When we got a copy of Not Charlie Sheem’s House of Whores, the newest celebrity parody from award-winning studio X-Play for review, we couldn’t believe how perfect the timing was. Charlie Sheen couldn’t have picked a better time for a porn parody to be released, even with his ninja assassins and adonis DNA! So we called up the porn parody master behind the camera on House of Whores, 2010’s AVN Director of the Year, Will Ryder, to see what he thinks of the whole mess. Tiger blood or no, the man’s on to something.
WHACK! MAGAZINE Will Ryder, I have a feeling that most of the people who are going to be reading this interview will know who you are, but just in case, can you give us a bit of an intro?
WILL RYDER Yes, I am the 2010 AVN director of the year. I am a Leo. I like walking along the ocean… No, I’m a musician turned porn director.
W! A musician, really?
WR Yeah, I was a musician all my life. I still am. I consider myself a musician first and foremost, and I’m a porn director and porn producer.
W! I didn’t know about the music stuff. Do you play guitar, or what’s your specialty?
WR I’m a piano and keyboard player, and I made my living at it for almost fifteen years.
W! Wow, that’s amazing. What kind of music?
WR I started out in the eighties, believe it or not, and I went to Minneapolis and got hooked up in the whole Prince vibe up there. I was working for Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and with those groups, toured the world. And then those groups came to LA and started working with other groups here. I worked with everyone from Brandi to All 4 One to the Backstreet Boys. Everybody. I was out there, I was doing it.
W! That sounds like… so much fun.
WR It was a lot of fun. There’s a lot of similarities between the porn business and the music business. They’re almost an identical business.
W! I was thinking that. I mean, it just sounds like a very enjoyable career overall.
WR Well, you know, if you enjoy what you do then you’re really not working. And although I work extremely hard, I’ve never really felt like I had a job. I’ve run companies, I’ve been all over the world many times, I’ve been to Japan sixteen times on tour. I mean, it’s been a hell of a life. I can’t imagine not having a lifestyle like this. Plus, the fringe benefits are great. And that’s women. I’m a guy who loves women, and I’ve had pretty much carte blanche with the women all my life.
W! Yeah, it sounds like it. Now… do you play… a keytar?
WR No. I don’t. Never did. I thought about it years ago in the eighties… Is that the thing that straps around you?
W! Yeah.
WR I was gonna get a Roland, and then I was gonna get a Casio AZ-1 when that was happening. But I just never did it. I actually owned one for a while but I never used it.
W! Aw, really? I think those things are kind of hilarious but awesome at the same time.
WR They’s a TV commercial now… I can’t remember what it’s for… where the guy’s playing a Casio AZ-1 wrapped around his neck and it’s a mockery commercial. He’s making fun of somebody. “The Final Countdown” is the song he’s playing and it’s very goofy. I think it’s more of a joke than anything. But you know, there’s some people that played them that were great. I mean, Herbie Hancock, he played it.
W! I think if you really rock it, it can be a cool instrument.
WR But you know, it’s pretty hard to stand up next to the guitar player or the bass player. I never felt a need, like I had to prove anything. I just remained behind my rack of keyboards.
W! That’s the way to be.
WR But I mean, it’s really a similar business. Ironically, the demise of both businesses are from the same source: the illegal downloads. Everything’s for free. Go figure.
W! I feel like the music industry was the first that was really victimized by that. It got undermined a lot faster.
WR It was. The music industry was the first industry to get hammered. Obviously, Napster was first and then everything else came after that. Messed up legal fights. And what it pretty much did is it wiped out the record industry as we knew it.
W! And it seems to me, at least as far as I can see from the East Coast, is that there are a lot of much smaller bands and record labels who have to make their own names on a smaller scale now.
WR It’s almost impossible to make your own name without the money that it takes to break an egg. But what happened is that the way they write record contracts has completely changed over the last five years. In the old days you would never ask an artist, “Hey we’d like a piece of your touring, we’d like a piece of your T-shirt sales, we’d like a piece of your corporate sponsorships.” They’d have just said “F off.” But now that’s how the record companies make their money because they can’t make money selling records anymore. It’s a very difficult situation. Smaller bands can use social media and get a fan base, but they can never really reach the masses. Sometimes they can get part of the way there, kind of like how Arcade Fire were the social network darlings and they had the cult following, and the next thing you know they’re winning Grammys. It does work to a point but I don’t think it’s the best method to sell records. Just like it wouldn’t be the best method to sell porn DVDs just on a website.
W! What do you think is going to happen? Do you think there’s a parallel for the porn industry that could be followed?
WR Yeah, the parallel is, “Get your life preservers, because the Titanic is going down.” I mean that with all seriousness. It’s done. It’s over. It’s still ok now and it’ll run for a couple more years, but after two more years there’s no business model that even exists on how the porn industry’s going to survive.
W! Do you see any kind of business model? Do you have any ideas about ways that this might go? I’m sure that porn will never die; there will always be porn.
WR There will always be porn. It’s just that people won’t pay for it. And what happens when people don’t pay for something is that
no people are interested in producing it because there’s no monetary incentive to make something that’s good or that costs money because they can’t make returns. The whole situation is out of whack. Porn will never die. Guys are always gonna want to jerk off; girls are always gonna be curious about certain things. But there’s so much free porn available on the internet that will always be there, millions of scenes, that you don’t need to buy it. What’s happened is that we’ve evolved a whole generation of people growing up not having to pay for porn.
W! Right, having no idea that that’s even something that ever happened.
WR Right, and when you’re twenty-six you’re not gonna say, “Ok, now I’ll open my wallet. Let’s go.” It’s not gonna happen. We’ve put ourselves in this position. And the sad part is that people have been saying for several years that eventually it will all be advertiser supported. I don’t think so because you’re still never gonna get McDonald’s or Coca-Cola or General Motors to support porn with their advertising. They just won’t do it. I don’t see it happening in ten more years, and by five more years, I’d say ninety percent of the porn companies will be wiped out of business.
W! Do you think there’s any hope in the toy industry? Sex toys seem to be where all the money is.
WR Yeah, I think that people are putting their money into sex toys, but how many people can make sex toys?
W! I’ve been wondering that. It seems like there’s a new company popping up every day.
WR I mean, there’s companies like New Sensations, and I think Zero Tolerance is doing a line, and Hustler, and Vivid’s doing toys. Everybody that has a brand is dong toys. But what’s gonna happen is everybody’s going to have the latest dildo or the latest thing that spins around, and Pocket Rocket or whatever. I think the only thing that’s gonna survive in porn, long term, is the individual girl. The girls with the big fan bases. Because they can do things live, and there’s still something to be said about live situations. But anything past that, eh, I don’t know. I’m not the smartest person in the world, so I don’t know if I can think about what it’s going to be. It’ll be something. Somebody’s gonna figure something out and make a ton of money off of it.
W! Right. It’ll be interesting to see… What do you think about small, indie companies?
WR Like my company?
W! Yeah, like X-Play.
WR Um… ultimately, no.
W! So what’s your ten-year plan, then, for yourself?
WR Well, my ten-year-plan is to lament the fact that I didn’t get into this five years earlier. I’ve been wondering, “What the fuck was I doing, staying in music five years too long?” You know…
W! I think you were busy getting laid.
WR Well, yeah. I was getting laid and I still get laid quite a bit. You know, if you don’t enjoy the product, you can’t really be good at selling it. Or creating it. You have to be in love with the product. If I was making widgets, I’d be in love with widgets, but I’m not. There’s two things I love in life and that’s music and women. And I love naked women. So I’m in the perfect business. I wish it could last. As far as a ten-year plan, I mean, we’re starting other businesses, I mean there’s things that we can do. We’re not relegated only to porn, I mean we run other companies that I can’t really go into talking about too much in a porn interview. But I’m sad to say that porn is the best business I’ve ever been in. It’s the most enjoyable. There’s a lot more to it than the music industry. The results are about the same, which is basically going to a party, and meeting a girl, and getting banged without any guilt. I mean, I don’t have a wife and kids, I don’t have anything to be guilty about. I don’t shortchange the process like Charlie Sheen, you know.
W! Winning!
WR Yeah, I don’t think he’s winning right now, that’s for sure. So, you know, I live a very interesting, relaxed lifestyle. I’m sad to see that go. When it’s gonna go I don’t know, I mean I’m still living it right now. But I imagine it’s gonna be gone in two years. And then I’ll come up with something else.
W! You’re really riding the wave. Parodies are the thing to be doing right now in the porn industry.
WR Yeah, to a degree. It is. We definitely brought back the parody. Parody has been around in porn for thirty years, but what we did is… the difference is that when we did Britney Spears—Britney Rears—and the Brady Bunch, is we made it look like the TV show. In the eighties, parodies didn’t necessarily have a lot to do with the original, but we decided to make it as close to the actual original as possible. And I never really knew it would explode like it did. If I told you I knew I would have had a different business plan. We were kind of caught by surprise with the Brady Bunch, that Not the Bradys XXX blew up so huge. It’s one of the biggest-selling series in the history of porn. Who knew? I never would have thought that…
W! Well, I don’t know, I mean the possibilities for step-brother, step-mother pairings and orgies are just endless with the Brady Bunch, so I can see the appeal to the consumer.
WR You know I still get fan mail to this day asking me how come I never had the father fuck Marcia or whatever. That’s the great question. But you know, we learned our lesson well that not only is porn a beautiful and perverted industry, it is also a commercial industry. What we found out is that we would get restricted from certain stores and certain catalogues in parts of the country if, for instance, we had incest. So we couldn’t do it. We made a mistake with the first Bradies by having Greg bang Marcia, which turned out to be a dream sequence—he didn’t really do it. But we got banned from some major catalogues.
W! Huh. I mean, that’s completely implied incest. That’s not even real familial stuff.
WR It is implied, but we sure learned our lesson in that first one. Because you can’t have incest of any kind or you get banned. Like we were banned from the Adam & Eve catalogue. We were the number one selling title in the Adam & Eve catalogue, in the catalogue and online, and we got banned. Go figure. So you know, we were then very careful not to have incest, so now people call up and say, “Hey how come you didn’t have this or that?” And the reason is because we’re also business men.
W! That’s something that people, generally, don’t understand about the porn industry. Most of the people I’ve met just from being a writer and kind of hanging out on the periphery of things is that most of the people who do well in this industry are all business, all the time.
WR Yeah, the perception is that we’re a bunch of raincoaters running around in the dark jerking off, and that’s not the case. It’s not a bad perception to have. I think there’s something to be said about keeping the seedy, Mafia-tinged vibe of the industry alive. But it has gone corporate thanks to companies like Vivid, with Steve Hirsch, who turned it into a Hollywood company, and Digital Playground, and those things. And I appreciate those people. We tried to put some fun back into porn here at X-Play by not taking it so seriously. I was never really into the spanking and the spitting and the choking and the hacking and all that stuff. I just wanted to make goofy movies that you could laugh at while jerking off. And some people criticize this wave of porn parody, and other people think it’s fantastic. And if you don’t like it, that’s fine, I don’t mind. I’ve had retailers come up to me at the last two AEE shows in Vegas and say, “If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve lost store earlier.” Because all these parodies have kept them in business. And I’m like, “Wow, that’s pretty amazing.” It’s ironic that we’ve changed the course of modern porn. We really have, and I never thought I would, but we did. And so I’d like to say to the industry: “You’re welcome.”
W! So what do you think it is about the parody genre that’s so appealing?
WR Well, your sale is already done. Let’s take M*A*S*H, for example. You’ve got some boring doctors, some hot, sexy nurses, and the whole group of people. We don’t have to sell the characters; we don’t have to sell Hawkeye or Colonel Blake. They’re already sold. We just have to recreate them in a way that’s believable and introduce vaginas into the picture. And we’ve won. So there’s a built-in audience. We tend to do parodies that are older—a lot of companies do brand-new ones, but I always want to tap into ones that have two or three or four generations of viewers already fans of the parody. It increases our audience. Our sales are to men in their forties.
W! Yeah that makes sense. Those are people who are used to the idea of paying for porn.
WR Right. If you want to do a TV show that has a demographic in their twenties, those people aren’t buying porn. I want people in their mid-forties and fifties who aren’t downloading from a torrent site.
W! Do you think that part of the appeal of parodies is also that because there’s a storyline and a cast of characters that you already know, that it’s more accessible to couples and women?
WR Oh absolutely. Couples is a growing segment of the market, and women want to be entertained, too. They want to be with a man or with a man while they’re watching some porn. And there’s other things that work for couples, also. The romance movies are selling now, and so there’s things that are specifically aimed at women. We don’t necessarily make things specifically for women, but we definitely want to include women. And that’s why we make it just like the TV show, because if you look at the demographic for the TV shows that we’ve done porn parodies of, the audience is very evenly divided between men and women. Even M*A*S*H had a very even audience because women loved watching M*A*S*H.
W! That’s so heartening. I love hearing that women love porn. I’ve heard it a million times already but it makes me feel good every time.
WR You wanna hear what I’ve learned being in the porn business?
W! Sure.
WR Women wanna get fucked just as much as guys do. Period, plain, and simple. As guys we tend to believe that they don’t and that we’ve gotta convince them and we’re getting one over on them if we can bang them, but, no. They love fucking just as much as we do.
W! I do believe that’s true.
WR I mean, look at all the girls in porn who have sex freely. I think it’s a wonderful thing. I didn’t see the free love of the sixties; I wasn’t old enough. But I mean, shit, I love it. I think if these girls wanna get down and have sex at a porn party, that’s beautiful.
W! Let’s talk about Not Charlie Sheen’s House of Whores. So, this whole Charlie Sheen debacle has been kind of going on and coming to a head for the past few months. So where in the process did you look at the situation and say, “Ok it’s time to make a parody about this”?
WR Well, right from the moment I realized it was a story that would last, my partner Scott David and I, we said, let’s make a parody of Charlie Sheen. Because there have been other news stories and celebrity stories in the past that we didn’t jump on because we didn’t think it was going to last very long, and really they went on for much longer than we anticipated. Charlie Sheen, we looked at him, and I said, “This is gonna go on for a while.” There are many layers. And yeah, my business partner just walked in and said, “And we had every girl.” And yeah, we did. And we banged some of them ourselves, which was just an added perk, so we were like, “Charlie, we know just what you’re feeling, bro!”
I love Charlie Sheen, personally. I’ve never met him but I love him. He’s the kind of guy that I would go over there and drink a few beers with him, because he’s living the lifestyle. The only difference between him and me is the money and the fact that he’s got a big, huge 31-room house and, uh, he’s got kids. I’m not so sure that if I had kids I would do that. I probably wouldn’t. But, you know, as a divorced man, he’s free to do what he wants to do. And he chose all the porn chicks… You know, I think he’s great. He’s a single guy, he’s banging these girls, he’s banging Bree Olson, Kacey Jordan, Tanner Mayes… You know, all these beautiful girls. You know, why not? Go for it, I’m all for it.
And we rushed our movie into production. Our movie’s really a collection of scenes with an interlocking storyline. It’s very funny, and it’s really for people who want to see the vaginas of the girls that Charlie Sheen has poked.
W! So how did you go about getting all of those girls he poked to be in your movie?
WR Well our movie is a collection of scenes, not a separately shot movie like the Brady Bunch, where we had our own script. What happened was we took scenes that we already had in our library from other movies and acquired scenes from some of the girls who we hadn’t shot, and we just assembled it and put a storyline around it. So it’s all individual scenes pulled together. It’s really a connoisseur’s collection for those who want to see the girls that Charlie has been with, or lusted after, or whatever you want to call it. So it’s not really a separate movie with a separate storyline, its’ more of a collection of girls that he’s banged.
W! I’m finding it very interesting that now he’s shacked up with Bree Olson. Cause you know, I guess it was right around AVN when they were in Vegas together and making all the headlines and everything. And now she’s living with him. Not that I expect you to have that much insight into their situation, but, what’s your take on that? You do think that’s a sustainable situation?
WR Well let’s put it this way: Bree ain’t no dummy. She is no dummy, and she’s beautiful, and she’s horny. When I shot Bree, who also stars in Not Bionic Woman and the Six Million Dollar Man XXX, she was fabulous. She was great. I’d only met her within the periphery here and there at parties and whatever, I’d shot her once before in a “barely legal” something when she first broke into the business, but she has got to be the horniest girl in the world. And we have a lot to cover when we’re shooting a feature, but there must have been five opportunities where she’s come up to me and pulled her pants down and been like, “Stick it in me.” And, if I was ten years younger, I would’ve been able to do it on the fly, but you know, I need to be romanced a little bit. And I couldn’t do it because there were people around or whatever, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to going on the set into a corner or a private room or the bathroom or something and bang one of these beautiful girls… cause I like to do that! But even though she wanted to do it quickly, she’s also an exhibitionist. She likes to do it in front of people. Well I don’t. So even though she was teasing me with a certain amount of sincerity, I wasn’t able to pull the trigger so quick, and I was still trying to shoot a movie.
As far as Charlie, he’s got a beautiful girl, she is in shape, she looks absolutely beautiful, and she’s wild, she loves dick, and she wants to get banged. I mean, what more could you want. He was getting interviewed by ABC, 20/20, and they asked, “Why do you get with porn stars?” And his answer was, “Duh.”
Well I feel the same way. I feel a kinship with Charlie Sheen because I know what he appreciates, and he’s living the rock star life, and being an award-winning porn director is very similar to being a rock star in lifestyle.
Will it last? No, of course it’s not gonna last.
W! I just don’t think it can. I mean, I in no way want to judge Charlie Sheen on this, because, honestly, I think he’s brilliant. I don’t know if the recent developments in his life are the result of some deep-seated emotional issues or if he’s making it all up. I think he’s brilliant.
WR I don’t think we’re gonna know until it all plays out, but now that he’s been fired by CBS, I don’t think that’s a good sign for him. That’s not good. Probably it’s gonna lead to more partying and drinking and the whole nine yards, but who knows, I mean, that’s the guy’s prerogative, then whatever.
W! Exactly, as long as he’s not hurting anybody.
WR You know he had another girl, who was also in our movies, named Kacey Jordan. And Kacey was my date to the AVN awards this year, so that was quite an interesting thing. You know, I have a big insight to this whole thing and how it all went down, and I think it’s fabulous.
W! So, do you think that, given all the recent developments in Charlie Sheen’s life, are you thinking about making another movie? I feel like some of the things that have come out of his mouth lately are just begging to be parodied.
WR They’re fantastic, but anybody’s who gonna make an original parody with it is gonna fuck it up. I mean, let’s be honest. I see some of these directors talking on various websites saying they’re gonna really kill it, but I say they couldn’t make a movie if they tried, so let ‘em try. No, I think if we did decide to make a Charlie Sheen movie, by the time we made it and had it ready to go, you don’t know where the situation’s going to be, but with him getting fired, that probably reduces the chance of it being a hot media topic. He’s probably going to be suing CBS and Warner Brothers and it’s gonna be an ugly and protracted. I think the audience is gonna slowly start to sour on him.
W! I think so, too.
WR It’s kind of sad, but maybe by that time everything will be out of his system and his brain will be back to normal functioning and he’ll be like, “Oh my god, what was I talking about? I looked like a raving maniac.” In the meantime, though, he’s gonna bang beautiful women.
W! Right, and he’s having a blast. So more power to him, but I hope that all ends well.
WR It probably won’t, but you know…
W! Well so what else? What are you working on now at X-Play? Can you give me any tidbits about what’s coming up?
WR Yes. Mayyybe. Maybe we’re coming to making a movie about Jesus Christ.
W! laughing Oh, no, really?
WR Yes. Jesus Christ: A XXX Porn Parody, a story of God. Yes, that’s something that I’m getting ready to shoot.
W! Wow. Um. Are you taking like a conspiracy theory, like a Dan Brown approach?
WR No, we’re just doing a straight, factual account. It’s not blasphemous because we’re portraying it in a beautiful light, and we’ll see where it goes. The other movie that we want to make, although we’re not quite ready to make it, but I want to do a XXX parody of Hitler. Not Hitler XXX: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
W! Oh my god, you’re really going for it.
WR But the problem with that is that most of the distributors are run by Jews, and although we’re going to make Hitler look like the imbecile he was, they might not want to carry it, so that’s a little bit more dicey.
W! You know, I heard somewhere… can’t remember where so maybe it’s not accurate, but I heard… that Hitler only had one testicle.
WR He did. He masturbated so much that he squeezed the other one into a little grape and some wine came out of his dick. Do you know why Hitler was so mean and so upset?
W! No, do tell.
WR Cause he always got bad haircuts.
W! He did get bad haircuts.
WR Horrible haircuts! They looked like somebody went nuts on the side of his head and like shaved him, and he came back from the barbershop like, “I can’t fucking believe this! I’m gonna fucking kill all these motherfuckers!”
W! You know he was really kind of the first emo guy.
WR He was very emo. That Hitler, he was a nutcase.
W! He had the emo look, the emo hair… The whole hair in the eyes thing… But really it was the whole facial hair issue that did him in.
WR You know, you don’t see a lot of babies after World War II named Adolf.
W! No, really you don’t.
WR I think right now you’re seeing a lot of babies named after Justin Bieber, and that kind of thing, but you didn’t see a lot of babies in the 40’s and 50’s named Adolf. It’s just not a good name. Cause he was such a dick. If we make that movie we’re gonna just lampoon him like a motherfucker.
W! Do you have like a Churchill character? An FDR character?
WR Oh, yes, absolutely.
W! Himmler? Goebbels?
WR Well, I don’t know how deep in his cabinet we’re gonna go. We’re gonna have a good time. But also, another movie we have coming out is Not Jennifer Lopez: An American Idol, which will be coming out right in the middle of American Idol mania. And there’s going to be The Wizard of Oz.
W! Now that’s a good idea.
WR The Wizard of Oz XXX. I’ll keep details tight, but that’s going to be an epic motion picture.
W! The Tin Man? I can see tons of possibilities. [Editorial note: In the original books, he was called the Tin Woodsman!]
WR Yes, the Tin Man, the costumes… that’s gonna be spectacular.
W! I’m a big supporter of all these ideas. Jesus Christ is a great idea, but it’s something that people have probably been terrified of touching for a long time, so kudos to you.
WR Well, you know, it’s all how it’s done. We’re not going to be distasteful… I mean, some might think it’s distasteful, but we’re all fans of Jesus over here.
W! I mean, Jesus was a great guy. Really a rock star.
WR He was a rock star. The storyline is great: there were virgins, there were whores, there were prostitutes. There was everything. There was foot fetish, lots of washing of feet. Lots of kinky stuff going on. The bottom line is that you’ve gotta come up with great titles, and we’re gonna come up with great titles to be able to compete in the marketplace, but the basic porn parodies don’t interest me anymore. There’s too many of them on the market. There’s over 470 movies that have been made in the past few years.
W! Wow, it’s hard to believe there’s anything left to parody.
WR There’s always stuff up for parody, but it is interesting. I want to keep it interesting because as a director, if it’s not fun, I don’t want to do it. I have no desire to do anything that’s not fun. I want to enjoy every single day. I want to spend every single day working hard in my office and at night having dinner with a beautiful girl that’s willing to get naked. That’s what I want.
W! You’re living the life. You and Charlie Sheen.
WR Yeah, I just don’t do any drugs.
W! Neither does he, remember? He cured himself with his brain.
WR Winning! No, I don’t think so, Charlie, I think you’re losing, but that’s just my opinion.
W! Well, Will, this has been fantastic.
WR Yeah, you know, porn is fun! Be sure to have everyone check out my company, X-Play, at our website, Sitcums.com, and hit up my blog, willryder.com.
—Interview conducted by WHACK! staph degenerate and editor-in-chief, Miss Lagsalot.