When porn fans hear the name of director Nicholas Steele, they’re likely to think “big-budget blockbuster”—especially after last year, when the Bluebird Films CEO juggled huge casts and complicated special effects in Bonny and Clide and BatfXXX.
But Steele sees something else when he considers the 100-plus hardcore titles he’s directed since 1991. According to him (aside from “a darker six-film run” after he went through a divorce), he’s a romantic at heart.
“If you were to call me anything, you would call me the soft king of the industry,” Steele avers.
In fact, he says, “I’m a sap.”
This softer side is the face that Steele will be revealing to the world in 2011 as he begins releasing some of his more intimate projects as a series he’s calling “Nicholas Steele Seductions.”
As the name suggests, the footage is from Steele’s archives—mid-budget features never before released on DVD. Steele says the budgets ran $60,000 to $75,000.
The first title in this female-friendly, couples-oriented fare is Dirty Little Secrets, starring Delilah Strong, Hilary Scott, Lexi Love, Derrick Pierce and Jack Lawrence, among others. The titles will be released monthly after that—a total of 23 features.
The next release—Tales of Lace—follows the story of a famed lingerie designer who’s known for stealing ideas. But her plans to exploit a young protégé are thwarted by a handsome hero.
When asked what ties these features together, Steele muses on what for him are the three most crucial components of any production in which he’s involved. First, he looks for a project for that meets a particular demand in the marketplace. His choice of subject matter is “very intentional, based on customer needs.”
Second, he’s looking for something that is “very digestible for couples. ... There are layers of story, but there’s always a layer that’s about love.”
But above all he’s seeking “an integrity, a quality of product.”
Steele elaborates on those two guiding lights: integrity and quality. On one hand, he always strives for “good quality, great locations, good wardrobe—all that you’d expect out of a feature.” On the other hand, he’s concerned about “integrity of the film.” As Steele explains, there’s “always some kind of reason why people were having sex.”
Steele’s concern with quality make sense when he mentions that the first piece of porn he saw as an adult was shot by erotic auteur Andrew Blake. Steele went on to work with Blake on four films. Elements of Desire was first, he says, but the best known is Dinner Party, which featured Jenna Jameson and sold over a million tapes.
Other big-budget films with brisk sales have come along often for the director, who spent 11 years releasing his work with Adam & Eve Pictures before his more recent tenure at Bluebird. He’s shot in the jungles of Venezuela (Emerald Rain, loosely based on the Sean Connery movie), told the story of the Marquis de Sade (Taste of a Woman, starring Randy Spears), and worked in exotic locales with superstar Tera Patrick (Fire and Ice and Caribbean Undercover).
And he’s no stranger to the AVN Awards stage, where his Rawhide tied for Best Video in 2003 and most recently BatfXXX won for Best Parody – Drama this past January.
But through all his projects, Steele is as concerned about the inner lives of his characters as he is about the trappings of a big-budget porn production. “I always try to have a couple of different stories going on,” he says. And one of those stories always has “some sort of romantic or relationship-based twist.”
Like the old joke about actors, Steele is always asking himself, “What’s my motivation?” And he admires other directors who do the same. “I think Andrew Blake is phenomenal, Brad Armstrong is very, very talented. I think John Stagliano has altered the essence of a certain genre,” Steele says. These directors “take it seriously—there’s a reason you’re going into production.
“There are a lot of intentional directors out there,” he continues. “Joone is another one. When I look at those directors across the border ... we get the buildup.”
“The buildup” is important to Steele, and he explains why. “These people really let me in,” he says, musing on the responsibility he feels to deliver a quality erotic experience to his fans. “When they let me in, I want to honor that—I don’t want to ever do anything to dishonor that. I try to make it clever, and give a reason why and build it up so that they have something going on imagination wise to go along with the physical part of it.
“I am working with the one muscle that’s key,” he says. “The biggest muscle is your brain and your imagination.”
And it’s an appropriate place to focus on—particularly when marketing to couples, since it’s one part of the body men and women share.
This article originally ran in the February 2010 issue of AVN.
Pictured: Nicholas Steele and a still from one of his movies, titled Elegance.
