Porn Valley- On Monday morning I began a conversation with Ivan who directs for Anabolic Video.
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And that chat may still be going for all I know because Ivan can certainly spin a yarn. In Part 1, we reminisced a bit about our days together at Extreme and Ivan was just getting to the part where he left and later got a job at Anabolic.
“I told Anabolic I would love to work for you guys,” says Ivan. “They wanted me to work for them but wouldn’t offer what I was getting at Extreme- shooting and editing my own stuff. All I was offered was editing work and I said that’s fine. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, and thought I’m going to be in over my head. I went to a set and thought I could do this.”
Ivan describes his style as an attempt to work in a lot of preliminary tease to make the girl look pretty.
“I want guys to be so excited over the tease that they can’t wait for her to get fucked,” he explains. “And Anabolic style was more strictly gonzo. So I wanted to make the girl look pretty, show her body and personality off with energetic, Anabolic sex. I felt I could bring that to the table, and they let me shoot an Initiation scene. I was so totally excited about it that I went and had custom-made fortune cookies that said Anabolic Initiation on the inside. I shot the scene. They liked it. Then they gave me one line. Now I have seven or eight lines.”
Ivan is particularly enamored of the Sweet Cheeks titles.
“It was the first movie I shot for the company, and, unfortunately some directors got fired over it because they were, like, why couldn’t you do this? I felt bad because I do what I do. And those guys do what they do.
“I love that series so much that I pretty much spend my whole budget on them,” he continues. “That’s a series if I don’t make a penny on. I just want to put the best possible movie together.”
“At Anabolic most of our lines are niche lines,” Ivan further explains.
“We have teen anal, cream, pies, big boobs. All of them require certain things. Sweet Cheeks requires a nice ass, so that opens up the possibility of shooting almost every girl in the business for me. As long as she’s not anorexic. If she’s got a nice ass, I can shoot her. I love shooting that line.”
While the average Anabolic movie features six or seven girls, Ivan put nine girls in Sweet Cheeks 10.
“If I had my choice of two-on-one scenes, I’d rather shoot two girls and a guy than two guys and girl,” he adds.
“I prefer more pussy and boobs than cocks. But that’s my favorite line. Cream Plosions I like too because that’s a line that was created for me. I said I wanted a squirting line. They were, no, let’s do a cream pie line. Okay. But I’m still pushing for a squirting line.”
“At some point I might shoot a feature for the company but I’m not sure. It might be the same type of horror-spoof stuff I did at Extreme.”
Ivan also likes to give the girls stuffed animals promoting, of course, his website, www.iamivan.com
“I figure every girl gets a paycheck? Right? The paycheck comes and goes but a stuffed animal is forever. It’s sitting on their bed and they’re, hey, I remember him. It’s something I used to do with my ex – Kami Andrews – I gave her a stuffed animals after every scene whether she had a good day or bad. So I kept that going.”
[Andrews was the first Anabolic contract girl and was Ivan’s lead when he shot Texas Asshole Massacre. She and Ivan dated 18 months.]
Ivan also has this gimmick which he calls Girls With Cameras and shoots them assuming sultry Charlie’s Angels poses.
“It’s funny- I get girls contacting me on MySpace asking to do that,” he laughs.
“I try to do things that are a little bit different. That’s one thing that Tom Byron taught me that stuck with me. Coming from the mainstream which is a completely different ball game, I asked him how adult sales work. He was telling me it’s all about re-orders. If someone rents a movie and they decide to keep it, the store re-orders more. I figured if that’s the case I want to put something in that movie that they’ll want to show their friends because it’s something unique or different.
“Like for Texas Asshole Massacre [refer to Part 1 of the interview] I re-did the final chase scene with two girls and one girl’s chasing the other with a three-foot dildo. It’s the same scene as the mainstream movie but something like that, someone would watch.
“I just figure make sure your fans are treated right and give them the best possible product with the best possible girls and then give them something cool and a little bit different. I try to do that with every movie. And I don’t mind being the brunt of jokes.”
“One time a girl put a cum-covered rose petal on my face and I put that in the trailer,” Ivan recalls.
“It was for a line called Teenage Anal Princess. I give girls roses at the end of the scene. After a performance, this one girl was covered in cum. We took a rose petal and put it on her face. She took it off her face and put it on my face. I thought, okay, I can hit her with a camera or can laugh about it. I put it in the trailer. It makes me look weird but it’s okay. People will go, did you really do that? Yeah, so that sticks in their head. I just try to make it unique and fun. On my sets it’s always about having fun and laughing. You come in, laugh and have a good time, and that opens you up to doing a better scene.”
Ivan also makes sure he provides a lot of candy to lend a sugar rush to the mirth.
Over this past weekend he shot Nice Rack with a brand new girl named London Keys.
“She’s an Asian girl, 18 years old and beyond cute,” he says.
“I got an email from her agent Type 9 Models. I booked her for a cream pie but because she has a nice rack, natural D cups and a beautiful face I shot her for Nice Rack. She’s young, new with a lot of energy and very vocal. She is beyond cute. She did a great job.”
Ivan’s also been penning a blog for his site which has been going on now for five years.
“I get a lot of fan following from that site,” he comments.
“And people in the industry read it. I used to do it real elaborately with video clips and a video story. And I still put a lot of pictures on it. It also won a porn blog of the year award. My life is very open to a point where I got friends calling to say you shouldn’t put that stuff up there because you’re being too personal. It’s fine. I think the personal stuff helps in gathering a good reputation and then people enjoy working with you. To me that’s the most important thing.“
Ever since he was a kid Ivan wanted to be a cartoonist. After high school he got accepted to a big name fashion institute in Los Angeles.
“I went to orientation and way back I was very homophobic- it was funny,” he recalls.
“There were these gay dudes all around me because it’s a fashion institute. I didn’t know. I grew up in the inner city. So I’m going I really don’t like this. So I didn’t go there, and it’s stupid of me because it was a really great school. Then I went to a commercial arts school and took a video production course.
“So, instead of drawing, I could make a movie with a video camera? From that point on I took two years of film history, film theory then went on to getting a bachelor’s degree in cinematography and motion picture.
“That’s why I do horror movies on the side- I still have a dream of being a horror filmmaker,” says Ivan.
“I love shooting and editing and writing scripts. So I guess I fell in love with filmmaking when I was 19, maybe. But that’s a long time ago. As soon as I picked up a camera I loved it. And every day I shoot and try to create something with tricks that I’ve learned where someone will go, how did you do that? I’ve had a few movies like that. And that keeps me going by doing something different and unique. When your brain stops, you become a zombie and I don’t want to be a zombie.”
Ivan also loves the camaraderie of porn sets, and his brother who started with him at Extreme is now doing the photography at Anabolic.
“I talk to him every day and you can’t beat that. You work together, trust each other and you can leave your wallet around,” he laughs.
“Boy I remember the night my brother quit Extreme,” Ivan goes on.
“He quit and the next day he had a job with Diabolic. That was a rough night and a very uncomfortable moment.”
After he joined up with Anabolic, Ivan took one of the company directors with him over to Extreme.
“He was curious to see how it was. I told him you have to be prepared for this. It was one of the craziest days at Extreme. We walked in and there was Zupko in one room shooting his Ass Squirts and one girl is squirting colored apple juice over another girl. There was a midget on a cross dressed as Jesus, screaming.
“In the next room a girl is shooting a Slap Happy. Then there’s Lizzy getting pictures taken for some clothing ad.”
“This guy goes does it get like this every day? I go not this bad but pretty close. He goes, wow, I’d like to work here. I go, maybe…like now I work with guys who never heard of Extreme Associates. I tell them it was like walking into your boss’s office and he growls at you, ‘suck my balls. Go Fuck yourself. It’s entertaining if you’re in a good mood. If you’re in a shitty mood, then it’s a problem.”
Realizing that every day in the industry presents something new and new challenges, Ivan carries his camera around with him.
“There were times that I didn’t carry it with me and blew perfectly good opportunities,” he laughs.
“It used to be in my car all the time. Then I had someone break into it and steal most of my equipment. Now even when I go to a restaurant I carry it with me. I’m not leaving it in the truck any more. I try to shoot as much as I can.”
“There’s a lot of interesting people you meet in the industry and working in porn really makes you tolerant of others,” he reflects.
“You deal with so many different types, characters and so many fucked up individuals that you have to learn how to deal with people like that. Like I was very homophobic. Now I’m tolerant of everything and everybody – it doesn’t matter. You respect people for what they do. And working for Anabolic, I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.”