Page 46 - AVN December 2022

46 AVN.COM | 12.22 | OTS
“I’m just trying to give it the best I got, and I got a great team behind me.”
The first thing that strikes us—like a whoosh of fresh air—upon stepping into the upstairs bedroom of the mansion where director/performer Seth Gamble is shooting an episode of his next sprawling opus is the sheer size of the crew on hand.
Just as a partial list, there’s AVN Hall of Famer James Avalon handling director of photography duties, with a second cameraman and sound-man working out the next shot with him, art director and fellow Hall of Famer Kylie Ireland on stand-by, veteran lighting guru Shawn Rivera tinkering with some gels, and industry workhorse Billy Visual orchestrating it all in the role of assistant director. (“A position sorely missing in adult,” producer and Gamble mentor Axel Braun—also in attendance—comments to us as an aside. “He cracks the whip.”)
Amidst this hive of activity, current AVN Female Performer of the Year and Best Supporting Actress nominee, Vanna Bardot, is rehearsing her lines with back-in-action Braun stable player Ryan Driller. Of course, in this case, Gamble is the man calling the shots—literally— and he’s feverishly engrossed in doing just that at Avalon’s side.
The whole scene feels like a throwback to the type of set one might have encountered in the mid-2000s but in this era has become a rarity, to say the least.
To that point, the title of this Wicked project—Privilege—feels highly apropos insofar as it reflects Gamble’s own fortune in having it entrusted to him at this stage in his still very young directing career.
This is something of which he is both cognizant and plenty appreciative, telling us during a break, “My stuff’s very ambitious. I can’t do this with a small crew, it’s impossible. And I am afforded the luxury and I’m very fortunate. I’m just lucky. You know, Axel believes in me, he’s been behind me, and I’m just lucky to have a friend and a colleague that sees something in me that I didn’t see in myself. I had no fucking idea I was gonna be OK or even decent at this. And we’ll see how things go ... I’m just trying to give it the best I got, and I got a great team behind me.”
His humble veneer aside, Gamble did rack up a nice chunk of 2023 AVN Awards nominations for his eight-part epic of this year, Deranged, including Best Screenplay – Movie or Limited Series, Outstanding Directing – Individual Work, and the biggest prize of them all, Grand Reel. (And he’s up in all three, it bears no small significance, against both Braun and Avalon.)
If Deranged was any indication, Privilege promises to be quite the extravagant saga.,