This article originally ran in the August 2015 issue of AVN magazine. Click here to read the online edition.
Wicked Pictures contract performer/director Stormy Daniels must have felt gratified once shooting began on Wanted, her big-budget Western epic. After all, she had waited eight years to make the movie—and by her own reckoning, it is her most ambitious production yet. Indeed, it took two companies to produce it: Wicked Pictures and Adam & Eve Pictures.
Shot on location from one end of Los Angeles County to the other, it’s got a cast to match the picturesque surroundings. Headed by Daniels, the lineup includes Anikka Albrite, Allie Haze, Jodi Taylor, Brendon Miller and many others.
AVN was present for some of the shoot, including a day in a remote corner of the Santa Monica Mountains. The crew already had faced its share of hard work but still kept a sense of humor more than intact.
Kylie Ireland and Andy Appleton sat at the entrance to one of the buildings in a quaint Western-style townscape on a windswept hillside. Surrounded by a pile of headstones being painted for an upcoming scene, the award-winning art direction team admitted that this project had been far from a trot in the park. “She threw a lot of challenges at us,” Ireland said of the director.
Fellow crew member David Lord, wearing various hats on Wanted, detailed some of those challenges, including last-minute casting changes, a fire near the set the week before, and a car almost slipping over a cliff that day. And there was also actual blood spilled, he noted, pointing to a cut on his temple, which came from smacking against the ragged metal edge on the roof of a shed (now covered by a tennis ball). He shrugged it off, joking, “You can’t mess with tragic perfection.”
In another corner of the action-packed set, Daniels was doing a scene with several performers—interrupted now and then by the drone of aircraft. Eric Masterson pointed out a helicopter chasing a plane—“the deadly dance of the non-avian fliers.” Amber Rayne, meanwhile, glared stonily in the direction of Brendon Miller, playing a villain. “Is that a pretty good death stare?” she asked Daniels.
Rayne came out of retirement for this role, and she’s a natural for the part, given that she is a riding instructor—a good thing to have around since at least one of the actresses had never been on a horse before. Wanted is her last adult shoot; after that, Rayne will return to her many other jobs: caring for horses, working as an assistant tour manager, shooting camera operator and designing characters for video games. Even a quick stop by the set indicates that this period Western feature will be a great career capper.
Dressed up in frontier garb, Daniels, Haze, Rayne and Taylor rode their mounts around and then chatted for the BTS camera while the crew got ready for a saloon scene. Taylor had to get her smudged makeup redone—designed to make her look like she just got vioated by ruffians—while Anikka stripped down for a costume change and pointed out her “lucky panties,” with Wonder Woman images. “I feel lucky just looking at them,” someone murmured.
But before the scene began, everyone gathered around as Miller gave them a taste of the original song he wrote for the production. Booming out on a car stereo, with Southern rock guitar wailing (“drum solo right here,” Miller gestured), the music turns this dusty townscape into a Hollywood movie set. It made one eager to see the credits roll and the action begin.
That, however, won’t be until September, when the joint Wicked/Adam & Eve production will gallop onto the streets as a two-disc DVD set. The DVD ships September 9 and will be in stores on September 16.
Stormy Daniels, Allie Haze and Anikka Albrite will be at Exxxotica Dallas today through Saturday to promote the movie. Click here to find out more.
Pictured above from left: Stormy Daniels, Allie Haze, Amber Rayne, Eric Masterson and Anikka Albrite
