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“I love when my imagination obsesses on a concept because when I finally write it, it’s liberating to see the idea go from a thought in my head to a film.” – Kay Brandt
Kay Brandt is an award winning Adult Movie filmmaker with a true passion for writing and directing. Not to stop there, she has a zest for life with no boundaries or labels, which I found refreshing in this exclusive interview. At times, the writer doesn’t get the credit they truly deserve to the overall film, but when you hear as you recently did in my exclusive interview with another Adult Movie writer, Jacky St. James, and now Kay, you understand as their words jump off the written page in their answers.
Without the writer, you have no film, whether in the adult movie business or mainstream. So to all the writers out there who have found success such as Kay, and to the ones struggling to achieve success, but have the passion, you will want to pay close attention when reading this interview.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Ms Kay Brandt…
NB: Let’s catch the NewzBreaker readers up on what projects you are currently working on?
At this time I’m working with New Sensations, developing all girl/lesbian content for their Sappho Series line. I’ve made two films for them so far, the first two episodes of a kinky, fetish filled, twisted sex series called “Against Her Will”. Loaded with fishnets, blindfolds, and ropes, I’m diving deep into my lesbian fantasies of Dom/Sub and older woman/young girl pairings with these films, as well as fetish orgies. Erotic seduction meets S&M with a naughty, unfolding plot/story of a woman’s journey in becoming a submissive sex slave to a dominant sexual powerhouse vixen.
NB: Where did you grow up? How did growing up there lead to your interest in writing lesbian erotica that centers on the psychological aspects of desire as well as the physical?
I grew up mostly in and around Los Angeles where billboards advertising sexually oriented content are everywhere. I remember being 6 years old the first time I saw a giant billboard for scantily clad “Angeline” spreading her sexiness all over the hood of her infamous pink corvette on my way to school in the mornings. I remember wondering who she was and why she was posing like that and if that’s how grown women behave and dress and yet I couldn’t get the images of her shocking blonde hair and pouting pink lips out of my mind.
Angeline was a ‘rock star’, I guess, a media sensation of her own creation and money. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars creating and promoting herself into a Hollywood Icon–an image still seen today, even though it is more than 20 years later–and yet no one really knew who she was or what she did to deserve all those prime location billboards. The boldness of sex that covered Hollywood then was totally inappropriate for children to see, but we did, constantly, and some were not affected by it, but I was, deeply. Outward displays of sex, and erotic images from my years going to elementary school in Hollywood truly got into my psyche, and since I was a teenager I felt drawn to pornography and explicit material and my curiosity went way beyond the physical.
I wondered just as deeply about whom these people engaging in explicit activity were, and what they were thinking, and how did they end up on that billboard or publication. The sheer allure of nudity and sexuality triggers often too many thoughts within me, which brings me to want to explore how the mind translates desire and passion and need once the instant physical attraction has subsided, as in, seeing a picture or naked body and feeling turned on, and then how the mental process keeps you intrigued.
NB: Before you started writing scripts for adult movies, what type of work did you do? How did that job lead you to your writing for adult movies?
I was a mainstream writer/director/producer for 20 years, and the owner of a Los Angeles Theatre company. My first love as a writer is being a playwright. The first play I ever wrote was about two lesbian strippers who were in a turbulent sexual relationship with each other. I produced that play back in 1996, and still to this day I have no idea why or how the idea of lesbian strippers consumed me enough to actually create a play around these characters, but it did and it was successful and launched my entire career as a Los Angeles playwright.
From that point on I continued to be drawn to stories that centered on sex and sexual situations. When my resume was found by the owner of Girlfriends Films on a mainstream job board, it seemed like a natural step to crossover into adult filmmaking, and oddly, starting with making lesbian films. It’s as if I was preparing for it since my first production, but I never thought the path I was on would lead me in this direction…and I’m happy it did.
NB: Recently, I interviewed one of your colleagues Writer/Director Jacky St. James, a writer, that I have a lot of respect for. In our interview, she said, “A lot of people discount porn writing – assuming that it’s easy.” What are your thoughts about her comment?
It’s not easy, but it’s not harder than any other writing I’ve done. Writing is a difficult job entirely…hours upon hours of sitting alone, most of the time for me in silence, thinking, imagining, conceptualizing, breathing life into characters and situations and having to make it all seem worthy of being made into a film, or a play or a book. It is a frustrating and often emotionally draining job that I want to smash to bits sometimes. It’s never easy to write out a story and make it seamless, and then make the incorporation of sex inside the story seamless.
What Jacky and I do is make the sex a perfectly natural part of the story as opposed to writing setups to justify the sex or make a sex film come across with more substance. “Story Porn” writers have the challenge of writing a coherent story that blends well with explicit scenes and we still follow the three-act structure of storytelling and give thought to developing the characters as fully as possible. If all we had to do is jot down a few naughty ideas and then film them, it would be easy…but that’s not at all what we do.
NB: You have written and directed adult movies. What are the things you like most about both and the least?
I love when my imagination obsesses on a concept because when I finally write it, it’s liberating to see the idea go from a thought in my head to a film. I’m giddy at the notion that I’m exposing my fantasies, my wildest, nastiest thoughts and putting it out there for anyone and everyone to see, and yet, I can still somehow not own it either as really from my own mind. I love when my fans ask me how I came up with my ideas. It’s hard for me to believe that we don’t all think the things that are in my brain, because they seem natural. What I like least about writing is the writing. It’s tedious as much as it is wonderfully fun.
Directing is another beast, and if I could be one or the other, I would choose being a director. The writing often feels like a means to an end, the end being me getting to do what I love doing more than anything else in this world, and that’s directing. I’m passionate about taking the written word and putting it into action, making it come alive and putting my own creative spin on it (yes, I actually feel I put my own creative directing spin on my own writing).
Writing is solitary and directing is the social party, the action, the forward manifestation of the seed that grew into the script. I love being visual, and getting inside the heads of the actors/performers I work with and guiding them to find their own truth within the characters they’ve been cast to play. I love the give and take, the realization, the end result. The only thing I dislike about directing is when no matter how hard you to try, sometimes even the best ideas must be compromised and unrealized, scratched and tossed out. I hate giving up as a director, but that’s the glitch…being clear enough to know when something is false and wrong and then being brave enough to let it go and move on.
NB: Do you have that one Citizen Kane in you, but every time you put words to paper, you cannot finish it?
The mere question makes my palms sweaty. I have a few scripts that are on the personal ‘opus’ level, yes, and the fact that I have not been able to finish them, some for a decade now, haunts me and gives me anxiety. I don’t know what it is that keeps them unfinished or what creates the enormous amount of blockage when I attempt working on them. I have some scripts that actually cause me to feel ill when I think of finishing them. What a strange dynamic a writer can have with their own work. I hate the unfinished and I truly hope I can wrap my brain around my epic concepts, complete them, and set them free one day. I will finally be at peace when I do.
NB: What are your thoughts on “MEASURE B”?
B stands for bullshit, I think. I certainly hope those politicians and government fools who like to stick their fingers in the adult industry don’t have any need, want or taste for porn because if they keep up their stances, we won’t have a business anymore. This would make many happy, I know, and if they do manage to wipe us heathens from the face of entertainment, I hope they don’t ever have inappropriate sexual thoughts when their organs need some attention.
God forbid they should ever long to see a cock without a condom fucking a woman who truly wants to take it bare back, which most performers prefer for many reasons. God forbid they realize that most performers do care about their bodies and their physical safety and they’re not just mindless sex fiends with no care for disease control.
NB: You have won both an AVN and XBIZ Award for Best All Girl Release 2012. What was that experience like?
It was surreal. The awards are like the wicked step children of the Oscars or Emmys. The shows are noisy and fueled with sexual energy and awards for things like, Best All Anal Orgy. Performers are an excited bunch and keeping them quite for extended periods is impossible. I was in a state of shock, I think, at the award shows, like being in someone else’s life for the moment. Out of all my years in mainstream I never won anything, but I come to work in the adult business for three years and I win big awards at both of the two major shows. I still am in shock about it. It’s very cool, though, and hearing my movies announced as the winners above the others were an exhilarating moment that I will never forget. I feel very fortunate to have won.
NB: What are your words of wisdom to the young man or woman wanting to break into the writing field you have found success in?
I say do it for a hobby, as an expression of the art within you, or as the expression goes, to release the fire within. However, be very aware of how tough it is to make money as a writer, especially these days. The mainstream industry is smaller and so is the adult business. Paid work is not easy to come by. I know too many writers who can only get unpaid writing assignments and they can’t make ends meet because being a writer is all they’ve ever been. Write because you love it, and try to not put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.
NB: Who do you feel is the one Adult Movie Star that has moved the industry forward the most and why?
Any performer that has successfully crossed over into mainstream film has. They serve to blur the lines between what is accepted and what is not. They serve to reduce stigma for adult performers and to allow for performers to be seen as worthy entertainers on a bigger level. Riley Steele, Kayden Kross, Sasha Grey are on that level and have made their porn names socially acceptable on mainstream media, with some exceptions, of course.
NB: Do you feel the Democrats who as we know, hold the Oval Office need to do more for the Porn Industry, a huge tax revenue base, and an industry that creates many jobs?
Yes, they should, but I don’t ever see that happening. Politics, with all its known and unknown modes of operation, will never openly be a friend to the porn business. It’s too risky to say you are ‘for’ the porn business and then go kiss babies to stay in office. One day I hope we can all be strong and fearless in support of the adult business, but I don’t see that happening for a long, long time, if ever. The flipside is that the porn business is creating fewer and fewer jobs these days and that is due to nothing other than piracy. Less money being spent in favor of stealing hurts everyone.
NB: If Mitt Romney wins the election and the Republicans take control of the Oval Office, how do you think it will affect the porn industry?
It’s hard to say. I don’t really have an opinion on this at this time. If he does, I just hope he has a soft spot in his heart for a certain porn star and that alone would keep him from getting too involved with the sector.
NB: What is the one question to date, you have never been asked, but wish that you were?
What is your stance on God?
NB: The floor is yours….
Although it seems trendy these days to be ‘spiritual and not religious’, I am spiritual AND secretly religious. I don’t believe in God as an entity, but as an energy, which would make God a ‘that’ and not an ‘it’. However, when I pray, I do see an image, mostly of an icon, but I pray to the Universe and hope, hope, hope that something good is listening.
NB: If you were stranded on a desert island, what is the one CD and movie you would like to have?
The one CD would be Zenyatta Mondatta from my favorite band in the whole world, The Police. The movie would be National Lampoon’s Animal House or John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. I never stop laughing when I watch either movie, and if I were stranded, I’d want to laugh as often as possible.
NB: What is one thing you can share with the NewzBreaker readers that has never been heard before?
I’m obsessed with Disneyland and all things Disney. I’m thinking about getting my first ever tattoo…and the tattoo would be images from the insanely profound animated short Walt did with Salvatore Dali back in the late 1940′s called “Destino”.
NB: Finally, do you have a saying you continue to live your life by?
“Be cool. Fly low and avoid the radar. Don’t sweat the small shit. Live, love, laugh.”
If you’re looking to get your talent interviewed for NewzBreaker.com, contact “Bad” Brad at [email protected]