Image exclusively emailed to me from Andrew Blake, from his new “Night Trips: a Dark Odyssey”. This is the image that didn’t make it into my Chronicle column’s gallery…
For this week’s SF Chronicle column, I had the extreme honor of interviewing one of my all-time erotic filmmaking heroes, Andrew Blake. Not just an interview — I got to ask him *anything* I wanted, and to my stunned delight, he answered every single question in detail. What’s more, I did something I’ve been experimenting with: I crowdsourced the interview — meaning, I asked you what questions you would ask Blake if *you* could ask him anything. I got questions from Twitter peeps and Tiny Nibbles readers, put them to Blake, he answered — and I linked to the questioners in the final result, the interview. Thank you for your questions; I feel like you all got to participate in the interview, too. And I so very badly want mainstream media to be participatory.
Again — still rolling about on the floor in a giddy mess that I got to interview the man whose videos have been formative in shaping my porn tastes, as well as personal arousal material. I’ve always held Blake’s standards as the highest. Adding to my excitement, I discovered that Blake is a really, really fucking cool guy. Emailing back and forth with him on Tuesday — he’s just awesome. One thing he said is still pinging around my brain because it speaks so strongly to my own beliefs around porn, and all the work I’ve done in indymedia (specifically blogging, podcasting and videoblogging): he said, “It was my fortune to enter a business where the product meant nothing to the people making it!”
Think about it.
Do read the interview — I’ve never seen Blake open up like this in any other place. Also, to my amazement, SF Gate ran images with the column from Blake’s new film, “Night Trips: A Dark Odyssey.” And if you also want to see a little of how he is behind the scenes, I just found this video of Blake at work with Melisande in bondage. Now, please enjoy The Helmut Newton of Porn: Violet Blue interviews erotic filmmaking legend Andrew Blake, snip:
Andrew Blake (andrewblake.com, link is not work-safe) has been known to say things like, “Average porn is anti-erotic.” And we all know he’s right: Most porn sucks, and not in the way we like. To describe Blake’s films and photos as the sprawling body of Helmut Newton-esque work that they are, you have to use the words decadent, lush, opulent, unfailingly arousing, moneyed and sophisticated. The women are electric; men, if in the films at all, are used only as props and seldom shown from the waist up. Which, considering the sad state of most male porn performers — and Blake never uses the average — is just fine with us porn-loving girls.
It’s a whole different genre of explicit erotic filmmaking evident from the first frame — pure high fashion, glossy candyland fantasy. It is luxuriously designed from nip tip to toe. And it’s stylish as hell.
So it was no real surprise when “The Tyra Banks Show” had me on as a female “porn expert,” after the on-camera interview a staff member leaned over to me and quietly asked, “Hey, have you ever heard of Andrew Blake?” I said, of course I had; he responded with a knowing smile. Blake’s explicit films are the highest end of the porn spectrum; he’s directed Dita Von Teese and was the first adult director to win a film award at a mainstream international film festival. Blake reveals himself in parsed bits; we get that he’s fiercely indie (he has his own company, Studio A), doesn’t like to share much, and has made reference to his mysterious “naked assistant.” (Note: ask Santa for naked assistant.)
It’s tough to figure out who Blake is. But his porn has a cult-like following that seems to span all social statuses, genders, and orientations. I jumped at the opportunity to ask Blake anything I wanted, and also crowdsourced a few questions from readers and Twitter.
Violet Blue: Your photographic and filmic style is so far and away from mainstream pornography, and as a result you’ve garnered a huge, international fan base. Artistically speaking, what, in your beginnings, shaped your unique style?
Andrew Blake: I decided to make a hard-core sex film in 1989, after completing work on a Playboy Channel TV series featuring the Playmates of that era. Playboy was pure vanilla, and I wanted to see what I could do without the problems of working in the soft-core genre. The movie I wanted to make would combine beautiful women, fashion, and interior design. (…read more, sfgate.com)
