“Now we’re gonna fucking nail this shit!” porn wild man Tom Zupko exclaims to one and all.
He’s got reason to be pumped. After several hours of delays inside the stifling Xotic Studios soundstage, the cameras are finally set to roll for the big backdoor showdown between the woman of Zupko’s very dark dreams, Avy Scott, and Van Damage for Zupko’s The Anal Obsessions of Avy Scott for Hustler Video.
In an industry full of characters with big personalities, the hugely eccentric Zupko is in a league all his own.
A manic, soft-bodied gnome with a wild mass of long unkempt hair and a Billy goat beard that would do ZZ Top proud, Zupko looks like a pint-sized cross between Dostoyevsky and a Hell’s Angel, though without the physical menace. He seems incapable of censoring any thoughts that come into his constantly working overtime brain, verbalizing them in violent staccato bursts of verbiage, frequently stumbling over his words out of sheer excitement, punctuating them with nervous, self-conscious laughter.
To wit: “Fuck-yeah-that-is-the-most-awesome-thing-I’ve-ever-seen-heh-heh-I’m-an-idiot-you-guys-make-me-look-good-after-this-movie-I’m-gonna-walk-into-the-ocean-and-die-heh-heh-that’s-fucking art.”
Zupko is a human quote machine, a reporter’s wet dream. He’s also frequently a sweetheart, very respectful (he consistently calls me “sir”), quite humble and a bit sad. This is a man with some serious inner demons —he’s an aggressively in-your-face lapsed Catholic — which probably explains why he’s such a distinctive porn artiste.
While I’ve sometimes found his more plot-oriented, angst-ridden, frequently blasphemous work a bit pretentious for porn (in this one, Scott plays a patient in analysis who flashes back to various betrayals in her life – classic Zupko), Tom himself, despite what some might consider an affected exterior, seems utterly devoid of pretension. And the sheer outrageousness of his personality, of course, cracks me up.
Scott, scrumptious in a blue latex mini, crawls up a moodily-lit smoke and fake cloud-covered stairway to heaven atop which sits Van Damage as a graying Zeus-like character and starts giving him head, an appetizer before the main anal course (this is a Zupko production after all). At Zupko’s direction, an appropriately beatific track from the Blue Velvet soundtrack keeps playing over and over and over and ... It’s just for the mood of the set, not for the finished movie obviously, though is the thought of fellow eccentric David Lynch giving Zupko his blessings that far of a stretch?
Tom is painfully smitten with Avy, showering her with praise, offering to marry her, bemoaning the fact that he’ll probably never get to fuck her.
“I’m the director and I can’t feel my dick in her ass,” he laments, feigning to whack off.
Damage meanwhile, feels his dick in Avy’s ass in all the usual positions, though at one point, she doesn’t want to do a reverse cowgirl cause her legs are sore. But Zupko, who is a very hands-on, even micro-managing director (who in the pre-sex portion of the scene tends to cut like every 30 seconds when something is not to his exact liking), is insistent: “Mind over matter. Tear it up.” Thick, tense standoff and we take five, then resume, and this time, Scott’s legs can handle it for a bit. Into a spoon, then a doggy, then Van goes up and over and pastes her tongue.
“That was fucking awesome,” Zupko pronounces.
The next day, he sends me an E-mail, thanking me for coming to his shoot, expressing concerns, “I hope the ‘Thomas Zupko experience’ wasn't too traumatizing!”
No way Tom, but an experience for sure.
Your anal compulsives can fixate on Tom Zupko’s The Anal Obsessions of Avy Scott from Hustler Video, also starring Tory Lane, Vanessa Michaels and Katie Morgan, starting this month.
