Page 38 - AVN August 2013

ON THE SET | By Sharan Street
Team Effort
Wicked’s Brad Armstrong picks top crew to realize his vision in ‘Underworld’
warm June afternoon, Wicked Pictures director Brad Armstrong is
O
n a working on Underworld, his big fall movie project, but his attention is
focused right now on the little things. He’s meticulously drawing black
lines around performer Toni Ribas’ wrists while Ribas’ costar, Asphyxia
Noir, sits on a couch reading her script. Noir has already been through
the painting process, and the tattooed beauty has fresh ink on her fingers,
wrists, neck, shins and knees that look like stitches. There’s even black stitching painted
on her white ankle-high boots with black laces.
Armstrong focuses intently, drawing around Ribas’ elbows as well and then adding
stitch marks. The muscular porn star is bare-chested, wearing a pair of knee-length
shorts. Armstrong explains that they are going to shoot dialog first, because once the
action gets hot and heavy, he fears his handiwork will smudge.
While he works, his leading lady—Wicked contract star Jessica Drake—fills in the
blanks on the project. Drake plays Tanya, a young woman who, after “making the
sweet love” with fiancé Steve St. Croix, is mugged, shot and left for dead. Once at the
hospital, Drake says, “the anesthesia has side effects that sort of transport me to a fan-
tasy underworld—hence the title. And in the underworld, what’s so cool is that every-
one I’m coming across directly correlates with what is going on in the operating room.”
Head Trip: Jessica Drake (left) enters fantasy characters like Stitch
(Asphyxia Noir, above) while she’s undergoing surgery in Underworld .
The previous day, they shot a scene showing the first person she meets: a character
named Slice, played by Xander Corvus. “He’s a guy on stilts with crazy Edward
Scissorhands things on his hands—and he’s the scalpel.” Drake explains. Julia Ann plays
the ventilator to which Tanya is tethered, while Derrick Pierce embodies the spirit of
Death.
Does Death win in the end? Drake explains that it’s as yet uncertain. “So there are
alternate endings—will I live or will I die?” Armstrong hasn’t chosen yet, she says; he just
shot it both ways. “I’m pulling to die because I think it’
s a bit darker and I really like
what goes on when I’m in death’s lair.”
This day, she’s doing a scene set in the hospital, with Noir and Ribas as Stitch and
Suture. “I’ve wanted to work with Asphyxia Noir forever. … I also have Toni Ribas,
LIGHTS, CAMERA ...
whom I’ve hired for my instructional series, but I’ve never worked with him before.
“So, I’m tied up at the beginning of the scene…” Drake pauses. “Here, I’ll give you an
exclusive: I don’t like being tied up, but nobody knows it. Brad may know it, but we
>>
You’ve got the sci-fi with a couple of the scenes;
you’ve got the eerie, goth-y noir kind of thing. …
”It’ s kind of a cr oss between a littl e bit of everything.
And the outdoor stuff in the desert.
—Brad Armstr ong
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