ANDREW BLAKE INTERVIEW

HCG: So you are the great Andrew Blake?
AB: Yes I am.

HCG: When did you get into it all and why?
AB: F you. [laughter]-

HCG: What was wrong with you at the time?
AB: No. I got into adult because I wanted to, and not because it was some kind of desperate attempt at a career. I was working for Playboy at the time.

HCG: Doing what?
AB: I had a series on the Playboy channel at the time. I was shooting video centerfolds for them. I guess I just got tired of trying to figure out what the girls should do next with their hands.

HCG: What year was this?
AB: 1989.

HCG: What kind of background do you have?
AB: I am an art director basically. So I worked for CBS as an art director in New York, CBS News. I worked for all the news shows like 60 MINUTES. Well, at the time it was with Walter Cronkite. Now it is Dan Rather.

HCG: Did you go to film school?
AB: No. I was a painting major at a college in the Philadelphia area and my idol at the time was Francis Bacon. He was a violent, erotic painter. He was English and he lived in London. I was just enamored by him, but I wasn’t a painter. I couldn’t do it. It’s just like you try something and you can’t do it. I simply was not a painter. So I got involved with TV, I got involved with TV art direction and that is really where I found, through celebrity television, that I could do something interesting that would graphically incorporate all of the artistic influences of the period.

HCG: Like what?
AB: Like Pop Art. It was very exciting to me, although it wasn’t erotic. This is what led me up to Playboy. I got myself into the TV business, into TV graphics, and then I decided, well, when the Playboy channel came about, here was an opportunity to do something that was art directed beautifully, that was beautiful to look at, and erotic at the same time. And it was really the advent of the Playboy that was the advent of my career.

HCG: That is quotable.
AB: It’s true.

HCG: At what point does this narrative splinter off into you directing your own work? Did you start off as a director?
AB: Well, with Playboy I was directing my own stuff, they really went out on a limb.

HCG: Did they ask you?
AB: I approached them. I decided at a certain point that I wanted to leave the whole art direction business and that I wanted to get into erotic art, and like I said, Playboy seemed to be the best choice. So I self produced a little piece, they liked it, I got a series, I did it. However, Playboy was very tame. Playboy didn’t want to show a lot of pussy. They were very conscious about going with the mores of the time. So then I decided what can we do with these girls hands and bodies that goes beyond what Playboy is willing to do? So I approached this little company called Caballero. I think they are still around.

HCG: I think so.
AB: I guy named Howard Klein gave me my break. He said, here is a certain amount of money. Now go out and make a movie. So I did. It was called NIGHT TRIPS. It became this wildly successful movie.

HCG: Who was in it?
AB: Tori Welles, Jamie Summers, Porsche Lynn, Peter North…

HCG: Wow.
AB: Torri Welles was the most sexual creature I had ever met. I mean she was unbe-fucking-lievable!

HCG: What was it about her, that she did?
AB: She wasn’t holding back. She wasn’t, you know this was before the Jenna Jameson’s. This was before the Vivid girls. Before all of that. She just was a highly sexual girl and she went for it. It was wonderful. And watching her give Peter North a blowjob was one of the most interesting things I have ever shot on film. I mean it was wonderful. I mean they were just into each other. I mean it was a performance. They are actors. They weren’t necessarily into each other sexually, but they were into each other to create this performance. And that was magical to me. I had never seen that before. That is what got me hooked on shooting porn or shooting erotic, that there are people that will do that, that there are people that will give themselves sexually and emotionally just for the purpose of being a turn on on film. It was great.

HCG: The exhibitionist tendency.
AB: Yes. The quintessential exhibitionist.

HCG: So what came after that? You did a couple of movies for Caballero?
AB: Yeah. Then I did a movie called NIGHT TRIPS 2, obviously.

HCG: When was HOUSE OF DREAMS?
AB: Right after that.

HCG: That was the first movie I saw by you.
AB: I found Zara White who was a Dutch girl, from Amsterdam. Her mother was a madam. She grew up in a, a…

HCG: Whorehouse?
AB: A whorehouse.

HCG: Sounds fantastic.
AB: And also that was one of Rocco Siffredi’s first movies. And Rocco and Zara were very much into each other at the time.

HCG: This was in HOUSE OF DREAMS?
AB: Yes. And Rocco, his dream was to open up an Italian restaurant in Rome with his brother. This was before he became Rocco. That was his thing. He wanted to become a restauranteur. Then things changed in his life. I’ve got to tell you. I don’t shoot anal scenes very much. I did one anal scene in that movie. It was with Rocco and Zara and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen on set. I was shooting it. I had to step back and just look at it. When you are shooting film you always have to have your eye in the viewfinder. I wanted to be the voyeur at that point and just step back. It was beautiful. I have never shot another anal scene, ever, and I don’t think I ever want to shoot another one unless it is with those two.

HCG: I saw a scene with him in ROCCO NEVER DIES that was of that caliber.
AB: Rocco is just amazing. He is amazing.

HCG: It is in a forest and it looks like a dream.
AB: Rocco, just, I don’t know…he’s just a sexual dynamo.

HCG: Now people grow up wanting to be Rocco.
AB: Yes but they can’t.

HCG: At what point did you start your own company and move on?
AB: I made a bunch of movies in the early nineties and they were very successful. I met this distributor and got into a dispute with the distribution, we will just leave it at that, and then my wife and I formed our own company, STUDIO A. My wife really takes care of the business aspects and I do all the production.

HCG: When did STUDIO A form?
AB: 1995.

HCG: And how many movies do you think you have made since then?
AB: About twenty. We do three movies a year.

HCG: Do you usually shoot on film?
AB: Always. I only shot one video feature and that was a disaster.

HCG: Which one was that?
AB: It was called ADRIANA.

HCG: You know I helped to name her?
AB: No I didn’t. That movie was a disaster to me because I shot it on video, not because of anything that Adriana or Justine did in it. By the way, I named Justine. She used to be called Swan and then I renamed her after the Marquis De Sade.

HCG: I know.
AB: I think that ADRIANA technically from the point of view of shooting it on tape, was not a great thing. I should have shot it on film. However, that being said, there were moments of that movie that were just stunning. The shot of the hypodermic needle, with Justine and Emily Marilyn was amazing. There were other things, like Justine in the bathroom, just naked, and it was beautiful. There was a scene with Justine and Aria that was absolutely beautiful. So there were things that worked, but in the long picture of everything, I wish I would have shot that on film.

HCG: Do you prefer shooting in the country or out? Or does it matter to you?
AB: You know lately I’ve become aware of the fact that I am spending a lot of money out of the country and I think that on a show like THE VILLA, which both Justine and Elsa were in, two of yours, it worked out very beautifully. The EXHIBITIONIST, which worked out very beautifully. But now I seem to be getting into close ups on panties and close ups on breasts that I can shoot right here, so why not?

HCG: How many awards have you won at this point? I know you just won four for THE VILLA.
AB: I don’t know, actually. I have a whole closet full of them. This goes back since 1989, so.

HCG: Do you display them?
AB: No. I like the fact that my BEST ALL SEX FILM award this year from AVN had a piece of bubblegum on it when I got it.

HCG: When you got it?
AB: It came with it.

HCG: Do you spend big money in advertising with AVN?
AB: No actually I don’t. I spend about, maybe one or two ads a year I buy from AVN. I thought it was really good that this year I won the four awards with only a few ads while the other companies are spending megabucks.

HCG: So, you have heard the ridiculously clichéd phrase, that insists that imitation is ostensibly bound to flattery, have you heard it?
AB: Right.

HCG: How do you stand on this issue in regards to the new wave of Andrew Blake imitators that have cropped up as of late?
AB: Well I think that Michael Ninn does a good job. He shoots on tape. He is much more hardcore than I am. He does angles on sexual positions that I don’t use, you know like where the guy is spread eagle and you see him more than you see the girl. That I don’t go for. Who else?

HCG: I would say Laurent but now he is with Ninnworx too.
AB: Laurent I think he does a good job but I think he is falling into the trap of quick cuts. I fell into that once. Are they shooting on film?

HCG: No.
AB: No, they aren’t because it is too expensive. Plus I try to use the best looking girls I can find, the World Class beauties, the memorable girls.

HCG: There is still some kind of resonance, as we have discussed before, to the term “an Andrew Blake girl,”…it has a meaning to it, which has kind of evolved.
AB: I think that for me, the way that I have evolved as a filmmaker, an erotic filmmaker, is that before I was looking to emulate a music video or a commercial and it was all about quick cuts. Now I just let the scene play out. I let the panties show. I let them see the beautiful breasts. Let the viewer see it, and masturbate. That, to me, is what this should be all about. Isn’t it.

HCG: I thought so.
AB: I have always also believed that if you are an erotic filmmaker, first of all you’ve got to turn yourself on. You find the girl that does that. I have found girls that do that for me. My most favorite girl is Dahlia Gray. She turns me on. So if I can get a hard on while watching it, ultimately filming it, that’s what I think matters most.

HCG: That is a good standard.
AB: Yeah, because if you can’t be turned on my your own work then nobody else is going to be.

HCG: I don’t think of you as a pornographer.
AB: I don’t think of myself as one either.

HCG: Your work tends to fall more into the erotica category. I have often said that your work seems like something that should be played against a white wall…
AB: I would love that.

HCG: …during the middle of a coke party.
AB: Exactly. Bring it on. I would love that.

HCG: When I did watch some of your work what I did feel was that I didn’t get that immediate feeling, like the lust drive you would get from seeing super hardcore raincoater stuff. Like a Private movie.
AB: Hmmm.

HCG: What I noticed with your work was more a gradual, building up, where it began to overwhelm you, and then after watching for a while and having it seep in more, it became manic. It didn’t have the immediacy that a Platinum or a Red Light movie might have. It required your attention.
AB: Well my movies are better composed, graphically, you know, art direction wise? I think that some people get turned off by that, if it is too perfect.

HCG: Do you like any of that rain coater stuff even though it is not the type of stuff that you shoot?
AB: I have tried. It would depend on the girl. Anything with tall brunettes with natural breasts that are shot well, I am there. I’m not really into the fucking part of it either. I am more into looking at legs. I am more into looking at feet. I am more into looking at the pussy. It is more of the tease for me, and the foreplay to me than the actually fucking to me.

HCG: What about these movies that keep pushing the envelope? The double anal and the bukkake?
AB: No. Not into it. Not unless Rocco and Zara are in it, then I don’t care. The whole erotic thing is so subjective and so quirky. It’s like, my taste may not be the taste of the typical porn viewer.

HCG: We’re not going to fall off into Freudian psychoanalytical roots of fetishes now are we?
AB: No I guess not.

HCG: Do you feel that there was some kind of psychological imprinting that might have influenced your personal fetishes? Did you see your mother’s stockings one day and associate that with the essence of femininity and ritualized commodification?
AB: Funny you should say that, because…[laughter]…no. There is a whole episode in my early life that has to do with seeing some naked pictures of my mom, and that was like, ah, I’ve just been dealing with that with my shrink.

HCG: Do you think that has anything to do with why you have moved this way in life? Why you have chosen to be an erotic artist?
AB: Well it is interesting, because my mom’s boobs and Dahlia Gray’s boobs and this Playmate from the early sixties, they all have the same boobs, which I was very influenced by.

HCG: I can imagine that, given that this is where you got your sustenance as a young infant? It might have left an imprint.
AB: Well I saw the pictures when I was twelve-years-old. Definitely.

HCG: If it is fair to say that women are attracted to men that remind them of their father then it is fair to say that the reverse is true as well.
AB: Absolutely.

HCG: What are some of your influences for your work now?
AB: I really was influenced by Francis Bacon the painter. He is regarded as the greatest painter of the twentieth century, or the latter twentieth century. Helmet Newton certainly was an influence as well.

HCG: How do you feel about his recent passing?
AB: It was just horrible.

HCG: I think that he was so distraught to hear that Captain Kangaroo had died that he lost control of the vehicle coming out of Marmont onto Sunset.
AB: [laughter]

HCG: At least he tried to take out a paparazzi on his way.
AB: Possibly. I grew up with him too. When I worked at CBS in the seventies they shot Captain Kangaroo there and I always saw the Captain and Mr. Greenjeans down in the cafeteria.

HCG: That was a bad week for you. You lost Helmet and the Captain all at once.
AB: It was. You know the thing that I like about Bacon was that he did very kind of violent and sexual innuendo.

HCG: What about Dali?
AB: He was all right. I met Dali.

HCG: You met Dali?
AB: I met Salvador Dali in 1973 when he was in New York and I was working at CBS. I really wanted to meet him. I was working at CBS and I had a friend named John Hart who was the anchor guy at the morning news at the time and he said, yeah you should go out and interview him. So he gave me his tape recorder at the time, which was a far bigger and more elaborate thing at the time, and I went over to the St. Regis hotel in New York and I met him. Then he invited me to an opening with Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper and him were doing a show together.

HCG: Did you go?
AB: Yeah. I went. Then I interviewed them both. I had my CBS gear and the microphone and that was great. Salvador Dali was the quintessential promoter. I mean he was more of a promoter than an artist.

HCG: What was the last book that you read?
AB: It was called FAST FOOD NATION. It was about the food that is being foisted on the American public through the fast food chains, and how the processing plants where the cattle are slaughtered and how poor the quality of the meat and food are.

HCG: And if I read it?
AB: You will never want to eat fast food again.

HCG: I only long for fast food in foreign countries.
AB: I’m not sure that it’s such a good idea then either.

HCG: Who is your favorite philosopher?
AB: My favorite would probably be Helmet Newton. He is just…wow.

HCG: So you see yourself more as an existentialist then?
AB: Absolutely.

HCG: What do you listen to music wise?
AB: I listen to mostly talk radio. I’m not really into music per say.

HCG: Who do you listen to on talk radio?
AB: Howard Stern.

HCG: You listen to Howard Stern?
AB: Yes, I love it. I think he is terrific.

HCG: Did her work for CBS?
AB: He works for CBS now. I’m just not into music that much right now.

HCG: What inspires you to make a movie?
AB: Obsession. That is what it really is. Obsession. And my real, true obsession is Dahlia Gray.

HCG: So as long as Dahlia Gray is around you will continue to make movies?
AB: Let’s hope.

HCG: Was she in THE VILLA or HARD EDGE?
AB: No, she wasn’t.

HCG: Aren’t those two of your more acclaimed movies?
AB: According to AVN. She was in THE DOLLHOUSE and WET.

HCG: I never saw WET but I heard about it. I don’t watch a lot of porn. I just like the magazines.
AB: I know. I love the magazines. Which do you like?

HCG: I like some Hustler, although the new art direction isn’t to my taste. I don’t like Penthouse or Playboy and I don’t like Hawk or Club International. I like Cheri and Oui and the big ones with lots of hardcore. Clive McClain does good work.
AB: Yes. I like Clive. High Society has a lot of great stuff.

HCG: Yeah. I like Suze Randall.
AB: Sure. Her daughter does some good work too. See I prefer like LEG SHOW. PANTY PLAY is also a good one. I like more of the objectifying of a woman as opposed to a hardcore layout. I prefer to see a panty shot or a beautiful leg. I don’t want to see necessarily penetration all the time, although penetration some of the time is all right. I feel that I am getting away from boy girl and all of that. I feel like my work is getting even more…even more…

HCG: Obscure?
AB: Obscure and fetishistic. I think that is the word that I am looking for.

HCG: What else, besides Dahlia, inspires you?
AB: Well, Justine inspires me, and Aria, Aria Giovanni is way up there. I have used these people over the years over and over again and they always bring something.

HCG: What is next? Where do you go from here? Is it all about this fetishistic thing you described?
AB: You know I think that it is. When you get to a point in a career like mine and you have people that say that you should more boy girl and you should do more of that, all I can say is that I am not trying to please the world. I am trying to please myself. I want to look at my movies and get turned on and watch it in five to ten minute increments.

HCG: You’re not trying to churn out a factory of product then?
AB: No. I am not making sausages.

HCG: What would you do differently if you could?
AB: I would own the rights to everything that I made, and I would sleep with more women.

HCG: What is your favorite period that you have lived through?
AB: The 90’s. I loved the 90’s.

HCG: Who would you sleep with if you could sleep with anyone in the world right now and get away with it?
AB: Jessica Alba. I love that girl.

HCG: I will put that out there and maybe she will respond.
AB: God I hope so. Tell her to call me.