The Storytellers: Interview With Nica Noelle

For a feature on storytelling in the adult industry that ran in the April 2014 issue of AVN magazine, reporter Jason Lyon interviewed a dozen big names in the business, including director Nica Noelle, whose studios Hard Candy Films, Girl Candy Films, Transromantic and Rock Candy Films are released by AEBN and distributed by Pulse. AVN is posting longer versions of the interviews as separate stories online. Click here to see the digital print edition; see bottom of article for links to individual interviews online.   I email writer/director Nica Noelle the very next day. Describing the basic premise for my article and politely requesting a phone interview, Noelle sends me a kind reply, indicating her preference for a written interview, to which I gladly agree. I email Noelle my questions, and she sends me her detailed answers a short while later. The first question I ask Noelle: Is there something about sex that naturally inspires good stories? Or for her, is the creative process often the other way around—does she sense the story first, and the sex scenes grow out of that? “I don’t think you can separate the two,” writes Noelle. “When we think of hot sex, we think of certain things, and those things vary from person to person, but there are a few recurring themes: forbidden sex is probably the biggest one. Having sex with someone who’s off limits in some way, either morally or ethically—because of an age difference, or even because there’s a family connection.  So I always add some forbidden element to the story. “The main characters in my films are almost always struggling with an overwhelming but inappropriate sexual attraction to someone. I like to show that inner conflict intensify throughout the movie, to add tension and to make the urgency and passion of the sex scene more believable.” Responding to my second question, “Do you feel you can express things in adult that cannot be expressed in other forms of storytelling?” Noelle writes: “A great comedy shows us life as viewed through the perspective of humor; a great dramatic film focuses on the emotional complexities and sorrows of life. So it follows that a great adult film should give us a view of life from the perspective of sex. There’s an art to it, just as there’s an art to any other genre of filmmaking. I don’t think we’ve got it down yet; we’re still all over the place, artistically speaking. “There are still the porn directors who want to be silly and make the viewer laugh, or focus on filming an elaborate shootout or a car chase and just throw in a few sex scenes they’ve given little thought to,” she continues. “But overall, the industry is slowly making an effort to think a little harder about what we’re doing and take it a little more seriously. A few times I’ve felt like I’ve almost seen the mountaintop, but it’s still very hit and miss. Not everyone is here to do something artistic or meaningful. Not everyone is approaching their work with the same principles or thoughtfulness. There’s a wide range of reasons that people decide to work in adult films, and a wide range of attitudes toward the work itself.” I ask Noelle about the conventional "grammar" of porn, where a certain number of sex scenes and positions are often expected. “Is this limiting,” I ask, “or do you find it a creative challenge to form a story around these conventions?” “It’s definitely a challenge sometimes, but I think all filmmakers have to work within certain limitations. For instance, very few mainstream films are more than an hour and a half to two hours long, so the writer and director have to find a way to tell the story within that time constraint. With adult films, the audience expects to see a certain number of sex scenes, so we have to work within those parameters. It can be restricting, but it can also force us to be more creative, and to think a little harder, which is a good thing. That aside, I think the fans would appreciate a little more diversity and a little less ‘formula.’ At least that’s what they always tell me.” “I almost never have any idea of what I’m going to write,” writes Noelle, when I ask her about her creative process. “I try to use performers that inspire me, because sometimes I’ll meet someone and for some reason they have a muse-like effect on me, where suddenly I’m overflowing with ideas for characters I want them to play. But as for coming up with story lines, I have a type of synesthesia where narratives form triangles in my mind as I’m writing, so basically I sit at the computer and start typing and my brain constructs the narrative without much conscious thinking on my part. And these triangles kind of pile on top of each other in my mind as the narrative grows, so it’s essentially involuntary, which is why I never get writer’s block. It’s the same process when I’m writing feature stories for magazines, when I'm working as a journalist. Sometimes I won’t even know how the story ends until I type it, and I’m taken by surprise. The brain is a very strange and mysterious organ.” I love that Nica Noelle’s movies often focus around one expressive central character as an anchor—like Laurel in Lesbian Voyeur, or Vanilla DeVille in The Psychotherapist. We experience the tales through their words and emotions, and then their own scenes feel like a culmination of the entire story. So I ask Noelle if her characters develop as she writes the story, or if she has a clear idea of the central character from the start, and then the story naturally evolves around her or him. “I generally find performers who inspire me,” Noelle writes, “and the character grows from there. If I have a specific idea for a story, I usually won’t write it or even attempt to until I have the right performer signed on. But I can’t say it’s the same way every time. There have been times when a location has inspired me; where the location has been my muse! So I start with the location and build from there.” “In the case of Shay Laren in Lesbian Voyeur, I had a situation where I wanted to work with a model who didn't feel ready to perform a hardcore sex scene. So, from that fundamental restriction came the storyline. I turned her into a repressed lesbian with self-esteem issues, who prefers to watch couples having sex and then masturbate to it later, when she's alone.” I conclude my questions by asking: “When you see one of your movies go from the early creative stages all the way to a finished product, and you know you have done good work, what does that feel like? What is it like to see the results of your imagination and creativity on screen?” “It varies,” Noelle explains. “Sometimes I’m disappointed, other times it turns out a lot better than I’d expected when we were filming it. You never quite know what the camera is capturing until you sit in the editing room and go over it frame by frame. Also, you can shoot the greatest content in the world, but put it in the wrong editor’s hands and it’s destroyed. I spend a lot of time with my editors, really hassling them over whether a pause in the dialogue is long or short enough, or whether to switch to another angle at some precise moment. I obsess. And even then, I can watch the movie a month later and say ‘I should have cut to the other angle two seconds earlier.’ There’s always something I could have done better, because I’m still a novice and still learning on the job. “But in general I think I shoot some of the best sex scenes to be found in adult film. Not because I’m so gifted, but because I have a very elaborate philosophy and I never compromise it or my work ethic. And if the people around me aren’t on board with my philosophy, they can’t work with me. I don’t care if someone thinks I’m being difficult, or weird; I don’t care if they like me. I’m not here to make friends; I’m here to make movies. I have an artistic agenda, and I haven’t fulfilled it yet. Not even close.” Links to other interviews: Wicked Pictures directors Brad Armstrong, Stormy Daniels and Jessica Drake Actresses Jesse Jane and Veronica Hart New Sensations director Jacky St. James Girlfriends Films founder Dan O'Connell Skow for Girlfriends Films director B. Skow BurningAngel Entertainment founder Joanna Angel