Porn Valley- Ivan now directs for Anabolic Video but we met years ago back in the Extreme Associates days of hallway buffoonery, spitballs and bouncing paychecks. Ivan, www.iamivan.com was shooting BTS at the time and was looking for a full time gig.
We talked about that and a lot of other foxhole combat stories when we chatted Monday afternoon. Ivan, who’s been directing mainstream horror movies 11 years besides porn, is a happy man and it’s reflected in the velocity of his chatter.
Right now, he’s in the middle of editing three movies and is producing another two. On the average, he shoots maybe two movies a month.
“It gets pretty busy, pretty hectic. But I love my job. I make my own schedule and do what I want. The nice thing, too, is if I find a girl attractive, I can shoot her. I can see her naked. And shoot her in a scene I'd like to see her in."
"And I still do my horror stuff on the side,” he's telling me. “That keeps me sane.”
Ivan used to shoot in the mainstream and remembers working for people who didn't appreciate his efforts. He remembers a few people he worked side by side with who went further along.
"But you'd think they would toss me a bone?" he asks, laughing.
And Ivan still does his horror stuff mostly for film festivals and review by magazines.
“A few months back Fangoria had their horror convention which they have every year- we got a booth and promoted our movie Roadside Killer, www.roadsidekiller.com there."
“It’s a series of shorts,” he explains.
“Originally we had a feature in mind and Roadside Killer was going to be a ‘short’ within the movie. What happened was the funding fell through for the feature and we stayed with the short. It’s a comedy and it makes fun of the horror genre. It’s that whole serial killer, stalking the girl type of thing. Then we shot another one and now we’re working on feature-length scripts again.”
I asked him if he was attending the upcoming Comic-con in San Diego. Or, at least I would have assumed he was. Ivan says no.
“I’m just too busy and I didn’t even know it was coming up,” he laughs.
“To be honest, I don’t even know special engagements that go on in our industry. I work seven days a week and probably sleep at the office three or four days a week.”
One would trust this routine comes with a generous change of shorts, cologne and T-shirts.
“If somebody comes up and asks are you going to the party tonight I go what party? Then I would probably drive to Topanga Mall and buy myself a T-shirt and take a shower so I could go to it. My life’s kind of stuck in my office.”
Ivan doesn’t mind people knowing both his mutual connection with the horror genre and the adult industry.
“A lot of people don’t want to be associated with porn for whatever,” he says. “I’m not going to be the president; I’m not running for Congress. I’m not embarrassed by what I do. I just work my ass off to make the best possible adult movies I can. I want to be proud of that. I’m not showing them to my grandparents, obviously. So I don’t mind doing the cross-promotion. When I have my horror stuff I don’t mind stating my real name and also known as Ivan from Anabolic. I’m proud of both."
Ivan mentions the fact that he’ll use porn girls in his horror movies so it stands to reason that he gets tempting offers. He used to date one of the girls in the business. And Ivan’s office is a wallpapering of horror posters and two six foot Killer Klowns.
“When girls come into the office they see this stuff and wonder what’s this all about?” he says. “I tell them I do horror movies and they want to be in them.”
“In the first ‘Roadside Killer’ we used a now ex porn girl,” he continues. “She was working for Anabolic and we brought her in to do the movie. She was in the industry for a short time.”
At the mention of Extreme, Ivan says, “you were always a big supporter of us- you were on our sets and it was great seeing you. I remember one time you saying you wanted to make my name a household one in the industry. It was really cool. And you told me something I tell every new girl- you said there was nothing adult about the adult industry. And that stuck in my head.”
While he was at Extreme, Ivan also got to shoot footage for XPW wrestling besides the BTS for porn.
“I quickly realized that there were a few people not doing their jobs as well as they could,” he reflects without naming those names.
“One day I was coming back from a long day on set and I called Kevin the general manager at the time. I said something, if you’re paying those guys to shoot your movies, please give me an opportunity. That’s all I ask. But this guy was a really, really cool dude. The fact is I’m going you’re shitting me, right? Then when I saw how the movie came out I could totally see why it turned out that way. The movie was so bad it never went to a reviewer. I was a P.A. on it. Then they gave me an opportunity to shoot.”
After that Ivan got more of an opportunity to shoot when the merger of Extreme and Evolution came about.
“Then I got ultimate creative freedom,” he says. “The only guidelines I got were you can’t shit and you can’t fist. Everything else, do what the fuck you want. They said you could do a rough scene or pissing, whatever you want. But if you do those two other things, make sure it only goes to the web. Besides the restrictions of the budget [$8,000 to $10,000] they let me do whatever I wanted.”
Then Ivan began shooting horror porno spoofs like Texas Asshole Massacre.
“A couple of them got some good reviews and a few rewards,” he says. “It led to a job offer from a really big porn feature company. But I turned it down because I was loyal to Rob and Tommy. It was very flattering and I debated that for the longest time.”
Ivan talks about how he got an e-mail from a fan who contacted him about a porn feature he had shot several years previous.
“It was very cool, very flattering that people still watch them,” reflects Ivan.
“I also got to meet Sylvester Stallone’s son Sage. He was a big fan of Texas Asshole Massacre. That was the one that got me the job offer.
[Me, I’m still waiting for that offer from Bill Gaits regarding Great American Ass.]
“But he [Sage] was a fan of that and to me that was awesome,” laughs Ivan, noting that during his length of stay, Extreme was something of a revolving door. While I was there, 78 people came and left. While he was there, Ivan thinks it may have been another 40 people who came and disappeared, including Guy Capo and a graphic artist.
“Every single one of those people left on horrible terms,” he notes.
“Somebody on set mentioned that to me and I said do you realize that instead of 40 assholes, there was one common denominator. I’m not saying Rob was a total dick but I’m telling you there’s a reason people are leaving. If you worked for Extreme you had to be very loyal and dedicated to your job. It tests you. I was dedicated to the company and was very loyal. I love my job. Tommy [Byron] taught me a lot about the industry. So did Rob. With Rob I learned how to do certain things. But there comes a time with everybody where it’s I can’t be here any more. I couldn’t deal with certain things.”
Ivan recalls the inside joke about the green check and the blue check. One was issued which was meant to bounce. The other was the good one.
“And I felt bad for Tommy because he was quiet and kept to himself,” Ivan continues. “He was lost in the shuffle a little bit.”
After the federal bust in April 2003, Extreme pretty much folded its tent.
“That’s why they brought me in to shoot for Evolution,” Ivan recalls.
“Evolution had good momentum and was making really cool movies. When Extreme mended fences with AVN, they started shooting again and that put Evolution on the back burner. That’s when Guy Capo left. They think he left because of the money-thing. He thought he wasn’t getting the opportunity to shoot much. At least that’s what he told me. Things were going well but there was some decision making causing problems.”
By the time Extreme moved from North Hollywood to a new expansive headquarters on Canoga [which is now closed], Ivan had left the company on his own terms.
“I quit two weeks before they moved,” he recalls. “It was good timing for me because I didn’t want to help them move then quit. I knew I wasn’t going to get paid anyways. I just told them I as leaving for another job but I sat for a month. I had a couple of companies offer me work but I didn’t want to leave for that reason.”
“Zupko came back to the company before I quit and they were doing really crazy, crazy stuff,” Ivan continues. “Stuff that didn’t even make sense.”
I mention the Shane Bugbee project involving the Black Mass and Ivan has an anecdote to add to that.
“I met Shane Bugbee because he always read my blogs,” states Ivan. “He contacted me once in awhile and I finally met him the time before he came there. He was disappointed because he wanted me to do the camerawork on that. I said I wasn’t there any more, but that I wanted to work with him. The timing wasn’t right. I also told him to be careful because you’re going to get a lot of promises. And most likely none of them are ever going to come true.”
During the time he was hanging out at home, Ivan says he was very nervous about an uneasy situation which could have resulted in permamnent unemployment.
“I worked for the company three and half years and didn’t know anyone in the industry," he says.
"Because when you work for Extreme you’re kind of secluded. Then when you told people you worked for Extreme you got that kind of look on their face. I said I wasn’t like that so I just sat around and weighed my options.”
Ivan began hanging out socially with other people in the business and one day he walked into Anabolic and said, “I’d like to work for you guys.”
To be continued
