Performers on Acting, Directors and the Adult Industry

Back row, from left, Whitney Wright, Ricky Johnson, Seth Gamble, Bree Mills, Derrick Pierce, Small Hands; photo by Jeff Koga/@KogaFoto The day before the 2018 AVN Awards Show, when several of her movies nabbed major awards—including three of the four acting honors—Gamma Films Head of Production Bree Mills sat down with seven adult performers to discuss the importance of acting in adult entertainment. Titled “Lights, Camera … Acting: The Bare Essentials of Erotic Storytelling,” the January 26 discussion was part of the seminar program for trade attendees at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. In attendance were Aubrey Sinclair, Casey Calvert, Derrick Pierce, Ricky Johnson, Seth Gamble, Small Hands and Whitney Wright. All of the participants had worked with Mills on various projects and some hints of interesting things to come from Pure Taboo emerged from the discussion, but as moderator she moved the discourse from the specific—favorite roles the performers had played—to the more general, including, most notably, a question about what changes these performers would like to see in the industry. Mills kicked things off by using a device she credited to French journalist Bernard Pivot and asked each participant for a one-word answer to various random questions, including: “Seth, what’s your least favorite word?” “Insanity.” “What turns you on, Small Hands?” “Everything.” “Casey, what turns you off?” “Bad teeth.” “Whitney, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?” “Nursing.” After breaking the ice, Mills got into specifics, asking each about their favorite roles. “On the fun, funny side I was Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas once. And that was awesome because I was airbrushed from head to toe,” Small Hands recalled. “It was actually horrible, but it came out well.” The tattooed thespian—who won Best Supporting Actor for his role as a sociopathic stepbrother in Half His Age: A Teenage Tragedy—also said, “I like the darker side.” Gamble agreed: “I really like playing sadist, sociopathic characters. … It’s hard to play yourself. It’s easier to play someone who isn’t you.” Pierce added, “Definitely my favorite stuff is all the comic book stuff we’ve done over the years. … Those things are cool because they’re epic and they’re relatively timeless so they’ll always be there in that regard. … I’ve been lucky to be built like every comic book bad guy. Just put a mask on me, some paint, and we’ll be good.” Pierce also likes the dark side. “For me doing the crazy role seems easy.” And the craziest of all, he says, was his AVN Award-nominated performance as “a perverted scumbag” in Bree Mills’ Indirect Relations (from her Pretty Dirty studio). “Did you watch that scene?” he asked. “I couldn’t watch it. It’s really fucked up—out of all the stuff I’ve shot, that scene was probably my most twisted.” Above, Seth Gamble and Derrick Pierce; photo by JFK/FUBARWebmasters.com Mills responded by explaining how she helps people lose themselves in their characters: “A lot of the work that we’ve done together has really been method acting. We don’t do scripts at Pure Taboo. It’s like a theater workshop. … What comes out is far more real than any scripted dialog that I could ever do.” Guiding the discussion to other studios and directors, Mills asked the group about their own role models. Small Hands jumped right in: “Tommy Pistol, 100 percent. He is as good as it gets. … He can do anything. This isn’t porn—he’s just an actor.” Gamble gave props to veteran star Tom Byron: “I’ve never acted with someone for whom it was so easy—it comes to him so quickly. He’s done more movies than all of us combined.” “For me it was Evan Stone and Steven St. Croix,” Pierce added. Mills also asked about the performers’ favorite directors “and the lessons they have taught you.” Small Hands: I’d be murdered in my sleep if I did not say my wife [BurningAngel director Joanna Angel]. … I also really like working for Mike Quasar. But there’s not really anyone I don’t like.” Johnson concurred about Quasar, and also gave the thumbs up to James Avalon. Calvert seconded that emotion and added, “It’s all about feeling comfortable on set. I love working with them. And Holly Randall is great to work for. These people just let you be you. Sure, you might have a script—and in the case of Holly, a very detailed script—but they still let you be you. It doesn’t feel like work.” Pierce expounded on Quasar, saying he is “going to be number one. He’s so simple and easy, and he realizes the triviality of what he’s shooting. But there was another director who inspired me to direct, and he always told me something that stuck with me, and that was, ‘When you’re shooting, shoot what you need and then shoot what you want.’ That was Eli [Cross].” Gamble added, eliciting a laugh, “We’ve all worked for directors where you think, ‘Are you serious? Are you still talking? We’re on hour 15 and we still have to shoot a sex scene.’” On a more personal note, Mills asked the performers about their biggest challenges. Aside from being told he was “too soft for gonzo and too hard for features,” Pierce recalled difficulty getting cast when sitcom parodies were all the rage “because I didn’t look like anybody in the ’80s or ’90s.” Small Hands said, “My biggest obstacle is the way I look, at least it was in the beginning. For those of you who don’t know, I have a lot of tattoos, all over my body, and that’s distracting. A lot of people don’t like it. … But then times changed, and now my look is OK." Johnson didn’t hesitate: “My biggest challenge has been the color of my skin.” Not only is there the complication of being African American—he is also light-skinned, which cuts out some casting opportunities. “Even in interracial, I have another barrier,” Johnson said. “There are certain companies that won’t book me because I’m not dark enough. … But that makes me work hard; it makes me feel like I can’t fuck up. Because I’m already not what everybody’s looking for, so I have to be on my best at all times. But there are some great directors who don’t have issues with that.” Calvert mused, “As a Spiegler Girl I always feel like I come from a great position of privilege in the industry; people know that means you are certain things—you are responsible, you are professional. So my biggest challenge has always been just me, my self-confidence and my trust in myself to actually do the job that I said I can do.” Sinclair said, “I think my biggest challenge is my look, because I look pretty young and innocent—sweet, the girl next door. And those things are all great but I feel like … the scenes that I’m interested in doing, that I’m passionate about doing, are the gonzo, the rough ones, where I’m not acting in them, I’m just having sex, being true to myself. And it’s really rare to come across companies that will book me for those kinds of scenes because I don’t look like that intense of a performer.” Finally, Mills posed this question to all: “If you could change one thing about this business, what would it be?” Wright said, gently, “Just reaching out to each other more. I realize that sounds so generic. But I feel like people actually deal with stuff. They’re not going to reject it if you reach out to someone.” Johnson got a laugh when he said, “Get rid of all the shady people. Like all industries, there’s always a shady group.” Small Hands said he’d like to see an end to “homophobia, transphobia—all these problems with genders—that’s bullshit. That’s the sins of our past.” Gamble responded at length, touching on his many years in the business and concluding, “When I got into the business at 18 years old, I was the youngest person in the business at the time. … I didn’t know who I was. I don’t think I even found out who I was until last year, to be honest with you. You come in this business and you work and you’re not getting the validation that you want, you’re not getting the love that you want, you’re getting this hatred … you don’t know how to handle it, and you’re not learning these coping skills … I feel like there ought to be more of a protocol about how you get into the business and what happens when you get into the business … I heard Dani Daniels say this on a podcast: ‘Getting into porn is not like getting your bangs changed.’ … People think, ‘It’s not as taboo as it used to be,’ but you have to be mentally strong to be able to handle being in this business, and I think that’s something that needs to be touched upon.” Calvert said she gets asked this question a lot, and various topics come up, such as agency problems or payscale problems. “But I’m going to say something different this time. … I miss creativity in porn. I miss showing up on set and being able to just do what you want in a scene—within reason, of course. To be able to work with someone and have passion and have chemistry with someone rather than just be told, ‘This is what you’re going to do today. You’re going to do these five positions.’ … I want to just be able to fuck.” Pierce brought up the prevalent problem of piracy, which is “why the payscale changed. … Pay for your goddamn porn. It’s not that difficult. If you ask anybody under the age of 25, ‘Have you paid for porn?’ they look at you like you’re ridiculous. I don’t go to your job and take your computer. Don’t run into mine and take my shit.” Sinclair’s answer, though, got the biggest response from the crowd: a resounding round of applause. “As a female performer in this industry there is so much judgment, hate. The girls are so mean to each other,” she said. “And I’m not sure how the guys feel about this, but I feel like being a girl every day it’s a competition—who is prettier, who looks better in an outfit, who has the most DVD titles. Everything is a competition. And at the end of the day we’re all one industry, we’re all one family, we’re all working toward one thing together. I feel like if we could be a little nicer to each other, and compliment each other more, and just be genuinely kinder people to each other, there would be a lot less issues with the industry as a whole.” From left, Whitney Wright, Ricky Johnson, Aubrey Sinclair and Casey Calvert; photo by JFK/FUBARWebmasters.com