James Deen Will Talk About Anything… Except Clowns: The Fleshbot Interview

Often referred to as "Porn's Boy Next Door," James Deen is a true original. He is the perfect representation of the modern adult film industry in that he doesn't take himself too seriously, but he's also savvy enough to know that it is still a business. After making his way onto the scene in 2004, Deen has appeared in over 1400 adult films and has twice won AVN's Performer of the Year award in 2009 & 2013. James has been pouring most of his time and energy lately into his website jamesdeen.com, which is, in his words, his "own porno wonderland." His open submission policy on his site has garnered him a lot of attention for opening up the casting process to anyone who thinks they might want to have sex with him, but as he explains below, the vetting process is intense. His most recent project has been a series of films based around the Seven Deadly Sins, with Sloth being the one he shot most recently, and for which he grew a shaggy beard. I sat down with James recently to discuss all of these projects, as well as his fear of clowns, why stereotypes exist, and his reason for not appearing in Frat House Fuckhouse 11.

Tucker Bankshot: First things first, have you shaved now that you’re done with Sloth?

James Deen: I have, I have. On my blog recently, actually yesterday, I did a post where I did a progression of different facial hair styles until I was clean shaven.

TB: Please tell me you threw in a handlebar, at least?

JD: Oh yeah, hell yeah. I think I said that was my favorite one. 

TB: It almost seems apocryphal at this point in time, but is it really true that you wanted to be a porn star as early as when you were in Kindergarten?

JD: Yeah, as long as I can remember, it’s what I’ve aspired to do my entire life. 

TB: My only question that would come out of that would be, what if you had been, let’s put it politely, not equipped to do it once you reached a certain age?

JD: That never even entered my mind. I was always more worried about the ability as opposed to the equipment. I’m sure you’ve seen enough adult films to know that there’s a range of penis sizes from small to average to extremely large, and I fall in there somewhere. I was more worried that I would just get on set and not be able to perform. And I’m very happy that that did not happen.

TB: Reading your filmography is not unlike that scene in Clerks where Randall’s ordering porn. Cum Drinkers, Cum Drippers, Cum on My Tattoo, Cum Swapping Sluts… How did you not end up doing Cum on Eileen?  

JD: I don’t know, actually, but I think that that’s now a working title. That’s brilliant, and should be done. (Both laugh)

TB: Can you tell me anything that you remember about any of those movies?

JD: Well, Cum on My Tattoo is definitely the most memorable because Burning Angel is just such a fun company and one of the greatest things about Burning Angel is just the fact that they intentionally try to not take themselves too seriously. They try to make performing in adult film a fun experience and it’s something that I’ve actively tried to carry over. After I stopped working with Burning Angel, I wanted to keep those principles of making moves that were fun and enjoyable, and that you don’t need to take too seriously, yet you can still have good, hot sex. 

So Cum on My Tattoo is definitely a memorable experience because Joanna pretty much created this thing where you’re like, “Oh, fetish, Cum on My Tattoo,” and she’s like, “it’s not fetish it’s a joke. There’s all these Cum on My Face, cum on my this, cum on my that, you know, cum on my tattoo, it’s just cum, who cares?” So, yeah, I definitely remember that. 

TB: Can you explain your refusal to have sex with or dressed as a clown? Is that deep seated?

JD: It’s not so much deep seated, I’m just terrified of clowns. My grandma, who actually recently passed and I miss her a lot, she would tell me stories about how when I was a kid, it got to a point where if there was a birthday party, she would call in advance and ask, “is there going to be a clown at this birthday party,” because if there was, I would just cry and refuse to go outside. So it got to a point where if there were any sort of clown related things my grandma would not even bring me to the party and it’s just something that has disturbed me my entire life. They’re freaky, they’re weird, I’m not into them. So the idea of having sex with clowns terrifies me. (Laughs)

TB: Hey, that’s a valid fear, I don’t blame you. 

JD: They’re weird right?

TB: Yeah, totally. I don’t know if it’s just a remnant of a bygone era that just won’t go away, because you see so many old pictures of clowns that are just inherently creepy and you wonder if they were ever actually amusing to anyone.

JD: I mean, somebody’s gotta like them, there’s definitely a market for it as far as the adult world goes, and I’m not here to tell people what they can and cannot like. If people want to have sex with clowns or masturbate to people having sex with clowns or whatever, that is their prerogative, and more power to ‘em. If people want to have clowns at their birthday parties, by all means, have fun. It’s just, personally, I am not too into it.  

TB: You’re in Frat House Fuckfest 1-10, and 12 & 13. Did you get the script for 11 and just say, “no, I’m not doing this one”?

JD: (Laughs) I’m sure it was more of a booking situation, where they called and asked me if I was available, and I just wasn’t. But your story’s way more entertaining. (Both laugh).

TB: What has your experience been like opening up casting to regular, everyday people? 

JD: It’s actually been really, really good. It’s a pretty rigorous process. I think that people think I’m just sitting there going through e-mails and having sex with random girls off the internet, but in actuality, I try to make it very clear to every single applicant that this is something that is a life decision. It’s not something that you should do on a whim, just because you want to have sex with me. It’s going to be recorded and distributed through jamesdeen.com and it’s going to be seen throughout the world. So, if you have political aspirations or if you want to be a teacher, or something like that, it might not be the right decision. 

Pretty much the way it works is that I get the applications, and I get hundreds a day, and then from those hundreds I have a model coordinator who actually goes through them and responds and communicates with the potential models, and talks to them. Usually there’s a lot of people that just apply because they think that it will be fun to see if they’ll get accepted, and once they find out that it’s actually an option they decide that they don’t want to do it. And the ones that do decide that they want to do it, there’s a whole conversation with the model coordinator who will say something to the effect of, just so you know, you’re not paying for this, we’re paying you, and we’re not paying you for sex, this is not prostitution, we’re paying you for the licensing rights for the video so that we then own the video and I can distribute it, as I said, on jamesdeen.com and throughout the internet. 

So after all that they’ll say, “are you sure you want to do this, you can say no, and even back out at the last minute if you want.” And then they’ll get into the testing protocols, and the procedures because this is how it works. So I’m not even involved until the model goes and acquires an industry standard test, because personally, as a performer, I don’t feel comfortable performing with people that are not willing to get tested to the same protocols that the industry follows. So once the model goes and gets their industry standard test, then I step in and I’m like, “Hey, what’s up, how are you, why do you want to do this,” all this stuff and then I’ll talk to them and we’ll come together to create a scene that falls in their comfort zone. So then we just kind of hang out, and talk, and see what happens, get to know each other. And every now and then the model will want to do a high profile professional scene, so I’ll sometimes shoot more than one with the same model. 

Then on set, I have my lawyer make up this three page questionnaire that, it’s not necessarily a legal thing, it’s made with the intention of reminding the performers that you know, your family is going to see this. You may not think that they will, but you have to operate under the assumption that they’re going to see this, and if you think that your aunt in Utah or whatever might have an issue with this, you might want to consider that before you go through with this. 

This is 2014, and we, as a culture, are a little more sexually liberal and have more equal sex rights than we used to, but there is still a stigma around performing in adult films. If somebody wants to be a teacher, this could affect their life. There’s this whole banking thing, where banks are shutting down accounts for people that have ever engaged in any sort of sex work or sold firearms, or any of that sort of stuff, so that’s something else to think about. It’s all about, what do you want to do with your life? Do you want to be a politician, because if you want to be a politician, they’re going to dig up things in your past, and if they find out that you made this video, it’s going to affect you. So you really need to think about that stuff.

So after they fill out the questionnaire, and they’ve heard my full talk about how they need to think about what they’re doing, and they get through the model coordinator, and they get their test, and they do all this stuff, then we shoot the scene. I mean, I guess I could just be an ass about it and run around and just try to get scenes with girls that have never shot before, but I didn’t want to conduct business that way. I feel it’s not morally correct and ethically correct, and I would rather lose 60-70% of my potential models than shoot one girl and have her life completely destroyed by the fact that she shot this one video. I would much prefer to shoot girls and just have them go off and become full-time performers and not shoot all of these exclusive scenes and end up ruining people’s lives. It’s a pretty large responsibility, and it’s something that I worry about, so I try to do every possible necessary precaution to ensure that never happens. 

Luckily thus far, there’s been a few girls that have gone on, like Janice Griffith is one. You know, she’s one who I shot in a few scenes and afterwords she said she had a great time, it was so much fun. So I gave her some agency contacts and she went and she’s now performing for everybody. Dollie Darko’s another one, she’s just Dolly on my site but she now got an agent, and she’s, you know, performing for everyone. I can sleep well at night, you know. It’s a big headache, but it’s the right thing to do. I can’t conduct business in any way other than the way I see fit, so hopefully I’m not hurting anybody. (Laughs).

TB: Do you think that, the way the culture is now, that people are so familiar with porn that they feel like they’ll be able to do it? 

JD: Maybe. I only really have experience on the coasts, you know. I don’t see Kansas and Missouri and stuff like that so it’s tough for me to really make an accurate assessment without any bias coming into it. But from what I see, yes, in California, and New York, and Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which I know is in California, and Washington, there’s a much more liberal view on sexuality and doing an adult scene doesn’t necessarily restrict you from being a functional adult. 

But as far as the world goes, there’s so many interviews, and so many experiences where I’ve gone to parties and people will be like, “oh yeah, we get it, we think it’s so great. You’re doing stuff for equality, and pushing boundaries, and blah, blah, blah, we totally get it.” But as they start throwing what they “get” at me, I quickly realize that it’s just kind of like them going to the zoo and they’re looking at somebody who they have these prejudices about. And it’s not necessarily a bad prejudice, it’s just that they apply their own views into things and they create this thought pattern and process that isn’t necessarily because as far as our society goes we still have hundreds and thousands of years of religious, not really oppression, but you know, influence into our thought patterns. No matter how far we try to break from the physical activity of sex and sex as entertainment, and no matter how many constitutional legalities we have, etc. we still are a country that is dictated by religion and a lot of decisions that are made are not necessarily influenced by the church, but they have elements of what is quote, unquote “acceptable” based on teachings from the church.

Yeah, you know, it’s a thing, but I do see progress just in the last, let’s call it twenty years of my life, you know back when I was eight years old, and I remember talking to people and nobody would admit that they watched porn. Well, actually, let’s call it twelve, because that’s a little more realistic than eight, but when I was twelve everyone was like, “porn this, porn that,” but no one admitted that they watched porn. It was very much one of these, “oh yeah, I’ve seen it but I don’t watch it, I don’t masturbate.” And maybe it’s an age thing, as I got older maybe people became more comfortable, but I began to see a change in the personal relationships people have with sex. And it’s not necessarily everybody, but as far as the people that I encounter in my life, I’ve noticed just in the last ten years of the adult industry alone we’ve gone from a lot of people that fit this stereotype of people needing money or they think it’ll be fun, and now people are coming in and having aspirations and thinking long-term career, you know, they’re planning for the future and making this a business, as opposed to just doing it for the sake of doing it or because they want to do modeling and this is just something to do in between. 

I do see progress, but it’s just hard because sex is a personal thing and it’s very difficult to articulate a lot of proponents of it, which makes it hard to really explore it. Plus it’s not like there’s going to be any official entity that’s going to put money behind research in order to really identify different all sorts of different things, so you end up with a lot of unknowns and a lot of personal feelings, and you repeat your peers’ influence on a lot of things, and it turns into this thing like, “yeah everyone loves porn.” No, not everyone loves porn, it’s just that a lot of people that you encounter in your day to day life love porn, you know, you don’t have access to the entire world. 

It’s a hard question to answer, but my opinion is yes, we are becoming more open and accepting, but do I know? No, I do not.  

TB: You recently called out Juliette Lewis on your blog for trashing porn and then trying to pass off pictures of her having sex as artistic. I also know that you had some initial friction with Paul Schrader, who made some disparaging remarks on the set of “The Canyons.” Do you find that this conception of the adult industry is prevalent among people in Hollywood?

JD: Yes. Now, as far as the Juliette Lewis thing goes, I actually honestly don’t even know what the deal with that is. That was just because I woke up at 5 am and I had been working all morning and it was like 9:30, and I was like, “Oh shit, I need to write a blog post!” My blog goes live at 10, and I didn’t have a blog post so I was like, “fuck, uh… Google!” So I just googled celebrity sex and I went to, you know, mrskin.com and I was like, “hey, look at all this stuff on Mr. Skin,” and then I found a photo somewhere that said “Juliette Lewis has hardcore sex,” and I just grabbed it and put it up. 

But as far as the consensus goes, you know, is that Juliette Lewis or is that some young model who resembles Juliette Lewis, do we know? You know, so there’s all sorts of opinions there, so I don’t want to necessarily say that that was Juliette Lewis having hardcore sex and then pass it off as that because I don’t know. I know not. But as far as her statements on Twitter, I linked to those and those were 100% her.

Now Paul Schrader as far as his opinions, he is one of the most fascinating, amazing people that I’ve ever met. I was actually just in New York recently and I had dinner with him and he never ceases to amaze. He’s so incredibly smart and so knowledgable and so sharp, so my opinions of him haven’t really… he’s just an enigma and he’s amazing. But he’s just very blunt, so he was worried because there’s this whole thing with porn people, and like pizza boys, and that stuff, and he’s making comments like that that are kind of disparaging, you know. He’s not wrong, but at the same time his way of saying it was very crude, and blunt, and insulting, and I have experienced multiple occasions where I’m at these Hollywood events and I get these things where, like I said, it’s like that whole going to the zoo aspect of it where a lot of people think that way.

And I think it’s because, and this is my opinion, but I think it’s because there was a time in the 70s, let’s say, where a lot of adult performers were people that wanted to be actors and couldn’t quite hack it, or they never got their big break, or they were doing this because the movies at that time had some semblance of plot and acting and stuff. So there’s a lot of this, “porn actors can’t act,” and “they’re not as good as mainstream movies,” and there’s the stereotypical porn bad acting stuff. You have to remember that, Asa Akira, this is her quote, which is fucking brilliant, is that “that’s like saying are all doctors bad actors?” We’re not actors, that’s not what we do.

Maybe at a time in Paul Schrader’s era there were a lot of people that were going in and auditioning for roles who were porn actors and they acted like they were in a porn, you know, they weren’t that good. Nowadays, if you talk to, I’m gonna say nine out of ten performers, and you say, “hey, do you want to do some mainstream acting?” They’re gonna say no. They didn’t get into the adult industry to be actors, they got into the adult industry to be sex icons or to, you know, make adult films. And the acting is almost something that is secondary in a lot of cases, you know, depending upon the project and stuff.

Look at these parodies that are coming out left and right, there’s no acting in them. If anything, it’s emulation, it’s not acting. It’s just basically trying to copy the best you can what somebody else did. And then you have these narratives, every now and then, these features that come out that you do actually need acting in it, and on a lot of those they hire differently. They don’t hire the people that can’t act, they hire the people that can, and that are interested in it and will have fun with it. 

There is, I think, still a serious misconception of the adult film industry, but what’s that misconception based on? I don’t know. I’m too young, you know, I’m 28, I’ve been performing for ten years and in the ten years that I’ve been performing there’s been Ron Jeremy, Sasha Grey, and a few others, Sophie Dee. So there aren’t people going over to the mainstream world because people aren’t trying to go over to the mainstream world. There’s people like Stoya, and Kayden Kross, and Riley Steel who were pushed to do all this mainstream stuff, and they’ve done it but they don’t continue to do it, and it’s not because they’re not good at it. You know, Sasha Grey is doing more movies, and more stuff, because that’s what she wants to, and that’s the career she’s trying to have now. 

But you have people like, you know, Lexi Belle, she’s not trying to make it in the mainstream world. She is trying to make sure that she gets featured dancing gigs, and she’s a Penthouse Pet, and she’s you know, being Lexi Belle, that’s her career. Asa Akira on the other hand, she wrote a book and she’s promoting her book about the fact that she does porn, and she’s doing porn. It’s something that people need to get out of their head in the mainstream world, because the mainstream world isn’t really that good. It’s much skeezier than porn, it’s all sorts of convoluted and bizarre, and I have all sorts of things where, like, these contract negotiations come in and they start talking and it’s almost as if they think that I’m going to pay them for the privilege of having the mainstream exposure of whatever it may be. And I have to be like, look this is something that I’m doing because I think it’s going to be fun, or good, or exciting, but I’m not here because I’m hoping for my big break in the mainstream world. I mean, shit, it was an indie movie, it was The Canyons, or whatever, but it was because I was the lead in a movie directed by Paul-fucking-Schrader, and written by Bret Easton-motherfuckin-Ellis, and co-starring Lindsay-fucking-Lohan, and what did I do? I went right back to doing porn (both laugh). 

So people need to get that out of their heads, that porn people are bad actors. No, porn people are amazing performers, and some of us act, some of us can’t, it’s not what we do. 

TB: It’s great that you can own that, because I think that conception exists and I don’t know about changing people’s opinions, but I would hope that people would read what you just said and potentially back off a bit.

JD: Yeah, but again, I mean, think of stereotypes. Stereotypes exist for a reason, so let’s talk about Jews, because I am a Jew, and I feel comfortable saying disparaging remarks about Jews. People say, “Jews have big noses, and they’re greedy, and they’re good with numbers, and money, and stuff,” and if you look at these stereotypes, there’s a reason why they exist. Middle Eastern culture, and Jewish culture, there’s more dust in the air, so bigger noses is an evolutionary advantage that has occurred for people that live in that region. So Jews have big noses, that’s where that comes from. Jews being good with finances, and good with money, and stingy, that comes from, I’m not sure exactly, but The Great Depression maybe and the fact that the majority of Jews went into accounting or the fact that we’re a very education based culture. Judaism, as a culture is very education based, work, learn, so maybe that has something to do with it.

So now you take all of these stereotypes, and you apply them to porn, you know, like porn actors are bad actors. Okay, well, let’s think about it, back when the big cultural revolution of pornography, when it became constitutionally legal and wasn’t just dark alley illegal behavior, it was deemed on a federal level as legal, there were a lot of people that just weren’t great actors, and I don’t know what was going on then, but if you look at, that’s what it is. If you think about your stereotypical porn guy with his hairy chest, and his gold chains, and his mustache, and have you watched any of the movies made in the seventies? It’s Harry Reems, he was a very prolific actor in the seventies, you know, he did Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones, and all these movies, he’s got that hairy chest, and the porno ‘stache, and the chains, and all that stuff, and so the opinions are based on these things that did occur. 

If you look at it where it’s like, everyone’s on coke, and everyone’s this, and everyone’s that, well, apply that to the rest of the world in the 70s (both laugh). So apply that to porn, you know, everyone’s on cocaine, well, in the 70s and 80s, who wasn’t on cocaine? Look at that Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer, that’s the joke about that era. So there might be some validity to it based on the times, but the times change and people grow and as a business we further our legitimacy as a business, and as an actual business, you can’t be on drugs while you’re at work, so that doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe they did at the time, but at the time, stock brokers were on drugs, who knew? I wasn’t alive! (Both laugh).

There’s a reason for the mentality, and I understand that, but it’s not like that anymore, or maybe was never like that, or maybe was never more like that than anywhere else in the world. These are just things that people need to consider before they make their judgments.  

TB: You’ve been pouring a ton of work into your own personal website. Do you think it’s paying off, and allowing you to remove the middle man between yourself and your fans?

JD: Actually yes, and I do think that as far as the future of adult films go, I do see a lot more situations like this. Me personally, I always wanted to build my own porno wonderland where I could have the ability to shoot whatever I want, so if I want to do the Seven Sins stuff where it’s not really more feature-y, it’s just very high production value with kinda sorta art film things I guess, I don’t know it’s hard to describe. I just really wanted to film this one scene, Pride, and I’m using Seven Sins as an excuse to shoot that one scene, which is going to be live on jamesdeen.com this month, I believe. 

So that’s why I did it, but in actuality I just wanted to do really pretty, kind of creepy, kind of cool, weird stuff. But at the same time, I have the whole sex tape-type stuff where they apply to do a scene and the camera goes down just in the corner and kind of captures real life events and I describe it as more, not gonzo-y, but like dogme films. There was an artist in the 70s who did these films where he’d just turn the films on and let the world happen in front of the camera, and that’s basically what I want to see is the actual chemistry and connection grow without any editing, if possible, and show what happens between two people and how it leads to sex, whether it’s conversation, or we just walk in and start fucking, you know, whatever happens, let it just happen. 

At the same time, I don’t want to just shoot those two things, you know? The Seven Sins is a $150,000 project, so I want to shoot stuff like that as well as this really crash course-like, exploratory scenes, and just standard stuff that I like. Right now on my site, on Mondays I have the updates, you know, which right know is the Seven Sins, but before that it was just third person where someone else is holding a camera and filming me, or I’m holding a camera filming other people, and I just think of concepts and scenes, you know, like interviews and maybe a striptease, and then the scene happens. 

So that’s Mondays, then Wednesdays are free updates, I’m doing a lot of updates and I’m working on new updates and things to give away for free, for fun, because I really believe that the user format of the adult industry is going to follow the mainstream format of Hulu or Netflix where it’s going to be less subscription based and more commercial based, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m just experimenting with that and giving stuff away for free and for fun, and sharing content with people.

And then Fridays are going to be those amateur, dogme, or whatever you call them scenes.

TB: Cinéma Vérité

JD: Yeah, sure, we can go with that (both laugh). So, yeah, I’m just really trying to create a world where I can have the ability to shoot whatever I feel passionate about, and create the content that I feel is the best, and hopefully the consumer will gravitate towards it and be interested in it. I really see the future of adult films being the same way where it’s less of the big production houses, you know, there might still be some of them, but for the most part, the beauty of the internet is that the performer will have the ability to directly communicate with their fan base and really figure out exactly what they want to shoot and then tailor that to their audience and let the audience find them. 

It’s already happening, where everyone is starting to have their own website, usually as part of a network or a larger platform, which is kind of irritating for me because I want to be doing it myself, but whatever (both laugh). But you have these websites that have fifteen different girls and they’ll tailor stuff to their fans, and you have different directors and producers that are all on the same network and they’re all able to provide content directly to the consumer as opposed to having to worry about this old format of DVDs where you’re not even selling to a consumer, you’re selling to a buyer, who then is selling to a distributor, who is then giving it to a store and saying you need to put this there. And the store is not basing their sales on what people are actually buying, because people are buying what they see, they’re not buying what is there, while the internet gives you browsing ability and stuff like that where you can actually track clicks and see what people are clicking on and why, and what they’re interested in, and then find ways to say, “oh wow, people like this, and I also like this, so why don’t I do this, and it’s gonna be great!”

So yeah, I definitely see this as the future as being more direct consumer based sales and less of these big companies telling people what to do. 

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As a side note, James is running a special offer through his site for the entire month of June. See below for details...

James Deen, one of the most recognizable names in the adult industry, is celebrating the success of the launch of his own site, JamesDeen.com, by offering a $15 discount on any product at JamesDeenStore.com for anyone that signs up to a 3 month subscription to the site.  “I just wanted to offer a little something back to the fans that support my site,” says James, with a big smile, “I was watching wresting and I saw that they were doing this promotion with their store and I said... hey, I got a store. I figured if it is good enough for Hulk Hogan then it is good enough for me”