Page 50 - AVN December 2015

FEATURE
Our [members] are extremely
sensitive for stories. Another bullshit
belief is that people skip the stories.
No, they fucking don’t. I don’t. if you’re
wasting my patience with 20 minutes,
then yes, I’m going to skip forward.
But if it’s a really good concept, and
you’re making me believe it, yeah, I can
really get into it. I never liked gonzo
porn. Nothing wrong with it, just not
No other reason.
I try not to judge, but I don’t like violence. It’s not my
thing. I don’t like choking, I don’t like women being slapped
in the face. I don’t find that attractive. So I don’t shoot that.
If some bullshit expert says, “Greg, people want to see that,”
I say, “Well, good for them.” I will cater to the audience
of my choosing. That’s the vision I have. The process of
creating something has to be genuine. You really have to
like it. If not, it’s not a genuine artistic process. If you don’t
consider that pornography is a form of art, you shouldn’t be
my thing. I like content. We storyboard
the story, not the sex. I work with
a couple of cinematographers; most
of my crew are people I brought in
from the mainstream business, the
fashion business. When we opened
this company, I recruited everyone
and they never did porn. It came with
its challenges, because they knew
nothing about it, but we benefitted
because they had a fresh outlook and
no preconceived notions of what can or
cannot be done. My cinematographer
didn’t think, “We need to have four
positions, and a pop shot, and the
scene needs to be 30 minutes long.”
He didn’t think like that, and it created
so much more room to create good
stuff. Cinematography is such a tough
art. I’m very passionate about it. I
started as a photographer, and I started
shooting as a photographer. When I
started I went shot-to-shot, like stills.
It was too literal and it didn’t flow.
Collaborating with other artists is the
best part of everything I’ve ever done.
I’m a fan of guys like Roger Deakins.
He told the story of shooting Skyfall
and he said that the first day everybody
was shocked that he was ready to go.
He said, “My philosophy is ‘less light,
more grip.’” That’s always been my
vision. It takes a lot of time and effort
and measurement, but Roger Deakins’
cinematography is great. Flag this
light. Blow out this. Put a pattern in
there. Reflection, bounce and flags. He
doesn’t bring an enormous lighting
kit—just have a grip guy lying in the
floor with a silver reflector. It’ll reflect
a little bit of the light. Very little light,
all grip. It’s fucking fantastic. There’s
not enough time in my day. If I could
just read about cinematography I
would. It’s fantastic what you can do.
Roger Deakins is one of my favorite
cinematographers. What he did with
James Bond was incredible.
doing it. That’s my vision of it, at least.
I have very strong views about porn. I shoot interracial
the same way I shoot an anal scene, the same way I shoot
a boy/girl scene. To me it’s just a scene. Going back to the
creative process, my main driving factor is I love beauty. It’s
a subjective definition, obviously, but my own definition.
Any time I can see it, I can recognize it, I can shape it, I will.
Fortunately, we live in a day and age where you can see it
a lot, and not just in porn. Interracial is a popular niche,
Blacked.com is doing well, people want to copy it. Some
people’s business model is “Let’s sit on our asses, wait until
someone does well with something, and copy it.” I would
never want to be one of these people. If you do that, you’ve
lost already. The original always wins. Always. In porn,
people have more room to copy than in mainstream because
in mainstream you get sued. …
If I had to knock off someone I know I would fail at
it. I don’t like violence but I look at Kink.com and I can
appreciate the passion. They’re really into that leather-S-
and-M stuff. It’s a lifestyle for them. There’s a heart behind
We started with Blacked, and we created a site within that
niche. … It could have been lesbian or any other niche.
I would have kept the same approach.
Flash Brown & Abigail Mac, Black & White 4
“I did another homage, to Fast Times at Ridgemont
High, where Phoebe Cates comes out of the pool and
takes her top off.”
A lot of people who make movies make what they wanted to see.
What did you want to see that you weren’t seeing?
I think that’s very true. I love porn and I love the adult
industry. When I say I love it, I really love it. I would be
doing something else if I didn’t love it. I’m very protective
of the industry and I take it personally when other people
don’t. I get very vocal and very upset. I consider adult stars
artists. Everyone can have a definition of “art”; My simplistic
definition is if you touch people in any way, that is art. I
created those two sites to meet a niche for high-end product,
but the “experts” told me that wasn’t what people wanted to
see. I learned that experts don’t know shit, and people don’t
know what they want. I don’t know what I want. What movie
should Tarantino make next? Or Scorsese? I don’t know. But
I’ll tell you if I like it when you show it to me. I didn’t have a
particular interest in the stock market in the ’90s but I enjoyed
The Wolf of Wall Street. I looked at the market and I decided we
can make something really hot and really beautiful and really
artistic doing a high-end interracial website. And we created
Blacked, and it was kind of against the popular belief. The
white décor is my vision of the aesthetic: I like the color white
for clothing, for lingerie. I like backlighting. I like anything
that’s soft on the skin. I’m not a director who’s into moody,
contrasty stuff. Nothing wrong with it, it’s just not my thing.
I would not shoot something that doesn’t turn me on. That I
don’t find beautiful. That I don’t find attractive. I did shoot
Blacked, and I did shoot Tushy, and I will shoot for my third
site because I want to enjoy it, and I find it beautiful and hot.
it. There’s a passion behind it. I can respect that as an artist:
These people have this vision. I can look at a foot fetish site.
It turns me on as much as this table. But I can look at a good
amateur video and it doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do
with money: Look at the passion. The person is really driven.
The money and the production is just a tool to elevate the
art. It’s like having a bigger canvas to paint on.
What are you proudest of? If somebody reads this and wants to
check you out, where should they go?
I would say Being Riley is the best movie I’ve done. A
fantastic collaboration with a wonderful artist. Riley Reid
is just, overall, a star. I think we accomplished something
really cool. The story was good, the scenes were fantastic.
We really consciously tried to do some good cinematography
with it. I’m very proud of that movie. The Kendra Lust scene
in Miss Tushy. Sometimes when you go to the studio you
think, “It’s just a scene,” but I look at it more like a short
film. It was her first anal.
There were two mainstream movies that I impressed me
when I was younger. The first one was True Lies, and there’s
a scene where Jamie Lee Curtis does a little striptease for
Schwarzenegger, but he doesn’t know it because there’s a
backlight with the rain outside. I wanted to re-create that
scene. We had a rain machine and she was dancing and I was
very proud of what we did. In Black & White 4, I did another
homage, to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, where Phoebe Cates
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50 | AVN.com | 12.15