John Quinn has produced, written, and directed several films for Indigo Entertainment, the Playboy-owned film company that produces the EROS Collection softcore features. Some of the films he has worked on include Key To Sex, The Awakening of Gabriella, "Beauty Betrayed", Passion's Peak, Fast Lane To Vegas, and his most recent feature, Girl for Girl. John was recently kind enough to let us ask him a few questions about the softcore biz...

SOFTCORE REVIEWS: How did you get involved in making softcore films, and more specifically, how did you end up working with Playboy?

JOHN QUINN: I went to UCLA film school, thought I was going to be a writer/director like everybody else who graduates right from there, and instead I got involved in independent film distribution. For like fourteen years I was a distributor. I set up my own distribution company of specialized independent films. I discovered David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and got that going... and then I distributed The Decline of Western Civilization, which was directed by Penelope Spheeris, who later went on to direct Wayne’s World. After awhile, anyway, I got kind of tired of doing distribution and wanted to get back into writing and production. I wanted to be more creative.  In distribution, the most creative thing you do besides discovering a film is creating the ad campaign and setting up its release pattern.

The first films I produced were actually children's films. The first was called Goldy – the Last of the Golden Bears, it was about a little orphan girl and a bear lost in the woods around the turn of the century in California. It did quite well; in fact, so much so that I eventually produced two more Goldy features. The first picture that I directed was called Cheerleader Camp (aka Bloody Pom Poms). I guess that had a little bit of the eroticism in it. I had like three centerfolds in the movie. One was Terri Weigel, who eventually wound up going into X--I think she’s the only centerfold that Playboy has ever had who's wound up doing X--anyway, that film I'm kind of delighted to say is sort of like a cult classic. Sort of an 80’s low budget comedy/horror flick that has a following around the world.

To make a longer story shorter, I then set up a company and for five years my partner and I tried to break into big budget studio features.  We got very close...but we wound up doing only one movie together and that was the third Goldy film starring Cheech Marin and Mr. T. After a couple of more years of “almost” getting a green light from a studio we shut the company down. I was running out of money and trying to decide what next to do when this Filipino producer, Ron Tecsen, said "Let's do a little low-budget erotic movie," and I said, okay...

SR: It could be worse...

JQ: (laughs) You know, I think the worse thing in this industry is not working. It was really funny because (it was called Broken Rose) they had these two beautiful Filipino actresses that they wanted as the lead and supporting lead, and one was Miss Philippines, really gorgeous girl, and I thought, oh god, this is gonna be really hot. And then, you know, I’m starting to write the script for it, and they say, “You have this love scene…but she’s not going to do any nudity.” I said, "What are you guys talking about? You’re casting two beautiful girls and they’re not going to do any nudity?" He goes, “No, no, no, we’ll put nudity around them.” And so we did it.

The film’s got some good action scenes and is pretty good but it’s a tease. You see these beautiful Filipino ladies and they don’t take off their clothes. Ron Tecsen said to me, “Why don’t you see if you can sell this to Playboy?” The film had been selling around the world and stuff--and so Playboy looked at it and said, “You obviously can direct, but this is not the format that we need, it doesn’t have enough eroticism in it. But why don’t you guys do something with us?” So we did a joint production together. Playboy put up half the money and the Filipino producer put up the other half. 

Playboy also coached us as to how much nudity and eroticism we should put into the script. The resulting film was called Fallen Angel. I feel it’s one of the best erotic films I’ve written and directed, not just for the eroticism but for the overall production value and story. It’s a 40’s film noir set in early Los Angeles. Playboy was so impressed they then asked me to work for them.

The first thing I did totally for Playboy was Sheer Passion…which was the only time I got to work with Lisa Boyle. She’s actually one of the most exciting actresses I’ve dealt with. I mean, she can act, and she’s incredibly sexy when she does her love scenes. The executives at Playboy are very cool, they’re extremely professional and the whole place is run extremely well.

I’m now executive producing four of the ten features for Playboy for the 2001 season. Of the four, I’ll probably direct 2.  I’ve already directed and written one this year. That was Hollywood’s Hidden Lives (aka Hollywood Starlet). It stars Brad Bartram and Angela Nicholas…and I’m introducing a new girl, Kim Price. One of the comments in your reviews that I read said that, “I don’t mind seeing the standard faces but I’d like to see new talent” (laughs), and we try to find new talent. This is her first starring role. Kim did some incredibly erotic scenes, plus she did a great job with her acting.

SR: When will this one be coming out?

JQ: In a couple months, you know…we just finished editing and making changes for the executives. And I haven’t even mixed it yet.

SR: Do you sit in on the editing for these movies?

JQ: The way Playboy works, we usually shoot these in 10-11 days, and after production the editor, usually within a week, gives a rough assembly. That’s what’s called the editor’s cut. Usually they’ll leave it long, even if they feel some scenes can be cut down a bit. After that the director comes in and works for a week, putting together the director’s cut. So this is like two weeks after wrap. Then the executive producer looks at it and makes suggestions. This is called the executive producer’s cut.

Then it goes to the senior vice-presidents of production and distribution, and then they look at it and make comments. So the directors at Playboy are a little closer to a director of a movie-of-the-week, they’ve got artistic license but they don’t have final cut. But usually the executives and the directors see eye to eye. Directors want to work here, I mean, Tom Lazarus (House of Love) is a pretty talented guy. Tom wrote Stigmata, and was a writer/producer on several television series, and he enjoys working here.

SR: His film House of Love was really hot…

JQ: Yes, very, hot. It was an interesting comment you made that you had to watch it twice to make sure it wasn’t an X movie cut down.

SR: Exactly. A lot of times we don’t get to hear the ‘audio’ portions of scenes. The music cues as they go into a scene and we can sometimes hear heavy breathing, but you don’t usually get to hear the flesh slapping and the dirty talk that was happening in quite a few of those scenes.

JQ: We started late last year to get that feeling. I have always pushed to get the natural sound of the actors during a love scene. I hate it when I go into a mix and we have to put in the moans and groans—which we call “M & Gs”. Sometimes the M & Gs won’t even be from the actress or the actor actually involved in the scene. It might be the receptionist or somebody that they have sitting around at the mix house. It just doesn’t work for me.  Fortunately there’s been a change and they’re allowing us to get the real sounds and sex talk that takes place during the scene. 

It’s so phenomenal. You hear the clothes rustling, you hear the breathing, you can let them talk dirty, you hear skin against skin. It’s incredibly hot. Natural sexual sound was one of the dimensions that we were leaving out of the finished film. It is more difficult to get the real thing, but it is worth it. The theory behind playing music in the background was that the music relaxed the actors. And sometimes it does, because then the actors can forget where they’re at, that there’s a crew standing around looking at them while they sit there naked. But we’ve really talked to the actors this year and explained to them that we’re not doing music because we feel it pulls the audience out of the scene.

SR: Your films are known for being more explicit than most other softcore films, I think The Key to Sex was the first time I had seen open leg shots done so up-close…

JQ: Well, Jeannie Millar was so beautiful, and that ring in her vagina…I mean, I think I did the rest of the world a favor! Maria Ford is gorgeous, you know. And that scene with her and Brandy (Mason Marconi) oiling each other by the pool, well, it doesn’t get much better. There’s always pressure for a director to push the envelope, whether it be an action film or a thriller. You feel the need to make it new, different.

We have a philosophy here that if the actors or actresses aren’t comfortable exposing the genital area then we’re not forcing it. This year, though, I did a lot of genital exposure on the girls in Hollywood’s Hidden Lives. One of the actresses wasn’t comfortable at all, and I just let it go.

SR: Has the increased explicitness been an attempt to grab more of the hardcore audience?

JQ: I think that one of the things is, you’re there and you can see it, so why not show it. On the other hand, I think people in the last three years—of course, Key to Sex was a couple years ago—with the internet and stuff, are accepting much more nudity. As a director you try to do things that are different, like in Key to Sex…one of the things somebody said that was really funny, I had done the first “wraparound”, and I said, “What is that?”, and the guy says, “Well you have Maria Ford reaching around on Scott Carson and masturbating him.” I said, “Really?” And they said, “Yeah, nobody’s done that before.”

I don’t know, I just do it (laughter). I think the woman’s figure is absolutely beautiful, it’s divine to look at, and you never get tired of looking at it. And unfortunately the code system is really like, you know, it’s a man’s penis, you can’t show that. Well now we can show the penis, we can show a flaccid penis, that is. If it’s an erect penis you start crossing the line, then they start saying we’re X. We don’t want to do X, we really want to stay away from that. It’s a fine line, it’s a very fine line, and I mean, you know, you sometimes think wow, this is as exciting or as erotic as an X-rated movie. Maybe even better cause you can relate to the actors and to the story. In X, people are just fucking.  After a while it gets boring. I can only watch an X film for a little while. But then, X films are structured so you can leave them and then come back for the next fuck scene and you haven’t missed anything.

SR: So has it been the actor’s choice not to show male frontal nudity?

JQ: Well, we didn’t show it at all, now we ask people if it’s okay. Most men are really kind of shy about it, you know, they’re real nervous about it. It’s a real “guy thing”, it’s so funny. But in Hollywood’s Hidden Lives, I start off showing a male penis right away. It’s just part of life, if a guy is taking off his clothes, or if he’s nude after sex and gets up out of the bed, rather than just showing his butt, you know, you just get up and turn to the camera instead of trying to hide it.

I know that some people try and direct an erotic film and think, well I don’t really have to show the eroticism. But that’s crazy. That’s like directing a horror film and thinking you don’t have to scare the audience. Those kinds of directors don’t last here at Playboy and they don’t last anywhere. I mean, a director should deliver on what it is he’s been hired to do. That’s our job.

SR: Do the performers ever get aroused while filming these scenes? What happens if arousal does occur and has anyone ever taken it too far for the cameras?

JQ: It does happen. I mean, it does happen that a guy will get a hard-on. You usually keep a sock on the guy during the love scenes, and that’s one of the reasons why—just in case--so that he doesn’t slip and, you know, put it in, which would be really disastrous. So you keep this little jockstrap sock, but it’s a little thinner than that, and it prevents him from being able to slip it in. But even if a guy gets a little hard-on you can see that, and it does happen, even with guys that are pretty experienced.

It might just be a particular girl, or a scene, and you know, they’re human, and part of acting is getting into it. Everybody is really spoken to before the love scene, especially if it’s their first time, and we really explain the boundaries and what they can and can’t do. I’ve only had a situation once where this young guy—I wasn’t directing but it was on Passion’s Cove (note: this was a series made for Cinemax and John Quinn executive produced)--he just thought when he was going down and giving head that he had a chance to get a free lick. And it really freaked out the actress, and she looked at the director and the director said, you know, you do that again and I’ll break your arm!

He was really thinking he could take advantage of it, and I mean, you have to be right there, really close, maybe an inch or two inches away, kissing on the inside of her thigh, but it’s still not right on target. That was the only one, and it was like the first time we used him. He was just a young guy, and we didn’t bring him back. Mostly everybody is really very professional about it.

The thing which is really strange, my wife was quite nervous when I started working here, thinking oh my god, there’s going to be all these beautiful women, and you know, yeah, there are a lot of beautiful women around. But it’s really funny, when you do these scenes and the crew’s there a lot of it is very technical, and it’s done very professional. Once she saw how it was done before we edited it and stuff she thought, oh, it’s okay (laughter).

But there are moments when it just does get…the actors do feel really, really real and do get very excited. Those moments are precious.

SR: I’m thinking in particular of a scene in Key to Sex with Maria Ford and Mason Marconi, that girl/girl poolside scene…

JQ: Yeah, actually that was one of my favorite scenes to direct, now that you’ve brought that up. We shot and shot because it was so magical, we could have made that into a fifteen minute love scene. It was very magical and Maria might have bumped a little bit right there, you know…

SR: It definitely looks very close.

JQ: She might have hit it with her nose or something or hit the side and made the mound move because you can see it. But she’s a real professional and was doing it as close, giving it as much as she could because she wanted to do a good job for me. But they really enjoyed touching and being with each other, so there was a reality we had in that. The filming of it was like, wow!

SR: That chemistry always comes across, you know, when the chemistry’s real. It makes the scene more erotic.

JQ: Yeah, they just both enjoyed it. They were really into the sensual touching and the lotion that they put on each other. It was a hot, warm day, and it was just magical. That was great…

At this point John was called back to the set of his latest project and we had to say goodbye. He’s executive producing Tom Lazarus’s new film, Voyeur Confessions, which started production earlier this month. We want to thank John again for taking the time to speak with us and look forward to watching many more of his films in the future.