LOS ANGELES—On a bright spring day in a very industrial-looking downtown L.A. loft, reigning AVN Director of the Year Ricky Greenwood is staging the opening and closing bookends of his forthcoming Adult Time period piece Grinders.
It may seem a bit disconcerting (for those of us who were well into adulthood at the time, anyway) to conceive of a movie set in 1999 as a “period piece,” but facts are facts: the oldest of the cast members on hand for the day’s shoot were in their early teens at most then. The majority were infants.
Anyone who does remember those pre-9/11 days vividly will surely feel a wash of nostalgia from the intricately spot-on art direction by AVN Hall of Famer Kylie Ireland, who conjured up everything from of-the-era computer monitors and cell phones to VHS players and even (in a delightfully cheeky bit of insider Easter-egg-dom) posters of herself from her heyday as one of the biggest stars of that “second Golden Age” for adult.
One thing for which Ms. Ireland can not take credit, however, is the garb donned by female lead Maya Woulfe—a perfectly bohemian/grunge combo of plaid yellow Capri pants and a black top bearing an illustration of a disembodied ribcage.
Maya Woulfe
“Actually almost all the clothes and the jewelry I’m wearing in this are mine,” Woulfe divulges to us. “Ricky actually sent me a picture of these pants, and I was like, ‘I own those.’”
At the same time, while she may own the clothes, she most decidedly does not own the hair—a matted, dirty-blonde wig that she explains “took like three hours of us finessing it to get it right.” She quickly adds, “We’re jumping in the pool with it tomorrow, so it’s gonna be interesting.”
During a break from shooting dialogue to snap outdoor stills of Woulfe and her lead male co-star Lucky Fate, Greenwood reveals some of the details of Grinders’ storyline, painting a broad-strokes portrait of what comes across as a Richard Linklater-esque indie romance set in the skater community and unfolding over the course of a day ... specifically, the day of New Year’s Eve heading into the year 2000.
Though he concurs with the Linklater comparison (we’re thinking a sort of Slacker-meets-Before Sunrise amalgam), Greenwood says he was influenced in conceiving the project more by another auteur who emerged during the ’90s indie boom: “I will say my inspiration for it was Larry Clark,” he submits. “It’s kind of an homage to those movies, that style ... that I grew up watching that I like.”
Ricky Greenwood
One thing he was intent on from the start was casting actors who had bona fide skateboarding skills.
“Back when I did Talk Derby to Me [his ambitious 2018 roller derby picture for Sweetheart Video], I said, ‘Oh, I can teach them how to do rollerblade,’ and it was a huge mistake,” he laughs. “So I learned from that mistake and I decided to take people who legitimately know how to skate.”
Those casting choices included Robby Echo, Nathan Bronson and relative newcomer Fate, for whom Grinders certainly promises to be a breakout vehicle.
Asked his general feelings about landing the role, Fate quips, “For the cheesiest line to start with, I feel extremely lucky.”
He continues, “I’ve been handed a role that I’m basically playing myself, like a graffiti artist/skateboarder/weed kid. So it’s been really nice, and I’ve been blessed to be with such an awesome crew, have a bunch of friends on set every day, invited a bunch of skaters to get in on some of the skateboarding, so it’s been surreal to be here, honestly. ... It doesn’t feel like work to come in and skateboard in front of a camera.”
Lucky Fate
And make no mistake: Fate’s skateboarding credentials are eminently legit.
“I’ve been skateboarding as long as I can remember,” he imparts. “I think I started in elementary school, like in first grade. That was in my hometown in Boston; that’s when our skate park was built in our little center of town. Tiny little crap skate park, but that’s kind of what lit me into the whole skateboarding world. When I went to college, I found every skate park I could find in Maine, and then moving out here which is kind of the mecca of skateboarding ... that’s been my journey for the last six or seven years, is just finding all the skate parks around here, meeting really cool skaters and just kind of getting into that scene.”
Fate asserts that his kinship with his character has helped ease his nerves as far as the pressure of carrying such a major role with so little acting experience under his belt.
“This is definitely the biggest thing I’ve worked on,” he confirms. “I mean, I’ve stepped foot on a couple bigger sets before, but this is the most intensive, longest script, most attention I’ve ever had on me in any situation, so I’m learning to cope with that. But honestly, getting on the set and getting able to skateboard, and like be asked by the art crew to tag stuff for them and use some of my spray paint background, I just feel like there’s a lot less pressure, just because I’m kind of in my element. Like, being able to get here and warm up just riding around on my skateboard on the ramps is a really nice way to start my mornings.”
It no doubt will also be of some help to Fate, acting-wise, sharing some of his camera time (albeit not on this particular day) with newly inducted AVN Hall of Fame member Tommy Pistol, who won two out of his THREE acting trophies at this year’s AVN Awards for Greenwood-directed projects.
For Grinders, Pistol underwent an extensive prosthetic makeover to become a balding, aging biker type. Greenwood shares an amusing anecdote about Pistol’s reaction to the results:
“It was funny, I said like, ‘What do you think of a Hulk Hogan type of look?’” he recounts. “I sent him the first picture, and he said, ‘I look creepy ... I like it!’”
Grinders releases in four parts on Adult Time starting with episode one today, May 31, followed by a new episode each coming Tuesday through June 21.
The streaming platform has created a dedicated landing page for the production at www.grindersfilm.com.
Tommy Pistol, Lucky Fate
