by Rich Moreland, April 2019
Bree Mills is a rising power in adult film. By that I mean writer, director, producer, and businesswoman. Her bold creativity and ability to play on the edges of legitimate (i.e. mainstream) production is reshaping the future of the adult industry.
We sat down in the press room for an engaging discussion during this year’s adult trade show in Las Vegas.
Photos are credited to Kevin Sayers. Pure Taboo supplied the logo.
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The Process
The focus of our interview is Pure Taboo, the studio and its productions.
Bree give us the basics. “I actually oversee quite a few different studios. When it comes to Pure Taboo, I have two intentions. The first is to challenge the psychological side of sexual desire and sexuality and take popular porn tropes and tell them with a different tone.”
That means taking a typical porn scenario and “treating it like a drama” or “tragedy” rather than “a lighthearted comedy.”
She explains. “I want to make people think about the content [they’re] watching, to confront it . . . to question [what they see].”
The native Bostonian believes viewers will either love or hate what she produces, but they will certainly never forget it.
After looking at a handful of Pure Taboo films, it’s hard to disagree with her.
Bree’s second intention involves her casts. “How can we work with these very underrated actors [and] provide a vehicle for adult actors to show their range?”
Part of the answer involves dialogue. “What’s interesting to note, which you may not have realized, is that those are all improvised acting performances. There are no scripts,” she says.
Bree describes the process.
“We work off a scene treatment that I write, or a member of my team writes, and the directors bring those characters to life. We rehearse and choreograph it.”
In effect, the scenes turn into “long single takes.” In the end, it’s challenging because improvisation is the key. “That is the most powerful aspect of this,” she adds.
Gangbang in a Prom Dress
Bree uses words like “raw emotion, realism, grittiness” to encapsulate what she wants from her performers. To realize this outcome, she works with them “from their own experiences or their own emotions. This means supporting the “method acting approach” to getting what she wants.
“I call it porn script theater,” she says, and that means spending “the day like a theater workshop.” It works because Bree sees her role as “the storyteller.”
After that, she lets “the actors flush it out and then we rehearse it” which means tweaking things a bit here and there.
Because she likes to focus on “realistic situations and bringing them to life,” that became the genesis of Prom Night starring Whitney Wright.
The film is “one of a kind,” Bree declares. “I had the idea to do a gangbang in a prom dress.” There are many stories of women who “end of losing their virginity on the prom nights in ways that were not what they had expected and it’s very complicated,” she states. So, why not delve into what for many girls is a bizarre and painful rite of passage.
She and Whitney talked through “how we wanted this character to feel” and “how we wanted to keep the realism of it,” Bree says.
“Whitney is one of our go-tos. She’s a great actress. She’s versatile and a great sex performer,” the director says of the twenty-seven-year-old.
There’s more when it comes to this charmer. Whitney’s “just a really great person,” Bree continues. “She’s funny, she’s weird, shows up on set with a smile on her face. She’s very generous and very willing to go the extra mile. The perfect type of person to bring on your set as cast.”
In the end, Bree approached the plot as “this fantasy that so many people have.” Create a group scene involving a prom dress that becomes a nightmare and a film is born.
Don’t Talk to Strangers
The other film I bring up is Don’t Talk to Strangers. It’s about a young girl kidnapped and imprisoned by a married couple. Bree says it was “inspired by several famous true crime stories that occurred in the early nineties in Canada.”
Having lived there for a while, Bree says, the scenario was “this nightmare I grew up with.”
The narrative explores the “Stockholm Syndrome” and the film became “one of the grittier scenes that we’ve put out,” Bree comments. “It was interesting to work with all three of those actors who we’ve shot multiple times in multiple different roles.”
One of them is Casey Calvert.
“That was the first time that her and I have worked together,” Bree exclaims. “I was very impressed. She’s exactly how I would have imagined that character. Really beautiful, but very cold.”
Bree gets some of her ideas from others, including her fans. But what is of particular interest to her are the stories she hears from performers.
“I’ll work with them to bring that story to life and for some people it’s therapeutic . . . a way for them to combat either something that happened to them personally or an issue that affected them otherwise,” she explains.
It’s an outlet, Bree believes, and she’s been able “to provide a platform for performers” to explore the deeper psychological aspects of their personality or their past.
“Sex is a complicated thing, you know. When making sex films, there’s a fair amount of emotion and anxiety and energy and vulnerability brought together. To be able to provide an outlet for people is therapeutic to me as a director. It’s one of the main reasons I’m in this business.”
Well said and we hope Bree Mills stays in the adult industry for a long time.
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You can visit Pure Taboo on twitter at https://twitter.com/puretaboocom