Drop-dead gorgeous and impossibly curvaceous, Taylor Wane makes no apologies for being an ultra glamorous porn woman, as opposed to the waif-like girls who are currently the rage in certain segments of the industry.
And through her production company, Taylor Wane Entertainment, this porn Renaissance dame writes, directs and stars in couples-oriented features aimed at that segment of the vast porn consuming demographic that appreciates big-chested sex Goddesses such as herself.
"My movies, most of them are created for guys that are into chicks, that like big boobs," the British-born Wane, 36, said while sitting in the kitchen of her upscale home in the Northridge section of Silicone Valley, where her company and other business enterprises (various Websites, including TaylorWane.com and Laurien Photographics, an adult photography studio that supplies images to many of the top men's magazines) are based. "That are into women who are very secure, sexual, who don't mind dressing up to the hilt.
"I love being probably an exaggerated woman," the blue-eyed, blonde beauty continued (and so, too, does the public; Wane remains a top draw on the adult convention circuit, including most recently, at June's Erotica L.A., where, attired in sizzling, form-baring fetish wear, she attracted among the longest lines of any exhibitor). "And I enjoy men who enjoy that.
"Especially now, it seems more and more women don't really want to be ultra feminine. Everybody's very laid back and casual. And I keep hearing from my male fans, they're saying, 'Where are all the girls in stockings or stiletto heels? Did people stop making that stuff?'"
Well, certainly not, Wane.
Taking the plunge
A successful men's magazine model, Wane entered the adult video industry in 1989 at age 18, and, since then, has made a relatively modest 200 titles or so.
In the mid-1990s, she formed Taylor Wane Entertainment.
"We all have thoughts about what we'd like to see ourselves, and what we think adult entertainment should be," she said. "So sometimes you just say, 'Hey, wouldn't it be great if I could shoot my own stuff, because then I could shoot it the way I think it should be, versus the way other people want to see you.' So that's why I started shooting my own movies."
Such Wane-directed, story-oriented titles as Bedeviled, Dirty Deeds and Legacy were distributed by Dreamland USA.
Late last year, she and her partner in the company, Laurien, took the plunge and starting with Catfight Club (nominated by AVN for Best Specialty Title – Other Genre) and assumed ownership of her titles.
Wane said the impetus for the move was how Catfight Club came to be made. Wane said members of her pay site kept asking her to do a catfight title and persisted to the point where some them even agreed to finance it.
"I said, 'If you fund it, sure I'll shoot it,' she explained. "So I set about doing that, and just shot the movie, and before I knew it, I had a finished movie, and it was great. And I was like, 'Wow, I have my first title. Maybe I should … Maybe this is just a message for me …' I got the help. They helped fund. But they helped fund in the way that all they wanted was their copy."
Next, she shopped the title around, looking for a distributor, and wound up signing with Avalon Enterprises.
Avalon CEO Gigi Appleton was "really excited about it," Wane recalled. "She called me back; she was like, 'Oh my God. This is great!' So her enthusiasm really kind of fueled the fire even more because she was like, 'I haven't signed anybody or even considered signing anybody in over two years. I wasn't going to take on any new people, but I really like your product. I can see that you're making an effort to put something good together, so let's sign a contract.'
"So that was it. That was the birth of the company."
Refuting the nay-sayers
Wane writes, directs and appears in one title a month with a modest average budget of about $17,000 and, at press time, had eight to her name, including Catfight Club, Interactive Sex with Nurse Taylor, Toxxxic Dreams and her best seller to date, Voluptuous Vixens (a sequel is planned). All are released simultaneously on tape and disc.
While the sex is certainly explicit, it is most definitely not aimed at the raincoater crowd.
"In the past few years there's been this huge influx of gaping holes and how many dicks can we get in your butt," Wane noted. "And there's a market for that, I'm not arguing that. However, I do feel that … guys want their wife or their girlfriend or their fiancé to watch porn with them. And I think it's harder for a guy to get his wife into watching porn if he flips off to the porn store, gets a movie, let's just say the couple is middle aged, over 40 or whatever, and he comes back with teenies who like to be double ass fucked until their gaping holes spew bile."
"So I would hope that I'm trying to make movies that couples can watch in that they're not offended," she said. "Movies made by women, that men can enjoy, but also don't offend women."
Thus far, Wane said, she's pleased with the response her titles are getting.
"They're doing great," she said. "They're getting rave reviews, and they're selling well. And I'm getting great feedback from my fans, which is the most important thing."
"Pound for pound," Appleton said, "they are the fastest-growing, selling titles that I've had in years. I'm selling a ton of it. Out the door, and I'm being real honest, and you know everybody lies, she's selling thousands out the door. And they're re-selling over and over and over again. And that's the key to this business."
And with Wane's high-profile name recognition (being a former Penthouse Pet and cover girl doesn't hurt), she appeals to all demographics, Appleton said. "So many people in our industry are going for that younger, hip-hop audience. Believe it or not, she crosses over all lines. And that, in the end, is what going to make her very, very successful. Cause the kids love her. But I get an older audience as well."
That broad appeal is undoubtedly a large part of why Adam & Eve has put Wane's Catfight Club on the cover if its most recent mail order catalog. "And Adam & Eve puts out their own titles, so to get a cover of their mail order catalog is no small feat," Appleton said with no small dose of excitement.
Wane's partner, Laurien, who shoots the titles as well as the stills for the box covers, said the early success of the company is especially sweet in light of the lack of industry encouragement Wane and he received when they first conceptualized the company.
"We're really taking a chance by doing this because everyone in the industry told us we couldn't do it," he said. "'No one will pick up your line. It's too controlled. You won't make any money. You'll get killed in this business.' Anything you could imagine, negative, is what we were confronted with.
"And that's basically been a reason for us to do anything, really, is when people say that we can't do something, it makes us want to do it. And we've proven them wrong. Basically, we felt that if we were doing movies as good as we were doing for other companies, there was no reason why we couldn't do it ourselves."
"The hardest part," Laurien added, "was actually getting somebody to pick up the line and distribute it. I guess there's a lot of people out there trying to start their own companies. Distributors pick them up, then they quit after two months."
Wane said such companies, after shelling out $50,000-$100,000 to launch, get dispirited when they don't turn a quick profit.
"They suddenly go, 'Whoa, hold on a minute. What do you mean I've got to wait to get the money back?' But that's business," she noted. "So what happens is they do two, three movies, and then they're out. And the distributor doesn't want to take the time to try to build a reputation for you if you just quit after a couple of movies."
In contrast, Wane and Laurien take a more pragmatic view, intending to stick around for the long haul.
"We started eight months ago, so if you expect to see a profit right away, then you're not a realistic business person," Wane said.
Laurien noted that Appleton has advised them that they need at least 10 titles in their library before they can start seeing a profit. "And then after two years, we'll be seeing checks as big as any other company," he said. "Avalon is very adamant about telling us to stick to it, because they can foresee that this company will be one of the up and coming companies in the future."
Baby steps
Speaking of the future, Wane would like to bring back some of her mega-mammaried contemporaries from the early '90s, such as Lisa Lipps and Summer Cummings ("these girls make me look small," she said with a laugh, but it's true.), by featuring them in future productions.
"In the early '90s there was this explosion of these big boob girls, and people were going nuts," Wane said. "And those girls were commanding the market. So with some of my movies, I've been contacting some of these girls, and I've said, 'Where are you? What's going on? I want you to come do a movie for me.' And sometimes I hear the girls say, 'Well, ya know, I'm 30 now,' or 'I'm 32 now. Nobody wants me.' And I go, 'Who doesn't want you? What do you mean? You look great.'"
Looking toward the future on a broader scale, Wane wants what every company owner wants, "to grow and be successful and get bigger. More than that, you have to work one day at a time and hope you make a product that people get excited about and not just keep churning out stuff for the sake of releasing something. I'd like my titles to be something that people would not throw away. That people would see over and over and over again because it was just a good movie."
"You take baby steps and hope you don't loose focus of making good quality product and keep fulfilling a part of the market that's maybe being ignored," she continued. "Because I got a feeling that the big boob thing's gonna come back around, despite all the people that don't want to see the titties."
Don't know what she's talking about.
To order Taylor Wane Entertainment titles, contact Gigi Appleton at Avalon Enterprises at 888-777-0969, 818-886-0402 or [email protected].
