LOS ANGELES—Seemingly ubiquitous porn power players Kayden Kross and Manuel Ferrara are everywhere these days. In addition to keeping up an impressive slate of new adult titles, the two have ventured into virtual reality porn, podcasting and curated adult entertainment via the membership site Trenchcoatx.com, started by Kross and Stoya.
Now they’re conquering a new format with Porn Soup, a series of humorous shorts on PornTube.com that document the dilemmas of daily life in Porn Valley.
“When Kayden first pitched the idea we were excited to see how it would play out on camera. We saw some examples of her other comedy work and knew that a crossover series on the industry would have lots of potential,” said Mike Miller of PornTube.
The series kicked off with “When Porn Stars Get Recognized,” in which Kross and Ferrara are accosted by clueless fans, some of whom can’t quite remember why they look so familiar.
“Ever since we filmed the first episode we’ve pretty much been walking around with a notebook and recording everything that happens to us as a comedy short,” said Kross. And that research has paid off in a series of thoroughly enjoyable vignettes. In the most recent update, “Porn Noobs,” Kross and Ferrara shake their heads over rookies and their mistakes.
The shorts are pretty much SFW because, as Ferrara said, “I don’t get laid on these sets, but a guy can dream.”
Kross and Ferrara are working with a mainstream crew whose résumés include credits for major studios. It’s clearly a bid to draw in new viewers with an enterprise that extends beyond the boundaries of adult.
Kross noted, “I think the audience we will attract to this series will grow beyond PornTube’s existing base. The quality of this work is on par with the sort of comedy series you’re seeing on network television.”
In an interview, Kross provided additional insight into the creative process behind Porn Soup. “The whole series is around us being a couple in the world. I don’t think there are any episodes that don’t directly reference the fact that we are a couple,” she said. “They kind of take things that happen to us as we go through life running into ridiculous situations and re-enacts them.
“We’re trying to tell the stories through actors and whatnot. We’re the callback. Every episode always begins with us talking about everything. Right now we’ve been in most of the episodes. We’re writing others that don’t have us in them. We’ve already developed a couple characters.”
Kross said the intro to each episode has a bit of a “Seinfeldy quality” to it. “We lead off with a hookah. Sometimes we’re the irrational character. Sometimes the others are,” she said. “For a web short it’s an efficient use of time to tell a larger story.”
Noting that Porn Soup is “a unique kind of show,” Kross said that if there’s anything in adult that's similar, “I’m not familiar with it. I’ve seen porn movies made with less of a budget than we have to make these. They’ve given us everything we need to succeed with this.”
Kross said they sought mainstream production crew “because we wanted to do something that wasn’t a usual suspect in terms of adult output.”
She added, “We wanted to bring in a fresh set of ears and eyes and we wanted to get that in terms of set design. We went after the people we knew would be excited about a project like this and we got so lucky. We have an amazing editor, an amazing, unique musical score and an amazing stop motion artist.”
Kross there is no nudity, but one bit has implied nudity. “We want to be able to hit the largest audience possible,” she said.
In terms of how the project came together, Kross recalled, “It was kind of an organic thing. We were talking with PornTube about projects we could do together. They’re the only tube site that licenses content only with permissions, which is really wonderful.”
The PornTube team was “looking at Kayden’s Review and some of my other YouTube videos, and that turned into a discussion about a present-day version of what something like that might look like. They’ve been great. They gave us compete creative control. They gave us a budget that allows us to really do this well. They’re really getting behind it.”
“I’m so excited,” Kross added. “It’s definitely my favorite project that we do every month. It’s so much fun and we have so much control over what we do.
“We love making porn and what we do. This is a weekend treat that we get to make. So many people would kill for a check to make whatever they want in a creative way every month. We’re insanely fortunate.”
New episodes of Porn Soup air Thursdays on PornTube.com, under the Series tab. Check it out now—it’s a great way to waste a little time at work, and you can even share it with your colleagues.
AVN's Dan Miller contributed to this story.
