Page 56 - AVN May 2015

FEATURE
FINDING A SECOND HOME “It definitely feels safer there and just more relaxed,” says Ivan,
director for the Puba Network.
“IT SHOULD BE LOGICAL
FOR PEOPLE IN PORN.
I THINK WHAT DVD
COMPANIES SHOULD
DO IS THEY SHOULD
START HIRING
FREELANCE
PRODUCERS AND
DIRECTORS TO SHOOT
IN VEGAS.”
— IVAN, HEAD OF PRODUCTION, PUBA
FEATURE | By Kim Airs
Hay travels back and forth between his L.A. office but he finds he
now spends the bulk of his time in Nevada.
“There’s a personal element with me for this. I could never have
anticipated I would enjoy Las Vegas as much as I do. I bought
a house in Vegas and opened up in Vegas primarily because of
condoms. I thought there would be a big rush of companies going
to Vegas. We were already doing a significant amount of business
in Vegas. I think it was the right move to do in hindsight,” Hay tells
AVN.
He says it also helps to maintain relationships with Vegas-based
producers when you can see them in person on occasion.
“In this day and age we have this plethora of different ways to
communicate with one another but still nothing can beat shaking
someone’s hand and just chatting with them for a while,” Hay
says. “You can still learn a lot more from that than other forms of
communication, including the phone. Not just that, living in Vegas
and working in Vegas you understand Vegas much more than you
ever could from L.A.”
Hay says in Vegas the adult industry is not subjected to the kind
of scrutiny it often comes under in L.A.
“There haven’t been any problems with film permitting issues
or police issues or OSHA issues, nothing at all,” he notes. “I think
Vegas is going to be bigger and continue to grow incrementally. But
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it’s clear there’s not going to be any big rush. Myself and many, many others were wrong about
that. However it is growing slowly and maybe for slightly different reasons than we thought.”
Adult film star Richelle Ryan moved to Vegas in 2015 and tells AVN she wishes she set up
there a long time ago.
“I love it out here,” Ryan says. “I just bought a house. I’m here for life. It’s the best decision
I’ve ever made not only work-wise, but also too Vegas is growing. We just got an NHL hockey
team, the Raiders are moving here; there’s talks about us getting an NBA team; recreational
marijuana just got passed—this city is truly amazing.”
Ryan, who grew up in Rochester, New York, and lived in Virginia for four years, says she can
get just about anywhere in Vegas in 20 minutes.
“People don’t believe me when I tell them it’s actually a very quiet city,” Ryan says. “You’re
starting to see a lot of performers move out here. I am a huge cheerleader for anybody that wants
to move to Vegas.”
The two-time winner of Exotic Dancer’s Adult Movie Feature Entertainer of the Year award
feature dances two weekends out of the month in between doing porn.
“Feature dancing is kind of like my love. Before I got into the porn industry I started off as
a dancer and I’ve built up a lot of movie credits,” Ryan says, noting she recently shot her first
virtual reality scene—for Naughty America and director Mia Lelani in Vegas.
Her next stop on her U.S. feature dancing tour will be May 18-20 at Scores in Houston.
Lee Roy Myers, the creative force behind WoodRocket.com who produces and directs parodies
such as Ten Inch Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Muffin Pounder Rangers as well as several viral videos
featuring porn stars, has been based in Vegas for the past four years.
“I think that it is local business friendly and not afraid of a little sexiness, so it feels like it is
the perfect place to produce adult content because of all of the sexy businesses that are out there
such as adult stores and strip clubs and nearby brothels,” Myers tells AVN. “It’s like we’ve found
a place that is a new home.
“When you’re in L.A. in the Valley, you run into a lot of porn people and you converse and you
feel like you’re at home. This has that same feeling. It’s very welcoming to new businesses. It’s
not afraid of adult businesses and there’s enough of us out here that a community is starting to
grow.”
Myers co-owns Mission Control, a 10,000-square-foot studio in Vegas that he also rents out
for commercials, music videos and more. Launched in January 2013, WoodRocket is nearing the
release of four new web series, reveals Myers, who is also working on new YouTube channel in the
pop culture and entertainment realm.
He says his reasoning for going to Vegas was not about the condom legislation in California.
“To be honest if you put a ‘Strokemon’ costume on someone, people don’t really care if you put
a condom on the performer. It’s just another piece,” he says.
“We’ve shot a ton of scenes with condoms. We don’t worry about how people feel about them
because our fan base doesn’t seem to care whether we have them. It was about the difficulty and
cost of shooting in Los Angeles. It’s very expensive to live and shoot in L.A., especially when you
shoot as much as we do and give it away for free.”
Myers adds, “And the paperwork you have to fill out to get a film permit and money for a film
permit and the possibility the day you shoot with a film permit is still a day you have police and
fire departments and everybody coming in to stop your production to check on your permit—not
even to check on if everything’s safe—takes a chunk out of the day.”
He says that while there was “a lot of bluffing” in the past year from porn companies
threatening to leave for Vegas if Prop 60 passed, many still are planning to come.
“We have six tours of our studio scheduled for this week for adult companies,” Myers says. “It’s
growing very quickly. I think in five years at least half the industry, if not most of the industry,
will be living in Las Vegas.”
Director Brett Brando, a native of the Inland Empire in Southern California who worked for
Miller Brewing Company before porn, tells AVN he has shot 16 scenes a month for Brazzers in
Vegas for the past five years. He got his start with Naughty America almost 15 years ago in San
Diego, where he was the studio’s only director for the first three years, shooting three scenes a
day.
Many of Brando’s scenes showcase the local color of Vegas, such as his sweeping shots of the
desert in Metal Rear Solid: The Phantom Peen (A XXX Parody), featuring Casey Calvert; his gorgeous
setup and tease with Abigail Mac on the Strip in My Night With a Porn Star; and his gritty street
pick-up sequence with Jillian Janson in Jillian for Sale.
“It’s been fantastic for me,” says Brando, who shot in L.A. for nine years before leaving.
“When I had left L.A. it was when the condom issue just came into effect and I was having to
shoot outside L.A. County. It became extremely tedious and we were also dealing with very high
location costs. I was going crazy in L.A. and I was always concerned there was going to be a knock
on the door from a cop.”
Like most everyone in porn, he felt relief when the condom law didn’t pass.
“I was concerned about that mass exodus,” Brando says. “A lot of porn companies, not all of
them fly under the radar. Some don’t care if they raise any red flags. I was worried that was going
to ruin it for Vic and I out here.
“There are still some companies filtering in. Vegas is so big, people don’t realize how big it
is. They’ve welcomed us with open arms. When I went and applied for a business license—zero
issues—and they knew exactly what I was doing.”