'Diminuendo' Makes West Coast Premiere at Dances With Films Fest

HOLLYWOOD—A contingent of adult industry players were on hand Friday evening for the official West Coast premiere screening of sci-fi drama Diminuendo as part of the 21st annual Dances With Films festival at the TCL Chinese Theatres cineplex. 

Co-produced by adult star Casey Calvert, who also co-wrote it with AVN Hall of Famer Bryn Pryor, the movie has played four other festivals thus far, and is an entrant alongside 15 other pictures in the feature competition at Dances With Films, which runs through June 17 and is billed as "a champion of independent filmmakers."

The final role performed by late actor Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica fame, Diminuendo casts him as a washed-up, catankerous director who gets tapped to helm a biopic about his own last great love, starlet Cello Shea (Chloe Dykstra), who committed suicide right before his eyes the night she won Best Actress for a film he directed nine years prior. The twist: Cello is to be played in the biopic by an Ex Machina-esque robot created uncannily in her likeness, and the film itself is being funded by the company that created the robot to essentially serve as a marketing tool for its envisioned line of own-your-own-movie-star androids. Incidentally, another hallowed figure of the sci-fi sphere who appears in Diminuendo, as Hatch's crusty Hollywood agent, is Walter Koenig, best known as Chekov from the original Star Trek cast. 

Calvert and Pryor both have small roles in the movie themselves, and previous mainstream crossover James Deen (who played the male lead opposite Lindsay Lohan in Paul Schrader's 2013 sex thriller The Canyons) has a rather sizeable one as the womanizing actor hired to play Hatch's young self alongside the robo-Cello. Other adult performers who appear include Ana Foxxx, Tyler Knight, Tommy Pistol, Xander Corvus, Derrick Pierce and Lily Lane, and veteran industry lensman/director Hank Hoffman served as cinematographer.

In attendance at Friday's screening—joining Calvert, Pryor, Deen, Pierce and Hoffman—were industry friends and colleagues Chanel Preston, Holly Randall, Tee Reel, Mark Spiegler, Mark Kernes, David Lord and Alina Lopez, among others. Also on the scene were Dykstra, Koenig and castmates Peter James Smith, Gigi Edgley and more.

"I think tonight went really, really well," Calvert told AVN. "We had a fantastic turnout, and I think we were really well received. It's really nice to watch your movie with a bunch of friends, it's really fun. And I'm really proud of what we just showed everybody."

As to what the future holds for Diminuendo, Pryor divulged, "We've signed with a pretty well-known sales agent, and they have worldwide rights to sell the movie. We actually have a few distributors here tonight looking at it, so they're going to start making those deals, and I think probably by the end of the year, we'll have sold the world, all the individual territories, and then we'll know better where is this going to go, how is it going to be released, is it going to be a little 10-city theatrical run, is it going to be a Netflix original ... but that's where it's headed, is something like that."

In the meantime, the movie competes this weekend at the SoHo International Film Festival in New York City. For more details and to purchase tickets, click here.

To keep up with the latest developments for Diminuendo and to view the trailer, visit DiminuendoMovie.com.

Pictured (l to r): Peter James Smith, Gigi Edgley, Walter Koenig, Chloe Dykstra, Bryn Pryor, Casey Calvert.