, it's not American,
<v Speaker 3>it's a different culture. It's very European. Now, I think
<v Speaker 3>it's more homogenized, so I think the cultures are more
<v Speaker 3>like each other. But back then, you, uh, we got
<v Speaker 3>off the plane, were going to Brussels, but they flew
<v Speaker 3>us into Amsterdam, and I remember getting off the plane
<v Speaker 3>in Amsterdam and seeing stewardesses with very hairy legs because
<v Speaker 3>Europe didn't shave. Women didn't shave their legs. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 3>that was just a thing and it was like it
<v Speaker 3>was to us, it was shocking, right. And also as
<v Speaker 3>driving around in Amsterdam, there was very very open at
<v Speaker 3>that time, and I remember they'd have brothels with the
<v Speaker 3>hookers like right in the window dancing topless trying to
<v Speaker 3>get people to come in. And then here I am,
<v Speaker 3>like nineteen years old, grew up Mormon, very conservative, and
<v Speaker 3>I'm all of a sudden exposed to this bam and
<v Speaker 3>tabloids on the street.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Does the Mormon Church like lose people on missionary
<v Speaker 2>trips because people are exposed to like a completely different world.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, they do. And I've read some reports that a
<v Speaker 3>lot drop out within two or three years after coming back.
<v Speaker 3>And France at that time was very Catholic, but it
<v Speaker 3>wasn't religiously Catholic. It was culturally Catholic. The conversion rate
<v Speaker 3>was very, very low. So the OBJECTI was more to
<v Speaker 3>publicize the Mormon religion and let people know what it
<v Speaker 3>was about, rather than trying to find converts, because you weren't.
<v Speaker 3>You just weren't going to give that many. And I
<v Speaker 3>think other Mormons that we knew back home were more
<v Speaker 3>in the numbers. So if you didn't come out have
<v Speaker 3>all these like religious stories where some spirit came down
<v Speaker 3>told you go to this place and this guy wants
<v Speaker 3>to be baptized. If you didn't have those kinds of stories,
<v Speaker 3>they felt like you didn't really do anything. Even though
<v Speaker 3>we worked hard.
<v Speaker 2>I hate to say this, but the only knowledge I
<v Speaker 2>have of all of this comes from the Book of Mormon, right,
<v Speaker 2>the musical.
<v Speaker 3>Oh really, have you seen it?
<v Speaker 2>No, you haven't seen it? Oh my god, you have to.
<v Speaker 3>I did have.
<v Speaker 2>It's so good.
<v Speaker 3>I did have dinner with them while they were trying
<v Speaker 3>to with uh with Matt and Trey, Matt and Trey,
<v Speaker 3>oh wow, while they were trying to get orgasmo off
<v Speaker 3>the ground. Oh right, And I was at that point
<v Speaker 3>I was editing for Tim Ferrell him. Oh yes, absolutely,
<v Speaker 3>and he knew them and they did little bit parts
<v Speaker 3>in some of his videos before you know, they got
<v Speaker 3>really famous. So I was at dinner with them and
<v Speaker 3>he introduced me as like the Mormon and they were
<v Speaker 3>doing the orgas trying to get orgasm off the ground
<v Speaker 3>and everything.
<v Speaker 2>What were they like?
<v Speaker 3>They were fun, they were just like regular guys. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>they were enthusiastic about.
<v Speaker 2>I'm a huge fan of like South Park, and like,
<v Speaker 2>oh yeah, yeah, and you are. I'm not a huge,
<v Speaker 2>huge musicals person, but I have to say, like I
<v Speaker 2>took my mom actually to go see the Book of
<v Speaker 2>Mormon last time I was in town, Okay, because I like,
<v Speaker 2>I love that. I mean I will watch that over
<v Speaker 2>and over again. It's so good.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I've seen bits of it. You have like fun.
<v Speaker 2>You have to go see it. If you go see
<v Speaker 2>what you please tell me.
<v Speaker 3>I think Take on Mormons is very good.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well they have a I mean they have a
<v Speaker 2>The great thing about them is that they just make
<v Speaker 2>fun of everyone, like nobody is safe. And I love
<v Speaker 2>that because you can't say they discriminate, right, it's just like, but.
<v Speaker 3>The fun they poke at the typical Mormons, because all
<v Speaker 3>Mormons are different. Yeah, it's very accurate. Actually, Yeah, for
<v Speaker 3>the most part, they're very friendly, hard working, honest people.
<v Speaker 2>Yes. So when did you decide to leave the Mormon
<v Speaker 2>Church And was it like an all in one thing
<v Speaker 2>where you said, Okay, I'm done or was it No,
<v Speaker 2>it was gradual, so you said it was kind of
<v Speaker 2>like a slow process. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>It was my Actually, it was my girlfriend at the
<v Speaker 3>time pretty much convinced me. I went back to BYU
<v Speaker 3>to get into learning about photography and filmmaking because I
<v Speaker 3>wanted to make Mormon movies that reflected the.
<v Speaker 2>Mormon Wow, you were right away on that mark.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Because I had an idea and of the friend
<v Speaker 3>of mine who was also in France on a mission. Uh,
<v Speaker 3>and we we weren't partners, but we uh, I think
<v Speaker 3>lived in the same complex. We're in the same city
<v Speaker 3>for a while. And uh. He was into movies and everything,
<v Speaker 3>and we wanted to take the Book of Mormon and
<v Speaker 3>make these epic movies based on the you know, the
<v Speaker 3>wars and the battles, all the events that went on
<v Speaker 3>in the Book of Mormon. And it was a big idea.
<v Speaker 3>So so when I got back, I went back to
<v Speaker 3>Byu to try to learn all that stuff. And that's
<v Speaker 3>how it got into it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, the Mormon Church is a lot of money.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sort of surprised that have they funded anything like that?
<v Speaker 2>Are there?
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, they do. They do a lot of movies.
<v Speaker 1>They have it.
<v Speaker 3>They had a full on movie studio and they have
<v Speaker 3>They had even cinematographer. His name was Read Smooth. I
<v Speaker 3>think he won an Academy Award for a documentary on Rodeos.
<v Speaker 3>Huh so as a cinematographer. Academy Award Best Cinematography and
<v Speaker 3>Documentary And it was a great documentary too.
<v Speaker 2>What's your view on God and religion? Now?
<v Speaker 3>I'm an atheist right now, and I think I always
<v Speaker 3>was so.
<v Speaker 2>Like there were things that you were being taught even
<v Speaker 2>when you were young. You were like, this doesn't really
<v Speaker 2>make sense. But I'm assuming that you were You weren't
<v Speaker 2>allowed to question.
<v Speaker 3>It, right, Yeah, when I was eight years old. I
<v Speaker 3>have a lot of relatives from southern Canada, southern Alberta.
<v Speaker 3>And when I was eight years old, my dad was
<v Speaker 3>getting his doctorate in Colorado, even though we were living
<v Speaker 3>in Hawaii at the time, and so we went up
<v Speaker 3>for the summer and spent the summer with relatives up there,
<v Speaker 3>and they're all Mormons. It's all Southern Alberta has a
<v Speaker 3>lot of Mormons. And I remember telling my aunt that
<v Speaker 3>I thought the thing that made the most sense was reincarnation,
<v Speaker 3>and this is not part of the Mormon religion. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>And I just remember the look of shock on her face.
<v Speaker 2>Here's a child just trying to be logical.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, eight or nine years old, Yeah, and just saying,
<v Speaker 3>you know, reincarnation makes a lot of sense. And she
<v Speaker 3>was just what.
<v Speaker 2>You left the Mormon Church for the most part, and
<v Speaker 2>now you are steps closer to working in the adle industry.
<v Speaker 2>You start off as a photographer, is that right?
<v Speaker 3>Actually, when I was at BYU, I would go out
<v Speaker 3>and shoot some theater photos. I taught black and white
<v Speaker 3>photography as an undergraduate because I was like one of
<v Speaker 3>the better paying jobs. And then when I say taught it,
<v Speaker 3>it wasn't the lecture. I taught the lab. So you'd
<v Speaker 3>have the lecture and you have a lab, and then
<v Speaker 3>in the lab they give you cameras film and you
<v Speaker 3>take it, and then I would show them how to
<v Speaker 3>develop it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, my friends put it and a developer in the
<v Speaker 2>enlarger and then back in the day guys when we
<v Speaker 2>used films.
<v Speaker 3>Right after about two years at B y U, I
<v Speaker 3>just realized I wasn't fitting in any longer because the
<v Speaker 3>more I learned about film, the more I was educated
<v Speaker 3>in it, it just it just opens up to the
<v Speaker 3>way the world is, and I just didn't fit it
<v Speaker 3>any longer.
<v Speaker 2>What was your first like step into the adult industry, Like,
<v Speaker 2>how'd you get introduced into that world?
<v Speaker 1>Oh?
<v Speaker 3>I had a friend. I got a job at a
<v Speaker 3>photoshop and a friend of mine was above me as
<v Speaker 3>a manager. He worked downtown. Anyway, we got talking. We
<v Speaker 3>were trying to do some screenplays together and we're trying to,
<v Speaker 3>you know, get into it all. He ended up getting
<v Speaker 3>the job at a motion picture equipment rental place, lighting
<v Speaker 3>and cameras lenses, and one day the guy that was
<v Speaker 3>a Vitelli was his first and I can't remember, but
<v Speaker 3>he shot Swedish erotica and one day he came in
<v Speaker 3>and says, you know any photographers, because we've got to
<v Speaker 3>get rid of the guy we have because he's kind
<v Speaker 3>of a creep and no one wants to work with
<v Speaker 3>him anymore. So do you know anyone? So they asked me,
<v Speaker 3>and I go sure. And at that point, I'm twenty
<v Speaker 3>four years old and trying to do headshots and pick
<v Speaker 3>up freelance work or whatnot, and it was hard, so
<v Speaker 3>I wasn't making much money. And then on top of it,
<v Speaker 3>my buddy and I were writing screenplays. We came up
<v Speaker 3>with this really great idea and this was just before
<v Speaker 3>Encounters that the Third kind came out, and it was
<v Speaker 3>basically a UFO story. A guy has a UFO encounter
<v Speaker 3>and then he gets actually picked up by actual you
<v Speaker 3>know in the story, actual aliens, and it's totally different
<v Speaker 3>than what he thought.
<v Speaker 2>When you were working in the adult industry, at least
<v Speaker 2>at the beginning, were you having any kind of conflict
<v Speaker 2>with like the way that you were raised and views
<v Speaker 2>on sex and like what you were participating in in
<v Speaker 2>that moment.
<v Speaker 3>It's not like easy, but you make the I think
<v Speaker 3>I was always like into sex anyway, because my dad
<v Speaker 3>had Nudy magazine, did Playboy magazine, stash places, and he
<v Speaker 3>had some Super eight porn films. I don't know where
<v Speaker 3>he got him from, but as a kid, I'd go
<v Speaker 3>in there and dig that stuff up, and me and
<v Speaker 3>my older older brother would look at it and then
<v Speaker 3>would like steal the magazines from each other. And you
<v Speaker 3>can't really it's not something you can tell him, oh,
<v Speaker 3>he stole the magazine. So it's like it was all
<v Speaker 3>very secret. But so I think I was always attracted
<v Speaker 3>to it in some way, which is natural a lot
<v Speaker 3>of people are. So when they offered it to me,
<v Speaker 3>it wasn't like, oh my god, it's a porn film.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, I was intrigued, so I kind of
<v Speaker 3>wanted to go out and shoot, but that didn't work out.
<v Speaker 3>That was with Swedish erotica, and so I only did
<v Speaker 3>a few films for him. And then another friend of
<v Speaker 3>mine was working at a publishing company and they put out,
<v Speaker 3>you know, nooty magazines and like in Film Moral, Atom,
<v Speaker 3>Film World, Atom Magazine and a few others. And he
<v Speaker 3>was assist got a job there as assistant editor, and
<v Speaker 3>then he was leaving and wanted to know if I
<v Speaker 3>wanted to take over, and I go sure, So I
<v Speaker 3>went in and started working, and that's how I got
<v Speaker 3>introduced into the whole whole thing.
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<v Speaker 2>thank you blue Choo for sponsoring the podcast. So James,
<v Speaker 2>as a magazine editor, photo editor and interviewer for Adam's
<v Speaker 2>Film World, you had a front row seat to the
<v Speaker 2>Golden era of porn, as people like to call it.
<v Speaker 2>What were those sets like compared to today?
<v Speaker 3>In some ways, it's not that much different. It's just
<v Speaker 3>at that point I was more at the tail end
<v Speaker 3>of the Golden era, so that was more of the seventies,
<v Speaker 3>and then I started getting into it in the early
<v Speaker 3>eighties and it was transitioning even then. But I would
<v Speaker 3>go on to I'd be as a still photographer. I
<v Speaker 3>would go on and shoot, but they would they would
<v Speaker 3>book a stage, they would have an art director, and
<v Speaker 3>they'd build sets.
<v Speaker 2>Which you don't get so much these days.
<v Speaker 3>Right, even when I started, we built sets. I had
<v Speaker 3>an art director and yeah, he would have two assistants
<v Speaker 3>and we'd go in and build sets, and then we
<v Speaker 3>would switch some things around, and sometimes we would keep
<v Speaker 3>the there was some artwork or something that would put
<v Speaker 3>in the background, and it would keep it, but build
<v Speaker 3>the set around it again, so it looked like it
<v Speaker 3>was a theme.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that. Like one thing that
<v Speaker 2>one can definitely say is that there was a lot
<v Speaker 2>less content being produced back then, right, like compared to now.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, because everyone's got a camera and that, so
<v Speaker 2>there's just like constantly, oh exactly, production just like stuff
<v Speaker 2>being put out. But back then it seems like the
<v Speaker 2>productions were fewer, but there was more time being put
<v Speaker 2>into them. Would you say that that is true?
<v Speaker 3>I think there were fewer productions just because it were
<v Speaker 3>more expensive because you had to shoot them on film, right.
<v Speaker 3>They also shot loops with super eight cameras, so and
<v Speaker 3>there were a lot of those, and anyone could get
<v Speaker 3>a super eight camera and go out and shoot porn.
<v Speaker 3>So it was like that's kind of the same, but
<v Speaker 3>it still cost money, whereas now digital and video you'd
<v Speaker 3>buy a tape and they were cheap and you could
<v Speaker 3>go for hours on them. But the loops, I think
<v Speaker 3>it had to be thought out more because you didn't
<v Speaker 3>want to want to shoot a Super eight, but you
<v Speaker 3>didn't want to edit it. And because it's it's not digital,
<v Speaker 3>it's an analog, you have to go in and edit film,
<v Speaker 3>so you're physically literally to cut it, and no one
<v Speaker 3>wanted to do that, and they just wanted to shoot
<v Speaker 3>it yeah and release it. Yeah, So they would have
<v Speaker 3>to think out what the scene was. And it's kind
<v Speaker 3>of like Gonzo. A lot of people go out and
<v Speaker 3>shoot and don't really edit. It's just what's in the
<v Speaker 3>camera they released. But something like Alex Derenzi, he shot
<v Speaker 3>a lot of loops, so he had that kind of
<v Speaker 3>in his head. But he also did a lot of
<v Speaker 3>big movies, right, and then those would get sent out
<v Speaker 3>to editors. I remember was it the Pearl Sisters. It
<v Speaker 3>was an editing team back then. They did a lot
<v Speaker 3>of the big budget movies and then also thirty five
<v Speaker 3>millimeter was shot and those were the big productions.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we we kind of wax nostalgic about a
<v Speaker 2>lot of like these classic points stars that are no
<v Speaker 2>longer around, especially like some of my you know fans
<v Speaker 2>that are more into like the vintage porn. Who really
<v Speaker 2>stands out for you from like the past. Oh, there
<v Speaker 2>are some great stars that you really remember as being
<v Speaker 2>like that person deserved to be that star.
<v Speaker 3>They were all in their own way, really great. But
<v Speaker 3>I remember being very impressed with In That Haven. She
<v Speaker 3>was she was classic. And the thing about In That
<v Speaker 3>Haven that struck me as the weirdest I've ever come
<v Speaker 3>across is that how she looked on film was nothing
<v Speaker 3>like how she looked in real life. She had one
<v Speaker 3>of those In real life, she had one of those
<v Speaker 3>blank faces that was not very remarkable. But once you
<v Speaker 3>put makeup on her and you shot her, she was
<v Speaker 3>so photogenic that it was like a whole different person.
<v Speaker 3>And she was and she was very professional, really good actress.
<v Speaker 3>I'm trying to remember another girl. I forget her. I
<v Speaker 3>forget her name, but she was I did an interview
<v Speaker 3>with her. She was an Asian girl. I don't think
<v Speaker 3>it was China Lee. I'd have to I can't remember,
<v Speaker 3>but that might have been her stage name. But she
<v Speaker 3>was so into the sex. She came from San Francisco,
<v Speaker 3>but she was so into the sex industry. She used
<v Speaker 3>to do she's to performed for free, oh wow, because
<v Speaker 3>she was just like into the whole culture. And then
<v Speaker 3>after a while she said she needed to start charging
<v Speaker 3>because she needed to make a living yet, but she
<v Speaker 3>said she just liked the culture.
<v Speaker 2>And what was the culture like back then, like compared to.
<v Speaker 3>Now, it was more open. It was more like what
<v Speaker 3>you think of as swingers. So people were very sexual,
<v Speaker 3>so on and off, you know, camera, in front of camera,
<v Speaker 3>behind camera, they were they love sex. So you'd hook
<v Speaker 3>up and then on a movie set and then afterwards
<v Speaker 3>go off smoke some pot and you know, have sex.
<v Speaker 2>I've heard it, like some directors say, especially nowadays with
<v Speaker 2>you know, like the rise of the personal content platforms
<v Speaker 2>and how everybody is like their own marketing agency and entrepreneur,
<v Speaker 2>that there are some people who get into the adult
<v Speaker 2>industry literally like for the likes and for the clicks,
<v Speaker 2>and they're not actually into the sex. They just yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's just like marketing for other things that they're doing.
<v Speaker 2>Is that something that you experienced.
<v Speaker 3>And oh, absolutely.
<v Speaker 2>Something very different than the horn star that you were
<v Speaker 2>shooting back in like the eighties.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think when I started, it wasn't so much
<v Speaker 3>the money because it was more of an underground so
<v Speaker 3>I mean, of course they did it for the money
<v Speaker 3>and everything, and there were some probably only the money,
<v Speaker 3>but for the most part, the stars and everybody liked
<v Speaker 3>doing movies so and having sex on in front of
<v Speaker 3>the camera, and they took a lot of time into it,
<v Speaker 3>brote bigger stories, and it wasn't as they didn't have
<v Speaker 3>as much money to shoot a movie as you know,
<v Speaker 3>regular productions were, so they were they did look cheap,
<v Speaker 3>and they you know, hackneyed and you know put they
<v Speaker 3>roughly put together because they didn't have a lot of
<v Speaker 3>the crew, didn't have the talent and everything. But there
<v Speaker 3>were cinematographers that also worked mainstream and did X rated
<v Speaker 3>on the side, and there were a number of them.
<v Speaker 3>But I would say though that the performers male and female,
<v Speaker 3>it was more of a cultural thing and they could
<v Speaker 3>make some money. Now it's like it's a business.
<v Speaker 2>I mean back then, especially like the stigma that followed
<v Speaker 2>you around was so strong.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, it was very strong.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that, I mean, if you were going to get
<v Speaker 2>into this industry, you had to really love it right
<v Speaker 2>to like handle that, you know. And now it's I mean,
<v Speaker 2>there's still a lot of stigma around it, but it's
<v Speaker 2>more accepted than it was.
<v Speaker 3>When I started. It was very underground. We would meet
<v Speaker 3>this was a typical day. You get booked towards seeinge.
<v Speaker 3>So they had a date. We'd go to Sherman Oaks
<v Speaker 3>and we'd have breakfast at six am until everybody showed up,
<v Speaker 3>and we'd park our cars in the parking lot and
<v Speaker 3>we'd hop in a van and they'd drive us to
<v Speaker 3>the location but wouldn't tell us where it was beforehand,
<v Speaker 3>wouldn't tell us where it was. So and then we'd
<v Speaker 3>shoot everything for the day, so it was you know,
<v Speaker 3>the twelve fourteen hour day, and then they'd drive us
<v Speaker 3>back and then we'd hop in the cars and leave
<v Speaker 3>and they'd pay in cash.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that sounds a lot like my mom had similar
<v Speaker 2>stories because I think that was before the Freeman case,
<v Speaker 2>right how foreign was became legal in California. So for
<v Speaker 2>those of you who don't know a little bit of
<v Speaker 2>porn history, there was the case they called the Freeman case,
<v Speaker 2>where essentially that was the case that made porn legal
<v Speaker 2>in California. Before that, it wasn't technically legal. It was
<v Speaker 2>sort of like a gray area. I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>you know.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, I had a friend that used to write for
<v Speaker 3>Hal Freeman. He write the scripts for him. Wow, So
<v Speaker 3>he was in really tight And I can't remember if
<v Speaker 3>Bill Margold was connected with hol Freeman or not, but
<v Speaker 3>Bill Margold was basically connected to everyone or just about
<v Speaker 3>everyone in porn in that era early eighties.
<v Speaker 2>So for those who don't know who was Bill Margold,
<v Speaker 2>can you tell?
<v Speaker 3>He was basically a huge fan of porn that got
<v Speaker 3>into making it and dealing with it in the industry
<v Speaker 3>as a talent agent, producer, writer, director, Yeah or whatnot.
<v Speaker 2>My parents said they would experience the same thing because
<v Speaker 2>you'd have like the vice squad, like going through your
<v Speaker 2>They used to, I guess, go through our trash and
<v Speaker 2>they would be watching you. And so you had to
<v Speaker 2>keep the location the secret because technically what you were
<v Speaker 2>doing was illegal. And so everybody would meet up one
<v Speaker 2>place and then yeah, I'll jump in one car or
<v Speaker 2>follow each other to the set and right, of course,
<v Speaker 2>my mother remembers those days fondly, back when it was legal,
<v Speaker 2>that's what it was fun, she said. She's like, now
<v Speaker 2>everyone everyone does porn, but back then you had to
<v Speaker 2>really be like counterculture to be in the industry. So
<v Speaker 2>you've also said that golden era of films were more
<v Speaker 2>watchable than most features today. What do you think makes
<v Speaker 2>them better? The story, the acting, the filmmakers.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's a good point. Back then they were trying.
<v Speaker 3>They were still trying to make stories, so you still
<v Speaker 3>had character and the loop, and it was separated into
<v Speaker 3>the features and the loops. The loops were just straight sex.
<v Speaker 2>So that's like our version of Gonzo.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, exactly, except they were shot on Super eight,
<v Speaker 3>so they look cool. But the features were more thought out,
<v Speaker 3>but they were shot on film. Film's expensive, so the
<v Speaker 3>sex was also thought out. So you only shot so
<v Speaker 3>much film for the sex scenes. So sex scenes could
<v Speaker 3>be three or four minutes, six or seven or eight
<v Speaker 3>minutes at the longest. Now when you have a feature,
<v Speaker 3>it's like you're required to shoot thirty minutes flass for
<v Speaker 3>sex scenes, and you need to run through all the
<v Speaker 3>positions like it's the Kama Sutra. So it's like you
<v Speaker 3>got a blowjob Pussye, yeah, you know, spoom cargo or
<v Speaker 3>reverse calgarl. You got to go through all the positions,
<v Speaker 3>and to me, I think that's just overkill. But back then,
<v Speaker 3>when you're shooting a film had an encounter, it was
<v Speaker 3>portrayed as more normal sex. Like someone moves, meets up
<v Speaker 3>in the in a hotel room. She sucks him off
<v Speaker 3>a little bit and he turns, you know, in one
<v Speaker 3>position he pops and that's like that was a sex scene.
<v Speaker 3>So they had to add more story. So it was
<v Speaker 3>more story. Sex scenes were quicker and you got through them.
<v Speaker 3>You had more sex scenes probably. I think when I
<v Speaker 3>started shooting features, you were required to have six six
<v Speaker 3>plus sex scenes. Oh wow, But they weren't thirty minutes, right,
<v Speaker 3>they were. They could They could be as short as
<v Speaker 3>two or three minutes. Usually they were six or seven minutes. Wow,
<v Speaker 3>twelve minutes on the long side.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, I can't imagine only having to shoot that long.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but when you think about it, that's the way
<v Speaker 3>it should be.
<v Speaker 2>No, I agree with you.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, cause sex in real life doesn't right. They're
<v Speaker 3>not thirty.
<v Speaker 2>Minutes, right, But you know why it is. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's so companies can cut them up into compilations, right,
<v Speaker 2>they can do like the blowjob compilation. Also they can
<v Speaker 2>tag it because now when you watch like a scene
<v Speaker 2>on a computer, you can like, you know, they have
<v Speaker 2>a little pop up where you can go to the
<v Speaker 2>BJ or go to the do you know, so people
<v Speaker 2>can pick like whatever it's like, right, you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>almost like too much choice.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's very mechanical, I guess, yes. Yeah, and all
<v Speaker 3>the companies needed because that's what their requirements are.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. You can't be the one company that doesn't give
<v Speaker 2>that to the fans because it could be expected, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it could be Yeah. So, having been in the industry
<v Speaker 2>for over forty years, you've witnessed the shift in so
<v Speaker 2>many different shooting mediums. Right, How the technological changes in
<v Speaker 2>filmmaking impacted your directing style or the possibilities of even
<v Speaker 2>storytelling in adult cinema.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's easier now. Back back when I started
<v Speaker 3>I started directing, well, most of the sets I went
<v Speaker 3>on as still photographer were shot on film. And then
<v Speaker 3>when I started directing, they wanted me because I had
<v Speaker 3>a background and shooting with film. And then with film
<v Speaker 3>you got to go through the process of developing it
<v Speaker 3>and then transferring it to video, so there's more background
<v Speaker 3>before you even start editing it. And then when video
<v Speaker 3>came in, they could just let it run because you'd
<v Speaker 3>put an hour tape on there, and film you had
<v Speaker 3>like eleven minutes or eight to eleven minutes, depending thirty
<v Speaker 3>five or sixteen milimeters, so you're all constantly changing the magazine.
<v Speaker 3>Where it's video, you could just let it run, and
<v Speaker 3>I think that's where the sex scenes got longer because
<v Speaker 3>it didn't matter. No one was trying to save videotape
<v Speaker 3>because it was cheap.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know what the cassettes cost, but they were
<v Speaker 3>a lot cheaper. I think we started with three quarter
<v Speaker 3>and then Betacam came amount and that was like half inch.
<v Speaker 3>But it was Beta Max with the Beta Beta Max cameras,
<v Speaker 3>which were really high end and heavy.
<v Speaker 2>And now you can shoot everything on a phone now.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, on a phone or a little mirrorless camera.
<v Speaker 2>I watched the film twenty years later, do you know
<v Speaker 2>the whole series with the zombie series, So I didn't realize,
<v Speaker 2>but I guess that was shot. Ernie. Can you verify
<v Speaker 2>this is true because my husband said that it was
<v Speaker 2>not that I don't trust him, but that the whole
<v Speaker 2>thing was shot on a cell phone, was on.
<v Speaker 3>My well, on multiple cell phones. Well yeah, sorry, but
<v Speaker 3>still like no, I mean they would line up a
<v Speaker 3>bunch of cell phones and get this panoramic shot.
<v Speaker 2>But I mean I didn't even realize that when I was.
<v Speaker 2>It's an incredible movie by the way, if you haven't
<v Speaker 2>seen it, like I loved it. It was so good.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I should check it out.
<v Speaker 2>But I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, was the iPhone fifty pro.
<v Speaker 2>Macs Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean it's like I mean,
<v Speaker 2>back then, did you ever think that people will be
<v Speaker 2>shooting no, no, something that small? What do you think
<v Speaker 2>that something the modern industry has lost in the move
<v Speaker 2>to cheaper, faster video production. And on the flip side,
<v Speaker 2>what do you think modern technology has generally improved?
<v Speaker 3>Well, back then, even if you shot on film, it
<v Speaker 3>was transferred to video, which was standard deaf, which is
<v Speaker 3>basically out of focus. If you look at it now,
<v Speaker 3>it is so fuzzy. Yeah, it looks terrible. So I
<v Speaker 3>think the quality has improved. Just the four K, which
<v Speaker 3>is standard even HD four K HD shot with good
<v Speaker 3>lenses and shot well, you can't really tell the difference
<v Speaker 3>that much.
<v Speaker 2>I remember when like HD and four K was coming out,
<v Speaker 2>performers were freaking out. They were thinking that they were
<v Speaker 2>going to have to cover their entire body with like
<v Speaker 2>body makeup. It was going to show so much. It does,
<v Speaker 2>and that's why we put a softening filter back on editing.
<v Speaker 3>Right. I used to use a diffusion filter all the time.
<v Speaker 3>Lately I just took it off. But every once in
<v Speaker 3>a while when I look at the when I'm in
<v Speaker 3>the editing room and I'm looking at a close up,
<v Speaker 3>I see all the pores and it's like, oh my god.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the quality has improved. What do you think
<v Speaker 2>that we've lost.
<v Speaker 3>I think we lost the spontaneity of the underground eche
<v Speaker 3>type culture of doing something that most people would never do.
<v Speaker 3>And there's kind of a way that bonded people in
<v Speaker 3>a certain way. I don't know, it was like a club.
<v Speaker 2>So what do you think the biggest misconception people have
<v Speaker 2>about what a porn director actually does is.
<v Speaker 3>The biggest misconception is I think they think it's like
<v Speaker 3>fun and you're at this sex party, which is not
<v Speaker 3>what it is. Almost twenty years ago, I started going
<v Speaker 3>with this girl that she worked at CBS, but she
<v Speaker 3>had absolutely nothing. She didn't know anything about porn. It
<v Speaker 3>wasn't that she was against it, she just wasn't acquainted
<v Speaker 3>with it. And she was like, yeah, she had no
<v Speaker 3>idea what the sets were. So I brought her to
<v Speaker 3>the set. It was a big set and we had
<v Speaker 3>like a smashed car that we got from a junkyard
<v Speaker 3>and we were shooting post accident. The movie was about
<v Speaker 3>a girl who died in a car accident and all
<v Speaker 3>the stuff that happens in her mind between the accident
<v Speaker 3>and actually dying. WHOA, that's one of the movies I did. Wow,
<v Speaker 3>it's called Justin's Daughter. And at the end of it,
<v Speaker 3>I asked her what she thought. She says, it was
<v Speaker 3>just like a regular movie set. Said, nothing really happened.
<v Speaker 3>That was any different than any other movie shit set
<v Speaker 3>she'd ever been on. And I think that's the misconception.
<v Speaker 3>And even now, even the lower budget, I'm more concerned
<v Speaker 3>about getting the stuff we do. We have. The shot
<v Speaker 3>is the audio okay? You know? What was the performance? Okay?
<v Speaker 3>Was you know? And and I'm dealing with a wide
<v Speaker 3>variety some girls. Some girls are actually surprisingly really good
<v Speaker 3>actresses and some are bad. Yeah, and you have to
<v Speaker 3>deal with both of them. Yeah, so you you know,
<v Speaker 3>I'll caging playback to see what the performance is. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>and then sometimes you go is it worth doing it again?
<v Speaker 3>That's another thing. So and then when you finally get
<v Speaker 3>to shooting the sex, it's like, okay, let's just get
<v Speaker 3>this over with.
<v Speaker 2>I know, right, that's like the one that's like the afterthought.
<v Speaker 2>We spend so much time to dialogue and set up
<v Speaker 2>because that's like the easiest part, right, they know what
<v Speaker 2>they're doing. Just turn the camera on, Like I don't
<v Speaker 2>need to pay attention. You know, you gotta at your
<v Speaker 2>thirty minutes in your five positions.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, all that kind of stuff.
<v Speaker 2>And maybe the softcore afterwards.
<v Speaker 3>And but occasionally when the performers have good chemistry and
<v Speaker 3>they're into it, it goes by like that, yeah, because
<v Speaker 3>you're like, you get involved in it.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think is the best film that you've done? Like,
<v Speaker 2>if someone's watching this now and they're like, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>I've never really I don't know if I've seen a
<v Speaker 2>James Avalon film, Like, where would you tell them they
<v Speaker 2>should go see.
<v Speaker 3>There's there's no there. They're a handful that I really like.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, give us the handful, give us a handful.
<v Speaker 3>The biggest one I did was a vampire movie called
<v Speaker 3>Le Vampire. It was about a bunch of female serial killers.
<v Speaker 3>They pretended to be vampires and she uh. It was
<v Speaker 3>kind of a loose adaptation of Daughters of Darkness where
<v Speaker 3>one of the vampire vampires falls in love with the
<v Speaker 3>girlfriend of these tourists and then so she and it
<v Speaker 3>gets into the middle of them and then drives the
<v Speaker 3>boyfriend away. And then that one. That one was fun
<v Speaker 3>that that came out good. Trial by Copulation, which was
<v Speaker 3>about a movie about in the future the world was
<v Speaker 3>taken over by women. They have all the major jobs.
<v Speaker 2>Ala. I like it. Good storyline.
<v Speaker 3>It's loosely based on the Trial by cop I'm a
<v Speaker 3>big Kofka fan, so a lot of these stories I
<v Speaker 3>would come up with are based on Kofka. They're bringing
<v Speaker 3>up various guys, put them on trial, and at the
<v Speaker 3>end of it, they're putting them death because there's only
<v Speaker 3>one punishment. It's like the Bible, like many crimes, one punishment,
<v Speaker 3>which is death, and so the whole thing is basically
<v Speaker 3>him going through this trial, and then everybody comes across,
<v Speaker 3>the judge, the lawyer, the policeman, they're all women. It's
<v Speaker 3>arrested by two women and that turns into some kind
<v Speaker 3>of sex scene. It was cool. I like that sex
<v Speaker 3>Picks was about this super right wing cowboy type that's
<v Speaker 3>also kind of like a pimp. But the movie is
<v Speaker 3>told backwards. So the first scene is that there's this
<v Speaker 3>girl who is sunny laying sitting on a bed in
<v Speaker 3>a motel room, freaking out. She's like going going nuts,
<v Speaker 3>and then the camera comes off her down to the
<v Speaker 3>floor and there's a pool of blood and you follow
<v Speaker 3>the pool of blood to this cowboy guy that's just
<v Speaker 3>laying in the blood in a broken beer bottle off
<v Speaker 3>to the side, and then it says one hour earlier,
<v Speaker 3>and then you cut to him coming in with her,
<v Speaker 3>and then it from each one of those scenes that
<v Speaker 3>goes backwards in time. I thought that was really cool.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's a really cool story telling tool.
<v Speaker 3>Sex Fix one of the first ones I did. Oh
<v Speaker 3>Blue Dahly was the very first one I did for
<v Speaker 3>Metro home Video. They gave me. I came in there
<v Speaker 3>as an editor and I edited Zazel. I don't know
<v Speaker 3>if you've ever heard of Zazel. Go was a big,
<v Speaker 3>glossy film. It is fantastic looking, like really incredible film.
<v Speaker 3>I came in there and edited that and started editing
<v Speaker 3>some of the Gonzos they were putting out. So they
<v Speaker 3>finally gave me a shot to direct, and I had
<v Speaker 3>I had a sixteen millimeter camera and I had some
<v Speaker 3>film leftover I used to edit for Access films. Those
<v Speaker 3>were erotic thrillers for showtime basically, and they had film
<v Speaker 3>leftover that didn't never use, so I just took it.
<v Speaker 3>I was in the editing room there to have storage thing,
<v Speaker 3>and then the company folded and I just like, they're
<v Speaker 3>just going to throw this away, so I'll take it.
<v Speaker 3>So anyway, so I'm shooting this video for them, and
<v Speaker 3>it was about a guy who was obsessed with brunettes
<v Speaker 3>and he just he has this very lyrical narration that
<v Speaker 3>we put over it. And Misty Rain played played the lead,
<v Speaker 3>and we had this like very fashionable outfit. And anyway,
<v Speaker 3>I started shooting film with the video, so I started
<v Speaker 3>mixing film and the video together, and then I went
<v Speaker 3>into the operations manager or the guy who was running
<v Speaker 3>Metro at the time, said hey, I shot a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of film. If you want to use it, you have
<v Speaker 3>to pay for processing and transferring it. So the first
<v Speaker 3>thing I did for them was a mix of video
<v Speaker 3>and film, which was very strange. Yeah, so anything that
<v Speaker 3>kind of happened in the mind of the guy was
<v Speaker 3>on film, and the stuff that happened outside of his
<v Speaker 3>mind was shot on video.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that makes sense. I was going to ask if
<v Speaker 2>you like separated the two mediums with some sort of narrative.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, yeah, tool.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that makes sense.
<v Speaker 3>And I got the idea from Monty Python because Monty
<v Speaker 3>Python at the time were shooting video and indoors. You
<v Speaker 3>have all the lights and everything so you can control it.
<v Speaker 3>But when they take the video cameras outside, it was
<v Speaker 3>they just couldn't handle daylight, so they use film. So
<v Speaker 3>if you look at Monty Python videos outside.
<v Speaker 2>Their film like their movies are like the.
<v Speaker 3>Skits, the skits okay from the late sixties, early seventies,
<v Speaker 3>All those skits outside was film inside. And they even
<v Speaker 3>did a skit aut it. Oh really, yeah, there's one
<v Speaker 3>of their skits.
<v Speaker 2>Because I love Monty Python.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, oh yeah, me too, And Yeah, there's one skit
<v Speaker 3>where they did I think with Eric Idol, He's like, oh, film,
<v Speaker 3>this is film, this is video, and he'd jump in
<v Speaker 3>and out of the window. Oh it was really crazy.
<v Speaker 2>That's great. So your films are known for blending explicit
<v Speaker 2>content with strong storytelling and characters. So how do you
<v Speaker 2>balance the sex, the story and the character elements when
<v Speaker 2>directing an adult film because sometimes it's hard to get
<v Speaker 2>the whole story in right if you've got to like
<v Speaker 2>put the sex in certain parts. Like the one thing
<v Speaker 2>I struggle with is you know you mentioned earlier how
<v Speaker 2>the features when you started needed six sex scenes, right, Like,
<v Speaker 2>sometimes you're just like, a sex scene doesn't make sense here,
<v Speaker 2>but I got to put something in here, Like how
<v Speaker 2>do you write around that? First?
<v Speaker 3>I would I would hire people who I thought could
<v Speaker 3>pull off the acting right. And then also they were
<v Speaker 3>known to be good second performers, So I had the
<v Speaker 3>two of them already there, so I didn't have to
<v Speaker 3>push either one. So I wanted to do one where
<v Speaker 3>a guy he's a businessman and he's having sex with
<v Speaker 3>his secretary and he's cheating on his wife, and I
<v Speaker 3>wanted the sex scene to shoot all the dialogue in
<v Speaker 3>the sex scene.
<v Speaker 2>Mm hmm.
<v Speaker 3>So it's like he's having a conversation with her and
<v Speaker 3>he's fucking her.
<v Speaker 2>So you're like driving the narrative across during the sex scene.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, and I just want and it was not easy. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and I think a lot of guys just can't do it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>but this guy pulled it off.
<v Speaker 2>Really well, especially if it was in the days before viagra.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this was probably early two thousands.
<v Speaker 2>Back before viagra was caberjack, all the things that guys
<v Speaker 2>sometimes used to get themselves going through the scene, Like
<v Speaker 2>what did you do if a guy.
<v Speaker 3>Like stunt stunt cocks stuntcocks? Okay, did you ever use
<v Speaker 3>any Oh, we were it was big. Well, if you're
<v Speaker 3>shooting something and it's on film, it's you have a set,
<v Speaker 3>you have all this money invested, and the guy loses it,
<v Speaker 3>and it happened quite a bit, and so it was
<v Speaker 3>like what do you do, Like get another guy to
<v Speaker 3>stand in on it, and you basically just shoot it
<v Speaker 3>from the outside and then you do the close up
<v Speaker 3>and then you just cut it in so it looks
<v Speaker 3>kind But a lot of films, even in the Golden era,
<v Speaker 3>it was like the outside. You know, the full shot
<v Speaker 3>looked more like softcore anyway, and then you go in
<v Speaker 3>for the hardcore and you wouldn't get that much hardcore.
<v Speaker 3>Have you? Have you seen some vintage films? Yeah, but yes,
<v Speaker 3>I think I viewed them. What was the first one
<v Speaker 3>she did? Oh my god, I think I reviewed it
<v Speaker 3>and I also did.
<v Speaker 2>Publicity, so I know there was too naughty to say no.
<v Speaker 2>And then there was Stud Hunters.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe maybe it was my dad.
<v Speaker 2>Wrote the song for it. It's so bad, so bad.
<v Speaker 2>I think my brother and I like, for a while,
<v Speaker 2>like both. I mean, obviously I continue to work for
<v Speaker 2>them in porn, but my brother like did a little
<v Speaker 2>bit of, like, uh, work for my parents, I think,
<v Speaker 2>like doing archiving or something like when he turned eighteen
<v Speaker 2>before I went to college. Like all of me and
<v Speaker 2>all my siblings have worked for my parents in some
<v Speaker 2>small capacity. I'm the only one who stuck with it.
<v Speaker 2>But we used to always like laugh about that song.
<v Speaker 2>It's like it's like stud Hunters and need some hud
<v Speaker 2>code love it. It's so terrible and it's just like footy,
<v Speaker 2>but it's cool because it's then it's it's better now
<v Speaker 2>than over b roll of like Venice Beach in the seventies.
<v Speaker 2>So it's kind of cool, right because the speech was
<v Speaker 2>such like an iconic place and then back in the
<v Speaker 2>seventies is like so it's kind of cool to see
<v Speaker 2>that because it's like this really like great you know
<v Speaker 2>moment of you know, in time. And back then, you
<v Speaker 2>could show random people's faces in a porn film and
<v Speaker 2>you didn't need their release, you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>You can just shoot roll like people just walking down
<v Speaker 2>the boardwalk and like they're oh, I'm in a porn
<v Speaker 2>scene now like real cared back then.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, now you can't get away with that, no way.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Back then when we were using stunt dicks or stunt cocks,
<v Speaker 3>I was before aids and all that, so you didn't
<v Speaker 3>need a test and you just needed okay or the
<v Speaker 3>girl yeah or whatnot? What a crew member every yeh yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I did a few.
<v Speaker 2>It was like, hey, you got to get the job done,
<v Speaker 2>let's go home.
<v Speaker 3>Oh there's two. There's two that I remember. One was
<v Speaker 3>older guy I forget his name. It would come to
<v Speaker 3>me Bob Cummings I think was his name, but he
<v Speaker 3>played the principal and he just lost it in the
<v Speaker 3>middle of it and we're in a studio and everything
<v Speaker 3>is gone, and I just said, okay, fuck it, just
<v Speaker 3>keep going, and then I stepped in and shot, you know,
<v Speaker 3>the close up, and then we went back to him
<v Speaker 3>pretending to come and all that kind of stuff.
<v Speaker 2>That okay, so but that has got to be. And
<v Speaker 2>I had to deal with this when I did my
<v Speaker 2>Playboy TV show because we had a pretty high fail
<v Speaker 2>rate because we were using non professionals. Oh but that
<v Speaker 2>has got to be. You're like, Okay, you can't keep
<v Speaker 2>your dick hard, but we need to keep you to
<v Speaker 2>get like the rest of the footage. So just pretend
<v Speaker 2>like you're having sex with her with your limp dick,
<v Speaker 2>and then we'll have somebody who can get their dick
<v Speaker 2>cards step in for you for the close ups. Like
<v Speaker 2>as a man like that's got to be a little
<v Speaker 2>soul crushing, give him.
<v Speaker 3>He'd have a certain amount of time. I get that.
<v Speaker 2>I get that, of course, yeah, you got to do it.
<v Speaker 3>You would accelerate it down.
<v Speaker 2>Sorry, I got to pull in a stunt cock like
<v Speaker 2>and then those are the things that I do not
<v Speaker 2>miss about directing is the guys who can't perform and
<v Speaker 2>having to like call the scene or like send them
<v Speaker 2>home and bring in somebody else or.
<v Speaker 3>And then we had another one. I was shooting a
<v Speaker 3>hippie sequence, so we went up to Angel's Crest Highway
<v Speaker 3>and we we had a guy and a girl and
<v Speaker 3>then they're running around in the woods and I'm shooting
<v Speaker 3>this on film and we're getting all these like great
<v Speaker 3>shots with the sun and everything. And what I wanted
<v Speaker 3>to do is we're out on top of this ridge,
<v Speaker 3>like way above the valley. It's like on top of
<v Speaker 3>Angel's Crest Highway, and uh so I wanted one scene
<v Speaker 3>on some rocks, one scene next to a tree, and
<v Speaker 3>you know, bj over here, you know, blah blah blah blah.
<v Speaker 3>And we got to the point where the sun was
<v Speaker 3>like within fifteen minutes of setting, and it was an
<v Speaker 3>anal scene and we're supposed to get this anal shot
<v Speaker 3>and the sun's going down and the guy can't get
<v Speaker 3>it up anymore because he's been up and down all day.
<v Speaker 3>So there again, I told the production and it was me,
<v Speaker 3>PA and a production manager or something, and I said,
<v Speaker 3>you guys got a condom And then I said I'll
<v Speaker 3>do it and put a condom on. So we got
<v Speaker 3>the close up footage for it, and then the guy
<v Speaker 3>you know, pretends to come on the other shot, and
<v Speaker 3>so we got it because if not then we'd have
<v Speaker 3>had to have rescheduled another day.
<v Speaker 2>I have a similar story, but the guy actually pulled through.
<v Speaker 2>So I was shooting by the pool actually at my place,
<v Speaker 2>and we'd spent so long like getting everything right, all
<v Speaker 2>the pre shots and stuff and same thing sunsetting, like
<v Speaker 2>one set, sun goes down, like you've lost a shot.
<v Speaker 3>He had to get it before the sun goes yeah, and.
<v Speaker 2>We had we still hadn't gotten the cum shot, and
<v Speaker 2>it was Johnny Sins and I was just like we
<v Speaker 2>have to get this cum shot. And I'm just like, Johnny,
<v Speaker 2>you got to get me this cum shot and like
<v Speaker 2>literally like less than a minute, like you can't fuck up,
<v Speaker 2>like I'm gonna lose the sun. And I'm like, don't
<v Speaker 2>fuck up, Johnny, And Johnny Sins pulled it off. He
<v Speaker 2>got the cup shot in before the sunset went down,
<v Speaker 2>So thank you, Johnny. But I just remember, like I
<v Speaker 2>put him under so much pressure. I'm like, you have
<v Speaker 2>to do it now, like you literally have a minute
<v Speaker 2>like that, otherwise we've lost a shot.
<v Speaker 3>Hmmm.
<v Speaker 2>Well through. That's why he's a legend, right. So other
<v Speaker 2>question for you, because this is something that I've heard
<v Speaker 2>a mix of both, and I swore that it wasn't
<v Speaker 2>true before, But then I remember my father telling me
<v Speaker 2>something different. Did fluffers exist? Was that a thing?
<v Speaker 3>It was more mythical than real. But there were times
<v Speaker 3>we had.
<v Speaker 2>Fluffers because I didn't think they existed at all.
<v Speaker 3>But I don't think anyone was hired to be a fluffer,
<v Speaker 3>but sometimes they needed stimulation from someone that wasn't their
<v Speaker 3>sex partner. In the film I was shooting stills for
<v Speaker 3>Dark Brother called let Me Tell You About White Chicks,
<v Speaker 3>which I don't I think they pulled.
<v Speaker 2>Have you ever seen why?
<v Speaker 3>It was very very racist. He actually went downtown and
<v Speaker 3>got homeless people and asked him if they wanted to
<v Speaker 3>be in a in a movie. And so they get
<v Speaker 3>on set and once they were on set, we had
<v Speaker 3>the catering and everything they did, they just ate this
<v Speaker 3>huge amount. Of course they did, and one guy that
<v Speaker 3>was supposed to do the same, he just couldn't get
<v Speaker 3>it up. But we had a.
<v Speaker 2>They didn't get one of the most people in to
<v Speaker 2>do it, did.
<v Speaker 3>They Yeah, yeah, they had sex. This was like in
<v Speaker 3>the eighties, so this is before aids, This is before
<v Speaker 3>you had to have tests. All he had to do
<v Speaker 3>was get the okay, but he couldn't get it up
<v Speaker 3>because he ate so much. So we had the producer
<v Speaker 3>was a woman, and what she what he needed to
<v Speaker 3>do was bend over and he had and she had
<v Speaker 3>to spank him and telling me it was a bad
<v Speaker 3>boy and all that kind of stuff, and that got
<v Speaker 3>him there and that got him hard. Oh but I
<v Speaker 3>think we spent four or five hours shooting that one
<v Speaker 3>sex scene. Wow, because and that was supposed to be
<v Speaker 3>a gang bang I think right, it was just it
<v Speaker 3>was rough.
<v Speaker 2>Why did they have to get Why couldn't they just
<v Speaker 2>get actors and bress them up as homeless people.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, that's not my show. I just remember
<v Speaker 3>being there and they were like him needing her to
<v Speaker 3>spank of.
<v Speaker 2>The director was like, I need authenticity. Wow, that is
<v Speaker 2>that is wild? God, it is Yeah. It is a
<v Speaker 2>different world now, that is for sure. What piece of
<v Speaker 2>advice do you give newer performers when they come on
<v Speaker 2>to your set with somebody with like the experience and
<v Speaker 2>the knowledge.
<v Speaker 3>My advice to new performers, guys or girls. Is just
<v Speaker 3>to try to work in and not be so self
<v Speaker 3>conscious and and and basically be professional.
<v Speaker 2>Show up on time.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Memory, the things that help us is that you
<v Speaker 3>understand what we're shooting. If there's dialogue. If you got
<v Speaker 3>a script with dialogue, habit memorized or very familiar with
<v Speaker 3>it so you can kind of wing it.
<v Speaker 2>Or at least have read it.
<v Speaker 3>And I took a chance on a new guy once
<v Speaker 3>and this is crazy, and he was a good actor actually,
<v Speaker 3>So we got through the dialogue and everything I think
<v Speaker 3>it was the erotica acts scene, and got into the sex.
<v Speaker 3>I think he went one position into the sex scene
<v Speaker 3>after the story and everything, and he just lost it.
<v Speaker 3>He could keep a heart on, and it was just
<v Speaker 3>like fucking difficult. So we'd shoot thirty seconds here, it
<v Speaker 3>would wait five minutes, shoot thirty seconds again, and went
<v Speaker 3>up and down and then and this was a fairly reason.
<v Speaker 3>So you needed tests and everything. And fortunately one of
<v Speaker 3>the pas does content. He's not like a performer for
<v Speaker 3>you know, higher he does does his own stuff, and
<v Speaker 3>she was okay with him, so we put him in
<v Speaker 3>to try to stunt and stuff for the pop shot.
<v Speaker 3>Because he couldn't even pop and we got so we
<v Speaker 3>got through that scene, and I was just like, oh man,
<v Speaker 3>I should never hire this guy. So I docked him
<v Speaker 3>one hundred dollars off his rate because this other guy,
<v Speaker 3>I had to give him something. So I just took
<v Speaker 3>it and paid him some more and he got just pissed.
<v Speaker 3>And then when he told his agent about it, and
<v Speaker 3>so finally I had to just pay the balance on
<v Speaker 3>him again. But it was like, come on, dude, you
<v Speaker 3>didn't even do the scene.
<v Speaker 2>That's kind of crazy.
<v Speaker 3>But the weird thing is the scene turned out good.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Magic of editing. Yeah. What do you think is
<v Speaker 2>the most important skill porn director needs today in today's world?
<v Speaker 3>Patience. The more you plan, the better things will go.
<v Speaker 3>But no matter how much you plan, things go wrong.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So like guys losing their heart on us. Absolutely. I
<v Speaker 3>try to hire guys that I, you know, can trust,
<v Speaker 3>and less so much on new guys. Even though I
<v Speaker 3>do hire new guys and some of them turn out
<v Speaker 3>to be really good and and not and shooting dialogue.
<v Speaker 3>If they're not prepared, you know, you're just going to
<v Speaker 3>have to take the time.
<v Speaker 2>To feed them.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I hate feeding beating lines, but sometimes you have
<v Speaker 3>to you have to yeah, basically, yeah, just not try
<v Speaker 3>to rush it. And also the more you put pressure
<v Speaker 3>on performers, either dialogue or sex, the worse they will do.
<v Speaker 3>So if they get the idea that they're not coming
<v Speaker 3>off right, it becomes self conscious and they do worse.
<v Speaker 2>And that's absolutely true because it's like you have to
<v Speaker 2>really guard that performers like sense of you know, like
<v Speaker 2>well being is probably not the right word, but you
<v Speaker 2>know what I'm saying, Like, even if they show.
<v Speaker 3>Up late, right, oh yeah, you gotta regards.
<v Speaker 2>To scream with them, because then you're not going to
<v Speaker 2>get a scene at it that you just.
<v Speaker 3>Kind of gotta be a late okay showing up story, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>first girl showed up on time, No, that's fine. Second
<v Speaker 3>girl was three hours late. And then when she showed up,
<v Speaker 3>I go, you're like three hours late? What's going on?
<v Speaker 3>She was no big deal, It's only like three hours wow.
<v Speaker 3>And and and then as soon as you showed up,
<v Speaker 3>the other girl that was supposed to act with her said,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not going.
<v Speaker 2>To act with her.
<v Speaker 3>Oh no, because she's so late that I don't want
<v Speaker 3>anything to do with her. I want to leave. I said, no, no,
<v Speaker 3>we gotta we gotta shoot this. So it's like, like,
<v Speaker 3>what do you do?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 3>Got to do this dialogue and then something else happens
<v Speaker 3>and it goes into the sex. So I said, okay,
<v Speaker 3>we'll do it as a phone conversation. I'm gonna take
<v Speaker 3>you go into the living room. I'm going to shoot
<v Speaker 3>your side of all the dialogue and then you can leave.
<v Speaker 2>And she goes great.
<v Speaker 3>So I did that and then I put her somewhere
<v Speaker 3>else and made it into a phone conversation.
<v Speaker 2>That's like really being an intuitive and well, what else
<v Speaker 2>can you do?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 3>She wouldn't be in the same room with her Wow,
<v Speaker 3>because she showed up late. She said, that's very unprofessional.
<v Speaker 3>And they were both really good actresses out just had
<v Speaker 3>different concepts.
<v Speaker 2>Of Yeah, all times you brought these books for us,
<v Speaker 2>So I want to quickly like kind of talk about
<v Speaker 2>these So this is now, this is a book that
<v Speaker 2>you said that you wrote a long time ago. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So I went out and started doing research and ended
<v Speaker 3>up taking a couple of years and came up with
<v Speaker 3>this book Future X, about the guy from the future
<v Speaker 3>comes back try to save Malcolm X. But when he
<v Speaker 3>gets back finds out that things didn't happen the way
<v Speaker 3>history said they were supposed to happen. So it's all
<v Speaker 3>kind of mixed. But anyway, the future I created was
<v Speaker 3>the United States had been taken over by these white
<v Speaker 3>supremas and became president and then started kicking out all
<v Speaker 3>the minorities.
<v Speaker 2>Are you psychic?
<v Speaker 3>Just kicking him out, and then put him in these
<v Speaker 3>huge solveign sovereign areas, like they would fence him off
<v Speaker 3>and everything. So Harlem became one of those areas. Watts
<v Speaker 3>became another one of those areas. So this character lives
<v Speaker 3>in a place called New Watts, which is not part
<v Speaker 3>of the United States anymore because the United States in
<v Speaker 3>this scenario, uh, is only white Americans. There's no people
<v Speaker 3>of color left in the United States at all.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, just gotta love it that. Uh yeah, we
<v Speaker 2>are living a strange time right now. Let's talk about
<v Speaker 2>something happier.
<v Speaker 3>That's why I re released it.
<v Speaker 2>Right, that's crazy. So something happier. Naked naked women? Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>this is your other book, So this is all your photography, right,
<v Speaker 2>some of it?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, just some some nice nudes.
<v Speaker 2>And then where can people get this from? Asylum Publications,
<v Speaker 2>Asylum Publications. Okay, we've got Remy Lacron, Remy Laqui and
<v Speaker 2>Riley Read, Danny Daniels, Jennie Ativa, Demisutra, My Girl, Luna Star.
<v Speaker 3>So you know all these girls.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I think we've probably we shot a lot
<v Speaker 2>of the same people. Well, thank you so much for
<v Speaker 2>coming on, James, It's been such a pleasure.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Can you let everyone know where they can find you
<v Speaker 2>on social media? I know you're You're on Twitter for sure.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. James Avalon picks for Twitter and James Avalon thirteen
<v Speaker 3>fifteen for Instagram. Although I haven't posted on Instagram in
<v Speaker 3>a while.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, well maybe that's going to change.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's got to change.
<v Speaker 2>Come on, come on, twenty twenty five.
<v Speaker 3>I know, I got to get with it. I'm just
<v Speaker 3>not used to self promotion though.
<v Speaker 2>That's why you got to hire someone to do it
<v Speaker 2>for you. Okay, I mean that's what I do. Oh,
<v Speaker 2>I'm also like fine promoting myself. But yeah, you guy
<v Speaker 2>guys wanted to do it for you. There's so many
<v Speaker 2>kids out there. They know the Instagrams and the.
<v Speaker 3>TikTok they know how to do it.
<v Speaker 2>All that stuff. You should start doing tiktoks.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, yeah, blow up.
<v Speaker 2>How much performers would love to do a tiktoks with you?
<v Speaker 3>Really?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Okay, We're gonna get James Avalent into TikTok. Watch watch,
<v Speaker 2>watch out, guys, It's gonna happen, all right, Well, you
<v Speaker 2>guys can also find me on Instagram and on Twitter
<v Speaker 2>at Holly Randall. For access to all of my links,
<v Speaker 2>go to hollylinks dot com. Of course, to support this podcast,
<v Speaker 2>watch these live streamed and check out the bonus Q
<v Speaker 2>and a's like we're about to do, go to Patreon
<v Speaker 2>dot com slash Holly Randall. I'm filtered. Thank you guys
<v Speaker 2>so much for joining us, and I will see you
<v Speaker 2>next week