Pictured above, Logan Pierce, Gia Paige and Jacky St. James. See more photos by Jeff Koga in a photo gallery on AVN.com
LOS ANGELES—Like any adult movie director, Jacky St. James spends a lot of time around young people. So when she muses on the distinctions between millennials and the generations that precede and succeed them—Generations X and Z—one can rest assured she’s drawing on extensive field observation. And she’s turned those insights into an on-point romantic comedy based on a millennial touchstone: social media.
The plotline and general tenor of the movie, Love in the Digital Age, call to mind earlier St. James rom-coms also released under the New Sensations Romance imprint, which has been dormant since 2014’s AVN Award-winning Second Chances, co-directed by St. James and New Sensations director/cinematographer Eddie Powell.
Now a prolific director with Mile High Media’s Sweet Sinner studio, St. James occasionally returns to her former home studio to collaborate with Powell, as they did once in 2017 for The Submission of Emma Marx: Evolved, released under the New Sensations Erotic Stories imprint.
For her return to the romance genre, St. James says, “I wanted to do something light-hearted. And with social media you can always go funny with it because you look at the people doing selfies and that in and of itself is hilarious.”
But social media has a darker side. “Look around at a restaurant and you see everyone’s on their phone—even the waiters are on the phone in their drink station. It’s so sad,” she muses, adding, “And I’m as guilty as the next person … I reflect on my life as it used to be pre social media, and I get very emotional and nostalgic because I miss when our lives were our own, and now it doesn’t seem that way anymore because we’re accessible 24 hours a day.”
Love in the Digital Age stars Gia Paige and Kenna James as Sara and Lizzie, two millennials who give up their smartphones to persuade the reluctant Janine (Mona Wales) to try online dating. The movie co-stars Logan Pierce, Tyler Nixon, Marcus London and Small Hands.
St. James welcomes her return to romantic comedy and would like to see a general resurgence. “I think the industry has really taken a shift. Romance used to be so popular back in 2011, when I first started. And now it’s drifted away and it’s a lot of step crap and a lot of darker stuff, and I’m excited because I don’t think there’s been a lot of lighthearted movies with messages. I love doing rom-coms.”
She’s also a big cheerleader for the actors’ performances. “I’m really excited for people to see Logan Pierce in this.” She reveals that Pierce’s character is based on Tom Leykis—a Southern California talk radio personality who hosted a nationally syndicated show from 1994 to 2009. But Pierce’s character is “the real person when he leaves the radio station.”
As a fitness guru, Nixon is “the typical millennial obsessed with his phone.” St. James says, “Tyler gets humor and he gets pacing. … He got into the head of the egomaniac guy doing his video blogs. He was great. … They’re all great.”
Wales’ character “is the voice of the average Gen-Xer. Millennials have always had access to everything, so it’s no big deal,” St. James explains. But when Wales discovers online dating, she demonstrates that while “the accessibility might be really good, it can also be really fucking bad.”
Heading up the cast is Paige, and St. James is certainly not ambivalent about her leading lady. “Best actress in the business without a question. 100 percent. There is nobody better than her. I don’t think it’s debatable. Having studied acting so long and just seeing what she can do with no training is unbelievable to me.”
The praise comes not because her role here is showy or difficult; rather, it’s her innate ability. St. James notes that many performers in adult can deliver lines believably. “But then there are people—and Logan is this way too—who aren’t just acting. They’re reacting and they’re listening. A lot of times, people are just waiting for their line or trying to remember their line. Gia never does that.”
St. James asserts that too much emphasis is placed on the showiness of the role, rather than the natural quality of the performance—even in Hollywood. “So it’s like I’m going to play the OCD guy and it’s memorable because it’s a memorable role,” she says. She would rather performers be “so subtle that it feels real. If you’re rehearsing and I listen to you outside the door and know you’re rehearsing, then you’re not acting well. If … you think it’s an actual conversation, that’s how you know it’s real. It’s just talking; it’s having a conversation. And Gia is incredible at that.”
Shooting with New Sensations again also means having Powell on board as a cinematographer. “He’s a perfectionist, as am I. It’s so nice to be working back with him. He shot-lists everything. … He’ll come to me after he reads the scripts so that we can collaborate. So it feels very collaborative.”
Though she enjoyed a longer-than-usual shooting schedule on Love in the Digital Age, the movie was still done on the typical adult-industry budget. Asked what she would value most in a bigger budget, St. James was unequivocal. “Time. I would do a twenty-day shoot and I would make it amazing. And I would have more than eight characters. … Then you can go out and get the shots outside or go into a park and get a better montage. But we’re just cutting corners … and we’re still there until midnight. I don’t shoot past midnight.”
Since St. James is such a fan of romantic erotica, it’s worth asking which movies she finds most arousing herself. In terms of mainstream, she mentions Black Snake Moan, The Secretary and Nymphomaniac. And she also calls out her favorite on-screen kiss. “You’re going to laugh because it’s not a sexy movie, but it’s the sexiest kiss of all time: the kiss in Catch and Release. You can watch it on YouTube and it will probably still hold up out of context because it’s so epic. It’s Timothy Olyphant and Jennifer Garner, who I don’t find very sexy at all, but it’s the tension … that makes you wish they would fuck in that moment.”
St. James admits, “For me I never like the payoff as much as I like the buildup, and I don’t think you get a lot of that in porn, unfortunately. I love the lead-up and the wanting and wishing to rip each other’s clothes off.”
So, has St. James shot anything in porn where she’s been able to build up a little suspense? “I think in [the Emma Marx series] we were able to do it in a lot of the scenes. And then there was a movie I did for Mile High—Mistress, with Abella Danger and Michael Vegas. And I just said, ‘Wait to kiss as long as possible and let us want you to kiss,’ and they did it. … They really understood, and that scene sticks out in my mind as being incredibly sexy.”
Love in the Digital Age is available in retail stores, VOD sites and on NewSensations.com.
