Page 88 - AVN September 2015

FEATURE
(‘Wanted’ continued from page 44)
“So we threw Allie in and we started shooting, but we got a six-hour late
start and everything kind of snowballed and it went downhill from there,” she
explained. “We had a fire coming down the mountainside onto us when we were
on location in Palm Springs; we were fighting smoke and ash, and we had seven
firefighters just off camera lined up watching us shoot but also to tell us whether
we had to evacuate immediately. Luckily, we got everything we needed.
On top of that, Stormy said, “I fired one person, made ten people cry, and one
person quit. And then, obviously the tragedy back home.”
Seems that the previous Sunday, Stormy’s home in Dallas had been struck by
a flash flood, and while firefighters and other workers had been able to rescue
husband Brendon Miller’s horse, which still spent almost a week in the hospital,
Stormy’s own horse Bailey and another one were lost to the raging waters.
“So the very last thing I wanted to do was get on a horse and direct this movie
after learning that my horse just died,” she sighed. “So very, very hard, because
all I want to do is go home and bury my horse. Luckily, I have good friends back
home and they recovered him and buried him and did all that stuff for me. There’s
a little Easter egg for him in the movie.”
Beyond that, there’s the fact that over the course of the shoot, several cars broke
down—”We have a really talented crew that does car repairs,” noted director of
photography Andre Madness—and for most of the production days, the cast and
crew had to make do with Porta-Potties. Also, while Stormy’s well used to dealing
with the ambient sounds that can interfere with production—airplanes overhead,
buzzsaws, lawnmowers, power lines, cellphones ringing and the like—those noises
were somewhat more of a problem for a movie that’s supposed to be set in the Old
West.
“We’ve had to do some scramble and some little tweaks here and here, but
everything’s been amazing,” Stormy understated. “It’s just that everything
possible that you could imagine could go wrong has gone wrong. … it’s all been
horribly exhausting and trying and painful; we were all injured. I’m covered with
scratches; I have a big lump on my head, too, from a fight scene. We all did our
own stunts—three fight scenes, a gunfight, riding stunts—and we shot nine sex
scenes. I must be out of my fucking mind—I could just go on and on and on and
on. It’s almost comical now.”
“I spent a massive amount of time making sure that every single detail was
perfect and laid into place and every stone turned,” she added. “For the last two
months, I’ve been living in 1879. Everything is historically correct, and researched,
and I’ve put a few little Easter eggs in the movie that I’ll see if people catch when
the movie comes out; little tidbits of trivia.”
And then there were the leeches.
“Ohmigod!” exclaimed Allie Haze. “Me and Anikka had to walk out into this
small pond on the property and stay there for a few minutes to avoid being seen by
the bad guys, but when we got out, there were all these little black bugs that sunk
their teeth or something into my legs, and we had to spend about ten minutes
picking them off of us. I’m just glad none of them got into my cooch!”
Besides Haze, Brendon Miller and herself, the movie stars some of Stormy’s
favorite performers, including Anikka Albrite, Amber Rayne, Jessica Drake, Steven
St. Croix, Tommy Gunn, Brad Armstrong (who did all the costuming as well,
based on ideas provided by Stormy) and Eric Masterson.
And by the way, in case anyone was wondering, there is a plot to Wanted. “What
is it about? Well, there are four women who are kind of thrown together under
some strange circumstances when one of them, Anikka, is accused of murdering
a man that she did not kill, because the sheriff wants the deed that he left to her,
and the other three make a last-minute decision to rescue her from the gallows
and ride out of town. What happens today is, we’re being chased by the sheriff and
his posse who want the deed from us, and also a bounty hunter that’s been on my
trail from years before—it’s a backstory—and we’ve got some Apache Indians who
are friends of one of the girls and they help us out and it all comes to a big climax
standoff at a silver mine, and I won’t tell you how it comes out.”
The movie also includes several firsts for Stormy. It’s the first time she’s
directed her Wicked Pictures compatriots Brad Armstrong and Jessica Drake; the
first time her husband Brendon has written (and sung) an original song for one
of her movies; and the first time she’s worked so extensively with animals, having
had to hire movie horses because “they’re used to cameras and booms swinging
over their heads and lights and guns going off in front of them. One gunshot and
my own horse would have been in a tree,” she said.
Stormy began writing Wanted more than eight years ago, but it’s only now that
circumstances have aligned to allow the movie to be made.
88 | AVN.com | 9.15
“I announced my official retirement in April,” Amber Rayne, who owns a horse
farm, told us, “and I’ve been in and out, in and out, performing-wise, for like a
year, but I’ve still been performing and directing and producing, editing. I’m here
because six years ago, Stormy Daniels said she couldn’t do this movie unless I was
here, and I said, ‘I will absolutely be a part of this, I promise.’ So I announced I
had retired; she pulled the trigger on this movie, and I went, ‘Okay, I’m doing it.
I don’t break my promises.’ My original plan was to do a boy/girl/girl scene and I
looked at Stormy and … I told her, ‘I ain’t leavin’ the industry that way; it’s gonna
be an anal scene,’ so I talked to Tommy Gunn and asked, ‘Will you put it in my
butt?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, yes, absolutely!’ And I want to tell you, trying to do an
enema in an RV bathroom was an epic experience.”
And then there’s Steven St. Croix.
“I always knew he was going to be the sheriff,” Stormy asserted, “and when I
wrote the script years ago, he’s who I had in mind—and then he left the business
for two years to go to France, so that was one of the reasons I didn’t do it then. I
want to say he came back from France to be in this movie; he just didn’t know it.
I’m gonna go with that story.
“If I would have tried to shoot this movie five years ago,” she added, “first of all,
I wouldn’t have had the awesome people that I have today—some of them weren’t
around—and second, if all of this shit had happened five years ago, I don’t think I
would have been a strong enough leader to keep the crew together.”
Stormy also hired the wunderkinder of adult art direction, Kylie Ireland and Andy
Appleton, who did all the set design, art direction and props. They even managed
to create an authentic-looking silver mine on the ranch in Agua Dulce where the
company shot for several days—and it was so good that the owner of the property
asked them if it would be okay if he left it up so that other production companies
could use it if they wanted!
Bottom line? “Everything that’s been captured on film looks exactly how I
wanted it to. It’s been incredible. But the coolest thing about this, other than how
awesome it looks, is, I’ve never seen people come together like this. … No one has
complained; no one. So I was like, ‘Hey, I need you to do this movie, and it’s going
to be the hardest, longest, most miserable thing you’ve ever done, and I need you
to do it for less money.’ And everybody did. And one of the coolest things is the
text messages that I’ve received from other people in the industry, who don’t work
for me, aren’t on this movie and don’t even work for Wicked; like directors from
other companies who have sent me messages saying, ‘Oh, your pictures look so
good; everything looks amazing; just want you to know we’re sorry for your loss
and everybody’s rooting for your movie.’”
The movie has also received a lot of mainstream coverage. L.A. Weekly sent a
photographer to cover one of the Agua Dulce ranch days; stories have run in not
only the Weekly but also on the Jezebel and Refinery 29 websites, and Stormy’s
heard rumors that GQ and Rolling Stone will be writing something on the movie
also.
We can’t help but feel that a few years from now, people will look back on this
production and say, “See? That’s the way we used to do things in porn!”