In the personal backstories of many successful people, we’re often told how they worked for years towards a goal they set for themselves when they were very young.
Professional athletes, for instance, often tell of how they knew, almost from the first time they tossed, dribbled or caught a ball, that their destiny was to be a pro ball player. From there, it was just a matter of putting in the work to reach their goal.
Not all success stories follow this familiar pattern, though. Sometimes, happenstance plays a central role – even when the person in question and their eventual career seem so perfectly matched, it’s understandable to assume they always planned to be on path they now tread.
When YNOT asked Director Lee Roy Myers, the man behind WoodRocket titles like Aladdick, Red Dead Erection and Strokemon, what drove his decision to specialize in adult parodies, he offered a response which speaks to the impact life’s happy accidents can have.
“To be honest, I didn’t really choose parodies,” Myers said. “And don’t get me wrong – if I could choose my dream pornographic genre to make, it would be parodies. I grew up on MAD Magazine and Weird Al albums and Mel Brooks movies. But, when I got my first offer to write a porno for a studio, it just evolved into me writing a parody, which I ended up directing since nobody else at the studio was available to shoot it.”
What’s more, even the fact that the first porn script he wrote was for a parody movie was something that occurred by chance.
“Scott (Taylor), the owner of New Sensations asked if I could write a comedic XXX feature about an office in Porn Valley,” Myers explained. “It just so happened that that time coincided with The Office finding an audience on American TV and both the Brady porn and Palin porn had just come out and showed some new signs of life for porn parodies. So, Scott and I talked about it, and I ended up writing my first porn parody, which I ended up directing, which turned into a career of writing and directing and producing adult parodies.”
Judging by the ongoing popularity of WoodRocket’s parodies, the coincidences involved couldn’t have involved a better recipient of their accidental bounty. As someone once said of the perfect timing of the rise of legendary rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix: “It could have been anyone, but it had to be him.”
The mainstream works that Myers now chooses to parody, on the other hand, certainly aren’t arrived upon by chance – and the selection process goes well beyond choosing a title which lends itself to innuendo-laden wordplay.
“Usually the way it works is that the whole WoodRocket team discusses movies, shows, games, stage shows that are either out or coming out and whether they are popular enough to parody, first and foremost,” Myers said. “Without an audience, we are just making porn for nobody to masturbate to.”
Once they have determined any given work is sufficiently popular to be worth targeting for parody, other considerations are then taken into account.
“After we figure out what makes our ‘Will Probably Have an Audience List’ we discuss whether the storylines or themes give us enough to work with to actually create a parody of it,” Myers explained. “Those are the main focusses for us when choosing what to spoof.”
Myers said that while the creative process at WoodRocket remains similar to the one he described to Complex.com in a profile of the company published in 2015, “our process for picking parodies has changed slightly since WoodRocket started.”
“The difference is that we work with Pornhub on parodies too now, so they’ve become an important part of our process,” Myers said. “The porn parodies we choose are usually the result of the whole WoodRocket team brainstorming and asking ourselves the questions, ‘What do we like?’, ‘What do other people like?’, ‘What are people talking about?’, and ‘Will it make a good porn parody?’. Then we discuss with the Pornhub team what their audience is looking for and which ideas they think will be successful.”
While adding more cooks to the kitchen sometimes has a negative impact on creative processes, Myers said the collaboration between WoodRocket and Pornhub has benefited the final product.
“We’ve evolved, and I think it’s allowed us to make some of our best parodies yet,” he said. “And if not our best, at least our bodypaintiest.”
Given how often critics and pundits (mostly mainstream ones) express trauma over seeing cherished TV shows, movies and video games parodied by WoodRocket, it’s reasonable to ask: Is there anything Myers and WoodRocket simply won’t parody?
“Absolutely,” Myers told YNOT. “For me, I try to avoid anything that would hurt anyone. So, anything about victims that relates to real experiences seems like it would be a little too fucked up for me to ‘funny-up’ and add some porking. So, anything about rape or diseases or genocide or molestation or assault – even though that last one has the word ‘ass’ in it – I avoid.”
Unsurprisingly, in terms of his comedic influences, Myers cites many of the same auteurs of classic parodies he enjoyed as a kid – along with a tip of the hat to the porn satirists who blazed the trail his company has since taken to new heights.
“I love Mel Brooks. I remember watching Blazing Saddles over and over and over growing up, starting when I was too young to even understand the references,” Myers said. “He will always be at the top of my list, but also on the list are Weird Al and MAD Magazine and Troma and Mystery Science Theater and now Rifftrax – and of course, 1980’s/1990’s porn parodies. I probably owe a handshake of Thanks to Edward Penishands.”
The latest co-production from WoodRocket and Pornhub is the musical XXX parody “Aladdick.” Fans can stay abreast of the studio’s latest parody titles by checking out WoodRocket.com and Pornhub’s WoodRocket channel every month for new releases.
