by Rich Moreland, December 2017
Their shoot for Eddie Powell wrapped up, Steve Holmes and Mandy Muse are game for a dual interview so we move outside to the veranda.
Steve’s wife soon joins us.
Here’s some of what we discussed.
* * *
A Convenient Marine
I open the discussion with a question about getting into the business.
Mandy starts us off. She’s been shooting for a while and works with Kendra Lust’s agency, Society 15.
“I’m 23 years old. I’ve been in the industry for 4 years now, started when I was 19. I have a big booty which I’m known for. I do pretty much everything except for double anal and double vag.”
Mandy has no background in acting other than a film class she once took. But the Southern California lass is well versed in sex, having her first experience at the tender age of twelve.
“I had my first threesome with two guys when I was fourteen and then my first orgy at about fifteen.” Her voice rises as if she’s not sure of the age, or doesn’t remember exactly.
She got into the industry once she turned eighteen, Mandy says, and relates how it happened.
“I was attempting my first DP with these two marines on base.”
A good time was had by all before another soldier shows up. He was on duty but that didn’t faze Mandy.
“He was really attractive and I wanted him to join in,” she remembers.
The marine was interested but declined. He was on duty. Undaunted, Mandy gave him her number.
“He later asked me if I’d do a scene with him for a uniform fetish website. I wore my cheer leading uniform from high school and that’s how porn found me!” the brunette declares gleefully.
Married with Children
Steve’s path started at a much later age.
“I’m German, born in Transylvania, then went to Germany as a kid.” he begins. “I worked in IT for ten years, before that in different jobs, always sales and marketing.”
I can believe that. He’s easy to get along with, just ask Mandy who met him for the first time today.
Steve’s wife arrives to pick him up and takes a seat.
As if on cue, he says, “When I started I was already married with children.”
I suggest his wife is a tolerant person. She smiles and sends him a knowing look.
“She is, yes,” he responds and turns to Mandy, “I did a nice feature with your agent, Kendra Lust. She played my wife.”
Come to think of it, I guess Steve has had lots of “wives” but only one real wife.
I tell Steve I first learned about him through his work with Kink.com in San Francisco.
“Kink is a funny story actually,” he offers. “They booked me the first time in 2007. I didn’t know the company. They always asked the girls at Kink who they like to shoot with. They were requesting me.”
The fetish giant explained that before they booked him he needed to do a little research to find out his comfort level with what they do.
They said, “’It’s not like the regular stuff. We’ll send you a link to our website and a password,’” Steve remembers.
He checked out their shoots and noticed something. He didn’t know how to do the rope work that seemed to be everywhere in a Kink production.
“They told me, ‘no problem we have people for that,’” Steve explains. “So that’s my first shoot at Kink for Sex and Submission in February or March, 2008.”
As time passed, Kink expanded their offerings to Steve.
“They asked me if I can help with producing and organizing. That’s how I started directing. One of the websites I produced was Public Disgrace. Princess Donna initiated that with the company.”
Donna has since left the adult business. I remembered seeing her a couple of years ago in a shoot for a European BDSM company called Elite Pain. Their work is rougher than anything stateside.
“Yes, a company owned by a friend of mine in Budapest,” Steve interjects. “They normally just shoot nudity with no sex.”
He references a shoot he did for them and shows a still of the bound model on his phone.
“The girl contacted me many years ago. She wasn’t a porn girl. She was a medical student in Germany. I booked her in Europe and we shot her in Berlin for Public Disgrace and I asked her if she enjoyed the scene.”
“‘I was hoping you’d beat me harder,’” he remembers her saying.
Asked about her limits and the girl said, “‘I don’t know, I’ve never reached that.’”
It turns out that Steve suggested she might want to give Elite Pain a shot.
“She came for the scene. We did it together. Hard punishment. I fucked her and she had so many orgasms. She was happy for the experience, but she’d never do it again,” he says with a chuckle.
As time passed Steve’s work with Kink was so impressive that he became one of their directors and specialized in filming in Europe.
Warming Up
Turning our attention to the shoot just completed, I asked our pair how they got to know one another when they arrived.
Steve begins
“Easy. We met. We got attracted to each other. We use the time they are setting up the lights.”
Yep, all that “warming up” paid off.
Mandy points out that being comfortable with your co-stars is important and in her case, she has “never really had a hard time finding chemistry especially with a performer like Steve Holmes. It’s just how I love being handled during a scene.”
“Thank you,” Steve says, forever the gentleman. Mandy giggles.
“We had a good time,” he continues, and comments on touching, caressing, and the like.
Mandy chimes in, “We talked about that too.”
Steve brings up the most important factor in porn . . . do you love what you do? It can make or break a shoot. And, of course, there is chemistry between performers.
“Productions have a certain idea about the scene and how they want it to be. But then sometimes they don’t always book the right people. When I feel the girl is just going through the motions, it usually reflects in the scene.”
Reading Expressions
How about communication when the camera is rolling?
Steve thinks of it as akin to dancing and uses a generational analogy I completely understand.
“My role model is Fred Astaire. Sometimes you go on the dance floor with a girl and she doesn’t feel it. You try to lead her, push her, you know. And then there are sexual girls. You dance to enjoy and also to put on a show. This is what we do here. We know where the camera is. We try to enjoy ourselves and look nice for the audience, the camera.”
I ask Mandy about making eye contact during sex.
She loves to do that but comments that in her personal life, it doesn’t always happen.
Regardless if it’s business sex or private sex, “You can see what they (your partners) are feeling more when you look at them.”
The eyes “make connections” and bring people together, she adds.
Steve is on board with that.
“Eye contact is very important. You know what your partner enjoys by reading their expressions. We react to each other.”
“Coming back to the BDSM fetish stuff,” he says, “it’s so important to read your partner so you can push them or back off.”
In shooting that type of scene, there is always a potential a safety issue, so everyone needs to be on the same page.
Did Steve use his expressions to get Mandy to go where he wanted to be in the shoot, or where he wanted her to be?
In chorus, Steve and Mandy exclaim, “Both.”
“It’s a given thing,” Steve says.
There was a fair amount of spanking in the shoot. How did this influence Mandy?
“I’m submissive,” she explains. “I like pain so I like to be spanked. It gets me stimulated. When the penetration after the spanking happens, it’s two different types of feelings so I just love the mixture of both.”
The PA for the shoot, AJ Westwood, comes out and offers to drive Mandy to her car. She’s parked at a local mall. Steve says it’s on his way and he’ll give her a lift.
Incidentally, in LA neighborhoods people coming and going from a house raises red flags. For that reason, my photographer and I parked down the street some distance away.
Keep the Energy
Before we wrap up, the conversation turns to Eddie Powell.
Steve says he’s worked with Eddie for about a year. He likes shooting for him because the director gives his performers freedom to express themselves.
“There are certain directors you enjoy more than others,” Steve says, and he’s known ones that are not to his taste.
He mentions a director from years ago. “The first time I shot for him was so boring.”
Once the director put the performers into a position, Steve explains, “he didn’t change anything. Don’t move your hand, don’t change anything. Hold the position.”
The crew worked around them.
“In the end the product looked great because the dynamic came from the editing. It was actually not a lot of fun, (just) hard work,” he says, adding that some shoots can range from five to eight hours on set.
Today was much different, Steve declares. He didn’t have to save his energy.
“The camera follows you, you can just keep going and enjoy yourself because you know the camera is going to pick it up.
“With Eddie, the scene is so good with the lighting and the camera being handheld. It’s not so easy and he pulls it off so well. That’s the quality of his shooting.
“The key is that Eddie actually tries to book performers who know what they are doing, then he tries to capture it. If you give him what he wants, then he lets you do it.”
Mandy offers a final comment about maintaining on-set energy especially during breaks.
“Even when the cameras aren’t rolling I want to continue the flow (of the scene) to still keep the energy there.
“Today was not supposed to be so hardcore. It was easy to not get worn out when the lights are changing,” she says.
What is important, Mandy insists, is “to continue flowing with the same energy.”
Understandable. That’s always a priority when you make your living as an entertainer.