This weekend we had the opportunity to chat with Robert Hunington, who, along with his wife Nicole London, are lending master strokes to the destiny of Outback Productions- outbackxxx.net- a relatively new adult company on the scene. Besides being one of the owners, Hunington, who has a background in advertising, also directs. He talks about his two latest back-to-back projects.
Hunington: We’re shooting a film whose working title is Signs; the other one is called Spunn- you can’t steal someone else’s title [in this case, Spun]. Spunn is just that. It’s a very spun movie and a very visual point. If I were to desire anything from the audience watching it, I hope their gut would be in a knot through the show, that they would have just as much anxiety and angst into the characters as the characters themselves do. It’s very quickly cut- a fast motion effect, a grimy sort of light show that will parallel the mainstream feature out there of the same title. It’s about the editing. It’s about the acting. It’s about the fact that these people are basically speed-freaks. Only the speed is the sex- they’re always craving, and some are always buying and some are always selling. There’s a lot of cuts in this movie that are reactionary; we have dialogues going on and then we come back to just a reactionary face. I get them for about 30 seconds to kind of flip out their face, lick their teeth, rub their face and give it a 5-second fast motion effect.

Gene: Your stuff is kind of minimal dialogue because you’re telling your story mostly through the visuals.

Hunington: Most of the stuff, yeah. I care a lot more about the visual orientation with the viewer than I really would expect any viewer to care about. I’d like to be known as the David Lynch of porn. The cuts, the style, the light, the mood, the feeling of just wanting to know what’s coming next.

Gene: What’s the second feature like?

Hunington: The second is a little melodramatic movie about this ring of players, quasi-drifters that make their way in and out of these little private speakeasy-type game/casino rooms where people have money and people like to bet. It’s a narrative throughout the story in voiceover of one male lead character who’s telling our audience the secret. Basically it’s not any one secret except for the fact that the audience knows something in the movie that the other characters don’t. It’s all voiceover. It’s a linguistic form of these drifters, their terms to things in the way of speaking, the way of acting. Basically the women are the distraction to the men stealing the money. The visual is basically the style of the movie, with the cards and the roulette wheel.

Gene: How was it like getting an adult company started.

Hunington: It began a full six months before we began actual release dates. What’s it like? A lot of work. We have two children, Nicole and I, and between business work, office hours never quit.

Gene: How did you get your interest in filmmaking.

Hunington: I went to school for advertising. In school, we came aboard storyboarding. A little bit of video and editing was involved. I really got into storyboarding. It was either writing flowery stuff or drawing- visually making flowery stuff. Film really splits that hair for me. It allows me to express myself in Kerouac visual, if you will.

Gene: What kind of commercials were you making.

Hunington: A bunch of different this and thats, AT&T Commercials, commercials for some Japanese company. Speaking of Japan in ’99 or 2000, some Japanese guy had some solo folk song that we d.p.d the video for. For awhile it was the number one video in Japan. That was very cool. Hey, that was my work. Then there were car commercials- lighting sexy women on cars. It’s all sex appeal.

Gene: You mentioned David Lynch. Any other director or movie maker that’s been an influence on you?

Hunington: Besides Lynch, Tarantino.

Gene: You can’t make a lick of sense out of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. That was out there.

Hunington: But you kept asking the question, right? Mulholland Drive is a little bit of a different form of Lynch. You go back to Eraserhead and stuff. I saw that when I was 16. It made me go wow. Robert Rodriguez also came out of that stuff.

Gene: Have you seen Once Upon a Time in Mexico?

Hunington: No, but I heard it’s phenomenal. And shot on DVD. I also like El Mariachi, a very cool little movie. It makes you guess and think. His is a lot of the way I do a lot of things. I don’t really care about this big grandiose shot of everything that’s going on unless it really matters psychologically to the film. A lot of times the more psychology is with the peoples faces and their eyes. That whole Rodriguez style. My camera is right here. Give me the emotion I’m asking for.

Gene: Give me your views of Asylum. Where did you get the inspiration for this.

Hunington: Straight up, the inspiration was from a film called Session 9. It’s about a group of asbestos removers that go into an actual asylum. They said the whole aura of the joint drove them nuts. They go in and spirits overtake them. They make a parallel in between the reality life subject and a spiritual dead girl subject- and what happened to both these lives. That movie kind of leaves you hanging, too. You’re given a little insight and go, huh? That’s actually what I wanted Asylum to do- be kind of spooky in the sharp jumps it makes from one thing to another, but then kind of leads you on this kind of spirit-ethereal-lingering-watching-feeling. Women are lingering in the hall as Evan Stone reads the book about the place.

Gene: What made you decide to get into adult movie making.

Hunington: A friend of mine a long time ago, his family owned the company. The Zicaris. Matt Zane and Rob Black are related, I grew up in upstate New York with those guys. We grew up as kids. They brought me out here producing in ’95.

Gene: What were you doing then.

Hunington: I jumped right into the production managing realm for them. Actually the exact opposite from what I do now. But before school, I started with a union in small theater, so as far as lighting and visual inspiration, it’s been concerts, theater- that’s where I first started climbing ropes, climbing grids, focusing lights. I look at myself and say you’re pretty damn lucky because you don’t know anything but show business. Good thing you have a job.

Gene: How did you and Nicole meet.

Hunington: First time I was doing a lighting gig and we just kind of met. She caught my eye right off the bat. We began talking and she began hiring me. She started calling me for all kinds of stuff, hooking me up. And I would hook her up- anything I could to make a good relationship between us and it sort of carried on. She went through her times; I went through my times. And we kind of came around full circle when we were both done with the weird stuff, ready to form a unit and project into life what we have to offer. We’re perfect halves of each other in every aspect from this business to anything else spiritual, emotional, or psychological. We’re actually each other’s other half.

Gene: You talked about lining your ducks in a row at least six months before your first release. Financial backing is the primary concern of any company getting of the ground.

Hunington: What happened there was we met someone who had a money backer. That backer turned out to be a connection to the actual backer who’s still with us today- J. Andrews, our executive partner in Australia. That person we had met contacted Nicole because she’s the best in this business at producing as far as I’m concerned. She knows her shit and all the stuff. Their way of life, I’ll just say, got really in the way of being able to pick them up off the ground. So she decided to walk away. When that happened, that middle man to J. Andrews called her and said, no way, I’m getting rid of them. You’re staying with me. Andrews met her and said I want you with me, only. On the way to where we are now, some serious embezzling took place. That middle man got thrown off some corporate papers and J. Andrews, Nicole, myself and Dixie formed quite a strong bond as far as trusting each other. Of course at that point, our pockets became a little deeper because of J. Andrews and he was welcomed into this business. It’s been really cool.

Gene: Talk about your first projects.

Hunington: The first film written and done was called Envy. The first release was Adultress. Adultress we all like better because of the quality of camera, quality of editing. It’s our first in-house edit project. To be blunt, we know what we’re doing with our company and we go in the direction we want to. In a lot of times, outer influences got in the way, so we were happy with Adultress being released first. Envy was a movie that we weren’t happy with the camera, cameraman or editor. Although Envy is quite the mind fuck of a script. And people actually seem to be liking it. It’s doing quite well for us. A little bit better than Adultress, to tell you the truth.