|
10/20/04
"I'm directing for a couple of different companies," says Dan, a porn editor for a decade. He's also married with two kids. "Colossal Entertainment and Smash Pictures. I did my debut with Easy Prey." We chat by phone. He's in his office at Eagle Eye Editing. "They [Smash] gave me an interactive. I just did My Playtoy 3 with Lauren Phoenix and Selena Silver. It's a different beast than a gonzo. "I'm directing under my real name -- Dan Silver. I just finished one for Colossal called I Cream On Jeanie." Hasn't that name been used before?
"It's a departure from the typical gonzo. It hearkens back to the early '90s stuff where there was more of a scenario. It focuses on these five frat boys in a house and they stumble on this bottle and they rub it and the genies come out and they have sex with the genies. "Lauren Phoenix. Britney Skye. Miss Monroe. Katie Morgan. Sammy Rhodes. Jayna Oso. Shy Love. "I shot it October 6th and I turned it in October 18. It's a quirky romp. Remember Ed Wood who made those low-budget stupid horror movies? This is like that. The camera logs off. The smoke machine comes in. There's a dissolve and wha wha, the genie's there. "There's a killer scene between Lauren Phoenix and Kurt Lockwood. To have these two professionals come off the set... They'd never worked together. They independently said that that was the best scene they had ever done made me feel good. I had little to do with that. That's between the two of them. "My directing style is that I shut the hell up and let the professionals do their job. My job is to capture it. The less I say the better. That scene went on automatic pilot. "Aside from the campy set-ups, once we get into the action, I'm a gonzo-style shooter. I was taught by Vince Voyeur. I edit for Mike Johns [at Red Light District]. I look at the best guys in the business and what they do. I'm not locked into a style yet. "No condoms. I would prefer not to have fake tits, but I'm not casting. Colossal casts. "I'm going to shoot another movie this week called Domestic Disturbance. They have cop outfits. It's going to be women police officers arresting the men and having their way with them. There was one girl they were going to bring in. I said, I just edited a scene of her's. Her boob job is so bad it is almost distracting. She's pretty and she's nasty, but if we could substitute? "I feel I can do so much better than what I've been doing. It's one thing to sit in your edit bay and edit thousands of hours of porn. It's another thing to be on the set and to be in charge of what is going on. "I still have to figure out what looks sexy on camera. I'm not a big fan of where the business is going and the nasty let me [verb] in your [noun] and [verb] on the floor and [verb] it up. Oooh, yeah, that's great. That's disgusting. "I like hardcore sex but I get more aroused if the girl, before the scene, is lotioning up her body or making out with the talent on the couch even though they've never met. That's sexy because it's real. How do you transfer that into a scene?" What do you enjoy more? Directing or editing? "I'm so tired of sitting in the chair. This not only affords me the opportunity to get up and move around, but it also gets me out there. When I would go to AVN and the awards show, and I'd see these girls I'd edited thousands of hours of, they had no idea who I was. Now you put a camera in my hand and I'm a genius. They can't wait to hug me and kiss me and like me. "I saw Lauren Phoenix today on a set. She was like, 'Oh, hi. How are you?' Before, she would walk right by me. I'd be like, hey, I cut that scene you won the AVN award for. And she'd be, yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't get than in addition to the photographer, the editor makes them look good. "It's such an injustice in the business that someone like Brad Armstrong [Wicked Pictures director] can shoot a feature film in three days and then it takes me six weeks to edit it. He makes more money for those three days than I do for six weeks. "The last film I edited -- The Collector -- is one of the best things I've done since Falling From Grace. Barring any bizarre Fashionistas coming out this year, it should win some serious awards. Brad Armstrong directed. "It would be interesting after ten years of editing to get an AVN award. I've convinced myself that those things don't matter, but in reality, it is nice to be acknowledged for the work that you've done. You have people who come into the business as talent and then seven years later, they're in the hall of fame. I'm not taking anything away from Misty Rain, Asia Carrera, or Brad Armstrong...but at what point do all those people who trudge through all this murky media get acknowledged? It's unbelievable how mistreated the editors are. How the prices have dropped. "That's why I had to get out. I make more money shooting one day of camera than I do a whole week editing." How's the industry reacting to the Cal-OHSA fines? "The ones they are going to go after are like Rob Black. The ones who are really pushing the envelope. I heard that T.T. Boy was well-known for not using condoms and for not caring about tests and going out and getting real street whores and filming them. The people like Vivid, Wicked, Hustler, Smash, Red Light, that get the tests, have the IDs... They're professional. They're not just back-alley blowbang this-is-for-the-Internet-let's-pick-up-some-girl-in-a-bar-and-rape-her. 'We didn't rape her. We paid her a thousand bucks.' Well, that's the feeling that it gave. "At what point did slapping and spitting become sexy? I hope to shoot for companies that want something a little softer. I can't do what guys like Jake Malone, Mike Johns, do. If the scene goes there and the talent are into that type of thing, I'll capture it until it gets me uncomfortable. "I edited a Michael Zen movie. A Vince Voyeur movie. A James Avalon movie. A Mike Johns movie. I'm flexible that I have those skills. "Smash is putting a lot of press into this stuff. They have a big following. "Colossal wants me to do a couple a month for them. "The Collector is beautiful. It is lit beautifully. It is shot beautifully. There's beautiful music. It's a quality movie. Can you jerk off to it? No. I can't. Who can? I don't know. Is it going to play in every hotel in the country? Yes. But as far as hardcore pieces going out the door? How many can they sell? Three thousand? When you've got a company like Anabolic or Red Light, they're selling 6,000 pieces out the door. But they don't do a soft version. "There's a real change in the business. Even the hardcore gonzo people are starting to do more scenarios. Pizza delivery boy stuff. It used to just start with the girl on the sofa -- hi. How are you? What's your name? How long have you been in the business? You want to [verb] a [noun]? Go. "Now they say, let her be a genie. A cop. A secretary. We're back in the '80s. Dialogue and stuff. The talent doesn't want to do that. They want to lie on their back for an hour, get their check, and go. They don't want to sit around a set for ten hours doing multiple takes, different angles, and dialogue and pickups. "It used to be that actresses came into our business who couldn't make it in mainstream and they became porn stars. But they were actresses first. These girls coming off the bus, they have no intention of acting. They don't have an acting bone in their body. They have oily legs and big tits. "By the way, whatever happened to the big-titted girls? How come all the girls coming into the business have no tits or fake tits? "Companies want their gonzos to have more story. That takes more time. Time used to equate to money. Nobody wants to pay more money. They want their product for the same amount of money. They don't care how long you spend on the set. "The prices of editing are going down. I have a wife and two kids and a mortgage. I can't compete with some kid out of college who bought a Final Cut pro system and lives out of grandmother's garage. The stuff I used to get $1,500 to cut, they're not telling me I have to do it for $600. Quality be damned. If you give this kid $600 at the end of the week, he's ecstatic. He gets to buy his girlfriend a drink at the movies and a sixpack. I can't support my family on $600 a week. "When Red Light District started, they didn't have that much money. I did all their movies. Vince [Voyeur] said, when we get bigger and start making more, we will pay you more. I was making $1,300 per movie. After a year, I went to Vince and said it was time to up it. He basically fired me. He hired another editor in-house. Three months later, he came back to me. He said they were so busy that this guy couldn't handle it. What's it going to take? "I was asking for $50 more per scene? From $1,300 I went up to $1,500. He begrudgingly said ok. He said, by the way, we now want behind-the-scenes. I said fine. We want a trailor. I said ok. A couple of months later, he said, now we are doing bonus scenes. Instead of six scenes, it is seven. The bonus scenes used to be a 15-minute BJ, no big deal. Then he started doing full-scenes. So you're editing an extra scene. They expect it to be free. "Instead of making one master and a back-up copy, then they wanted a third copy for their foreign guy. Every time I run a copy through my system, that's two-hours-and-20-minutes of time. Dion said to me, can't you run it at night? "I said, so if I go to Kinkos and tell them to run my copies at night, I shouldn't have to pay for them because I'm giving them the paper and they're running it at night? "I said no. It is still my time, my machine, my air conditioning, electricity. Now they're up to eight copies. One with a watermark. One without. One for cable. That's over 20 hours." But you don't have to work during that time? You can just push a couple of buttons and walk away? "Yeah. But I can't work on anything else while that is going on. My system is being used. I'm not a duplicator. If you went to a duplicator, they're probably charge you $100 per copy. That's a $1,000. And they're getting people to do it for free. I finally said, I am not going to do it for free. I could take those three days and cut somebody else's movie." Do you still cut for Red Light District? "I only cut for Mike Johns who happens to have a distribution deal with Red Light. "I refuse to join the race for the bottom [in pricing]. I did the same thing with Hustler. I insisted that they start making their product better. I wrote them a letter: * If you are going to use two cameras, this is what you have to do. * These are the elements I need. * I need more quiet on the set so I am not doing hours of audio work taking out the director's voice. Whatever happened to 'Quiet on the set!'? These people carry on phone conversations while the camera is rolling. Do you know how stupid that looks to put moans and groans in in post? Then they have the nerve to send it back from quality control with a note that says her mouth was making an aaah and you put in an oooh. I want to say, go to hell. There's 20 minutes of the director talking. If I miss one aaah from an oooh, blow me. That's ridiculous. How about the guy shuts up and we let the girl moan and groan. Duke: "Who are the best and worst directors to edit?" Dan: "The best directors are the ones who have sat in the edit bay. There's a whole new confluence of directors coming in because the video cameras are so cheap and they haven't spent one minute in the edit bay. So they have no idea what cutaways they need and what shots fit together. "I don't want to edit anybody else's stuff other than my own. They're not paying me now to edit. They say that the money they give me [to make a movie] includes the edit. We don't care how you edit it. I say, what? That's two separate things. I'm shooting and I'm editing. OK, I'm going to shoot it so that it is easy to edit. So I spend less than three hours on a scene. Four years ago, I was spending a week editing a scene for James Avalon at Metro. Hundreds and hundreds of cuts in a scene. You can't beat off to it. It's cut, cut, cut. Look at how much we can cut in non-linear." MTV-style. "Exactly. You need a sustained shot with rythym and motion in my view." Then what is the purpose with all these MTV-style cuts? "It's directorial masturbation. It is -- look at how many cuts we can make. Michael Ninn, same thing. Michael Zen. With all the effects, make-up, hair, wigs... I think people have lost track of what people want to see. That's why gonzo is so popular. That's why POV (point-of-view) is so popular now." The Internet features neat little scenarios like Bangbus, probably the most successful POV line. That's what people love. "So they can put themselves in the picture." Who are the most expensive editors? "I hope that it would be me. It used to be me. "I had one company who paid me $6,000 to do a feature. I called them and said I needed the check. They said, ok, but we need a trailor. I said, that wasn't included in the price. They said that if I included the trailor in the price, they'd get me a check tomorrow. "I said that sounds like extortion. That's pornographic of you to do that. But, I need the check, so I'll do it. I came home and told my wife that story. She said, you call them back and say absolutely not. You're a professional. We can wait the week. "So I called them back and refused. I asked them for $500 for the trailor and they ended up paying me [in full] a week later. I'm never going to work for that company again."
|
|
|
|