up interview with director Steele who had this to say about Taboo of Tarot and another feature which he did called Caribbean Undercover. Of the Caribbean feature, Steele says this.
Steele: The story was a little rough. Everybody down there was partying. I couldn't get anybody to act. Visually it rocked, and I had a lot of fun with it. I had a bidding war over it between The Playboy Channel and TeN. Then Taboo of Tarot was right after that within two weeks. And Playboy just fuckin' creamed. They were just blown away by that. I had a lot of fun on that shoot. This is now the fourth feature that I've directed, and now it's really beginning to jell for me where I can use voiceover and story."
G. Ross: "Where did you find this mansion?"
Steele: "They have a whole website. It's called Piru mansion. It's up in Lake Piru [Ventura County]. It's the only thing in this town. They don't even have a bank. I got kinda lucky because when I developed this story I'm thinking where am I going to find a place to match the wardrobe. The wardrobe was really over-the-top. So I went in and I was going to do a Michael Ninn and shoot it on green screen and mat it. I was searching and searching and spending so much time looking for locations, but three weeks before we were about to shoot, someone said check out this Piru Mansion-thing. I went up on the web and said, fuck, this place has got that tower I want. It was perfect. So I called them.
"I'd say 20 out of the 30 days each month they shoot nothing but mainstream. Then every weekend they have weddings booked. When I went up there, the couple was really cool. I told them it was adult. They said there's been some Penthouse photo shoots here and some Playboy stuff. I said are you open to it. They said yeah. Everything was there that I needed. Then, on top of it all, I always wanted to do a Ben Hur scene.
"The place that rents all that stuff is like five minutes away. They must have 3,000 different variations of carriages and just shipped in five chariots from Europe. The location lent itself to some good voiceover, and the house was just so rich to shoot. There were a lot of long hours but it was fun. Right in the middle of it, the Friday before there was to be a wedding, the whole wedding party shows up for rehearsal. I'm talking about 75 people. We're in the house shooting. Luckily I was inside. I asked them what time the people were arriving so I could schedule a scene in the bathroom [Chandler, Jessica Drake and Vivi Anne] with the three girls. Droves of people are pulling up and they're there for about three hours. I'm going, girls be quiet. With those girls, right. It was pretty tough, but that was hilarious.
"Then the fire marshalls were in and out. That house had burned down and they rebuilt it. So we had the fire marshalls constantly up there. They hung out forever. It was like they were making excuses to stay on the set."
