November 20, 2006

Hot House - Behind The Scenes

On Saturday afternoon, I had the pleasure of visiting the set of a new Hot House movie being shot here in San Francisco. The movie doesn't have a title yet, but it's got an auto mechanics theme, and it's to be a star vehicle for Hot House exclusive Nick Piston.

The invitation to visit the set came from Hot House's new promotions director, David Mc Cambridge. We met at Hot House's new production facility they've occupied for only the past 6 months. It's an unassuming warehouse space a few blocks from my house, located in the area that was once dubbed "Multimedia Gulch", but has lately become known as "Gay Porn Gulch". (The offices of Hot House, COLT, Raging Stallion, Falcon, Bear Films, Factory Video, Naked Sword, are all within walking distance.)

The studio is a big, barn-like building that is used strictly for video and photo production. (The Hot House corporate offices are at a separate undisclosed location, which David also invited me to visit at another time.) Upon entering, there is a very organized prop room on the left with plastic bins labeled for the various kinds of "toys" to be shoved up porn star anuses, and a shelf full of military style boots. On the right is a "lounge" area to relax between scenes, serve food and apply makeup.

The rest of the building is mostly open areas that are flexible enough that they can be changed to create whatever scene is needed. They recently purchased a classic style barber chair, that I'm sure will be seen quite often in upcoming Hot House movies.

Toward the back on the right, some fake walls were installed to create a tea-room scene, complete with a fake urinal trough bolted to the wall. A vintage Mustang in flourescent orange was parked in the middle, probably there just for this auto mechanic movie.

The back corner on the left was set up for shooting stills that day. Nick Piston was dressed in a rubber apron, and I believe they were doing a photo shoot for Instigator Magazine. (If it's for Instigator, it's GOT to be something kinky and rubbery.)

I wish I would have paid more attention to the surroundings, but I was preoccupied with being charming to all the new and familiar faces I was meeting, not to mention being distracted by Nick Piston walking around in nothing but a rubber apron and boots!

I was soon whisked off to another location where another entire crew was busy shooting another scene.

The other scene was also just a few blocks away in another uber-butch looking warehouse space, this time with a red drill-press and red tool drawers that looked great against the tanned skin of the models.

We arrived in the midst of shooting a scene with Hot House superstar Robert Van Damme topping a sinewy boy named Marco something, who was nicknamed "Brazil" to distingish him from another Hot House superstar, Marco Paris. Having been on way too many porn sets, I was more interested in the behind the scenes action and chatting up the crew, which again consisted of both new and familiar faces. Hot House owner Steven Scarborough was the most familiar face, and it's always a pleasure to meet with him. Though again, there was a lot of distractions, not to mention the radiating star power of Robert Van Damme naked in the room.

With a crew of nine, including a director, Steven was there mostly as overseer. The company has gotten quite large, so his time is better spent with more CEO-type duties. We only chatted briefly, but the main points were that the Hot House website "Backroom" will get a makeover in the near future. As everyone in the industry predicts, the future of porn will be less dependant on physical distribution of DVD's. In anticipation of that, Steven says, "We're shooting more content exclusively for our website, and plan to offer ways for customers to download and save scenes on their computers."

During a break that I can only assume was "douche break", I got a chance to meet and pose for a picture with the lovely Robert Van Damme, father of twins (and more) back in his home country of Hungary. He was so awesome in person, I was too tongue-tied to ask questions, so I hope I'm not saying too much out of school!

From there, I was returned to the Hot House home studio to interview Nick Piston, which is in another blog entry.

My suggestion for a title to this yet untitled epic: "PISTON: A Star Vehicle".

You're welcome.

Posted by lavenderlounge at 12:25 PM

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