Page 58 - AVN June 2015

From
Vanilla
Severeto
The origin story
of a femdom
film collective
by Sherri L.Shaulis
FEATURE
58 | AVN.com | 6.15
It’s nice to see so many
people finding their voice in
BDSM. It’s awesome that
the lifestyle is getting
more attention in
mainstream.
It’s almost like the
Stonewall era.
—Dee Severe
Severe Sex, always had a creative streak.
Even in her former life in the mainstream,
Dee Severe, the name behind the adult studio
she found an outlet in writing. After
growing up in Seattle, she took the plunge
at the age of 19 and moved to New York
City. There, she cultivated a career as a rock
journalist, covering bands and concerts for the likes of Spin,
Circus, Rolling Stone, Hollywood Reporter and more. She was
married, and leading a life that most people dream of.
But for her, there was something more out there.
“I had always wanted to do screenwriting, and in the mid-
’90s I moved to Los Angeles and divorced my first ‘vanilla’
husband,” she said. “I wrote six screenplays, and four of them
got optioned. I didn’t know at the time, but that basically
means someone gives you a couple of hundred dollars and you
have to rewrite your script about 479 times—and by the end
of it all you are ready to conduct a mass suicide with yourself,
the producers and everyone else involved. I knew I wanted to
make movies, but not like this.”
She soon joined a small film collective, where members of
the group crewed for one another. Some of their short films
did well in festivals, including the L.A. Short Film Fest and
the Action/Cut competition.
Additionally, Severe wrote a horror movie, and even co-
wrote a book on remodeling kitchens.
“I thought that was really going to take off,” she said. “I
bought all these suits and professional clothes that it turned
out I didn’t need!”
When times were tight, Severe would work part-time as a
domme, which allowed her to explore her sexuality.
“I had always had a kinky streak in me, and in L.A. I was
able to explore that,” she said. “I had some early experiences
in New York, and always had kinky fantasies. But then I
decided I wanted to be a kinky person.”
With she met Jimmy Broadway, things got even better.
“When we met it was like, ‘Hey, you also wanna make
movies, you’re awesome, you also like dogs … you’re it!’” she
said.
Today, the two of them live and work in downtown Los
Angeles with their four dogs—Libby, Bella, Teddy and Clyde
(who even has his own Twitter account @LittleDudeClyde).
Severe and Broadway are passionate about animal rights and
supporting animal rescue.