I’ve been shooting straight porn for more than a year after having been an exclusively girl/girl director for several years, and I have stories to tell. Observations to share. I have insights. Anecdotes. And you, my curious porn viewers, apparently have a few questions for me.

First, a little back story: I created Sweet Sinner Films because I had a hunch that straight porn fans might appreciate the same things that had set apart Sweetheart Video from typical girl/girl films: Real passion, real sex, real orgasms. Storylines. A bit of emotion to enhance, not detract, from scorching hot, realistic sex scenes. I’ve always found that jerking off to dumb, fake-looking porn is an empty experience, so I sought to create girl/girl films I’d want to jerk off to myself. Why wouldn’t fans of straight porn want the same things I did? I took a bet that they would.

The only problem was I didn’t know what I was doing, exactly. Although I’m bisexual in my real life, my porn of choice has always been strictly girl/girl. So when I showed up that fine morning to direct my first penis, all I really had to go on was how I make love to men in real life.

And because my ignorance was common knowledge to those around me, there was no shortage of concerned folks to take me aside and tell me I was making a big mistake. That straight porn was “different” than girl/girl (for more than the obvious reasons). The sensibility was different, the positions were different, viewer expectations were different. Was I really intending to try to bring my lovey-dovey girl/girl mentality to the harsh world of boy/girl porn? (As one fan famously joked, “Sweetheart Video – Now with Cock!”)

Sure enough, I did have some new “issues” to confront. For instance, what to do when a guy can’t quite keep his erection, and the girl is getting frustrated and upset. That obviously doesn’t happen in girl/girl encounters, where the scene can almost always proceed, uninterrupted, from start to finish. But in straight porn, the scene’s momentum and energy is at risk if the male is having “technical issues.” Not to mention that the girl might take it personally, or feel frustrated by the sudden disconnect and never quite recover her passion. In the adult industry we deal with human beings at their most vulnerable, their most exposed, and this can make for a variety of outcomes. Human emotions and reactions are complicated and run the gamut, and as a director, I have to be prepared to confront any and all of them.

There has also been the issue of male performers who “come on” to me, and decide that if they’re sleeping with me, I’ll probably give them more or better roles. I’m hip to this, so I made it clear from the beginning that if you want to work for me, the worst thing you can do is ask me out. First of all, I don’t dig guys with ulterior motives – who does? Secondly, what if the “off camera fling” doesn’t work out? How likely am I to want to book that guy again anytime soon? I don’t discount the possibility of falling in love with a co-worker, and I do socialize with the people I work with. But as a woman dealing with men in a sexually charged environment, motives have become harder to discern. My guard is up a lot higher when I work with men.

So here we are a year into Sweet Sinner, and my hunch seems to have paid off. Far from perplexing fans with our unorthodox approach to filming straight sex, we have won them over. We also won a few awards: X Biz Best New Studio 2010, AEBN’s Feature of the Year (“My Daughter’s Boyfriend”) and Sexiest Straight Movie at the 2010 Feminist Porn Awards (for “The Deviant”). Fans have responded enthusiastically to the portrayal of straight sex with passion, real positions, and of course, lots of kissing and orgasms.

A few new studios are starting to pop up using our approach and ideology to make “passionate” lines of their own. “Did you see that so and so is coming out with a copycat line?” I was asked recently, and though my expected response was one of resentment, I felt just the opposite. My work in porn has always been and will always be a quest to legitimize the art form and to create films that are beautiful, real and erotic. If our films are starting to set the tone for those to come, then I’m truly excited and encouraged. After all, it was only a year ago that nobody thought this would sell!

So what are the biggest differences between men and women in porn? Not as many as you might imagine, or that I imagined when I first embarked on Sweet Sinner. Both men and women need to be in a loving, nurturing environment where they’re able to feel desired and aroused. Both respond poorly to an insensitive director or crew, or an indifferent costar. And both men and women enjoy their job most when they are allowed to simply make love, in the many ways we can make love: fast and slow, sensual and raw, intense and playful. I seek to show all the many facets of sexual expression with Sweet Sinner, and I can now tell you with complete certainty that passion and seduction know no gender.

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