The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries #7
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Filtering by Tag: PHOTOGRAPHS
Filtering by Author: Susannah Breslin
Finished
Yesterday, I finished writing a 5,000-word short story I ended up titling “Topical Matters.” It’s about a man who discovers an adult movie is being made in the house behind his house. When I was done editing it, I submitted it to a dozen publications. If that doesn’t work, I’ll publish it myself. Check back here for future updates.
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NoHo in Yellow
Some yellow art in a parking lot in North Hollywood. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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Life in LA (Think)
Recent scenes from my life in Los Angeles: stars, think, kick. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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C U Next Tuesday
A drawing on a rock at Empire Shopping Center in Burbank. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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Life in LA (Dead End)
Recent scenes from my life in Los Angeles: art, dead end, art. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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Transforma
A moment from Chris Cunningham’s Tranforma at Deitch. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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Post Human
I took this photo today at Post Human at Jeffrey Deitch. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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Body Parts
I took this photo in Burbank on Magnolia Boulevard. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries #3
Welcome to The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries, a behind-the-scenes look at my life as a sex writer and all the weird shit that entails. From my recent sexplorations to my current obsessions, this weekly newsletter takes you into the mind of someone who has seen too many porn movies. In RCD #3: What happens at a virtual strip club? Why is my short story called “The Scopophiliac”? Would you or someone you love wear a lip gloss called Pussyhole Pink? You can find the answers here. Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share.
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Valley Five-O
I took this photo in Studio City on Ventura Boulevard. For more of my photographs, follow me on Instagram.
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How The Hardest Working Director In Porn Gets The Job Done
This story was originally published on Forbes.com in July 2024.
On a recent Saturday morning, the adult movie director Ricky Greenwood was busy overseeing the production of a big budget pornographic feature entitled Project X. A couple dozen crew members were buzzing around the office space that previously housed a biotechnology company. For now, most of the action was taking place in a hallway where a hospital gurney had been rolled into position. Soon, a sex scene starring veteran performers Mick Blue and Cherie DeVille would be shot.
These days, Greenwood is one of the most in-demand directors in the adult business. At 42, he has made, by his estimate, over 500 porn movies, among them Grinders (a skateboarding movie), Talk Derby to Me (a roller derby movie), and Machine Gunner (a war movie). Originally from Montreal, Quebec, he is tall, bearded, heavily tattooed, and speaks with a Québécois accent. His favorite movies include The Exorcist, Point Break, and High Fidelity. Among the directors he most admires is Michael Bay: “He’s doing commercial movies that are like a big cheeseburger.” Greenwood says this is not unlike what he does. “I know when I’m making porn, I’m making a sort of entertainment. I go with that and play with it. He’s that type of guy.”
Before he got into the adult business, Greenwood worked in television in Montreal. At a certain point, he took a job directing a porn movie. It wasn’t a positive experience. So he went back to television. A friend had a boss looking for a production manager in adult. So he gave it another try. This time, things went better. He moved to Los Angeles. He wrote and directed adult movies. He won some awards. The story for the movie he’s directing today came from its producer, Digital Playground. It’s about what happens when the government finds an alien ship that has crashed on earth. DeVille plays a biologist. When Blue arrives on set, the wardrobe supervisor hands him a white lab coat with a name tag that reads: “Dr. John Harding GENETICIST.”
Getting on the same page Prior to shooting the scene, DeVille, Blue, two talent liaisons, and Greenwood convene in a room. As a camera records, the group goes over a “Pre-Shoot Discussion & Boundary Checklist.” (The performers are given time to complete the consent checklist prior to the meeting.) Here, the actors identify what they are willing and not willing to do in the scene. DeVille takes the lead, noting her dos and don’ts among the 30-plus items listed in the “Sex Acts” column (said acts range from the vanilla—say, kissing—to the not-so vanilla—say, bondage). “The goal is to make the talent comfortable, to create a safe space for the talent and make them feel heard and respected by production,” Greenwood relates later.
Make it look good High production value is something of a Greenwood signature. Unlike the low-budget, lo-fi “gonzo porn” of yesteryear, his productions are saturated in deep colors, preoccupied with story, and look more like a movie produced by A24 than garden variety smut. “Real porn back in the day used to be cinematic, used to be a movie,” he recalls, nostalgic. “Now we want to go back to it: big production, big budget, something that is entertaining.” In the hallway, DeVille and Blue, clad in white lab coats, await the call for action. The lighting is tweaked. In a dimly-lit adjacent room, Greenwood takes a seat and strokes his beard thoughtfully as he surveys the video feeds from the three cameras displayed on the monitors.
Catching the sex “And, action,” Greenwood announces. The cameras move in and out, following the actors’ lead. There isn’t a lot of direction. When it comes to filming sex, this director takes a mostly hands-off approach, preferring to let things unfold organically. “I like to let them do what they want to do,” he shares. “I barely direct them for sex because I feel I want to have a more natural sex scene. I want to be a fly on the wall watching them. I don’t want to give them tricky angles and positions. I want us to witness and not have them working. If you create that safety zone, they will forget the camera. You will get those nice moments and scenes. If you direct them, it become like a job for them, and it become like a fake scene.”
Work against stereotype “As performers, we are like athletes,” Blue, who has pale blue eyes and an Austrian accent and is canonized in the AVN Hall of Fame, opined earlier when asked what it’s like working with Greenwood. “Not a lot of directors who haven’t performed understand that stuff. The better the director understand what we do, the better the outcome will be.” As Blue and DeVille do their thing on the gurney, Greenwood watches, his face bathed in the green glow of an EXIT sign. He’s good at his job, he says: “Because I care.” He knows that some people don’t respect what he does for a living. “‘It doesn’t matter, it’s just porn,’” he parrots the critics saying. But it matters to him. “We want it to be good. We want to make it interesting and different. If we give them a regular porn movie, what’s the point of doing it?”
Know your niche A little over an hour later, the first scene of the day is completed. “I love working with Ricky,” DeVille, an award-winning MILF performer who ran for president in the 2020 election, says in a bathroom afterwards. “I like being extremely organized,” she adds, something they have in common. Meanwhile, Greenwood is getting ready to film a dialogue scene with other actors. He’s busy, but thankful for the work. His friends who direct mainstream movies make a movie every five years. He makes nine or ten movies in a year. Still, there’s a stigma with which to contend. In Europe, “People see a porn director as any type of director. They see it as the same thing as a regular movie director.” In America, it’s taboo. To him, porn is “just another genre that people like and can watch.” That said, he believes public perception is changing—for some, at least. “The younger generation don’t see it so much as bad.”
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Hollywood Walk of Dildos
I took this photo in an adult store on Hollywood Boulevard. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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What You Don't See
I had this idea recently that I should do a series of photos that I have taken on adult movie sets but the photos have no depictions of sex in them. When I visit a set, there are plenty of photos that I take that have no sex in them; oftentimes, they have no people in them. The subject of these non-sex images is the stuff that gets left out: the waiting prop, the douches and wipes, the clapperboard, the set itself, the girls getting their makeup done. You see these same impulses in the works of Larry Sultan and Jeff Burton, who have both photographed on porn sets. There is a preoccupation with the banal behind the explicit, the ordinary juxtaposed against the extraordinary. Years ago, a guy reproduced stills from porn movies and Photoshopped out the people—I think that’s what he did—but I can’t find his work or remember his name. Anyway, this documentary photography series I’ll be working on is untitled for now. Here is a shot of a gurney that I took on a set I went to this June.
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Los Angeles Apparel
It’s Los Angeles Apparel. It’s not American Apparel. Got that? For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
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The Porn Director
Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
After a little over a year hiatus, during which time I published and promoted my book, I’m back as a senior contributor to Forbes.com. In my latest story, I spend time with Ricky Greenwood, a very popular, very busy porn director. Ricky is a big bear of a guy, and I enjoyed watching him work. The scene I saw him direct features two award-winning veteran performers: Cherie DeVille and Mick Blue. Read the story here.
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Street Art
Some random street art I saw while visiting art galleries in Melrose Hill. Check out more photos on Instagram.
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Tour
Go for a Ride
This is a photo I took yesterday at the wonderful Imagined Wests exhibit at the Autry Museum of the American West. The exhibit is about how the American West exists in the imagination in many forms, from art to movies to objects. Since the novel I’m working on that’s set in the adult movie industry is also about California and the twin myths of the American West and the American Dream, I found the exhibit very inspiring. In fact, it gave me an idea for an extremely important scene that appears late in the book.
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The Porn Library Recent Updates
Awhile back I created The Porn Library, which is a compendium of books, movies, art, and more about the adult movie business. Recently, I’ve added a few more. They are The People’s Porn: A History of Handmade Pornography in America by Lisa Z. Sigel, Smutcutter: How I Survived Porn by Sonny Malone, and Sexytime: The Post-Porn Rise of the Pornoisseur by Jacques Boyreau. Got a suggestion? Submit it here.
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