This story originally ran in the April 2012 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to view the issue online.
VAN NUYS, Calif.—Francesca Lé is only slightly embarrassed to admit that she’s been acting in adult for 20 years, with husband Mark Wood only slightly behind her at 14—but it’s safe to say that with all that experience (and a slew of past nominations) under their belts, they know something about making adult movies, as evidenced by the decade-long catalog of features they’ve directed and released under LeWood Productions.
But the couple, despite a successful distribution deal with Exquisite Multimedia and Juicy Entertainment, decided to broaden their company’s fan base ... and has inked a nine-movie contract with Buttman Magazine Choice, the niche-oriented branch of Evil Angel Productions.
“It got started maybe two or three months ago,” Wood explained. “Just out of the blue, I was reflecting on our stuff, and as a gonzo guy, working primarily in that genre, I just kind of wanted to try something different, and I said, what if we see if Stagliano would be interested in something we shot? Because I grew up watching all his stuff—Rocco’s stuff, Joey [Silvera], John Leslie—and I just wanted to make one movie there, just to say that I did it. I never even thought of going there, because we’ve always taken our own path where it led, but I said, ‘Let’s try it.’”
By an odd coincidence, Francesca has been a longtime friend of Buttman Magazine Choice’s production manager, Lia Baren—”I’ve known her since I was dancing underage as a stripper at bachelor parties, and she got me started in wrestling in 1991,” Lé said—and Baren was only too happy to start the ball rolling.
“She said, ‘Bring in some movies for John,’” Wood recalled. “So I brought over some I thought he’d be interested in, some stuff we had done for Red Light District, some stuff we’d done for ourselves, and he’s like, ‘I like it.’ He called me a few days later and he just said, ‘I want you to make a movie here.’”
“We’ve already shot the first one,” Lé chimed in. “It’s called Gasp, Gag and Gape, which are the three basic niches: Smothering is gasp, gag is throat-fucking, and obviously the gape is anal.”
“That’s what John wanted to see,” Wood explained. “He came up with the title, actually. I’d given him something we’d done which was of the smothering genre but with sex involved too, and he liked that. He added those other elements, and I said, ‘That’s something we could do and we’d like to do,’ and it’s already done and edited, and it’ll be out the third week of April. We’re working on the second volume now.”
“It’s more of what we do already, but maybe kicked up a notch,” he continued. “I don’t want to change; I want to stay with what we do, but with more of an Evil flair, I guess. I think in recent years, we’ve mellowed out a bit because that’s what a lot of the market was demanding, but that’s not necessarily what we want to do. We want to do what feels right and do it for the right reasons.”
“What gets us off,” Lé added. “Some people are asking if we’re going to be in front of the camera or behind, but it’ll be both. I just don’t want to be pigeonholed to where we’re going to be in every single movie. It’ll depend on the project—but Mark will not be in any of my strap-on movies.”
The movies, which will still be branded “LeWood Productions,” will feature plenty of new talent, and Wood said the couple is particularly looking for big-butt women, “but they’re hard to find.” One performer of that type who appears in the first volume is newcomer Remy LaCroix, whom Lé met when the two of them worked together for Kink.com.
At press time, the couple was hard at work on Volume 2 of the series, following their own sexual instincts but keeping in mind Stagliano’s preferences.
“For the first volume, obviously, he wanted to see it, and I was hanging on every critique because he had some specific things,” Wood stated. “He was happy with it, but he gave me recommendations for what to do next time, and of course, I’m going to try to make him happy. The ultimate goal is, I want for him to want to watch it, and if he’s unhappy about anything, I’ll want to fix it, but we want to stay as true to ourselves as possible.”
