On the Set: Will Ryder's 'The Young & The Rest of Us'

This article originally ran in the September 2015 issue of AVN. To see the digital edition, click here. Pictured: Seth Gamble and Holly Heart

Known for their parodies, the directing/producing duo of Will Ryder and Scott David has teamed with Adam & Eve Pictures to create something new and different: a full-fledged episodic hardcore soap opera, originally titled Sons & Daughters but now renamed The Young & The Rest of Us, though Ryder may add “NOT A Porn Parody” to the title, for obvious reasons. AVN was on set during shooting for the first three episodes earlier this year.

Producer Scott David explained, “What we’re going to do is, we’re shooting six episodes altogether right now, and they’re going to release them first online to their subscribers. … So they’re going to show the episodes one at a time.” Then, the episodes will be grouped together and put out in DVD format.

“It’s kind of a new concept, and it shows you that All Media Play can do original things, like Love, Sex & TV News [also shot for Adam & Eve]. It’s nice to shoot some original stuff, though we’ve certainly made our mark already with the parodies.”

The Young & The Rest of Us is an ambitious project, what with 15 pages of small-font dialog to shoot over the three-day period, plus 11 sex scenes, all of which involves 17 performers—and anyone who’s ever tackled a shoot of that scope can relate to what a challenge that can be. In addition, the production is being shot in a hilltop mansion roughly 60 miles from where most of the performers live, so Los Angeles area traffic, recently affirmed to be the worst in the nation, is yet another obstacle the production will have to overcome.

Ryder sent over a copy of the script with his invitation to AVN to cover the shoot, and according to the included synopsis, the series will be “focused on parents and the college-age youth of a fictional city in America. A college president with political ambitions attempts to keep his ‘perfect family’ and career together but corruption, lies, cheating and sexual experimentation threaten the very fabric holding everything together. College Grove might look like a sleepy college town but it’s alive and wide awake.”

And that, of course, gives absolutely no clue to the good stuff. That college president is Vince Ferrara, played by Steven St. Croix, and those who know his acting from, for example, Wetwork (for which he won AVN’s Best Actor honor) may be able to imagine just how ruthless he’ll be in mounting his run for the U.S. Senate. Even his racketball game with the series’ other dad, John Hargarten (Alec Knight), is virtually no-holds barred in its energy—and right in the middle, St. Croix takes a call from college professor Sarah Vandella, threatening her with being fired if she doesn’t tutor his son (Griffin, aka Tyler Nixon) so he’ll pass his courses.

And then there’s Vince’s new wife, Abby, well played by Holly Heart, and she too may be generously described as a “piece of work.”

“I’m basically a trophy wife and I can’t stand my husband and his kids hate me and I’m a drunk and a coke addict,” Holly summed up her role. “Will described me as a kind of Sharon Stone in Casino. He said ‘Make sure you give me that,’ so that was pretty fun. So I thought of that in my head, and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ve got this.’ My sex scene is with Nick Manning, the detective, so basically, my husband gets himself into a little trouble, and I’m worried about losing my luxurious lifestyle, so I smooth things over with Detective Manning.”

One scene finds Abby tooting from a plateful of cocaine (flour, actually) while trying to seduce her drug dealer (Pacman, aka Seth Gamble), who’s got the hots for Vince’s daughter Elizabeth, ironically played by the former Elizabeth Bentley, who now goes just by Bentley.

“I get to narrate pretty much the whole show in voiceover, and apparently I’m like the main character because I’m narrating it,” Bentley told AVN. “But it has nothing to do with me being very beautiful and spunky. When Will wrote this—he and I have never met, but he knows me. I’m exactly myself in this. I’m a bitch who smokes weed, so I think he wrote this with me in mind.

“What happens basically in the storyline, apparently my dad is a really high-powered person in the community and the college and my stepmother is some sort of drug addict,” Bentley explained, “so I’m rebelling against both of them, and smoking weed all over the place and not doing well in school, which is why I need a tutor—but I don’t get any tutoring in this; I just have sex for drugs.”

In true mainstream fashion as befits a soap opera, there are no long expositions of the plot anywhere to be seen; just a series of short scenes, some under two minutes’ duration, that advance the plot in short spurts—leaving time for the longer spurts which cum at the ends of the sex scenes.

“My scene was a girl/girl scene, so I got to be buried deep in vagina with the beautiful Katerina Kay,” said Anya Ivy, listed in the credits as “Female Friend #1.” “She’s already a rebel. Katerina Kay is the daughter of one of the families, and I’m the friend that feeds into that, the friend that’s going along with everything. I’m there, I’m a supporter, but I’m a rebel as well.”

Another character who may or may not have a continuing role in the series was bubbly buxom blonde Christie Stevens.

“I only found out about this shoot last night, actually, as I was coming home from a scene,” Christie confided. “They told me I was playing a massage girl, 24-ish, with big boobs, but I’m also a kinesiology student. That’s basically like athletic massage, muscle therapy, and I get to massage Steven [St. Croix], and it’s both of our first time working with Adam & Eve and Will and Scott. I’ve been in the industry for three and a half years, and so I guess it’s about time. I can’t give away too much of the plot, but I get to do some blackmailing. Blackmail goes with soap operas, right?”

Also involved in dirty deeds is Vandella. “My role is a professor who comes in to tutor Griffin, played by the lovely Tyler Nixon, and I basically am summoned by his father, played by Steven St. Croix aka Vince Ferrara. … So he basically summons me to tutor his son, and in doing so, holds the threat of me losing my job over my head, so piggy-backing off of what the lovely Christie said, it’s definitely a blackmail-involved type of scandal, so I would definitely say you’ve got to watch to see what happens.”

Indeed, we were asked several times not to give away key plot elements, and the script is full of them ... but it probably can’t hurt to let our readers in on a brief sex scene that we witnessed.

The scene begins with Seth Gamble leaning against a poolside wall, when he’s approached by Bentley, dressed only in a top and panties, who’s looking for some free weed—but he’s not about to turn it over until he gets some action. He starts by pulling Bentley around until her back is resting against him, and after massaging her tits through her top, he begins rubbing his hand over her still-covered pussy.

Before long, he’s sticking his fingers under the panties’ elastic rim and fingering her lower lips and clit directly—and judging by her expression, she loves it. But fingering isn’t enough for either of them, so Bentley slips her panties down to her knees, and Seth quickly kneels in front of her, placing his mouth directly on her pussy. He licks her for several minutes—until the pair are interrupted by a furious Steven St. Croix, who pulls the couple apart, orders Bentley to return to the house, then comes back and grabs Seth by the ear and tells him never to come around again.

“I can’t wait to see the finished product!” Bentley exclaimed. “I have a lot of formal acting training, but this is the first time I’ve worked for Adam & Eve, so I’m really excited. This is a wonderful opportunity. Will Ryder and Scott David are incredible producers and everything they make is great, and I’m really, really happy to be a part of all of this. I hope the fans enjoy it as much as I’m having making it.”

According to Rachel Vigneaux from Adam & Eve, who was present for the entire three-day shoot, “This is a big step for us, putting together a continuing series that will be first shown online, and then made into a DVD. We’ve agreed to the first six episodes, and if it takes off, we’ll definitely make more.”

The Young & The Rest of Us will be shown weekly on AdamEveTV.com and AdamandEveVOD.com and released on DVD in September.