This article originally ran in the June 2015 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to see the magazine online.
Southern California is filled with studios. There are the great big mainstream movie studios, their airplane-hangar-sized soundstages stretching five and six stories into the sky; there are independent studios, with equally large buildings but with generic and unfamiliar names, usually the same name as the street they are located on; and then there are the small working studios, usually found in industrial parks and outlying areas. CSI: shot in one of those studios in Santa Clarita for years.
Will Ryder is shooting his new original comedy Love, Sex & TV News in one of these, a specialized studio outfitted like a TV newsroom, in collaboration with his X-Play producing partner, Scott David. Waist-high cubicles dominate half the studio space, with wide aisles to accommodate moving cameras; to one side, a glass-walled executive office overlooks the cubicles; across from the executive office, a large conference table dominates a glass-walled conference room. The cast of Love, Sex & TV News includes Sarah Vandella, Josie Jagger, Carmen Caliente, Skin Diamond, Jeanie Marie Sullivan, Janice Griffith, Seth Gamble, Nick Manning, Chad White, and in non-sex roles, Frank Bukkwyd and Roy Karch.
Ryder wastes no time dragooning me into playing an extra in the newsroom set. I take my place at a desk, pretending to read from my notebook and tapping away at a molded-plastic one-piece keyboard, peering at a dummy monitor that cleverly has a manufacturer's logo that reads PROPS. Ryder is working with Vandella and Caliente on a dialogue scene, suggesting slowing down, enunciating, emphasizing a character name. I make a quick note, then start tapping on the faux keyboard again. I notice a sticky note on the edge of the monitor: "Don't fart!"
Skin Diamond walks through in a skin-tight black dress as I am relocated to a different desk to accommodate a different angle on the dialogue scene. The sticky note at this desk says "Call Amber Lynn." I can't see the dialogue scene playing out from here but there are compensations: directly in my eye line is Janice Griffith wearing lacy panties and a suntan. People walk around with copies of today's L.A. Times as props. Ryder runs a loose, casual set, although a cricket chirping through the dialogue scene in the newsroom is making him angry. As the scene goes on, Roy Karch is laconically eating a sprig of broccoli and Carmen Caliente mock-snarls and flips me off as she walks by. I manage not to laugh, but it's not easy. In a corner, Janice Griffith is blowing Seth Gamble for the BTS camera. The BTS guy goes away, they keep going.
"Okay, let's shoot this," Ryder says as he sets up a sex scene with Skin Diamond and Nick Manning, as if the thought just occurred to him. The three speak quietly, working out business as two civilian visitors look enviously at me sitting on the floor near the camera furiously writing in my notebook. They would love to watch from my vantage point but there's no room, and the glass walls of the conference room put them in camera range so they can't observe from there either. Bad luck, fellas.
When the scene starts, Diamond leads Manning by the hand to the conference table and leans up to kiss him. He pulls off her dress, revealing a purple bra and G-string. She points at his purple shirt and grins "We match." Not for long: He pulls off her bra as she sits on the table, taking off the G-string, and he dives into her pussy tongue first. She smiles at him, then turns her face up, eyes closed, lips pressed together. She then returns the favor, squatting in front of Manning, opening his pants, taking his cock in her mouth as he groans. "Let's do it soft," Ryder says. "Keep your hand there, cover it." They play a three-way game of hide-and-seek for a few minutes, Diamond and Manning and the camera guy, hiding the action so everybody gets what they want. "Cowgirl," Ryder says, and Manning lies back on the table. Diamond straddles him and Ryder says, "Close it up" and legs slam together to keep the camera out. When they have enough, they move on ("What now?" "It's okay—There are no wrong answers," Ryder says, leaving it up to them) to reverse cowgirl, and with Diamond's legs concealing the action Manning goes to town, pumping up hard and fast as she squeals. He pulls her tight, kisses her neck, as she giggles.
Standing by the table and re-dressed from the stills shoot, they start again. She turns her back to him, he opens her bra, she tosses it aside. She pulls off her G-string as he kneels in front of her, kisses her breast and then works his way south. She wraps her legs around his neck and moans. Maybe she's acting but it looks good, she leaps and giggles so the camera gets a good show. She looks into his eyes. "Are you ready to fuck me?" They head into a standing mish with her lying back on the table as the cameras reposition to continue getting the action without breaking the mood. To get the soft shots they need, he stays deep inside her, pulling out slowly, grabbing her breasts as she croons "I love your cock" with a satisfied smile.
"I'm gonna ride you like a fuckin' cowgirl" she says, and they move onto the table. Manning reaches up to her until Ryder says "Don’t cover her tits" and she leans in, riding him, looking in his eyes, moaning, "Drive me crazy." He reaches back and slaps her ass and Ryder says, "No spanking until we go to hardcore." They both chuckle at that. Her eyes roll up and her mouth drops open as he slowly drives into her. "Yeah, rub my clit, fuck me," she encourages him. He picks up the pace and the room resounds with the sound of flesh slapping flesh. "Cum for me, cum inside me, the whole nine yards," she moans at him as his body arches and he lets fly with a loud, final-sounding groan. She leans forward, bringing her face down to his.
"And kiss. Beautiful," Ryder says. "Cut.
"Let's do it hardcore now."
Love, Sex & TV News will be released by Adam & Eve Pictures in late summer.
Pictured above: Skin Diamond and Nick Manning; photo by Rick Garcia/@IndustryByRick