HS: Thanks for sharing an excerpt from you upcoming book Phil. Will this be your first novel?
PSJ: My short stories have been published before, but yes, this is my first book.
It's actually a collection of character driven travel stories anchored by the story "Diary of Puerto Rican Porno."

HS: Want to talk about that first since I brought it up.
PSJ: Sure I'm an artist so my mind can take on any subject in any order!

HS: So anyway, in the story "Diary of a Puerto Rican Porno," you are in a bar in Puerto Rico where you boldly ask a perfect sexy stranger...
PSJ: A stranger named Gura....
HS: Yes, Gura, and you ask him if he wants to be in a porn movie you're shooting then you ask him to accompany you to the bathroom so you could check out his goods.
PSJ: Hell Yes... That's how I am.. I've got to see a guy's shit first! I'm not going to cast a guy in a part without seeing what he's working with. The bigger the dick the bigger the movie!

HS: So, is a big dick is a staple in a Phil St John movie?
PSJ: I'm always looking to cast the next handsome guy with a big dick.

HS: What if the guy is hot but has a small dick?
PSJ: If the guy has a small one, he'd better have the body of a God and be ready to bottom, otherwise I'm not going to cast him.

HS: When you propositioned Gura in that bar was that dramatic effect talking or are you really that direct?
PSJ: You better believe it. Like I said before. I don't have time to waste with small talk.

HS: Has anyone ever taken offense or gotten belligerent when you said you'd like to
put them in a porn movie.
PSJ: Most people are flattered when I ask them. I' don't think anyone has ever been belligerent.
I've been given dicey looks but really it's the ultimate, flattering compliment to be asked to be in a porn movie...that someone thinks you're hot enough to turn others on with your body. Now and then I'll get a guy who is prudish, but they are usually cool and smile like a school girl and say 'no, sorry I just don't do that...."

HS: I could never recruit
PSJ: Well, I'm a really ballsy guy. I had one experience where a nightclub employee said "You better watch yourself or you're going to get thrown out of here!" My standard retort to those who say this is "I've been thrown out of MUCH BETTER places!" Then I turn my nose up high and leave calmly with dignity.

HS: That's a very Bette Davis-like response.
PSJ: I'll go with that.
You only go around life in this world, once and if you don't ask the all important question once you're never going to get that chance again. These folks, the guys I aim to cast, have never seen me...sometimes they have, but most will never see me again. I don't give a shit if they don't like the question. Of course I am much more polite and nice if someone is cutting me a big check for my art work. Then I'm very tactful...
unless they get on my ugly side and give me shit!

HS: You're different from 99 percent of the porn Directors in that you actually have hands on experience in mainstream film. Would you say working for Pier Pasolini's director of photography influenced your porn work?
PSJ: Sure it did. Porn is a genre. that's how I approach it. Every genre has rules. I'm an extraordinarily well-trained filmmaker so the rules of the genre make me conform specifically to the project at hand whether documentary, drama or porno. I have all the right tools to make a quality porno!
HS: You're the carpenter of porn!
PSJ: Thanks.

HS: When was your first film? I mean your very first film and what was it about?
PSJ: My very first completed film?
HS: Yes.
PSJ: My very first was one I made as my senior project at San Francisco state university. The title was "La'". It was nominated for a student Academy Award for best experimental film and PBS also aired it on their Independent Focus series.There was a lot of nudity in the film with very homo-erotic visuals. I was shocked PBS actually ran it, and ran it uncensored.
HS: I love PBS they show naked people!

PSJ: Me too.
HS: When was this
PSJ: That was in 1978 that they aired my experimental art film.

HS: What was it about?
PSJ: It was very arty and it was all in French, circa 1890. Being experimental meant you didn't need to know what the people in it were saying. It was about deriving meaning from context. It's protagonist was this bizarre, semi-autistic wild child who was naked throughout the entire movie. He laid on the floor of his living room mostly while he looked at images of decaying mummies through a stereo-opticon. (Laughing)
The very obvious homo-eroticism was the line of duck eggs that made a path all the way up between his legs towards his asshole.
It was kind of like a homo-erotic, Felini-esque,Twilight Zone. This naked young man could commune with his ancestors by looking through a mirror. One of those ancestors was a man in in a hashish club in 1930's Berlin. At the climactic moment of the film, the protagonist breaks one of the eggs in the mirror and there's all of this yolk running down his fingers.

HS: That does sound very homo-erotic.
PSJ: It was. It really was an elaborate effort. I used special effects in this film and brilliant colors like in the room where the boy's parents spent their dull lives. The walls were rose red and the parents ate giant red strawberries which they sliced with large cutlery. It was all very surreal in a sort of gay Twilight Zone way. This was my red movie.

HS: When you mentioned the roses I instantly thought of American Beauty and the scene with naked girl on the bed of red rose petals.
PSJ: That film inspired me to make a porno I called American Beauties much later on

HS: Ok I have to cut to the heart of my next line of questions because this is the Internet and folks want their infotainment quick and dirty, let's skip ahead a few years from the time you worked with Ponnio Delli Colli, Pier Pasolini's one and only director of Photograpy, the late great, Marcello Mastriani and equally great Vitorio Gazman all the way up to when you edited peep show loops for 2 ubiquitous porn shop owners on Time Square in New York city...when it was the dirty apple. Talk about that era.
PSJ: Well let me just say this before I go all historical on you.... I think cities need to have a little dirt in them to be real.
I despise the "Disney-fication" and the "malling" of America" It's turned
our culture into a mono-culture. Everything is Family oriented all the whores and homeless got chased away. All the stores are GAP or Starbucks. It's a horrible trend. Anyway back to my early introduction into New York's seedy porno biz.
I worked for Vinny and Joey

HS: Wait. Did you say Vinny and Joey? They sound like 2 mob guys
PSJ: I like to call them mokes. I love the mob ..they started the porn business. And Vinny and Joey were my bosses at the time. They ran huge adult theater emporium. Despite what people think most of the big porn shops and theaters were clean places and run like any other respectable business. But that era was wild. I loved it and those X-rated places.
The stores that showed the loops were big mega-stores filled with magazines and sex toys and of course peep shows in the back.
There were also tawdry little shops with glory holes in them.
You could pick up horny guys hanging out or gay for pay guys or you could have sex there in the balconies of these adult theaters.
Being gay at that point in time, was being a sexual outlaw.
Whether you had sex in the balcony or whether you owned porn, often times it was illegal to be gay, to sell porn, to watch it or posses. it. I come from that time of being a sexual outlaw.
A lot places like in Italy didn't have gay bars so you had sex in the park. the best and most active fuck park in Rome overlooked the Roman forum, a respectable outdoor amphitheater that showcased outdoor films for the masses. To beat the heat they would show Italian or Hollywood movies on a huge screen. It was an open air forum outside, so while the movies were playing guys were fucking in the park above you. The famous Colliseum was like that at night...full of pussycats and horny gay guys having sex.

HS: I'm sure all that's changed with the times and all of this security.
PSJ: No doubt it has.

HS: What are peep show loops and peep show theaters. I know what they are but tell those who don't know what they are.
PSJ: The peep shows started with loops. Basically there were 2 venues to see porn: 16 millimeter film prints on screen a theater screen shot through projectors or on those nonstop peep show reels called "loops.". All my movies for Vinnie And Joey were shot in 16mm The peep show theaters would make 8mm release prints spliced into 8mm endless loops. As long as you put your quarters in...the loop would never stop. That's how it went. And the theaters made a ton of money.
"Getting It" was my first major gay porn release on 16mm film. And that Showed in the last pay porn theaters projected as a real movie would be.
HS: Thats all changed now.
PSJ: Yes, as gay bars opened legally and gay sex became more acceptable the need for those places often time fell away. Once Will and Grace hit the airwaves being gay really became marketable and that era I'm talking about was over for good. Will and Grace I'm using as a metaphor because it single handedly served to give gays a seal of acceptability, not necessarily approval though.

HS: I guess you could say Will and Grace did a lot bad things by making a state of being into a fad or trendy.
PSJ: And a lot of good things it's a double edged sword. Who does not want to be accepted by the society that they live in.but at the same time especially for an artist
like myself, you don't want to give up the sexual outlaw identity. It's the proverbial bad boy. It's fun and dangerous and delicious it's not mainstream. This is the artist's dream.

HS: Well speaking of going mainstream, your novella or Belles Lettres will be made into a mainstream film?
PSJ: You didn't hear that from me.

HS: Ok, then tell us about the book.
PSJ In short, Diary of Puerto Rican Porno is the novella that anchors my book of character driven travel stories. There are 25 stories in the book
The biggest one is Diary of Puerto Rican Porno. There is a fabulous epilogue about a character named Bobby Bacon.

HS: Could Bobby Bacon be Bobby Brennan?
PSJ: On that my lips are sealed, but there are 25 stories like I said in this novella.

HS: What are some of the others?
PSJ: There's Going Down on Cuba that's about politics cigars and sex in Havana.
There's The Argentine Massage about a wonderful massage from most gorgeous guy I had in a hotel next to the waterfalls by Iguacu. They are the largest waterfalls on earth by the way, between Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay.

HS: Those sound like possible movie plots.
PSJ: But wait there's more. There's The Devils, and you're going to love this one: Blowing Smoke in LA
HS That could mean many things
PSJ: It means bullshit!

PSJ: You'll love these story titles Gay in a Communist work camp, Making porn in Prague, The Leeches of Marrakesh, Getting it in the Sahara, the Hole Wide World
and California Living.
HS I take it the last one has nothing to do with Martha Stewart
PSJ: Not really (laughing). Those are just some of the stories...they are all character driven travel stories.

HS: Was it hard to get a publisher to read your manuscript?
PSJ: You cannot get a first book published unless you're famous. Six of my stories are published already, but it still means nothing to publishers.

HS: What about some of the outrageous things you've shot. In Euro Sex Demons you actually have one guy open up another guy's ass with a spicy Kielbasa! That had to
burn!
PSJ: What was really hard was after the Kielbasa... I realized I had gotten spicy Kielbasa and the kid's poor ass was on fire so we had to put condom it.
I like to put strange things like popsicles or bananas, peeled first of course, up guys' asses and then the the hung tops bang the fuck out of him...
Maybe next time I'll have an entire salad bar with whole tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, olives and broccoli (laughing)
What do you think. Got any ideas?

HS: For things to put up a guy's butt? Hmm I'm stumped on that one. But I have always wondered why many gay porn directors fuck up a scene that's heating up and coming to what looks like a hot climax only to have the top pull out, spunk on the bottom's face all before the bottom shoots. Don't you think in a hot fuck scene that the bottom should get fucked until and while he's coming?.

PSJ: I never do that. I always let the top pump the kid's brains out till he cums then pull out and cum on the guy I wouldn't leave a bottom gaping and twisting for release when you really want to see him cum.

HS: You've given the best answer of any of the directors I've interviewed. I guess the average person doesn't consider that the director juggles the demands of the audience, the feelings of the performers and his own artistic credibility all while creating a hot scene work. What about those problem guys of gay porn, the so-called or self-defined straight boys. They seem to be more trouble than they're worth.

PSJ: Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes you have a gay 4 pay boy who's not a diva. He doesn't care who he fucks. A hole is a hole to him, and it's his job to fill it. It's his job, end of story. Then sometimes you get those guys who suddenly become fucked up pieces of shit who are unfortunately already entrenched in the production and it's too late to recast. When that happens you just grin and bare it until it's all done.
Often these fucked up guys have no control over their personal lives and they are out of control in every way. If the guy is not the star in my film, I'll fire him, but only if the story is not based around him. If he is in a key part or he has marquee value I just grit my teeth and
deal with it all.

HS: Don't they realize it's a job and it's actually all about making a hot scene.
PSJ: I don't think any of that goes through their heads.

HS: Is Gura straight? Is Billy Brandt truly straight.
PSJ: Well..put it like this:.I think sex on film is a great skill. You should be a perfectionist at it when it comes to porn. Also I think everyone is a shade of gray. No one is truly, truly straight granted there are a few exceptions but I don't think a totally straight guy would take a job fucking a boy's hole unless there is a tiny bit of gray there. When it comes to labels, I call people what they want to be called ...if they want to be called straight I call them straight. I had a boy in Prague with 4 fingers shoved up his ass, looking at a pussy mag. He called himself straight. I said, "Ok, you're straight."
I can totally see a straight guy having a fist shoved up his ass while looking at a pussy mag. He's having his prostate massaged! Who doesn't like having their prostate massaged! I don't see why they can't still like snatch but also like getting fucked in the ass.
Zachary Scott was one of the straight boys I cast in Skate Boy Sliders for obvious reason, especially for his humongous dick. That movie started an entire genre and copycat movies about skate boarders and skateboarding twinks. Another one of my firsts.
In my film Getting It at the Rave, Zachary is the big dicked club impresario who gets to fuck two different guys in the same scene, whipping off the condom, putting on another and fucking the 2nd guy then repeating the process. It's hot. Zachary was so hot I put him on the box cover. So here you have a straight boy who used his fame to help push his high priced Vegas call boy business. The more box covers he appeared on the higher his price! What kind of man chooses to be a high priced call boy as his career, if there was not a little bit of that gray or gay in his sexual make-up?
What do you think.

HS: I'm agree with you on that. It makes no sense, but I let folks label themselves and I don't argue with their self assigned labels.
PSJ: What's really interesting about all this is that in Prague....most of these people there grew up in a Communist atheist society.
There were no religious taboos against homosexuality, so now
that's why you'll see so much bisexually in that country. Hmm, maybe that could partly explain homosexuality in Cuba.

HS: They have that bugaron thing going on there in Cuban culture.
PSJ: A bugaron will kiss another man passionately and make love to him all night long but still define himself as straight. This is the total opposite of Mexican guys who will
fuck your ass then push you down in the dirt and walk away
Here's a little interesting item about Cuba. When Castro did the 1988 boat lift he allowed maricones or fags to get an exit visa to leave the country if they signed an affidavit
to get 3 others to swear they had fucked him in the ass. There was no stigma attached so the bugarones got there exit visas. There's no stigma for a bugaron
to fuck a maricon. In the U.S.and Islamic countries, there's a stigma attached to being gay sex, in particular any type of sexual acts between two males.

HS: There's a movie in there somewhere. Maybe "Bugaron y Maricon".
PSJ: Maybe I should make a film for Cuba's department of tourism and use 3 really hung bugarons in it. Perhaps it could at least increase tourism to Cuba. They have terrible public relations!

HS: Explain why you said in your Inches magazine interview that your straight performers must leave their girlfriends at home and never bring them to the set. You mentioned a situation that happened with a certain straight guy who was getting fucked and howling wildly "Fuck me...Fuck Me" while his girl was listening downstairs!

PSJ: Ah yes, I remember it well. I realized this from day one that you don't have girls on gay porn sets. Period.

HS: Who was that guy howling loudly while getting fucked?
PSJ: That was actor Sean Michaels and that was his last movie. He was really gorgeous. He was so embarrassed later about being so loud. He also lost his
girlfriend after that.
HS: Was it because he was enjoying an ass fucking?
PSJ: Yeah and especially for the screaming "fuck me fuck me" When it comes to my movies I am focused and I need the performers to be focused.
The girls will make the gay boys uncomfortable and distract the straight boys. For instance Billy Brandt brought his girlfriend to one set. She was running around my set collecting phone numbers and trying to recruit them for her low budget production company, so I threw that bitch off the set!

HS: I have a friend that is starting a blog about women not respecting men's privacy.
He thinks women don't belong in men's locker rooms or in gay nightclubs on stripper
nights. He seems radical. Do you think he has valid point. I mean when you think about it, men aren't afforded the same privileges.
PSJ: Legally you can't ban women from nightclubs on stripper night or any other night.
HS: Aren't guys are banned on ladies nights....
PSJ: I think there is a class action suit about that very practice, that's sexual discrimination. All I can say is I love women. I love to dress women. I like to go out with them, dance with them. In terms of shooting porn I just dont want them any where on my set, even lesbians.
I also don't do camp in my movies. I don't have old people in the movies. You know, like no old queens in some nonsexual role. Basically, no old queens or ugly people or women or camp in my movies. Why? because you can't laugh or keep a hard on at the same time.
You have to remember I'm taking you on fantasy adventure where every man is gorgeous, has a giant dick, amazing asshole and has a fabulous body. All those other extraneous factors intrude on that fantasy.

HS: What do you think about these so-called straight guys who use gay audiences as foot stools for their porn careers and then totally rebuke anything gay when they start making straight flicks...I'm referring to people like Matt Ramsey (aka Peter "I-was-teenage-power-bottom" North) and Christian (aka Maxx
I-take-it-up-the-ass-better-than-a-chick Diesel)

PSJ: Well...Peter North was in 2 of my movies. He did it all. He sucked, fucked and got fucked. I have a story for your readers.
I ran into him at an adult video show in Vegas when he was signing 8 by 10 photos of himself. There was a small line of fans, so I went up to him with an 8 x 10 glossy photo and said "can you sign it to Phil St John with love from Matt Ramsey?" He barely looks up and said, "I don't use that name anymore." I said "you should be proud of that name. We gave you your start in this business, and he said rudely "NEXT !"

HS: What an ass!
PSJ: It's what some of these guys become after we make them who they are, many times from skinny street punks into porn icons.

HS: Straight porn definitely steers clear of anything remotely gay doesn't it.
PSJ: Straight porn has a lot of homophobia and they use big budgets, so they don't jeopardize that big money factor.

HS: I always wonder if these gay-for-guys aren't hiding something from themselves..
PSJ: Well I call people what they want to be called first of all. If they say they are straight then that's what I call them. By the way, Matt Ramsey was in this softcore movie I made called Master of Discipline and he was hard most of the time. This was before Viagra by the way.
Matt or Peter rather beat the shit of his co-starring bottom. This was a hardcore s&m movie with softcore sex, so you never saw any penetration. Matt slapped around the bottom then beat him with a ping pong paddle and jerked off his rock hard cock while he was doing it, so you can make of that what you want.

HS: Very interesting.

HS: What about Bobby Brennan? Hotsapien interviewed him in 2003, and he claimed that you never paid him for his work in your film, Taggers. Here's your turn to give the world the Director's cut so to speak....

PSJ: (Sigh) Bobby Brennan.... I gave him that name, Bobby Brennan, and yes he gave me a lot of grief.. He came to me one day and said he wanted to be a star.
Billy Brant was such a problem, and I wanted another Billy Brant without the problems. So I gave Bobby a Phil St John makeover. I sent him to the best hair colorist in Beverly Hills. I paid for tanning sessions at the best tanning salon, and paid for a 6 week gym membership. I told him I'd take that gym membership out
of his pay. He got in shape and was looking great after my make over.
He told me he was both top and bottom. Ok, so we shot the love scene first. I like shooting the lovemaking first, so the actors don't get a chance to hate each other before the sex scenes. You never know what can happen so I try to keep them apart as much as possible so I don't end up getting "I don't like his hair or he's got too many tattoos."
So by the time we shoot, they boys are simply horny and ready to fuck without pretense!
By the way I used a stunt tongue instead of Gura's in Taggers. I paid an assistant 50 bucks because Gura wouldn't eat ass.
Anyway, I cast Anthony Halloway who was to be fucked by Bobby. Out of nowhere Bobby threw a nervous breakdown on the set. My assistant gave him a relaxing massage. Production was shut down. It was a very nurturing atmosphere. No one knew what was wrong. Everything was done to try to get Bobby back in order. The scene with Anthony basically turned into a dual jerk-off scene.

HS: So, what was the breakdown all about?
PSJ: Bobby basically got anxiety because he is a bottom and not a top. If he had only been honest with me about that I would have had Anthony fuck his brains out.
Later when I was making another movie, Bobby called me. I said come over and let me see what you're looking like these days. He comes over in less than 30 minutes
and what a shocker!
That 300 dollar blond doo was gone, it was mousey brown, he had pimples all over his face and was looking terribly anorexic.
I said "Bobby, all the lead roles are already cast..." which was untrue, but there were some extra parts available.
I told him the pay was 150 bucks...I couldn't do any close up shots of him at all even with him as an extra in the orgy scene. He was really looking that badly.
Later on David Forest calls me and asks how could I pay 150 dollars to the star of my last movie.
So him saying I never paid him was an out and out lie. I paid him every dollar we agreed on. He is a lying sack of shit.
I treat all my porn stars like angels. But when they misbehave I treat them like devils. I've taken car keys away from guys who come to sets misbehaving.
If they are going to give me shit I'm not going to take it. Bobby wasn't as bad as Billy Brandt however.
On another director's set, Billy shaved half of his hair off--a bald strip right down the middle of his scalp--in the middle of a shoot. He fucked up the entire movie.

HS: Isn't being a spoiled bad boy part of being an exclusive pornstar?
PSJ: No. You have to remember the entire shelf life for a porn star who keeps himself up is roughly 2 years.
There are a few people who really make this a business by going to gym and keeping their looks up. Those are the few who break through that 2 year barrier.
I'd say less than that 20% of the thousands of guys who do porn remain successfully in the business for more than 2 years.

HS: So would it be safe to say that these bad asses piss you off?
PSJ: Nah, I love them. I can take the most evil maniacal, reprehensible porn performer and make him look like a God. I have a whole bag of porn-film making tricks at my disposal to give the audience a really hot fantasy.

HS: What are some of your tricks of the trade?
PSJ: I use fake cumshots, strategic lighting, fake dicks, stunt asses and tongues, boxes to make the short midget guys look taller. Whatever they need it's my
job to make that guy look good. I have 2 basic tenets that I go by in making porn:

Give the characters some semblance of humanity and make them look like real life fantasies
to make them look as gorgeous as masculine and god-like as possible. Sometimes that is done in spite of them instead of because of them.

HS: What about drugs. A lot people in this business are caught up in one kind of substance or another.
PSJ: I do not let any drugs on my set. Also my shoots run longer than most shoots. I tell those boys who are in a rush to go fuck their next paying trick that I make porn but they are also films. I need to get my angles right, the lighting right, the dialogue right and if it's going to take 12 hours so be it. I tell them "when it's all done you're going to look like a god!" Drugs are an anathema to that.
Drugs are also illegal and they make your dick go soft. They are not conducive to sexual performance especially if you're in a scene that takes a few hours to complete.

HS: I've noticed many so-called exclusive or big name gay porn performers moonlighting
on the Internet and doing bareback porn. Have you taken note of that, and would
you hire any of these guys. I won't name any names...They'll eventually out themselves
no doubt. Do you think more directors should speak up and speak out about barebacking?
PSJ: I can only speak for myself and it's my right not make to them no matter how much money I'm offered. I applaud Bruce Cam and Keith Webb for their stand against barebacking and of course ChiChi for her great video against barebacking and for safer sex! I've seen an whole era of pornstars die so yes, I proudly say to the world I am staunchly against barebacking. There's a lot more about this on my blog. Please include the link to that in this interview.

HS: No doubt! I've got your blog bookmarked in my favorites. It's entertaining, sexy, and intellectual. I like that you appeal to the libido and the intelligence in a reader.
PSJ: Thank you. I try my best.

HS: Speaking of moonlighting I noticed gay performers like Brad Star and Maxx Diesel,
do a lot of strap-on stuff. What's your take on strap-on scenes. Fleshbot predicts
that strap-on scenes, where the guy gets schtuped in the ass by the chick, will
be a regular installment in mainstream heterosexual porn. Do you think they're right on with
that prediction? Or we shouldn't rush out and buy stock in dildoes?
PSJ: Well i think everyone is looking for a new gimmick all the time. If Fleshbot predicts strapon is the next trend I guess it is or will be. One other thing I've heard is a big trend is big dick trannies fucking straight guys. So you find my blog sexy and intellectual?

HS: Yes, and I know your other readers do as well.
PSJ: Well I'm an avid reader. Reading and travel have expanded me from day one.

HS: Is that why your productions are so involved and look very polished?
PSJ: I spend a lot production time on my shoots and that's why they look so good, and some people love the ride. I enjoy working with those people. I tell guys to bring
a book...that's if they can read... If the shoot goes quick I'm really happy. If it goes long that's the name of the game. that's what make my movies so special.

HS: Where is Bobby now? Maybe he'll rise from the ashes of drug abuse like Michael Brandon to become a successful star too. Bobby who? Oh yeah...Let's hope so... Ok moving right along.
PSJ: I have a story about Michael Brandon. He was doing Way Below the Belt. when he got a call about a relative who had a heart attack.
Michael cried in my arms and he didn't leave the set. He was very concerned and very heroic to have continued until the shoot was completed. He's a great professional and a great example for everyone.

HS: You love being a maverick director don't you...you try to be a person of first's.
Like using tinted, flavored lube, or ketchup and mustard or body paint in a sex scene.
Or even computer generated text coalescing out of a guy's orifice, or the fire coming out of the guy's ass in South Beach heat

HS: But Does being out there on the creative edge sell porn?

PSJ: Yes, and I love being the one to take that risky big step, hopefully before anyone else.
I'm the first to do a double penetration, scene with mega-hung Chad Douglas who was acutally Puerto Rican back then you couldn't have a box cover star who was ethnic.
In Below the belt, we had to use a stunt ass because the wussie couldn't do it.
In cinematography I rented a super slow motion movie camera that we used for the cum shot at the climax of one scene. With that camera, the actual cum spurts took 3 minutes for the cum to shoot out of the guy's dick and land on the other guy's face. I was spectacular and a first.
Back then I did some crazy things like put a lens up a guy's ass.

HS: I think that is a porn first or medical first!
PJS: Well we used an old Bolex camera for an extremely tight slow motion shot. When I say tight I mean like sticking the lens literally up the guy's ass, and we didn't lose it either. (laughs) Amazingly the shot wasn't out of focus either.
In Taggers we actually tagged the guys names over their faces with blue screen and we used character generation so words like "fuck it and suck it"
shot out of the asses or mouths.
I did the world's first ALL double penetration movie called Double Delights. There have been many double penetration scenes, but no one ever did an all DP movie. It won a 2006 GAYVN award. So yae being first with top production values and big dicks sure does sell porn and make more money than 4 scenes all shot in one fucking hotel room.
In South Beach Heat, we made this stuff called Tasty Paste which didn't burn if it got in your eyes or ass. I had this guy put 2 pints of yellow lube up his ass then I had a muscle guy hold him up in the air with legs wide open. You have to see it to enjoy it. While the bottom was being held high in the air I had him squirt the yellow lube out of ass Jackson Pollack style onto a big white canvas.
We also did the first under water cumshots that I've ever seen in a movie.The cum looked like underwater seahorses shooting out of their dicks and floating away. That was back in 1997. South Beach was a different world back then.

HS: When you shot South Beach Heat did you experience the "wildlife," like the nightclubs, Kremlin, Paragon, Hombre and Warsaw. At Warsaw the strippers would actually cum on stage.
PJS: Don't forget club Torpedoes. They had a room called the Submarine room. You had to be in-the-know to get into that room.
I had an apartment right around the corner from Torpedoes. On 17th street beach at night you would see a hot Puerto Rican getting fucked by a line of 17
guys. There was a lot of crazy stuff going on in Miami Beach. It was wild but also in an odd way innocent. On Ocean drive you could see Gianni Versace sipping his coffee while reading his paper at News Cafe and no one bothered him.
There was an unwritten respect so people respected his space because the culture said he was just a regular guy.

HS: Your proposed temporary public art installment for Santa Monica Boulevard in
West Hollywood did it ever happen?
PSJ: I am planning to present it to them again. The installment is a public project so any other artist's work can be displayed there as well.
It's a very colorful triptych that celebrates
the variety in subcultures that thrive in West Hollywood. The 3 Muses is what
you've called it. Why the 3 Muses?
PJS: The 3 Muses were represented by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, each sister framed by a different color. The blue is music, red is for art and yellow is drama.
Those are the motivating factors in my life.

HS: The colors are very brilliant.
PJS: I found that the best way to shoot them was in absolutely ice cold, frigid water to get that clarity. So we got the sisters shit-faced drunk and one by one
got them to get into a swimming pool for each shot. One of them
was very trepidatious, so I took her by the hand and said this was a once in a life time experience for her beauty to be captured for eternity like a saint. I had
one assistant standing nearby with a pitcher of vodka ready to pour her another shoot if needed.

HS: Drag Queens Love Phil St John.
PSJ: And I love drag queens. I love radical faeries and bull-dykes and all the artistic subcultures. In my personal life, not in my porn movies.

HS: Let's talk about your activism and how you incorporated it into your documentary filmmaker.
PSJ: By the end of the 80's I lost a lot of money on a legit feature that went bust. My friends were dying of AIDS and I started to get involved in Act Up and Queer Nation. My documentary films were being shown at all the festivals, and noticed the big move for assimilation in the gay and lesbian community but there were many different subcultures out side of that somewhat homogenized community. We rarely see or get to know all those pansies, butch leather queens, and bull dykes. I wanted to document the people like the drag kings, those teenage girls who dress up like macho roughnecks or cowboys, strap down their tits and put dildoes in their pants and go out on the town at night. I wanted to film those beautiful radical faeries who live in the forest and I did I'm proud to say.

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