I have a drinking game I play with my pal, the porn director Ron Royster, though he doesn’t know it and I am never actually near alcohol when I play it.
Whenever Ron says something to the effect of “I love everybody, Man” or “I’m just trying to make Art, Man” I uncork a virtual bottle. When he then launches into a tirade about how this person or that organization fucked him over, I drink it.
I drink a lot.
Royster directed a documentary for Adam & Eve called Alternative Worldz: Atlanta a few years ago. In an escalating back-and-forth that seems to characterize his dealings with companies, Royster fought for URLs of his contributors to be listed in the credits of the movie. The company couldn’t oblige due to legal concerns, though Royster says they originally agreed. Adam & Eve then added a second disc where his Behind the Scenes footage might have been, a decidedly non-alternative movie starring Adam & Eve contract star Carmen Luvana called Carmen Goes to College.
“I don’t know what it is with these companies, Man,” Royster said.
Royster arrived in L.A. last November to shoot a movie he’d pitched to VCA, Atomic Vixens: Escape from the Valley of the Sluts, which will be released next week. In the next few months, he executive-produced two movies, Barbed Wire Kiss (directed by Benny Profane), and Cat Pee’s Untitled Alpha 15 Project. He put together a crew of quirky iconoclasts worthy of a 70’s ensemble comedy.
There’s Chester, flamboyant George Benson-whistling, moped-renting Man Friday, Benny, Psychocandy auteur, deep thinker, and snappy dresser, Cat, starry-eyed newcomer with an eye for the ladies and girlfriend of porn-friendly Aristocrats director Paul Provenza, and Renee, ingenue of the Vibe Hotel. These people did everything from shooting movies to buying doughnuts to lifting immobile vehicles.
In addition, Royster worked with a ragtag fugitive fleet of below-the-line talent. There was “cunt!”-spouting cockney cameraman Tim Polecat, Nordic punk rocker/cameraman Henrik, longshoreman-cap-wearing pinup fetishist Octavio Arizala, and always somewhere nearby, the enigmatic team of Eon McKai and Malachi Ecks.
By the time Royster got to VCA, the company, McKai, and “alt-porn” were synonymous. VCA also began courting Joanna Angel during this period. Despite a little overlap in performers (particularly Justine Joli), there was nothing about Royster’s Atomic Vixens that could be characterized as “alt”.
“I call it ‘Glamourcore’,” Royster said, but, though Vixens was much more accessible to the LFP/Hustler/VCA consumer base (blondes were used, for example, including future Vivid girl Lacie Heart) than McKai’s more terra incognita-skewing material, Royster was lumped in with the alties.
This was reasonable because Royster’s worldview was similar to McKai’s. McKai would often say, during his transition from VCA to start Vivid-alt this year, that his “heart was too big for this business.”
“Ron said some really great things about me on messageboards when I was getting started as a director,” McKai said. “Without knowing me or having met me, he screened (McKai’s first movie) Art School Sluts in Atlanta and really helped put the word out. When he pitched VCA, I put in a good word for him.”
McKai has been instrumental in getting deals for Angel, Ecks, and Vena Virago at VCA, and he has been behind the scenes in some capacity in most of their movies.
Royster, who is 46, drew from a lifetime of enthusiastic fandom to put eclectic groups of people together. His next movie, to be shot in Prague with Tim Polecat (pending funding) will be Pornophenia. At a screening of source material Quadrophenia Royster said, “just imagine porn girls on scooters driving through the streets of Prague; it will be the best movie of all time.”
Royster threatened to pack up his stuff and move back to North Carolina several times over the past few months if VCA didn’t accede to various demands, like boxcover art and extra DVD space on movies. He has of late tempered his artistic anguish, though he recently lost a fight with LFP about the boxcover to Barbed Wire Kiss.
“He’s like a magical hippie and a Southern gentleman at the same time,” McKai said, “which is pretty impressive to someone who’s been wearing Vans since he was 12.”
As is the case with most magical hippies, sometimes there are concerns reconciling dreams with reality. There is no place better than porn to pull off fantastic things, but Royster is often frustrated with the numerous obstacles placed on his work in the name of completing production.
This has resulted in tensions with his crew and feuds with money suppliers that people outside of the adult business might call colorful or quaint but that people used to dealing with the way things are done here might dismiss as business as usual, and dismiss Royster as unrealistic in his expectations.
What is not usual or ordinary about Royster is his refusal to be blase about the work, even at the expense of pissing off people who work with him.
“If I pay you for a job,” Royster explained, “I pay you for the whole job.”
“Does that mean you can call people at 3 a.m.?” I saked.
“Yes, goddammit, but I’ll get them a sixpack of PBR when they’re done,” he said.
Royster expects a lot from his people and often acts surprised when they demonstrate minds of their own. “I guess you don’t want a paycheck,” he was overheard saying to a crewmember who disagreed with him.
“I would work with Ron for a hundred years,” said Benny Profane who, though he made money from three self-produced Psychocandy movies didn’t have a deal with a major studio until Ron pitched Barbed Wire Kiss to VCA. “He is very tenacious and persistent.”
This sentiment was echoed in reverse by people within Adam & Eve, who credited the North Carolina-born Royster’s tenacity with an off-the-record “bad taste in everyone’s mouth.”
“Ron is a brilliant guy,” one Adam & Eve staffer who asked to remain anonymous said, “but he just kept calling.”
“He put together more deals in a shorter time with VCA than I ever did,” McKai said. “Persistence is what gets movies made.”
Ron reminds me of people I grew up with. “I just want to eat pizza with pretty girls” he is fond of saying. He listens to Foghat, Nazareth, Steely Dan, Mountain, and Focus (creators of “Hocus Pocus”). He’s driving back to North Carolina this weekend, then heading to Prague, perhaps New York, and maybe San Francisco. He alternates between saying he will never return to Los Angeles and that he might in a couple of months, depending on who he’s talking to.
Royster is a larger than life character whose net effect on the industry in such a short time has, I think, been positive. Like McKai, he credits hiomself with having given people work and contacts in a business that is hard to get into if you don’t have boobies. He has made things happen, which is a real accomplishment. He has irritated numerous people, which isn’t surprising. He has put pretty girls with whom he’d rather be eating pizza on film.
I hope he has a good trip and I hope he comes back.
Previously: The World is your Royster; Rikki don’t lose that Royster (Fleshbot); Loft people naked; VCA fires preemptive volley as McKai leaves
See also: Eroticist Films, VCA, Hustler, Adam & Eve
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