Page 44 - AVN January 2018

WHO’S WHO
GETTING THE STORY
Kay Brandt tells tales for Adam & Eve
She had been working on Naked for a couple of years prior to shooting the movie. “It was a story that was
cultivated, just like Safe Landings,” Brandt says, referencing her first Adam & Eve project. Then she began to
dig in to find “the nugget” of the narrative. “Is it just going to be a parody of the show … or is there a bigger
story? And of course, like with everything I’ve done, there’s a much bigger story. There’s the event, and then
there’s the story around the event. In Safe Landings, the event was a plane crash. And then the story happened
around the event. The same thing for Naked.”
In Brandt’s Naked, the two participants develop a deeper bond—despite both being already in relationships.
“The female character, Cadence, is honest. She’s got to trust this guy with her life so she’s going to put it all
on the table. But Jackson, the male character, does not, because he’s in a polyamorous relationship and it’s not
something he wanted the world to learn about when he’s on a reality show.”
LIKE WITH EVERYTHING I’VE DONE, THERE’S
A MUCH BIGGER STORY. THERE’S THE EVENT,
AND THEN THERE’S THE STORY AROUND THE
EVENT.
—KAY BRANDT
The story ends on a cliffhanger, Brandt says, because that’s how she wrote the book—which is the first in a
trilogy.
Playing the contestants on the reality show are Derrick Pierce and Britney Amber. Pierce is the backbone of
the movie, Brandt says, but what really surprised her was how good Amber is in her role. “She’s going to blow
you away. Her acting is mainstream level,” the director says. “ She wasn’t afraid to be really vulnerable.”
Going above and beyond for art is something Brandt knows well. “I owned a theater company here [in Los
Angeles] in the 1990s and it was there that I wrote, directed and produced roughly 27 stage plays. This was
over a couple of years.”
After the age of the internet dawned, Brandt explains, it became harder to make a living in independent
theater. Then an interesting opportunity arose when Girlfriends Films owner Dan O’Connell reached out to
Brandt after seeing her résumé on a mainstream job board.
“He contacted me because on my résumé I had erotic films on there because when I was in mainstream I
worked for the late, great Zalman King. It took him a while to break it to me that Girlfriends Films was porn,”
Brandt recalls.
Brandt says she made 35 movies for Girlfriends, mostly uncredited, as was typically the case for movies by
that studio.
INTERVIEW | By Sharan Street
Some adult directors are camera
buffs who love tech above all else.
Others keep a tight focus on the
performers—how they act and what
they do during sex scenes. And
then there are those few who really
concentrate on the storyline: not
just who’s fucking whom, but why.
Kay Brandt assuredly falls into the
third camp. And she’s got a filmography to prove it.
Most recently, this talented screenwriter/director
has been working with Adam & Eve Pictures, and her
newest movies for the studio, Naked and HotWives and
Their Dirty Desires, are available on both VOD and DVD.
Released in October, Naked had been part of Brandt’s
creative life for the past couple of years. Fascinated by
the reality television show Naked & Afraid, Brandt first
wrote a trilogy of books loosely based on the show.
“To me, just seeing the trailers for [Naked & Afraid]
made me feel like I had to watch it because it’s so
weird. People willingly go on the show, they willingly
get naked, no shoes, no nothing—one article each. So
usually somebody brings a knife, somebody brings a
fire-starter or something like that. And then they’re left
to their own devices for 21 days.”
A regular viewer of the show, Brandt describes the
typical setup: “Most of the places they drop them
are really, really inhospitable. … They’re naked, their
bodies are being eaten alive by bugs, they’re trying not
to get bitten by snakes. They have to make fire, and
sometimes they’re in places where it rains 19 out of the
21 days.”
And on top of that, there’s the added distraction
(or diversion) of being paired up with another naked
person—usually of the opposite sex. And sometimes,
Brandt figures, they must do a little more than cuddling
inside those tents. Top, Britney Amber in director Kay Brandt’s Naked. Bottom, a scene from Brandt’s latest Adam & Eve movie, Hotwives and Their Dirty Desires. Like Naked and
Safe Landings, the movie is based on one of Brandt’s own books.
(Continued on page 46)
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