HS: Where can we see these lovely documentary films?
PJS: Well my student film in in the collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The queer sun culture stuff and THE AIDS activism stuff is in the New York Public Library, Th e UCLA Legacy collection, the One Institute for Gay and Lesbian Studies. NBC purchased some of my footage to use when George Bush got elected.
I was able to make some really fun wild films about the many gay subcultures.

HS: Would you use any of these people, the faeries, the drag kings etcetera in any of your porn films.
PJS: No, I would never let any of these people on my sets. I love all these people, but that's not the genre for porn

HS: But doesn't using the same tintypes of masculinity become boring, all those lean, athletic, buffed, generously endowed, handsome studs?

PSJ: Not at all. They never become boring. Everyone fantasizes about sexy, hot guys. I'll tell you what is boring to see in porn, fucking in a bed. Rarely do people fuck in bed in my movies. Let's go to places where people never fuck at and do things that you'd never do at home like stick popsicles up butts or go crazy with body paint or double penetration. Everybody loves double penetration. If they don't do it, they love to watch it.

HS: Friendship what does it mean to you?
PSJ: Friendship means unconditional love. Friendship means not being judgmental. Someone who is there for you and you are there for them. It's a 2 way street.
That's like the A-list. The B-list can contain people that challenge me in fresh ways or make me think in ways I never thought before or tell me about interesting movies that I haven't seen before or give me things to read that challenge my sensibilities or tell me about places that I've never been.
Sometimes you're lucky enough to have those friends in the first list and sometimes you're not.
I am not as lucky in love as I am in friendships or work. I guess you could say sometimes I work smart and fuck dumb.

HS: So you're not lucky in relationships?
PSJ: No, I have not been lucky in that area, but I love to make love. Often I end up having sex with a hot guy and we part ways, then I call up my best friend, go out and have couple of bottles of wine mixed with talk about everything in life. I haven't been able to do that with lovers for the most part. How about you?
HS: No, I'm too immersed in work.
PSJ: Do you think that you can work just as hard and still have a relationship?
HS: Personally no.

HS: If you had a boyfriend right now what you be doing with or for him?
PSJ: If I had a boyfriend I would dress him well.

HS: Really, why so?
PSJ: Well, I style all my movies and I love to dress people. Clothes are art. And dressing people up is just another way of making art.

HS: There's a rumor that you are dating blonde bombshell Benjamin Bradley. Truth or Fiction.
PSJ: NO... not me, never saw him before in my life. I actually did have a bf last year for awhile. I bought him a lot of clothes. I wasn't bribing him, but
because I make a lot of public appearances I like to look a certain way, and If you're going to be with me you have to look good.
In Prague, I go to a special thrift shop when I'm shooting a film. They only charge me 1 dollar for each item I use from their shop. They sell me vintage Halston fashions
and other designers. They're great people.
.
HS: You can name them if you want.
PSJ: Oh no, I keep that secret. If I give that out every porn producer, fashion designer and Hollywood director will ruin a good arrangement I have going.

HS: Do you love fashion.
PSJ: I love it. I remember Thierry Mugler, the designer who made Angel perfume gave me 20 pieces of couture for "Getting it at the Rave" He gave me this gorgeous pair of gray leather jeans which Bobby Golden aka Kidd Cox wore. Bobby got a hard on and shred the jeans in like 2 seconds. Of course all clothing for shoots have to be returned so I sent a note of apology to Thierry
and told him how the model sprang a boner, ripping the jeans to shreds. It was hilarious, and Thierry was very forgiving.

HS: Kidd Coxx must have a humongous dick.
PSJ: Kidd is like Michael Brandon almost. He's thicker where Michael is longer, but can you believe it one of my discoveries, Chris Young did a double penetration
scene with the two of them. That's Michael's big ol 11 inch monster and Kidd's ten inch Kielbasa in his tight virgin boy hole! That was in Skateboard Sliders by the way.

HS: You have a great rapport with your models or stars rather. Would you ever date one? Wait before you answer I'll rephrase that so you can answer it
in a general, third person way. Ok, Is it dangerous for a director to date a performer. I mean you're sleeping with a person who wants you only for your parts. Pun intended.
PSJ: My flat out rule is never to do that. Yes, It's a very dangerous situation. Besides the emotional dangers which I'm discounting.
They can jack you up in many ways. There's just so much that can go wrong. It's my policy to never date anyone who is in my movies. I may have met them under sexual circumstances and asked them if they wanted to be in one of my movies, but once they say yes, the romance is over. It's also unprofessional too.You just don't shit where you eat.

HS: Well you've got the dirty director persona going on with the signature cigar. Do folks at award shows know you by the cigar or the fashions or the hair?
PSJ: It's a package baby. If daddy's got bling he's going to show it. I branded myself visually.

HS: Is that a good thing...you sort of become a character.
PSJ: It's a good thing and a bad thing. When I go to award shows
people I never would have met come up to me. that's great. But then I constantly have to be developing new looks but new looks that fall into that persona. It's like an ongoing challenge, and yes, the cigar is real. I smoke 5 of them a day.

HS: Do porn people have style?
PSJ: Sadly, very few people in our industry have style. You go to a gay porn awards show and it looks like a banker and accountants banquet dinner. I'm sorry but the gay porn awards is our moment to shine and style. I want to see people dressed to the nines. What I usually end up seeing is someone dressed in a polyester sports jacket, looking like a TV sports anchor. There are some exceptions, like Blu Blake, but he's European so he doesn't count. Drag queens always have style like Mistress Bunny. The trend in Hollywood and that includes porn-dom is to not be bold or daring.
The movies are a reflection of that lack of style. Don't get me wrong there are some great filmmakers out there and great movies but that sense of artistic style is lacking. Everything is so butched-down-military.

HS: Ok, I gotta ask you about the name. Phil St John. Where did that come from.
Sounds like a morning drive time radio DJ or a martyr, gay patron saint of porn.
PSJ: I like martyred gay patron saint. It used to be Phillip St John, but Phil has worked for a long time.

HS: If I don't talk about this next topic Hotsapien will never hire me again. Let's talk
about you getting arrested at the Republican National convention. What were you
up to that got you thrown in the slammer.
PSJ: OH Boy... well the rock band Jefferson Airplane gave ACT UP Los Angeles 60,000 dollars to fly as many protesters to the Republican National convention in
Texas just to start shit.
One of the things we did was turn the fountain outside of convention blood red as a symbol for all of the gay lovers who died of AIDS. The owner of the Los Angeles
SPA gave us a 1000 condoms which we squirted with cream. The condoms were all greasy when we tied them around the doorknobs in the hotel where
all those republicans were staying. I'm talking really greasy, so they had to get greasy to trying to get them off the doors.
I was arrested with my forged press credentials, but not before slipping onto the floor of the RNC. I had a Pat Boone look so no one took a second look. I got tackled
by the secret service when I threw a greasy condom at George Bush. It missed though.
I wish it had beaned him. We were all arrested and thrown into Houston city Jail for 36 hours and then moved to Harris County Jail which was deplorable.
We were asked if we had AIDS but we all gave the following response: "we were all people dealing with AIDS." Needless to say they threw all of us into the AIDS tank.
We had no clothes just sheets. They took all of our clothing, and it was cold. With all of us wrapped in sheets, It looked like that Fellini film where the characters were all wearing white sheets in a sauna.
I talked to people who were already there awaiting trial or serving time who had AIDS. They were given no care, shitty food and none of the medications that were being prescribed at that time.
Later when I got out, I saw Pat Buchanan on TV calling for a "moral cleansing" of the country. To me that meant a call to arms to fight these fuckers.
I wrote a rebuttal to Buchanan's moral cleansing speech. That was my first serious piece. The Nazis if you recall used the same kind of language. It is a euphemism for genocide of all the people that Buchanan and his ilk find unacceptable.
All this was going on at the height of the Christian evangelical movement. For the record,
I will never go back to Texas. By the way they execute retarded people in Texas did you know that?
HS: No I didn't
PSJ: That's Texas justice.
When I saw the tortuous conditions there in that jail it made me fucking angry and this inspired me to create both the piece called "Moral Cleansing" and also a public art installation. West Hollywood commissioned me to do the public art work.
That experience moved me to write more. I haven't stopped writing since. I've written for Instinct, Genre, Frontiers, Adventure Journal, The Wow Report and of course for my book.

HS: Do you focus solely on politics in your writing?
PSJ: Not totally. I write about pop culture, celebrity, art and porn.

PSJ: Writing for me is like making film, you create the emotions and the pictures with words, then while you edit your copy they can be cut and pasted them like in film. I have to make art every day.
Making art to me is like eating food , drinking water or having sex, I need it every day..I can't live without fucking and I can't live without making art. Yeah, I guess this sounds a bit obsessive, but who gives a shit...that is how I live. I am hard wired to process my life by making art. When I was shooting Euro Sex Demons in Prague, I was constantly making 3-way calls to my brother in New York and my Mother in Florida. I could tell something was wrong. My brother was flying down to be with her. As soon as I got back to L.A. I turned the the video tape into the editor and the still shots to the graphic box cover designer, then flew to Florida. And so began a three month torturous odyssey jetting to New York to help out with my brother's stuff while he was in Florida taking care of Mom. I'd fly back to L.A. to try and work on my movie, then there would be another Emergency and I would have to go back to Florida. Finally my Mother died. It was kind of sudden, she did not suffer. I had just flown in the day before with shorts a couple of T shirts and flip flops for the beach. and had to buy clothes to fly up north and bury her. My friend, a designer gave me that leather coat, he sai d 0to keep me warm, but I think it was more to cheer me up. I was drunk for 3 days straight and I cried a lot.

HS: Did you do anything else to help you get through the immediate grief?
PSJ: The day after the funeral I went a Coolster Hip hop Hair house in the city and got my hair cut and styled out of grief. I focused on the concept of the photo I wanted to shoot. Then I flew back to L.A. and got the heart-shaped mirror cut. I found some friends to help me out with the shoot. I needed to shoot "Heartless" because I was all fucked up and I needed to heal.

HS: Heartless I take it is the title of the photo. What does it represent to you?
PSJ: Heartless is about strength and style overcoming grief. It was a way for me to reintegrate the emotional and geographical parts of my life that were shattered (Long Pause)
Style and strength can overcome grief. You should always feel your feelings to the fullest and look good while doing it!

HS: Spoken like a true fashionista-artist! So Phil St. John, what's your next work or are you going to do another hiatus like you did a in the 80's when you put down your porn camera and started making
documentaries.
PSJ: Oh No, I'm working on a major production under my new production company Phil St John Productions.
HS: We just never know with you. You always manage to shock and entertain.

HS: Well, thanks Phil, I'm looking forward to talking to you again. Oh by the way where can folks
read about you, buy your movies or send hate mail?
PSJ: Go to philstjohnxxx.com that's my site and you can also write to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

HS: Glorious!

Visit Phil St John's newly launched website & blog: PhilStJohnXXX

Photos courtesy of PhilTarley.com and Philstjohnxxx.com