Page 32 - AVN September 2017

LIGHTS, CAMERA
DRAMATIC PAUSE
Joanna Angel shows her serious side in Penthouse project
To say that Joanna’s been prolific over her career would be a major understatement. She’s been
responsible for more than 300 features and web scenes, all written by herself, but the current
feature, the punnily titled Corrupted by an Angel, is one that, as far as she is concerned, is testing
her mettle.
“It’s been a really great movie and it’s actually been a big challenge for me,” she said late on
the second day of shooting, “because primarily, I write comedies. This is a serious dramatic movie
though there’s still some comedic parts in it, but I think it would be categorized as a drama.
“It’s a very touching story,” she continued. “There’s some very sad moments and a lot of
intensity—there’s even some crying parts, and that was a challenge for me because I’ve never done
anything like that before and I really want to keep learning new things and doing new things. At
first, when Penthouse had told me they weren’t interested in a slapstick ridiculous comedy like
I’m used to making, there was one part of me that thought, no, I shouldn’t do this, because I only
know how to write comedies, but then I was like, no, let me try something different, and it’s been
really fun.”
“IT’S ACTUALLY BEEN A
BIG CHALLENGE FOR ME, BECAUSE PRIMARILY I WRITE COMEDIES. THIS
IS A SERIOUS DRAMATIC MOVIE.
—JOANNA ANGEL
ON THE SET | By Mark Kernes
Above, Joanna Angel with Riley Nixon, one of the Pets featured in her directorial debut for Penthouse.
It’s been the better part of a decade since Joanna Angel directed
a feature for anyone other than her own company, BurningAngel
Entertainment, but way back in 2005 and ’06, when she was just
getting into adult, she was briefly under contract to Hustler/LFP
and directed four features for them, all of which were overseen
by Drew Rosenfeld, LFP’s then-head of production, who’s now
performing the same duties for Penthouse.
I
“The whole thing came to me through Penthouse’s CEO Kelly
Holland,” recalled Rosenfeld. “I don’t know where she saw
Joanna—it may have been at some industry function—but they ran
into each other and had some conversation about a couple of things:
Penthouse’s massive broadcast reach and about BurningAngel’s
already produced content that Joanna would want to place with
Penthouse on the broadcast side, and that led to more conversation
about having Joanna come on board and direct for us.
“I have a long history with Joanna,” he added. We go back to just
before she started BurningAngel, so I’m very familiar with how
Joanna performs, works, directs; I’ve followed her career for years
and we did some really great stuff over at LFP, and I was really
looking forward to bringing Joanna over here so we could bring
that kind of variety to Penthouse as a brand, and with a new DVD
line coming out from Penthouse, I thought it would be a great fit to
have a Joanna Angel-directed/written/produced feature as one of
our newer release, and that’s our plan.”
Joanna had similar memories, though with more detail.
“I had a meeting with Drew at the Penthouse offices in regards
to them licensing some BurningAngel features for their broadcast
platform,” Joanna explained. “And during this meeting, we both
decided for various reasons this was not a good fit—but he did
mention to me he was looking for new directors to help revive the
Penthouse Video brand. Right there on the spot, half-jokingly, I
proposed the idea of a film about me corrupting the Penthouse Pets
and, well, we both laughed, and then we both smiled—and we both
agreed this could potentially be an awesome idea.”
32 | AVN.com | 9.17
And that’s something Rosenfeld could see when he visited the set.
“She’s got an amazing team, all guys we know who really care about the work they do, and who
have collectively been in this business for like 200 years, so we knew the production was in good
hands,” Rosenfeld said. “I went over there on Day One and watched for a little while and just felt
like, I don’t need to be watching her and seeing what she’s doing other than just having fun there,
because she knows exactly what she’s doing and understands exactly how to run a set really well.”
Our own observations certainly confirmed that. Her main videographer is the award-winning
Mike Quasar, and even with short dialogue scenes, his expertise in determining what camera
angles to use gave him good coverage of all aspects of the scene, often shooting the same action
from five or six different angles, not to mention “singles” on each speaker.
For Joanna, though, one of the best parts is getting to direct Penthouse Pets in several roles.
“It’s been really, really fun to actually work with the Penthouse Pets, Jenna Sativa, Gina
Valentina and Ryan Keely, and the main character is played by Riley Nixon, another Pet,” Joanna
noted. “The idea of a movie about me corrupting a bunch of Penthouse Pets seemed really sexy
to me, and it started to excite me, and it’s not something that would make sense in my own
platform, so I figured, ‘Why not?’
“Really at the end of the day, me and the girls, we’re all equally as slutty as one another; I just
have tattoos, so I kind of have to be the one doing the corrupting,” she added with a chuckle.
“But perhaps, in a different movie somewhere down the line, I am totally open to all the Pets
corrupting me! I mean, that would only be fair, right? Ha!! Either way, I truly look forward to
what’s to come in this exciting new relationship with my brand and one of the most renowned
brands in adult. I think we will both greatly benefit from it.” (Continued on page 106)