This year’s AVN nominations for Best Video Feature display a variety of thematic and visual approaches. Each of the 15 titles up for the coveted award takes its own approach at mixing scintillating sex scenes with an engrossing story.
Veteran director Paul Thomas began working on Briana Loves Rocco, since 2004. The Vivid Entertainment Group feature, which showcases performers Briana Banks and Rocco Siffredi, was shot primarily in Budapest, utilizing the country’s beautiful backdrops.
“Briana Loves Rocco was one of our biggest sellers this year,” Howard Levine, national sales manager for Vivid Entertainment Group, told AVN.com. “The sex between Rocco and Briana was absolutely explosive, and the story was engaging, due to some great acting.
“I think that Briana is one of the best actresses in the industry today,” continued Levine. “She looked unbelievable in this movie, and, to top it all off, she did two anal scenes and a d.p.”
Sunny Lane stars in another of this year’s nominees, James Avalon’s Sex Pix (Red Light District). The video’s narrative moves backwards, as a woman with amnesia discovers who she is through some sexy photographs. “This is only the second feature for me, as well as for RLD,” Lane said. “It’s a pretty wild movie. James [Avalon] is the best director out there…he knows exactly how to talk to his performers if he wants something changed.
“Sex Pix brings the hard sex of a gonzo title and combines it with the plot and the story of a feature.”
Another entry with plenty of nasty sex is Sin City’s Sodom 2. The Jim Powers feature traces performer Tory Lane’s decent into what Powers calls “anal hell.”
“I tried to make a movie that people will feel filthy after watching,” said Powers, who was working on the fourth installment of the Sodom series when he talked to AVN.com. “I think that one of the problems with shooting features is that the director is always forced to short-change the sex, due to the fact that they’re trying to get all the story and dialogue in. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate features with big stories, and Sodom 2 has a story, but this story involves lots of nasty sex and that’s what porno is all about.”
Another movie that wasn’t afraid to get a little grimy was Craven Moorehead’s Grub Girl. The Northstar title was released in association with Verotik Publishing (owned and operated by rocker Glenn Danzig). Inspired by horror author Ed Lee’s infamous comic-book character, Grub Girl stars Brittney Skye in the title role of a hooker who returns from the dead.
“I’m a horror freak, so it was great to be cast in this movie,” Skye said. “Craven called me up and told me that Glenn Danzig was a big fan of mine and he had chosen me specifically for the part…that was a big honor. Craven didn’t tell me much about the movie until I showed up on set, and realized that I was in for two hours of prosthetic work.
“In the end, I loved all the fake blood and the special effects. I prefer not to be dead in my movies,” joked Skye, “but whatever it takes. It was a lot of fun.”
With Danzig’s involvement, it’s no surprise that Grub Girl also features a big rock n’ roll soundtrack, including music from Moorehead’s band The Shift, Dead Girl Corps, Skum Love and a remixed track from Danzig himself.
Music also played an integral part in Michael Ninn’s Sacred Sin (Ninn Worx.) The acclaimed director hooked up with longtime friend Eddie Van Halen to write and perform two original songs for the movie.
“Music and sex have color to me, like film does,” said Ninn. “And that’s the way I approach filmmaking, for better or for worse…it’s been 15 years, and I’m still making films.”
Ninn added that combining sex and an intriguing storyline isn’t that easy. “If we were to follow the three part story structure of mainstream Hollywood, there just wouldn’t be enough time to build the anticipation and put the sex in. I use my three or four minutes between sex scenes to say what I have to say.
“Making a movie is all about textures to me,” Ninn continued. “Everything is visual to me; I’m an art director by trade. My mother died a few years ago, and I was packing her things up, and I noticed the torn edges of some paper sticking out of a suit case…the feeling I got from that, eventually became Sacred Sin.”
Wicked Pictures boasts three nominations in the esteemed category this year: David Stanley’s 1,000 Words, Brad Armstrong’s Curse Eternal and the Michael Raven sci-fi title The Visitors.
Stanley’s experimental, erotic drama takes a visual trip through a love affair between two photographers (Randy Spears and Carmen Hart) who feel neglected by their lovers. “David [Stanley] creates a really comfortable environment for his performers, so you get to be as sexually uninhibited as you want to be,” said co-star Gianna Lynn. “You get to release your sexual constraints. The threeway between Carmen Hart, Eric Masterson and myself was amazing…we had great chemistry.”
“It definitely had some of the best stuff I’ve ever shot in it,” Armstrong said of his Curse Eternal. The title stars 2005 AVN Best Actress winner and Wicked contract girl Jessica Drake as Samantha Stewart, an archaeologist who embarks on an expedition to uncover the secrets of an ancient tomb inhabited by Queen Neferkala (Kaylani Lei).
“It’s always tricky to mix sex and story, because usually one of them suffers at the expense of other,” Armstrong continued. “It always helps if you have some sort of sexy art direction, so even if the ladies are just standing around, they look hot…we had the benefit of that with Curse Eternal.
“Epic-like features like this one can come together into something really cool or really cheesy,” continued Armstrong, “and I think, from the acting to the sex to the editing, this one was a success.”
The big-budget production The Visitors stars Keri Sable (who has left the business) and Kimberly Kane as sisters who find themselves faced with the shocking reality that a string of disappearances in their small desert town is linked to mysterious visitors.
Raven said that the title took its toll on the cast and crew. “It was six full days of shooting, but it took us about a month to complete the whole thing, because we had to deal with all different kinds of issues, like bad weather. Also, the whole movie was shot at night, so we’d start shooting late in the evening…it was pretty brutal.
“I wanted to tell a story first, and the sex just happened naturally,” continued Raven. “It’s probably the most unique work I’ve done to date.”
Raven has also been celebrated for several of his past titles, including Beautiful and Breathless, and he just finished Delilah, a retelling of the Biblical story.
Another big production was Adam & Eve’s Tailgunners. Inspired by true events, the Nick Orleans helmed project is set in 1944, as it's discovered that the Germans are testing a bomber that can fly overseas and drop a dirty bomb on Manhattan. In the fight to stop the Nazi ME 264 bomber, the United States loses a top spy, Louis Champagne. The President of the United States is desperate, and is pressured by the First Lady to do something never done before: let women fly for the military.
“I wanted to make something that was both truthful and stylized,” Orleans said. “It’s what I call a hybrid movie.
“Adult and the mainstream are slowly merging…there were more sexually explicit movies at Cannes Film Festival this year than any of the previous years. Tailgunners serves as one of the steps along the way.”
Hustler’s lavish adventure Aphrodisiac spared no expense on production. The Jerome Tanner-directed feature stars Hustler contract starlet Memphis Monroe as a mythical, ancient goddess.
Aphrodisiac tells the tale of treasure hunter Dakota Smith (Evan Stone) who is forced by the evil Heinrich brothers to search for the ultimate aphrodisiac. But once he reaches his final destination, Smith realizes the aphrodisiac isn’t a potion, but Aphrodite, a living goddess who is the embodiment of pure sex.
“The story blended perfectly with the sex on this one,” said Tanner. “Sex was just part of the story and so they came together naturally.
“I took a couple of chances with Aphrodisiac, and they paid off. The story was interesting and the sex was fabulous…and I can’t say enough about the acting, it was great.
“I hope we win!”
Director Frank Castle took a macabre approach with his porno horror feature for SLLAB, The New Neighbors. “There is really something for everyone in The New Neighbors,” Castle said. The director explained that he tried to play on social taboos and push psychological boundaries as demons, depraved orgies, exorcisms, perversion and a nun who does gangbangs are all involved in his story of how a quiet community responds to an invasion by a subversive force of evil.
“I’m really happy with the response so far, and just to receive some nominations for January is an honor, as are the entire cast and crew of the movie.”
When a group of sexually dissatisfied housewives get together, the drama and sex quickly follow in Spice Studios’ The Sex Whisperer. Veteran director Bud Lee said he tried to give the video’s Hi-Def format a slicker, film-like quality. “I think it turned out looking great,” Lee said.
“The story is about some women who are not being sexually satisfied, and so I tried to start the movie out with a lot of incomplete sex scenes, so I could get the audience sexually frustrated as well. I take the audience on this very stunted ride, with a bunch of dead ends…until the characters go and see the sex whisperer.
“This is probably the best, what I like to call, ‘chick flick’ I’ve ever done. I figure if I can get the girls off, than the guys will be naturally taken care of.”
Christian Mann, vice president of sales at Metro Interactive, said that director DCypher’s Wonderland successfully bridges the gap between story and sex. “In my opinion, there’s a large market out there for porn that is story driven,” Mann explained. “It’s obvious that gonzo has found its place, and that works with people who want a simple scenario. But there are a lot of people out there that still want the fantasy…they want plausibility and background, they want some kind of motivation to go along with the sex. But the task for a director is never to forget that, in the end, people want to be excited…the sex has to be strong.
“Different directors approach a story in different ways, and it usually depends on their background. DCypher is a writer at heart, and his literary influences definitely come through with a movie like Wonderland.”
DCypher’s movie tells the story of a man obsessed with his stepdaughter's friend, who then becomes willing to risk everything for a moment of passion with her.
Director Eli Cross’ political sex thriller Corruption is a modern retelling of the rise of the ruthless Roman emperor Caligula. The story follows David Walker Helms, California’s first Republican Senator in more than a decade, as he looks toward a presidential campaign. At the same time, Helms’ venture is being threatened by a power struggle between his power-hungry wife (Kylie Ireland) and his naïve sex slave Natasha (Hillary Scott.)
“We did a bunch of things in this movie that you’re not supposed to do in a porno,” said Cross. “We actually have consequences, and that’s not supposed to be allowed…people are supposed to be up for banging each other’s brains out at any time. And we kept the tone of the sex the same as the tone of the story. Often you’ll have a director telling a very dark story and then the sex will come up and everybody will be happy as hell.
“I first came up with the story, and then mixed the sex in,” Cross continued. “We didn’t want it to stop the story for the sex, or stop the sex to start telling the story again.”
John Stagliano’s much-anticipated Fashionistas Safado: The Challenge is the Evil Angel follow-up to the director’s landmark, hardcore BDSM epic, The Fashionistas. Honed by Stagliano for two years, the movie delves deeper into the relationship portrayed by performers Rocco Siffredi and Belladonna.
“We are really honored to be nominated with so many other great movies like Corruption and Sacred Sin,” said Evil Angel’s Karen Stagliano. “John worked so hard on this movie and I think it's the best editing he's ever done. Nacho [Vidal] also surprised the hell out of me with his acting ability. He literally became the Safado character for the two weeks that we were in production in Berlin.
“With the new awards venue and some big nominations, we're very excited about this year's award show,” Stagliano added.
From ornate sets to expensive explosions to eye-popping orgies, the depth of this year’s Best Video Feature category should make for a very interesting race.
The 24th annual AVN Awards will be held the night of Jan. 13 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. For tickets, call (818 718-5788 ext. 117, or log onto www.avnawards.com and ticketmaster.com.
