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First of all, why don't you introduce yourself to those of us who
don't already know you?
Mike,
my friends call me Bob.
What can you tell us about the
website you work for, twilightwomen.com,
and the philosophy behind it?
The
movies I've made were originally financed by companies I owned, and later
licensed to another company which developed the twilightwomen.com
website.
So I don't actually work for the site, although Laura, who does run it, is
constantly on me to provide more edited footage.
In
your eyes, how does twilightwomen differ from other adult websites? It's
true that twilightwomen.com
is an adult website, but the trouble is that even the phrase "adult
website" tends to conjure up a whole image complete with very
specific conventions and expectations and I don't think we're even in that
ballpark.
twilightwomen seems
to consist of two main series of movies, Lesbian Seduction and House
of Shame. Could you go into more detail concerning both series?
How
these movies came about is a bit complicated and probably unusual. Some
years ago now, a business I owned required some video production skills. I
happened to have some background in film editing. I put together a crew,
including my wife and some friends, and developed a project through which
we could become more proficient with video technology.
The
vampire saga was a three year project that involved more than a thousand
people. In the last months of shooting we decided on some nudity and
brought in some of the supporting cast, including Ann Ampar, to do special
sequences. Everybody had fun with that but the vampire project finally
closed.
We
then went on to make the overtly erotic Lesbian Seduction-series, which led to the somewhat hardcore
House
of Shame.
Your
films seem to be more character- and plot-driven than the usual current
adult-fare. Would you like to elaborate on that?
Objectively
speaking, there's not much difference in the definitions of pornography
and erotica, but to my way of thinking there is a difference. I think
porno is simply the recording of a sexual act. Its justification is: they
are doing it, whatever
it might be. Depending on how extreme or different, this can be
interesting and is certainly a popular mainstream genre. I have never had
a desire to make that kind of movie and, I've said many times before,
wouldn't know how to do it and most surely not as well as the people in
that business.
I
prefer getting to know the characters and following some progression of
events leading finally to a sexual climax. If it takes many hours of
viewing to get there, it's fine with me. But that violates the rules of
porno in which the show is the time it takes to get the viewer off (20
minutes).
Also,
sex itself is not visually dramatic for me. I love to look at women,
obviously. But the drama comes not from wanting sex and having it. It
comes from wanting it and, for whatever reason, not wanting it. It comes
from that conflict. That is what interests me. It will happen, but a
submission to the desire must be there.
I
know trying to explain what you're trying to do is dumb, but you asked!
There
is almost invariably a BDSM-context to your films.Your thoughts about
that, and to what extent does the content of your films correspond with
your own sexual predilections/experiences?
I'm not personally into BDSM. It can connect with the
Dominant-Submissive theme in a strong way and that seems to me something
that a character could want and resist. If both characters were just
happily "playing roles" it wouldn't be my thing.
The sex on twilightwomen
is pretty much exclusively of the lesbian variety. Is there any chance a
male will eventually been thrown into the mix, or have you even been
tempted to do so?
I don't know how to get a male performer to be erotic,
even in a softcore way. Although women love our movies and many assume
they were made by a woman, they are what a male would like to see. A
woman, of course, may want to see a man in a sexual way, but I've no
interest.
Your films are rather explicit in
their depiction of sexuality. Is there a line you just won't cross, your
actresses won't cross, and/or
are there things you'd love to do but cannot on twilightwomen?
We've
got a lot of pee, fisting and incest already shot that will pay off, in
the House
of Shame movies. If I have one absolute back-off, it's children.
The women
I've worked with were very up-front about anything they wouldn't do.
Casting is an important part of the process. We turn away far more than we
use, super-sensitive to what I call the "prostitute" attitude
(I'll do this if you'll pay me that). We only use those who are on some
level into the fun of making movies. They become friends and trust us to
protect them. twilightwomen
seems to have quite a stable of regular performers. A few words about at
least some of them? The
only performer I actually ended up using who thought of herself as a
professional porn star was "Zille". I thought she had remarkable
talent but was way too full of herself for me to use more than a few
times. But the rest are non-professionals and Mike, I've made it a rule
not to discuss them as real people.
What can you tell us about your
filmmaking experiences before twilightwomen? I
made a student film in 1960. Other than that, all my experience was as a
film editor. The reason for making the vampire saga was to learn video
technology. The best way to learn is to get the equipment and develop a
project, get some friends and go at it.
What
made you want to go into filmmaking (and into adult filmmaking at that) in
the first place?
I
always wanted to make movies. Movies were always the primary interest in
my life. But you need a lot of money to make a film. But the people who
would give you the money unfortunately would like to at least get it back
and the movies I wanted to make had little or no financial viability.
The
first time I saw The Night of the Hunter was 1955. I was 15 years old. I've seen
it at least a hundred times since. It still blows me away and I think it's
still years ahead of its time, even though now it gets some of the
recognition it deserves. It never made a
dime and it was a relatively inexpensive production.
Video
is another matter, of course. We can all be Charles Laughton and do our
thing.
As for the
adult genre, I thought I could make what I'd like to see and nobody else
was making. I like westerns, but they made Shane
and Once Upon A Time in the West;
good enough for me. I like war movies, but The
Thin Red Line does it for me. Have you ever made/have you ever
considered to make films outside of the erotic genre? We made Vampire
Odyssey Part One and Two
and the Beatnik Movie. The
clips from those movies that appear on the website are extended scenes, or
sequences that were only experiments in lighting. Very little of it is in
or was ever intended to be in the final films proper. Those films
themselves were not in any way intended as erotic material. The hundreds
of hours of vampire stuff that ultimately will be on the site will amount
to about 15 minutes spread over the seven hours length of the real movie.
Future projects you'd like to talk
about? I'm
committed to completing the series we have going.
Filmmakers who inspire you?
I'm
very curious about Terrence Malick's next film, but all my guys are long
gone. Sergio Leone is my God, George Stevens, Elia Kazan, John Huston.
They were at the top of their game just as I was becoming obsessed with
movies. But I admire just about anyone who can get a movie made.
I
agree with you that The Grapes of Wrath is a great movie and probably his best, but
no matter how good his other films are on a number of levels, John Ford
fucks them up with what he thinks is funny. I like some of Hitchcock's
films very much, but along with Ford he is, in my opinion, the most
overrated of the masters, and the easiest to copy.
Ok,
having said that, let's get down to it - coming down from film school
land…
Jess
Franco: Started at the top
with Orson Welles and worked his way methodically down to not giving a
shit and making his
films which are sometimes sublime. His perversity is what I love.
Joe
Sarno: His black-and-white
60's New York stuff was the only actually erotic stuff I saw in those
days. And I love his Euro stuff, especially Siv,
Anne and Sven. His sex scenes are limited, repetitive, awkwardly
placed within the film, and I think poorly edited. But they have a kind of
intimacy nobody else I know went for.
Jean
Rollin: Not so much the films
themselves but the characters in them, particularly the two orphans - an
idea I ripped for our vampire story.
I hope
that gives you some idea.
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Your
favourite movies?
I'll
send you a year by year chronological list if you'd like, but not now.
Laura is always bugging me to let her put it up on the site.
... and of course, films you really
deplore?
I
actually paid money to see Titanic
when it first came out. I don't know exactly how that happened. There was
all this buzz I guess I bought into. Anyway, I kept standing up and my
wife kept grabbing me and making me sit. I felt so foolish sitting in this
audience watching what for me was monumental crap. I remember thinking
with all that money and technology and a real historical event, how could
anyone do what Cameron did. I tried to watch Avatar
on my giant TV screen but only got about 20 minutes into it. I'm not
saying these are the worst movies ever made. It's just annoying to me that
the general movie audience embraces this stuff and has more or less been
embracing it since 1980.
I'm
babbling on. What saved the day was home video and our access to all those
movies that we missed.
Your website, Facebook, whatever else?
Here
are some places you can find us online:
http://twilightwomen.com.
http://www.facebook.com/divfore
http://www.facebook.com/pages/twilightwomencom/86308695731
http://myspace.com/divfore
http://www.myspace.com/twilightwomen
Anything
else you are dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?
Mike,
I want to thank you for writing about our films. I personally liked what
you said about "real time". That's a way of saying what we were
actually trying to create a sense of that I miss in other forms of
erotica. And keep up what you're doing.
Oh!
One last thing: What's up with The
Adventures of Robin Hood being "cheesy"? I would think
that no matter what one thought of that film, "cheesy" would not
be it.
Love,
Bob (Div For'e) Thanks
for the interview!
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