Page 49 - AVN April 2016

together that was quite successful for a number of years,
JoeySilvera.com.”
At present, Grooby Productions has over a dozen
full-time employees as well as 10 content producers,
15 paysites, perhaps the most prominent of which
is SheMaleYum.com, and multiple solo sites under
GroobyNetwork.com.
“We’re constantly trying new ones, but unlike a lot
of companies where they’ll do these [sites] that all go
into one section, a number of front doors all going into
one, we don’t do that,” Grooby said. “Each of our sites
stand as a solo entity, and it has to fail or win on its own
content. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We’ve just
done Tgirls.porn, which is girl on girl, tranny on tranny,
or tranny on [cis]girl, and the content is great.
“Mona Wales just shot five scenes for us in San
Francisco, and she’s agreed to a whole series for us,”
he added. “I’d been hanging out with Kink, and Mona
turned up, and we knew each other because she’d
worked for us before but I’d never met her, and within
an hour, we’d done the deal for her to come on as a
producer of a series for us.
“As far as the producers who are actually on staff,
right now we’re working with River Stark, who’s done
some modeling, done some shoots. We’ve just done a
deal with Krista Michaels, whose model name was Bird
Mountain. She decided to get out of modeling and work
on the East Coast; she’s good. Jamie French has been
shooting stuff for us. She’s shot for us here and there
over the years. She’s a very unique individual. ... She
performs, writes music, plays in a band; she’s a fabulous
editor. She’s got a really, really amazing creative mind.”
We asked Grooby about what he thought were some
There’s going to be a lot more
trans-for-trans porn, I believe,
where there are more trans girls
buying it, and that’s a market
Grooby is aiming for
—Steven Grooby
of the trends in transgender porn over the time he’s
been in the business.
“The first shoots of the girls in the ’90s, Bob [of
Bob’s T-girls] was shooting for us in L.A., and they
were mainly Latin girls, Mexican girls actually, but we
used to get them from the donut shop on Santa Monica
Boulevard, which was the transsexual hangout. They
looked like transsexuals: The boobs, the ass, the nails,
the hair—they looked like the stereotype you could see
in a movie of a shemale: over-feminine, over the top.”
Over his company’s 20-year history, Grooby has
seen a rise of diversity in performers. More non-Latino
models started working in the early to mid 2000s, he
recalled, and “the white girls came hand in hand with
Grooby Girls Top left, Michelle Austin, who hosted the first Tranny
Awards, also introduced last month’s Transgender Erotica Awards, held
March 6 in Hollywood. Top right, Mona Wales, who won an award for
Best Non-TS Perrformer – Female at the TEAs, is now directing titles for
Grooby Productions.
a lot of the alternative girls and the girls next door as well.” And in 1998, when Grooby started BlackTgirls.
com, “we only had three weeks’ worth of content” and it was a struggle to find models. Now, he said,
“BlackTgirls is one of our best sites; it’s still very, very popular. Ethnicity is very popular. Blacktgirls works;
SheMaleJapan is one of our most successful sites as well. Just to be able to shoot in Japan is amazing, and we
sell it back to Japan without the mosaic.”
Also in the mid-2000s, Grooby began to see regional diversity, including “a lot of New York Bronx girls. …
They were great. And we started to get a lot of different girls coming through who were skater types, gamer
chicks, alternative, tats—Remember the whole Joanna Angel thing, when tats became so popular? Morgan
Bailey’s been in it for about eight years, but she wasn’t that tatted when she started. But the alternatives,
Pacific Northwest crowd, they started coming through, and that was a sort of milestone.”
Another trend on the rise, according to Grooby: educated, tech-savvy T-girls who don’t focus as much on
makeup and have a more androgynous look.
“A lot of them are into other girls, other transsexuals,” he continued. “I’ve never seen so many who are
into other transsexuals.”
He noted, “There’s much more fluidity, and you’ve also got trans people who are into trans, so there’s
a lot of trans relationships going on now genuinely. I wouldn’t shoot it in the past, because when you put
two trans porn star types, the old school ones, together, they weren’t into each other; they’d just fake it. You
could see it; it was just like lesbians who weren’t into each other. Now, these girls are into each other, so that
was a milestone, getting real girls who were into each other, probably within the past five years.”
One interesting facet of the Grooby empire is how he’s decided to handle trans models who may not be
sure if they want a career in adult.
“We launched FemOut for the early transitioning ones—the girls who are not quite ready for
SheMaleYum—and that’s been successful as well,” Grooby noted. “Most of them have just started hormones
and it’s just started to come through, and they want to get on the first stepping stone. … If someone shoots
for FemOut, the idea is if they’re good enough, they go on to SheMaleYum and SheMale.xxx. But if they
shoot for FemOut, after two years if they want the photographs removed, I’ll take them back down if they
decide it’s not for them, and they want to go and get a real job and all that stuff. I can’t do that for the other
shoots—it’s crazy the amount of money that we put out there—but for these ones, I’m prepared to eat that
after two years and say, ‘Let’s take it off.’ That’s the deal I make with them on that. I think it’s kind of a cool
way to go, to give somebody an idea of what the industry is like, and them maybe realize it’s not for them.”
But simply giving transgendered people a friendly place on the internet wasn’t enough for Grooby.
Through his award show, he provided a place for the community to celebrate itself.
There were only six awards given out online in the original Tranny Awards, but it drew a lot of people to
Grooby’s website. Soon, Grooby was discussing the awards concept with prominent director Buddy Wood,
and between the two, they came up with the idea for a live show with sponsors.
“We held it at a club called Blue Moon Nights, which Buddy was promoting, and it was great,” he recalled.
“Michelle Austin was hostess of that. There was just a little stage, and they had an outside area—but
everybody wanted to come out to this shitty little club for this one night, so the next year, we said, ‘Let’s try
something big; put a little money into this,’ and we went out to Glendale, the Palace of the Stars; we did that
for two years and that brought it up, and we had proper sponsors. … Now we’re at the Avalon, and that’s
fantastic. So the step up to the Avalon was good.
“I think the success of the TEA Awards has been, first of all, the sponsors,” he added. “We could afford to
do it without any sponsorship money, and it’s a big chunk of money, but it’s never been about being Grooby,
Grooby, Grooby; it’s always been about the trans community, and the thing is, where else can these girls
go as a community and have that night out where they are the focus? … When they come to this, they’re
dressed and beautiful and they get honored and get respected.”
Although the award show’s first after-party was run by Tranny Strip’s John Ed, Grooby quickly decided to
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