Welcoming visitors to the sprawling, sunshiney mansion where Ridgleline Movies’ second production, Beyond Malibu, is shooting, production manager Rob Romoni exclaims, “I can’t believe how many text messages I’m getting from the models who were in our first movie, A Rising Star, expressing appreciation for how well they were treated and begging to work with Jason Ridge again.”
Producer and star Ridge doesn’t like to talk about himself but instead about his work. “I have a new company,” he says. “I have a new vision.”
When told that his new longer, wavy hair is going to complicate the dream-life of millions of men, he lowers his face to blush and diverts the conversation to the movie (“I want to emphasize that it’s a beautiful movie about the brevity of love, not rough and edgy, yet full of hot sex”) and then praises his cast, which he describes as “awesomely diverse.”
It really is, and startlingly young and handsome, too. Ridge refers to Blu Kennedy, who was also in A Rising Star, as “my good luck.” Red-headed Kansan Kennedy, a muscle-hunk who seems made of pale porcelain, says of Ridge, “It’s easier working with a star who’s become a producer. He knows what to do and not to do. I like porn. That’s why I wanted to be in it. That, and to make a former boyfriend mad. But I don’t take it seriously. If I was my own fan, I wouldn’t know my name. I’d just know I liked ‘the redhead.’ I didn’t know who Jason Ridge was, but when I looked up his movies, I did. He’s good. He’s really good. He has a very intense stare.”
While Kennedy has done over 30 movies, raspy-voiced Maine native Braxton Bond is only three months and “eight or nine movies” in. Bond laughs, “I just woke up one day and said I wanted to do it. Porn is the first job I’ve ever had.”
Despite a scruffy charm that would suggest casting him as truck drivers or grunts, Bond is sophisticated. “I had no problem understanding François Sagat’s English when we worked together. I’ve lived in Singapore, I’ve lived in Amsterdam.” He has to say of Ridge merely a firm, “He’s hot.”
Brown-eyed Damian Rios did his scene with Braxton yesterday. “Today, we only wrestled a bit for the B-roll,” he says, “to go at the beginning and end of our sex scene. If you don’t count Internet, this should be my fifth movie since January 2007. Chi Chi LaRue saw me dancing on a bar in 1998 and kept offering me work, and I finally succumbed.”
He and his boyfriend, Scott Tanner, are both working steadily. “It’s flattering to be pursued. This is an especially good company. I was stuck on the plane for an hour and a half in Miami, and Rob Romoni called to keep me company. They’re always considerate. That helps a lot.” When asked if he’d cast himself, he smiles and says, “Of course!”
Intense Danny Vox, five years in the biz, knows what an honor it was for him to do a scene with Ridge and to be treated well on a set. He once lived in the Live and Raw Hotel (“You’re kind of a prisoner”), and “With my hairy body, I haven’t always been the norm, but maybe things are changing.” Though now making his living as a gemologist, he sought a role in this movie because “I love doing it, plus this movie is different and I support it.”
Ridge selected Dylan Ryan to direct the film because “His vision is very close to my own vision of what I intend one day to do as a director — no rules, no conventions.”
Energetic Ryan pops in just to ask jokingly what Ridge said about him. Learning that Ridge said “Dylan Ryan has an artistic vision,” Ryan laughs in approval and splits. Ridge underlines, “I’m going to treat every model with the utmost possible respect.” His new discovery, silky black, blue-eyed Ohioan Maliek Taylor, thrilled to be making his debut today with Ridge, says, “I contacted him. I always wanted to do this. He inspires such trust.” Ridge and Taylor then head for the spacious sundeck, where Ryan and Ridge may be seen very gently leading the newcomer into his first scene.
In another room, glamour photographer Josh Thompson, going over nudes of Kennedy, says the set is a swell place to work. “Jason brings it out in all of us.”
Ordering information: Wholesale and retail through RidgelineFilms.com.
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