Dana Vespoli interview / Podcast
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FunTranscript
00:00So Dana, you and I shot together like forever ago. Do you remember that?
00:26I remember it was 2005.
00:27Yeah.
00:28I remember that.
00:29Yeah.
00:30And it was at my mom's studio.
00:31Yeah.
00:32And it was with two guys. I can't remember their name.
00:36There were two different shoots. One was with Marco Banderas.
00:39Okay.
00:40And then the other one was with Tyler Knight.
00:43Yes, that's who it was.
00:44And a guy called Max.
00:45Yes. God, you've got a great memory.
00:48I remember the weirdest thing.
00:49Yeah. You know, I used to always remember like, I'm like an idiot about most things.
00:55Like literally, I won't remember what we talked about five minutes ago, but I'm almost like
00:59kind of like Rain Man when it comes to my shoots. Like I will remember every shoot,
01:03who I shot, what they wore, where we were, but I've actually started to lose that. I've
01:07noticed over like the last couple of years, I'm starting to forget shoots that I did.
01:13And I'm kind of sad about it, though, to be fair, I've been in this industry for 20 years,
01:18and I've done thousands of shoots, like thousands. And so I don't know why I expect myself to
01:24be able to remember all that. But I feel like that's the one like piece of like intelligence
01:29that I can grasp on to because all my other like smarts have gone out my brain because
01:34it's just been filled with porn. But we shot in an alley, and we shot with a car, didn't
01:42we?
01:43Yeah, I was like a limo driver.
01:44Yeah, yeah, that's what it was. I like that. That was actually a really cool idea. I wanted
01:50to do another shoot like that, like as a female limo driver. Nobody else would be listening
01:54to this and take my fucking idea. God damn it.
01:56You'd better rip and shoot it.
01:58I know, right? Because everybody listens to this podcast. So what are you up to lately?
02:07So you started off as a performer, and you've been doing like a ton of directing now. Is
02:11that like pretty much mostly what you're doing these days?
02:14Yeah, mostly. I started directing in 2006 with New Sensations, and then from there shot
02:24for some other places, some companies that are now defunct.
02:27There's a lot of those.
02:29Oh, yeah. And then Bang Bros for a short period of time, a little bit. And then I came back
02:36in earnest in like 2011 and started with Mile High for Sweetheart. And then I had my
02:45own stuff over at Evil Angel.
02:48It was like lesbian anal fisting POV? Lesbian anal POV?
02:52Yeah, there was some of that. And then Mile High was Sweetheart for many years, Sweetheart
03:01and Transcentral, so some TS stuff. And then I stopped shooting with Mile High in September.
03:12So I started shooting content for a site that I started with a partner, my partner Sal Genoa.
03:20So he shoots it and does stills. It's called Terror XXX, and it's essentially, it's horror
03:29porn.
03:30Okay. So that's super interesting to me. I've never had anybody on before who's like been
03:37into horror porn or shot horror porn. So can you explain, for those people who haven't
03:43ever seen horror porn, can you kind of explain what it is?
03:47Sure. To be fair, so when I started at Evil, the first movie I did was a horror movie.
03:53Okay, what was that?
03:54It was called Forsaken, about a girl who dies and doesn't realize she's dead.
03:59Oh, wow.
04:00And it's what happens. It stars Ash Hollywood. So I'd always had an interest in horror. I
04:06mean, from the time I was little. But it's a thing where you're always concerned about
04:13marketability, of course, in what we do and how we're always trying to make sure that
04:18what we're doing is going to make us money, is going to generate money, or else we can't
04:23keep doing it.
04:24Right.
04:25So fast forward a few years. And last spring, I saw a site called Horror Porn. I think it's
04:34based out of Czech Republic.
04:35Yeah, I've seen it.
04:37And so I thought, holy shit, there's a market for it. It seems successful. So then I thought
04:43I'd like to sort of put my, you know, I'd like to take this in a direction that interests
04:50me.
04:51Right.
04:52So I called WebGuy. And so we started shooting content for it. So the name of the site will
04:56be TerraXXX. We're supposed to launch at some point. We're supposed to launch last month.
05:01Hopefully it'll happen before Christmas.
05:03Yeah, those launch dates are never solid. I don't know anyone who's been like, who's
05:08had a website and like, we're going to, who's ever stuck to the initial launch dates, literally
05:12never happened.
05:13Right. But I feel compelled to talk about it because it's, I need to promote it for
05:17when it does get out. But yeah, so there's a lot of correlations between like fear and
05:26arousal.
05:27Yeah. If you think about it, those are kind of like two of like our most basic drives,
05:33fear and sex.
05:34Yep.
05:35Those are the two things that like people cling on to. I mean, look at the media. All
05:40it's ever selling is fear or sex. Fear of getting old or you've got to take these creams
05:46so that you don't look so old so then people won't have sex with you. It's like, you know,
05:50it's so like incredibly intertwined.
05:52It is. I mean, I guess they're the two things that drive us. So in growing up, you know,
05:59there were so much, I was just compelled to watch these movies. I've seen so many horror
06:05movies. It's nuts. And the kind of feelings that would surface, you know, feeling excited
06:10and also being turned on by certain elements like vampires and succubi and to a certain
06:20degree like minotaurs and these kind of things.
06:23And I think about all like the rough sex that I did in porn and the rough sex that I've
06:28shot. And I interviewed, we last shot Maya Kendrick. And I asked her, you know, do you
06:35like to be scared? And she talked about enjoying that feeling of fear and with all the kind
06:41of BDSM that she's done and the unexpected and anticipation. And so these are the types
06:47of feelings that I find really interesting.
06:51So it's been fun and it's risky. You know, we don't have a lot of money. So we'll take
06:56a big risk like, okay, this is what we're going to shoot. And I'm like, this is a great
06:59idea. And we get there, I'm like, holy shit, this could be really bad if it's not done
07:04right.
07:05Yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:06So it's been fun.
07:07Do you have an example of like that specific situation where you're like, this could be
07:14bad if it's not done right?
07:15We shot a minotaur scene.
07:17I saw a picture of that on your Twitter. I like the way that you created it as like a
07:21silhouette.
07:22Yeah.
07:23Yeah. Is that kind of what you're talking about?
07:24Yes.
07:25It's hard unless you have like a ton of money for special effects, makeup, and like costuming.
07:30Yeah, that can be...
07:32It could be really bad.
07:33It could be really bad.
07:34Well, I think about that too. I forgot if it was, I think it was either HP Lovecraft
07:40or Aleister Crowley. Someone said that, you know, there's essentially there's nothing
07:45more terrifying than what's in your own mind. And so like, I remember seeing the movie,
07:52it's the M. Night Shyamalan movie Signs, which was really, I was watching, I was getting
07:56into it. And then the problem was the big reveal. I was like, ah, that's the alien.
08:03I liked seeing the shadows and the little feet and like these kinds of things that,
08:07you know.
08:08Yeah. It's interesting, actually, if you, I'm sure you probably know this story about
08:11the movie Jaws.
08:12Yeah.
08:13And how like the mechanical shark like didn't work. And so like for most of the film, and
08:19so for most of the film, you couldn't see, you never, you didn't see the shark because
08:23like they literally couldn't get it to work. And Steven Spielberg, I think this was like
08:27his first big film. He was like, this is going to be a disaster. This is the end of my career.
08:31The mechanical shark is not working. And it turns out that because you couldn't see it
08:37for most of the movie, that's kind of what made it so compelling.
08:40Yeah.
08:41Exactly what you're saying. Like what's in your mind is usually more terrifying than
08:45the reality. And then of course, you know, us now with our special effects and everything,
08:50now looking at that mechanical shark, we're like, oh my God, that looks so fake.
08:52Right, right.
08:53So the scary part was when you didn't see it.
08:55Yeah.
08:56Yeah.
08:57I remember the girl, she's in the, at the beginning of the movie and she's in the ocean
08:59and all of a sudden she's like being pulled under and she's freaking out and then she's
09:02moving. Oh, it was, yeah.
09:04Yeah. Because we are, we are, and as also as human beings, we are so afraid of what
09:08we can't see.
09:09Yeah.
09:10And that's why the ocean is so terrifying.
09:11Yeah.
09:12And the dark.
09:13Yeah.
09:15It's true.
09:16Yeah.
09:17So go on.
09:18Oh, yeah. So, so yeah. So we're hopefully going to launch before the new year. I said
09:28before Christmas, now I'm saying before the new year.
09:30Yeah.
09:31Well, it'll, I mean, when it'll come out, it'll be worth it. There's always like so
09:33much work that goes into that.
09:37Yeah.
09:38It's, so it's interesting that what, what, can you tell us a little bit more about like
09:41the types of scenes or who you've shot for the movie or anything specific?
09:45Sure. So we've shot Lily Love, Maya Kendrick, Lily La, I almost said Lily LaBeau, Ivy LaBelle,
09:57and Damon Dice has been in it. I've been in a few of the scenes. We've shot Sovereign
10:06Sire for one of the scenes. What else? I might be forgetting people, but those are
10:13the first cluster of scenes that we have.
10:16Do you find that there's certain boundaries that you have to be careful not to cross?
10:19Like I know some companies, like the ones that I work for, like you can't have blood
10:23and sex in the same scene.
10:24Exactly. That's, and fortunately for me at Evil Angel, I was, because I would send these
10:32emails and it'd be something like, you know, to John Staliano and the subject would be...
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