Page 24 - AVN March 2016

LIGHTS,CAMERA...
ON THE SET| |By Tod Hunter
You Bête
Harry Sparks goes green (screen) for ‘Beauty and the Beast XXX’
Mainstream studio spaces have a different ambiance
from studios dedicated to porn production.
Mainstream studios have foyers, green rooms,
bathrooms and showers with privacy, makeup tables
with mirrors ringed with lights, Y-shaped ladders
on wheels, apple boxes, chest-high tech tool cases.
Air conditioning. This particular mainstream studio,
in a light-industrial manufacturing complex tucked
away on a side street, is dedicated to effects shots, as
demonstrated by the two-story high studio-spanning
back wall painted a seamless flawless luminous green,
the better to disappear and be replaced by CGI.
It is here that Harry Sparks is directing his porn
take on Beauty and the Beast, from his own script, based
on the original fairy tale. “I’m not going back to Jean
Cocteau,” Sparks tells me. “It has elements of that
one, but I wanted to go back to the original. Darker
than some of the versions since then. The version I’m
using has Beauty and her two sisters and the father.
They lost all their money, and when they found one
of his ships, that’s his motivation for going out to the
Beast’s lair.”
Sparks is adding another twist by building a
contemporary frame of the main character reading a
book and imagining herself in the story. “It takes place
in two different worlds,” Sparks says. “The first world
is the real world, where she’s reading the book. As
she’s reading it we’re seeing it through her eyes, in the
fairy tale. And she’s playing her sisters as well. It’s not
a parody as such, it’s the Beauty and the Beast story with
stuff added. I’m calling it an erotic fairy tale.”
Xander Corvus will be playing the Beast, hidden
under a wig and a prosthetic brow, and Dani Daniels
is playing Beauty. “I’ve wanted to cast him in my past
two movies, but he was busy and it was hard for us.
I’ve always wanted Dani to play Beauty, and now that
they’re a couple in real life [at the time when the
movie was shot in 2014], they have chemistry. When
they came together, it just sealed the deal.” The cast
also includes August Ames, Callie Calypso and Evan
Stone.
The non-sex dialogue scene set for today is a
challenging high-wire act, as Daniels is called upon
to play Beauty and her sisters in three repetitions of
the same scene as veteran performer James Bartholet
plays her father. In the first iteration, Daniels
plays Beauty, holding a book and thoughtfully and
compassionately responding to Father’s statements,
leaving empty silences where the other characters
will chime in. All on an empty stage, in front of
a featureless green wall. After the first few takes,
Daniels rushes off, changes costume, and plays
Beauty’s sister, standing in a different position,
slouchy, whiny, complaining. This is where the
high-wire act comes in: Daniels has changed clothes,
makeup and attitude, and has to play a totally
different character in the same scene she just played.
On the flip side of the same coin, Bartholet must give
precisely the same performance as he did the last go-
round, for continuity. Hit the same marks, give the
same line readings, make the same gestures, look the
same direction on each line, on each retake, in each
closeup.
Once Sparks is pleased with the second set, Daniels
is sent to change makeup and wardrobe again and
become the third sister, as Bartholet gets ready to
reprise his role. On “Action!” Daniels takes on her
new role as the third sister, and Bartholet is required
to play the same lines, exactly the same way, again.
It’s a masterful feat of concentration and skill for
both of them, and will be invisible on screen once
the background is added and the three sisters are
composited together.
“It’s a whole different level of acting when you
have to work on a green screen,” Bartholet says. “A
lot of times, you don’t have another actor that you’re
playing to, because it’s going to be CG’d in, that actor
or that creature or that situation. I had an earlier
scene where I was walking along a perilous cliff, and
I had to imagine looking down over this oh-my-gawd
precipice. It calls on your imagination. It calls on your
acting skills.
“Dani was playing three different characters, so I
had to play not just to the one sister, but to the other
two sisters. You really have to do some acting. That’s
why I’m always telling these kids to take an acting
class because you can’t get by just being able to fuck
any more. You can’t just go ‘I’m the pool boy’ ‘I can’t
pay for this pizza’ and—scene!
“You have to be able to act, too. You have to learn
your craft.”
After a long post-production period, the movie is
at last ready to come out. The DVD release offers a
second disc of special features, including a non-sex
version of the movie, outtakes, photo galleries and
more.
“I’m preselling the title now. There is already
excitement surrounding this release,” said Exquisite
sales manager David Peskin. “Already pre-orders
are coming in. There are some really strong pre-
booked numbers. We’re going to begin shipping it on
February 29 with a March 7 street date.”
To place a wholesale pre-order, email Peskin at
davep@expxxx.com or call (818) 576-9464.
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