Page 57 - AVN May 2025

Despite their importance to the process, male talent are often overlooked compared
to their female counterparts. It’s taken 20 years for adult performer-turned-director
Seth Gamble to achieve recognizability as a multi-award-winning leading male
performer, actor and director.
His clean cut, hunky looks lend themselves to lots of roles—horny business man,
hot stepdad, devious boyfriend, and dysfunctional husband. But it wasn’t always like
that for Gamble, the 2011 AVN Best Male Newcomer, who started out in the industry
when male talent were sometimes referred to as “meat puppets.”
Gamble’s largest production to date, in collaboration with legacy studio Wicked
Pictures, is titled Once Upon a Time in The Valley. In it, Gamble is writing a love
letter to the stars of the late ‘90s gonzo era and recalling the experiences of being a
new kid in town.
Loosely autobiographical, Gamble said what he envisioned for the movie has
elements of PT Anderson’s iconic 1992 porn ensemble epic Boogie Nights and,
obviously, is also a nod to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
“You know, this industry—this is my nineteenth year in the business. Yeah. I’ve
been doing this since I was eighteen years old. My entire adult life in adult, you know
what I mean? So, I wanted to tell a story,” Gamble told AVN.
The location for the last day of the nine-day shoot was a mid-Century ranch style
house in Laurel Canyon, not far from the Wonderland Murders house, infamous
for a 1981 case involving XXX legend John Holmes that was chronicled in 2003’s
Wonderland, when Holmes was portrayed by the late actor Val Kilmer.
“A lot of movies come out about porn and I felt like this was a movie that tells true
stories within a fictional world, but is still a very entertaining, exciting movie without it
trying to paint a picture of us as good or bad or evil. Right? It’s just kind of painting
us as human, with comedy and drama and really strong characters.”
“This movie is male-led and female-led as well, but like, very male-led,” Gamble
added. “Parker’s voiceover in the story playing me—he’s been in the business only
a few years. It was important to me to be able to take all the experience I had, all the
things I did, and [cast] two guys that I really like as human beings... To me, really, it’s
probably one of the most gratifying things about this feature.”
“It was different time, though. Like when I got in the business, the male performers
were a fraternity and they didn’t make it easy on you,” he recalled.
Up-and-coming performer Parker Ambrose plays Steve Jacobs, the role based on
a young Gamble. An Air Force veteran, Ambrose studied cinematography at school
before getting into adult. He confessed he’d been a fan and familiar with stars like
Abella Danger and others, later realizing that Gamble may have appeared in content
he’d watched as a teen.
The 27-year old is in the sophomore phase of his career since first appearing
in 2023, and has learned how to showcase his scene partners, deliver dialogue
convincingly, and to “open up” for the camera, allowing close-up shots of sex action.
“So, definitely—like your first year—I was just like star-struck by everything. Nervous
for every single shoot,” he laughed. “Like, I still get nervous for shoots, especially
when big projects like this come up. But it’s definitely gotten a lot easier.”
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