When the brain trust behind Nectar Entertainment’s successful comedy series Welcome to the Valley decided their third volume would be centered on the idea of porn movie clichés, director Johnny Diablo was reminded that the biggest cliché of them all stopped by during filming of the second episode.
“We were shooting on location,” Diablo tells AVN.com, “and I was shooting a girl-girl. I turn around and look and there’s a pizza guy there with twelve pizzas just staring at me. I freeze; the whole scene stopped. I go, ‘Who are you?’ He goes, ‘I’m the pizza guy.’” The director laughs at the memory. “I was so confused. You see it in porn for so many years. To have it actually happen where the guy is like ‘Uh, I need money for the pizza’ and he’s staring at the girls…? Unfortunately, there are some clichés that are even too much for me. I’m like ‘It’s not going to happen, pal.’ It was such a great moment, though!”
Diablo and the other members of the Welcome to the Valley creative team hope for similarly great moments in future installments of the increasingly ambitious series. The director describes his latest project as a combination of comedy and reality, and with its continuing cast and references to older episodes feels it may have more in common with television shows such as The Simpsons or the British hit The Office than anything currently on the adult entertainment market. “We’re very well-rounded in our humor,” Diablo declares. The reality portion of the series comes out of the collective experiences of its creators. “We try to take real inferences in terms of stuff that have happened to us being in porn or in real life and try to twist it a little bit,” says Diablo. “We’ve basically set it around the [Nectar Entertainment] office itself, and certain things that go on in the office.”
The series lead, Billy Tyler, plays a personal assistant to a same-name counterpart of Nectar Entertainment’s Sean Logan, portrayed in the movies by Dick Smothers, Jr. with what Diablo calls a sense of “reality and respect.” In the series, Logan is never shown having sex, because in actuality Sean Logan doesn’t have sex at the office. He’s a happily married man.” Future characters will include a version of director Marty Zion and a doppelganger of Diablo himself.
In this Fall’s Volume 3, it’s the old-school clichés that play the central role, including a sex scene that starts when a neighbor shows up with a welcome basket of strap-ons and Diablo’s favorite, the arrival of a cable guy played by Anthony Hardwood. “The buzzer hits and the door swings open, and there he is in the doorway with this 40-pound tool belt and the smoke going behind him. He had marks on him from the tool belt because we had so much stuff on there. Very simple: ‘I am here to fix porno.’ ‘We don’t have cable; we have satellite.’ ‘I’m here to… lay cable?’ And then boom! – right into it.”
High concepts are one thing, but individual scenes have to give off considerable heat and Welcome to the Valley 3 is no exception. For Diablo, the key to memorable scenes is getting input from the performers. “I like to sit down and talk to the people on the phone for a while and see who they want to be with. I really enjoy pairing it up. I want the sex to be good for everybody. The better the sex is for the people, the better it’s going to come off.” Doing a certain amount of work before the cameras are turned on has benefits for any director, says Diablo. “It means less work I have to do as a director. I can just give them the positions at the beginning, say a little bit of this, little bit of that, and then these three positions: go for it. And they really get into it. What’s beautiful is they get lost in it, and they really enjoy one another.” Diablo says one of the performers paid his set and Nectar Entertainment a high compliment after shooting had complete. “She said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing: I like you and I like the company. They let you cum.’”
Diablo plans on continuing with the Welcome to the Valley series for as many volumes as Nectar Entertainment wants him to and for “as long as it stays fun.” He says that the series creators will think in terms of seasons, and if reaction is positive and the interest in there, the eventual last show will feature the death of a character. Until then, plans call for two episodes a month, and soon Diablo will shoot a Halloween-themed installment. “We’re always thinking down the line, treating this in terms of a regular show. We want each one to stand alone, but we want it to be a series where people who start watching from the beginning get a little bit more of a payoff.” Diablo laughs, “Matt Damon wants more porno with better character development, so we’re giving it to him!”
For now, Diablo is happy for the opportunity and enjoying the ride. “I couldn’t have been paired up with a better group of people. Everyone at Nectar is very supportive and very creative. Creativity just flows. We like to do everything light-heartedly, we like to make people laugh, and we want people to enjoy what they’re watching – the sex, the comedy, whatever.” One thing the director and company have in common is distaste for degrading scenes and crude humor. “I don’t want that in the series,” Diablo says. “Besides, it’s too easy a way to get a laugh. It’s harder to actually tell a joke or get humor from a scene.”
“I love my job,” the director concludes. “It’s either doing something that’s fun and creative or go work on a reality TV show: ‘This morning I directed a guy who wanted to make 10 grand so he ate four rhinoceros balls.’ That’s reality? I don’t know about you, if I’m going to see balls eaten, I’d rather see a girl doing it to a guy.”
