What do you offer that other porn directors don’t?
Authenticity. I want to show real situations, real people, real settings, real sex.

What difference does a woman’s perspective make to adult cinema?
What arouses women is often opposite to what’s shown in mainstream porn. Good feminist porn focuses on female pleasure. In porn, women are in a minority, both in voice and audience. But when women watch and enjoy porn, regardless of what type, they are owning and exploring their sexuality, which can only be empowering and further social equality.

Why do you think Cabaret Desire won Porn Movie of the Year at the Feminist Porn Awards?
I think it offered viewers something they’d never seen before in adult film; an original premise, cool Barcelona locations, beautiful cinematography, authentic sex scenes, and a great balance of whimsy and realism, eroticism and intimacy.

How do you choose your actors?
I spend a good deal of time finding the right people and then making sure their values align with mine. It’s easy to tell when someone wants to work in adult films but doesn’t enjoy their work. I make an effort to get to know potential cast, their reasons for acting, and their attitude to sex.

What can men learn from your films?
The main thing men can take away from my films is a better idea of women’s fantasies and desires. Most of my male fans breathe a sigh of relief after seeing something close to their real experiences, which mainstream porn fails to do.

How successful have you been, in terms of actual sales?
My movie Five Hot Stories for Her (2007) sold about 240,000 copies and about a million legal downloads between my website, pay per-view and video on demand. Goodness only knows how many illegal downloads there are…

What new trends are you seeing in the porn industry?
Amateur and gonzo-scene collections still dominate the mainstream but remain formulaic. But indie adult filmmakers like myself have benefitted immensely from doing business online, where we can deal directly with consumers and really expand our fan-base.

What was that first meeting with your parents like after they Googled you and discovered what you do?
I was really embarrassed that they found out on the Internet rather than from me, but they were so great and supportive that the awkwardness was relieved right away.

What are your thoughts on the Australian adult industry?
I don’t know much about the Australian porn industry, but I was impressed with Australian filmmaker Anna Brownfield. Her film The Band is incredible.

What sort of porn do you enjoy?
L’Amant (The Lover) is passionate, sensual and erotic. It takes place in French colonial Vietnam and tells the semi-autobiographical story of an impossible love affair between a young French girl and a wealthy Chinese businessman. My favourite adult book is Little Birds by Anais Nin. Written in the 1940s, when erotica was particularly taboo, the stories pioneered the expression of female sexuality.

You’ve also produced the Erotic Bible to Europe. Do you have any personal favourite places?
The places I like best take something ordinary and create something totally erotic. For instance, London’s Icecreamists… so much more than an ice-cream parlour… they have elevated something as innocent as dessert to delicious adult status.

What fun sex trends have you come across recently?
Right now, I’m in love with pasties—the nipple covers made famous by strippers. They’re a great alternative to bras; you can wear them under sheer tops, avoid ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ in a bikini, and they’re insanely sexy. There’s a ton of variety, from rhinestone to rocker to snakeskin to tassels.

How did you get into the adult industry?
I wanted to do porn for as long as I could remember. When I turned 16, I realised that I had no idea how I was going to get involved, I just knew it was what I wanted to do. For some reason, I figured if I went to parties in Hollywood, I would meet someone who could help me out. I started doing just that and, sure enough, when I was 17, I met a girl who knew someone who knew someone who gave me a shot in a movie.

How important is cock size in becoming a porn star?
Not very. A giant cock is impressive and all and will get you more attention, but every producer I know will take a hard, average-sized dick over a floppy, huge penis.

What’s the most difficult or annoying part about being a dude in the industry?
Nothing. My job is pretty amazing in every way.

Who are your favourite adult actresses to work with?
I couldn’t choose favourites. There are so many great performers who I adore.

What have you learned about women during your career?
I don’t really feel like adult films necessarily teach guys anything more about women than any other profession.

What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you on set?
I never know how to answer this. Funny is subjective and there are a lot of goofy things that happen on set. Usually the most hilarious stuff is just people telling jokes.

Is it tough to keep it up and blow your load on command?
Not really. Kind of just what I do.

You’re cast alongside Lindsay Lohan in upcoming feature film The Canyons. How did you land the part and would you like to do more mainstream acting?
Bret Easton Ellis was writing this movie and started to post on Twitter that I was his ideal casting for it. We emailed back and forth, then I went through the process of meeting the producer and director and eventually it was decided that I would be best for the role. I had a great time on the mainstream set. I used to say I never wanted to do any acting and I still don’t see huge mainstream things in my future, but I’m not as opposed to it as I was before.

What’s your advice to guys who want to get into the business?
Do it! Porno is awesome.

What’s the biggest misconception about being a male porn star?
Fluffers. They do not exist.

How would you like to be remembered as a performer?
I would like to be remembered as a nice dude who was fun to be around. That applies to performing and just life in general.

Did you always want to be a porn star?
I never set out to become a porn star. In fact, I never really watched that much porn prior to my first scene. When the opportunity was presented to me, it felt pretty natural since I’ve always been an exhibitionist and very sexual. I enjoy se and knowing people get off while watching me have sex.

Why do you think alt porn is so popular right now?
Because tattooed girls are fucking hot! It just took the world some time to realise it.

Do you have a favourite tattoo?
My favourite tattoo is the roses that are on my waist and go up my right side. It was the most painful tattoo I’ve had so far, but it’s beautiful, so it was worth the pain.

Who do you most enjoy working with on camera?
My favourite guy to work with is Danny Wylde. Every time we’ve been paired up for a scene, I’ve had so much fun. My first scene with him for Burning Angel was just amazing. He didn’t know I was into anal, so when I told him to put his cock in my ass, he was very surprised! Veruca James is my favourite girl to work with; I have a huge girl crush on her and she has been the only girl, so far, who’s made me squirt.

What’s so special about Burning Angel?
The company is more like a family. I feel like an individual and not just a body. I’ve got to have sex with some really amazing guys and girls, as well as play roles in movies where I learned new and exciting things. For example, when we filmed Kung Fu Pussy, I learned fighting techniques and how to do stunts.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in your career so far?
I recently shot for a new movie called Evil Head, a parody of The Evil Dead. Besides getting re-animated as a demon, I was in the famous tree rape scene. If you’ve seen The Evil Dead, you know what I’m talking about; if not, I basically get gang-banged by possessed trees. The tree branches had dildos ‘growing’ off them and I ended up with one in my mouth, one in my pussy and the last one in my ass, all at once!

Woah! What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I enjoy exercising and running. I also love to cook for people—it makes me happy when I see people enjoying something I have made.

Which mainstream celebrity would you most like to bonk?
I have a list of a few I would love to bang! Definitely Johnny Depp (but who doesn’t want to bang him?), Christian Bale and Adrien Brody.

Finally, do you genuinely enjoy the taste of man-mayo?
Haha! The more loads I can swallow, the better.

EROTIC ENVOY

Axe To Grind

There are brave men and women around the world who face questions such as these every time they front up to work. Christopher Hart, the maestro behind big-budget Digital Playground productions Pirates and Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, is one such courageous soul.

Hart is a qualified recording engineer, songwriter and producer with a background in mainstream movies, television shows and commercials. His first attempt at an adult soundtrack—Pirates—netted him an Adult Video News Award for Best Music in 2006.

“I didn’t look at it as composing for porn,” says Hart. “I saw it as scoring a film, and for that you need to know orchestration, arranging and the effects different instruments have.”

Hart tells us that both Pirates and Pirates II had completely original scores, composed specifically for each movie. “We recorded strings, flutes and a huge variety of other instruments. The Pirates movies have about 90 minutes of non-sex scenes in them, which is comparable to feature films. We wrote more than two hours of music for each film.” But this is not the industry standard.

“This is very rare in adult films,” explains Hart. “Usually, there’s no budget at all for a composer and they put in some music from a music library. That’s why porn music is often so bad. They say the music doesn’t matter, but the relationship between sound and image is important.”

Closer to home, award-winning songwriter, score-writer and television star, Glenn Dormand, is another musician who fell into composing soundtracks for adult films. “I was working a day job and a colleague mentioned he was going to make a porn film with some money in the budget for a score,” says Dormand.

“I’d just had a minor hit on the radio with a song Tex Perkins and I had written together (‘Fake That Emotion’), so I was the most famous musician he knew. I was in my mid-twenties and had just broken up with my girlfriend, which meant that I had one stipulation: I’d need to be on set to find true inspiration.”

Dormand, best known for his work as Machine Gun Fellatio’s Chit Chat Von Loopin Stab and as a presenter on musicMAX, worked on porn soundtracks and sets between the demise of his first band, Vrag, and the many joys of his second, MGF.

“We wrote tracks that would work over a long period of time, whether that was 10 minutes or 20, and then we’d arrange them to best highlight the images.

“Though the old ‘wah’ is an industry standard and surprisingly still works well, at the time we opted for drum and bass, which was very popular and effective. We’d build with string pads, then get crazy with the drums. We also used a lot of slide guitar.”

Aside from the artistic details, the process of score production is fairly straightforward. The music is written, or cut together, scene by scene while the film is in ‘locked picture’ mode—meaning it is edited the way it should eventually be sold.

“The tricky thing is, the director can do re-cuts and take out scenes after the film is locked,” Hart tells Penthouse. “That means the last couple of weeks before the deadline are crazy and consist of 18-hour days.

“For Pirates, we also worked with the movie before all the heavy effects work was put in, so in the beginning we would only see the actors and a green background! We would write certain themes—the hero theme, the villain theme, the love theme and so on. And then we would compose scene by scene, and put in variations of the themes. In Pirates II, they travel around the world, so we got to write a lot of ethnic music, too.”

However, Cherry2000, an AVN-nominated electropunk band from Sydney, experienced the process from the other end.
“Producers used to cruise MySpace looking for tracks—this was back around 2006. They’d pick a song off your page and say, ‘Can we use that?’ Money rarely changed hands, but there was usually a bit of quid pro quo going on.”

Songs from the band’s first two albums were cherry-picked, and their music ended up on a soundtrack that was nominated for an AVN Award.

“A porn producer named Jack the Zipper got in touch with us,” says Cherry2000 singer Rachael Chaos. “He was doing ‘alt-porn’ with an up-and-coming video company. He asked if we would like to give him some music to use in his films, and we said yes. It became an ongoing relationship, though we never got paid.”

It was during that little adventure that their quid pro quo relationship with Jack eroded to nothing. Before the tension, though, Cherry2000 had written the title track for Jack’s next film, King Cobra. The song didn’t make the cut, but the lyrics were printed on the DVD cover, with no credit given to the band.

“It was annoying, but we were still flattered,” says Andy Rantzen. “The thing is, there were times when we felt we were being taken for a ride, but there were also times we did feel valued. People like Kimberly Kane and Eon McKai had respect for the musicians they worked with.”

American porn star-turned-director Kimberly Kane, whose film Live In My Secrets won Best Music Soundtrack at the 2010 AVN Awards, acknowledges there is good and bad in the industry. “Most pornographers are in porn to make an easy buck,” she says, “so they’re all about quantity over quality—the soundtrack is the last thing they think about.

“But great audio lends an important depth to any movie. I know the best pornographers in the world and they care about every detail of their films. That’s what makes them the best.”

For Hart, it’s even simpler than that, “You don’t put on crappy music when you want to seduce someone, do you? You put on smooth jazz, sexy R&B or hard rock. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and a lot of directors seem to forget that.”