CraveOnline: You were talking about publicity and how that’s a different aspect. I saw, I think it was on Huffington Post, they had a news story that said, “James Deen doesn’t particularly care for Michael Bay movies!”
James Deen: Oh god, yeah. Everything I say. I actually wrote a blog post about it because everything I say, somebody picks up on something, whether it’s a joke or something and they run with it. I’ve slammed everybody. Every time I say anything, it’s, “James Deen slams so and so!” So what happened was, if you look at things I did, back in like, 2009 or 2010, I was talking about artistic integrity and vision and stuff like that, I mentioned Michael Bay because I don’t personally like his movies…
It’s not a weird sentiment! You’re not the only person who doesn’t like Michael Bay movies. That’s the thing that fascinated me.
It is a fact that Michael Bay’s movies are blockbuster movies with a lot of action, a lot of explosions and they’re not the best “movies” but they’re entertaining and they make a lot of money. That is a fact. There’s no denying that. There’s no opinion when it comes to it. That is just actual, factual information. Opinions of the person, I’ve never met the guy. I know girls that have dated him, through porn and stuff like that. I know people that have worked with him. The A.D. on The Canyons was I think like, the 2nd A.D. on Transformers. I’ve heard personal opinions about him but I’ve never met the guy so I don’t know.
All I know is my opinion of his movies are… that’s not the type of movie that I would want do. If someone called me up and said, “Hey, Michael Bay’s got a movie for you,” I’d be like, “Well, I don’t really want to just do a Michael Bay movie. I mean, maybe if it’s like the coolest movie ever….” I can’t think of one that would excite me. When I was talking about that, I was talking about how good movies I would wanna do, scripts that I would wanna take are things that I read and I get excited about and I love the character and I want to like, involve myself in. It’s something that I want to see come to life. And I’ve never heard of a Michael Bay movie that I’d be like… The closest I ever came to a Michael Bay movie that I ever heard of, where I was like, “Oh, I can’t wait to see that!” was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and then the fucked it up! Because you want to know what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are? MUTANTS! Not aliens! It says it IN THE FUCKING NAME! The Teenage MUTANT Ninja Turtles!
They could be MUTANT aliens!
No… Well, that actually would be kind of cool. But that would be like, they go to an alien planet and then they create like, I don’t know… That could be cool. The fact of the matter is, they’re Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! They live in a sewer and they eat pizza and they’re awesome! [Laughs] There’s no reason to change that. You don’t need to alter perfection! It’s already there. It’s perfect! You don’t need to change that! [Laughs] So, yeah things like that are why I would never want to work for Michael Bay or be involved in a Michael Bay project because they don’t stimulate me or interest me. So, now apparently I’ve horribly insulted Michael Bay and I’m sure Michael Bay is sitting there, scouring the internet to see if a porn star insults him or not. I’m sure that is what Michael Bay does on the weekends. So I’m not worried about it.
I want you to talk about my favorite scene in The Canyons. It’s actually the therapy scene with you and Gus Van Sant.
Oh, thank you! Actually, that’s one of my favorites, too.
Could you tell me about that? Was Gus just on there for one day? Did you get a chance to talk to him, work with him on your characters? Tell me about that.
Yeah, he was only there for a day, just playing the character, doing a little cameo. I think we talked a little bit, just a little conversation. He was very nice, very cool, calm, relaxed, just a really chill guy. I thought it was really cool to be able to say I did a scene with him. The interesting thing about that scene was I was being electrocuted almost the entire time during one or two of the takes. My lav, my microphone that I had on my ankle, my sweat, because it was a very hot room… it was summertime, it was a room with no air conditioning, so that sucked. I was sweating in a track suit. At some point, my sweat from my leg interfered with the lav and something happened with the battery and it actually started to electrocute me. It was not super bad. I mean, it ran on AA batteries so it’s not that intense but it was just this pulsing, electrical current running through my leg, for almost an entire take. I didn’t know what it was and I just kind of tried to focus on it like, part of the discomfort and make it a feeling that I was having, that I didn’t want to be there and try to “use it,” if you would. But then I obviously, called cut and they fixed the issue and it was all in one take and I don’t even remember if it was on me, or on Gus. That’s what I found the most interesting about that scene. [Laughs]
Was Gus or Bret or Paul, were they fans of your work before this? Were they just like, “Dude, James Deen. That’s kinda cool?”
I have no idea. That would be a question for them.
They didn’t tell you, “Dude, I loved you in blank!
No. No one actually ever said that to me. I know the way Bret found out about me was I do a lot of press and I get a lot of attention. Then Braxton [Pope] and Bret sent e-mails back and forth to each other every day. Braxton sent Bret a couple e-mails with stories about me and he’d be like, “Hey, isn’t this interesting? Here’s this young, porn guy, kind of like a pop star but a porn star, with a female audience.” and all these things. Bret kind of got inspired and started talking about me on Twitter. So he and I met up for the movie. He’s said that he’s a “fan” but I don’t know if he’s become a fan or if he already knew about me or what he’s a fan of, and as far as Paul and Braxton and stuff, they never specifically stated anything. They were never like, “I loved you in Nurses!” [Laughs] On the first day with the crew, I made a joke and made a mention to something about it, and one of the camera guys, he was the 1st A.C., was like, “Nope! I know who you are! Don’t worry!” [Laughs] It was really fun but nobody specifically was like, “I love your porno, bro! You did this movie with this chick, it was so cool!” For the most part, the crew and everybody was like, not really chagrined or anything. That’s not the word. Not really embarrassed, but that’s not what they were doing. We weren’t in “Porno Time.” We were in “Work Time” so all the crew and stuff, they were doing their jobs.
Well, I will be that guy. You were really funny in Librarians.
Thank you! I love that one! God, I love that movie! That was so fun. Yeah, Joanna Angel is one of the most creative directors I’ve ever worked for in my life. That girl is so good. That came from her and I. That was actually when I was the head of production at that company and that came from her and I joking around about, “What movie should we do next and what’ll happen?”, how we wanted to do a movie about something we thought was hot and so we mentioned librarians and talking about how librarians are hot and the nerdy girl with the glasses and stuff. Then she took it and ran with it and was like, “What if we do like, a hostage situation where the library gets held hostage?” Then she wrote the whole movie and it was amazing. I love that movie.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
