Australian Penthouse

Eon McKai, the man behind VividAlt, discusses sub-culture babes and the rise and rise of ‘alternative pornography’

By Kate Hutchinson

Eon McKai doesn’t like whips, wrestling masks or wax; equally, he also dislikes bleached blondes with pneumatic fake tits and terrible spray tans.

“I am attracted to many different girls who aren’t in mainstream porn and are more sub-culture based, such as the goths, punks and the ravers,” he says.

Thus Eon began creating pornography starring “different girls”.

“I felt that these types of girls weren’t being represented. I wanted to show that there are other types of girls—obviously as beautiful as the girls in mainstream porn. Plus, if everyone’s trying to model themselves on Jesse Jane, then that’s not healthy.” Piercings and tattoos, then?

“No. That’s what everyone thinks when they think of alternative, sub-culture girls. I’m not necessarily looking for people with tattoos. If they’ve got them, hopefully they aren’t bad.”

So, how did Eon become the mastermind behind porn giant Vivid’s alternative arm, VividAlt? “I was studying film in grad school, where I began filming this edgy kind of porn,” he explains. “I was initially taking photos for www.suicidegirls.com and www.raverporn.net, at a time when there was no alternative porn commercially available.

“Vivid caught on to what I was doing, and I basically made a deal with them to start and run a whole new department.” That was three years ago, and since then Eon has made eight VividAlt stick flicks: “It was so successful because there was already an audience for this type of stuff—it was all over the Internet, but there was nowhere to buy the DVDs.

“Being the main guy at VividAlt Productions means I don’t have to convince anyone of my movie idea, which is interesting because you just roll with the idea and start putting it together.

“When it comes to money, it’s great, because I have realised you just edit until the money is gone! Some take more than a year, some take three months until it’s vanished, but you use it all.” The future for the 30-year-old looks good, and McKai says he has no plans to quit the business anytime soon: “Different sub-cultures are starting everyday, so why stop now?

“What other people think of me is bad sometimes—in that you can’t be a true filmmaker if you’re making porn—but you deal with that, and everything else about my world is so good and positive.” Unfortunately, McKai has no plans to bring his filmmaking skills to Australia; he jokes that “the plane ride is too long”. Born and bred in California, the director claims that “basically any kind of terrain that you can imagine is just 45 minutes from LA, so I’ll be staying here and filming more movies.”

And does the provocateur have a favourite muse? “No. VividAlt is like a revolving door; there are girls that come up, and the majority of them would probably love to do porn all the time, but their style is so intense that it’s not appropriate for all of my movies.

“We’re a bit more down to earth in that regard—we don’t put one girl on this lofty pedestal because she’s so beautiful.”

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