When Vivid Entertainment Group starts shooting Debbie Does Dallas…Again next month, it will do so under the probing eye of a mainstream production company recording the process for a cable TV reality series.
“They’ll be shooting everything for a couple of months,” director Paul Thomas told AVN.com, “from the casting to the rehearsing to actual filming.”
Thomas said the shooting of the reality series, tentatively titled "The Making of Debbie," will start next week when he initiates the casting process. The movie itself will roll in early July.
The big-budget feature is being shot on film, just like the 1978 original, a classic of porn’s Golden Age. All the movies in Vivid’s later series using the Debbie title were shot on video.
The story, however, is completely different from the first version. Thomas called it “Debbie meets Heaven Can Wait,” referring to the Warren Beatty hit, also from 1978, about a quarterback reincarnated as a gangster.
In Debbie…Again, the deceased Debbie comes back to life in a much less glamorous body than she had before. “Not unattractive,” Thomas said, “just a little nerdy.” The role has not yet been cast.
“It’s kind of a different take on the story,” said Vivid production chief Marci Hirsch, adding that the unusual double-pronged production will be “a challenge. It’s hard enough to shoot a big-budget movie, and to work with a TV production company at the same time adds another wrinkle. But Vivid is up for the challenge — we’re all set to go.”
