LOS ANGELES—An adult performer’s career is full of “first times,” from first solo to first boy/girl to first anal and beyond. But there are also some significant firsts for directors, and Kay Brandt is having one of those moments today.
“This juicy tidbit I’ve been wanting to talk about … but I just didn’t want to say anthing until I got really close. Now, Friday, I’m filming this scene.”
Best known for lush, heavily scripted features, the adult director is doing something completely different today: a one-scene shoot in which she’s directing a script written by Noelle, a Mindgeek writer she hasn't met yet.
It represents not one but two firsts: the first time she’s worked for the entity known as Mindgeek, and the first time she’s been behind the camera for a trans sex scene.
"We've been discussing it for quite some time, and when they decided to get serious with me, I said, sure, I'm interested in taking on the challenge," Brandt says.
“I've got my usual crew with me for this shoot, too, Sal Genoa as D.P. and David Lord on 2nd camera, with a cast I'm very excited to direct. I've never directed a trans scene before, but I have just released four short stories in an erotic romance trans book series called TS, I Love You. The fourth one was just published over the weekend and there are many more short stories planned in this series.”
In today’s scene, Brandt says, “The boy is Sebastian Keys and the girl is Nikki Vicious, who is fairly new. She’s been very pleasant.” And though Brandt didn’t write the script herself, she’s planning to add her own touches and “have a little fun.” As she describes it, Mindgeek scripts are a highly visual affair, with pictures of the desired props, a specific shot list and detailed descriptions of how the star should look.
Brandt reveals Vicious will be wearing a pink track suit. “I had to go to a couple of stores just to find it.”
For the director of Safe Landings and Babysitting the Baumgartners, this type of assignment is a far cry from her usual working style. “I haven’t had a day of work like this in a long time where I just go in and shoot a scene and then leave. I’m always doing features.”
She adds, “I’m ready … so excited.”
Though her focus has been on story-driven movies the last couple of years, back in the day she was acquainted with fast turnarounds and high volume. “I used to make five movies a month for Girlfriends Films back in the day. I can belt it out.”
Speaking of those feature projects, AVN caught up with Brandt about her upcoming projects for Adam & Eve Pictures, which this fall released The Seduction of Heidi, nominated for nine AVN Awards. Then in October came Submissive Wives, which Brandt characterizes as “a lightly scripted romance movie with four scenes featuring Angela White, Brandi Love, India Summer and Riley Nixon.”
And the next one to drop is Unfolding, which is based on a book by Selena Kitt. In fact, it’s the fourth movie that she has made based on Kitt’s best-selling books—one of which was The Seduction of Heidi, which is up for an AVN Award for Best Screenplay. Brandt talked about the process of writing that screenplay, noting that Kitt “allowed me to go off on my own. That was the first time I took so many liberties with one of her stories. Heidi and the Kaiser [the original title] was such a popular book. … People love it. I had a lot of women reach out to me and say, ‘I love what you did. Loved the book and I loved the movie too.’”
But as happy as she was with both the end product and the strong sales on The Seduction of Heidi, she’s even more excited about Unfolding, which she says is “the best movie I’ve made in 10 years.”
“Unfolding is a three-and-a-half-hour movie that’s coming out in January. It’s got like seven sex scenes in it. It is a gorgeous, romantic, beautifully acted movie starring Cherie DeVille and Seth Gamble. You’re not going to believe her in this movie—she’s amazing,” Brandt said.
And in between any upcoming scene work that may be in her future, Brandt will keep crafting screenplays. “I’m currently writing the script based on another one of Selena’s books called Bluebeard’s Wife—it’s another deeply romantic story about a couple. It will be my eighth book adaptation when we do Bluebeard’s Wife in 2019, and my fifth Selena Kitt adaptation.”
She adds, “They’re all different and they’re all beautiful, and they all come with a best-selling book attached to them that already has a fan base. So that’s all amazing. It’s all really good.”
And the most important thing to her—more than awards or movie sales—is “the objective of reaching this female audience and getting readers to understand that pornography doesn’t have to be bad, scary forbidden, ugly. … It’s all OK, because it’s made from a book.’”
To get a taste of Unfolding, see an NSFW trailer on Selena Kitt’s blog.
Above, Kay Brandt at the 2019 AVN Awards Nomination Party; photo by Jeff Koga/@KogaFoto
