LOS ANGELES—Stoney Curtis likes bouncing ideas off his talent when he’s on the set.
It keeps his creativity flowing.
“I like the talent to have some interjection,” Curtis says.
And 32-plus years later, he reveals one of the main drivers of his success is the love of the game.
“I still enjoy it after all these years,” Curtis tells AVN. “I still have enthusiasm.”
Indeed the AVN Hall of Fame owner of Lethal Hardcore, whose most popular series include Girl Scout Nookies, which has seen 21 volumes, and I Fucked My Best Friend’s Dad, which is up to eight, remains hands-on in every step of the creative process.
From his home office in Porn Valley, Curtis oversees everything from casting decisions to choosing who will be on the box covers. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Many owners hire other people to do all that,” Stoney says.
But Curtis not only has adapted and survived during the many eras of adult entertainment—he thrived.
The studio head, producer and director made a name for himself during the days of VHS tapes and DVDs, elevated his brand on the web, capitalized on tube sites and now is mastering VR production.
Now in its 21st year, Lethal Hardcore remains one of porn’s steadiest studio brands, releasing one new title a week and eight new VR titles a month.
Among Lethal’s other top-selling series are Her Rumpus is Scrumptious and Curvy Girl Auditions—both of which have reached seven volumes.
And Curtis teases several new titles coming soon, including Did You Order Rim Service?, Rubber Can’t Compete With This Meat and Clit Bait.
The native of Chicago—who left a career in engineering to get into adult—tells AVN he shoots all his Lethal Hardcore VR scenes in 4K, too, noting that his is the only studio doing both.
“If you like a girl in 4K, there’s a chance she might be in VR doing the same type of scene,” Curtis says. “We found a way to do both in the same day and we knock them out in four or five hours… I have an assistant shooter who shoots some of it and I direct everything… I have a co-director for the 4K—a cameraman that I’ve trained over the years.”
It’s become a winning formula for Curtis, who decided to align with Gamma Entertainment as his web partner in March 2024.
“It’s been a year now and it’s growing every month,” he says, adding that Lethal Hardcore sells rights to its titles to various sites around the world.
“I’ve made good decisions in terms of partnerships and I do a lot of my own sales. People come to me with offers and I decide whether I sell rights.
“And VR rights are going to become one of the next big things.”
Curtis would be the first to admit he didn’t know what he was doing when he entered the VR space in 2018.
“Back then it was GoPros, that was the thing. Nobody had these new cameras out yet and you had to do it on the fly. There are cameras now built for VR,” Stoney says.
“It was a guy that I had never met who was the one who taught me how to shoot VR the right way. He told me what I was doing wrong—sizing-wise and scale-wise.
“He was a VR review person and he literally was a fan of mine.”
Curtis reveals that his secret-weapon VR expert reached out on Twitter with an offer to help.
“He told me, ‘I’ve been a fan of your product since I was in college and I see you’re in VR now. I can tell you what you’re doing wrong,’” Stoney continues.
Older and wiser, Curtis put his ego aside.
“I said, why not, let’s hear the guy out—and he gave me his number,” he adds.
After almost 20 hours worth of phone calls in which they discussed what works and what doesn’t, Curtis made several adjustments to the way he was capturing his VR, leading to the look he achieves now.
“This guy was immensely helpful and I probably might not even be in VR if it wasn’t for him,” says Curtis, who shoots his VR in 8K using a Canon R5C.
“We’re set up for the future if 8K ever comes…I took the time out to listen to somebody who wasn’t even any successful shooter, he never made his own videos. He was a fan; he was a reviewer. But fans have knowledge…I was a fan before.
“I talked to him and I executed what he said and he was right—and I thank the guy for that. You gotta be humble in this world, you can’t act like you know everything.”
Curtis tells AVN a big part of directing VR scenes entails teaching the new generation of talent the do’s and don’t’s when they’ve had no prior experience in VR performing.
“I feel as though I’m a pretty good teacher at this point,” Stoney says. “I feel more like a coach.
“I tell them, ‘This is what guys are looking for. They’re looking for a storyline, a passionate voice, a sensual girl that opens up to them, a human being. They want somebody that’s going to give something of themselves so they can feel like they’re actually getting to know this girl.’ That’s what makes great VR.”
Curtis says Lethal Hardcore often is among the top 5 best-selling studios on the VR aggregator SexLikeReal, while his studio also performs well on VR Porn and POVR.
“It’s still growing, we haven’t peaked by any means,” he adds.
Curtis—who underwent open heart surgery in March 2014 and then overcame several complications in the months that followed—recounts how his first opportunity in adult “just kind of fell into my lap.”
His original investor was a weed grower who initially gave him $10K.
“He convinced me along with Peter North to start making my own movies because I was an avid fan,” Curtis says. “They said, ‘If you’re such a fan, why don’t you make your own?’
“And my first movie sold to VCA and they started encouraging me to make more. I thought this is kind of fun, working with all these people I watched on my TV all these years and then actually being on set.”
Curtis would later produce and direct a handful of volumes of Intense Perversions before launching what would be his signature series of the late 90s and early 2000s, Hot Bods & Tail Pipe, which went to 30 volumes for his former company, Celestial Productions, between 1997-2005.
Even though it didn’t take him a long time to establish himself as a gonzo director, Curtis knew there was much more he could do.
“The way to sustain a long career was to get into distribution,” Stoney says. “I’ve had a much easier lifestyle because I took control of my own career and I call my own shots.
“We just believed back then that the only way we were going to survive and stay a long time is to not be just a shooter for hire.”
Indeed, foresight and decisiveness have served Curtis well during many stages of his career.
By 2007, after years of facilitating DVD distribution on his own, Curtis also reached the conclusion that the distribution model for a small studio was not cost efficient.
So he made another game-changing decision, choosing to sign with a new company called Pulse Distribution.
“I saved myself a lot of money signing with Pulse and the distribution fee they gave me was small enough that it cut my costs. I sold more pieces and paid out less money,” Curtis recalls.
“I signed with Pulse long before pretty much the whole industry. I was the second or third studio they distributed.”
Fast forward to present day and Curtis applauds the content creators who have carved out a place in adult entertainment during this golden era of independent platforms—he also has message for them.
In short, he says anyone suggesting to creators that they’ll compromise their sales on OnlyFans by doing studio porn is giving them bad advice.
“To all the OnlyFans models out there, I salute you for coming into this industry and having the guts enough to actually pursue this and make money,” Curtis says. “One of the key ways to build your fanbase is to pick various studios who have longstanding fans to shoot for. And when you shoot for them it’s only going to build up the amount of fans coming to your OnlyFans.”
“It’s not going to cut into your sales,” he assures. “If you just do a limited number of scenes for studios it’s not going to hurt. In fact, it will increase your sales. Fans will find out about you from shooting for Lethal Hardcore. I can guarantee you a lot of them don’t know who you are.
“Some people just go to VOD sites, some go to websites, some go to Pornhub, some go to OnlyFans, some guys go to Chaturbate and some look at studio stuff.
“If you are only on OnlyFans you’re going to miss out on guys who don’t go on OnlyFans. There are millions of clients who are not going on OnlyFans.
“With that in mind, if you’re on OnlyFans, shooting for studios is a way to attract more fans to your OnlyFans. You don’t have to do 200 scenes. You can do four or five scenes a month and build up your popularity in professional porn and your numbers will grow.”
Meanwhile, Curtis tells AVN there is no shortage of talented up-and-coming performers in the industry, pointing to some of the recent standouts for Lethal Hardcore such as Maisey Monroe, Reyna Belle, Chloe Rose and Alexa Chains.
“Maisey Monroe is a great newer performer, a bodacious blonde, a classic beauty,” Curtis says. “Reyna Belle is an outstanding performer…And Alexa Chains is fantastic.”
