By Peter Berton
CHATSWORTH, Calif. – Taboo sex: That’s the market niche occupied by Forbidden Fruits Films. With titles like Mothers Behaving Very Badly, Mother-Daughter Lesbian Lessons and Blended and Twisted, the husband-and-wife filmmaking team Jay and Jodi West tread right along the edge of a major societal boundary: incest.
The risk is worth the reward, Jodi West told YNOT.com when we spoke with her. Turns out incest and other taboos may be forbidden in the real world, but they’re very much alive in porn fantasies.
YNOT: Adult filmmaking isn’t a first career for either you or your husband, is it?
Jodi West: Both my husband, Jay, and I came from non-adult business backgrounds. We were very successful in other endeavors, and when we decided switch directions a few years ago, we thought long and hard about going into the adult industry — which we knew absolutely nothing about.
We started by webcamming for a couple of years. First just for fun, exploring a newfound love of exhibitionism I had recently discovered. Soon, our webcam income replaced my entire salary and was way more fun than corporate America. At one point, we actually were on camera for 200 days straight as a couple, for at least one hour each day.
When people started asking where they could find movies, we started thinking about making them. We had no idea where to begin, so we started asking questions. We were told I should get an agent and do some work in the industry, so that’s what I did. For two months I worked for other companies and asked a lot of questions, took a lot of notes and learned a lot of stuff.
We were fortunate enough to have had Dan O’Connell with Girlfriends Films become somewhat of a mentor to us and, like sponges, we absorbed everything he and Moose said. We had already begun making clips when we met Dan, and he helped us refine what we had started.
During the two months I worked for other companies, we met someone else who would become instrumental in our success: Howard Levine. He told us we had all the components to make it, and we just need to film and film and then film some more until we had at least 200 quality scenes, then come back and see him. So that’s what we did. We filmed.
Two years after meeting Howard, we called him up. We said we had the content and had actually made three DVDs, had them replicated at 1000 each and were ready for distribution. We sent them to him, and he said “Your covers look like shit. And why is Jodi West in so many of your movies?”
We fixed the covers but kept me. [She laughed.]
The rest is history. One year and 22 titles later, Forbidden Fruits Films is now Exile Distributions’ No. 1 line.
Where did you and your husband get the idea to work in the taboo niche?
We get asked this question all the time, and I will attempt to answer as best as I can.
I am a woman in my 40s. There are only so many roles I can play. Being the nurturing mother figure comes naturally. I am also a swinger and sexually adventurous. My husband and I are very creative, and neither of us really cares what anyone thinks. So with those elements in our corner, we had swinger friends for years telling us outrageous stories about their friends’ husbands sons coming home on leave from the armed services or college and relationships getting out of hand with their new wives.
From camming, we learned the Oedipus complex and the various psychosexual areas surrounding it are huge. The subtle domination that a mature woman has is an amazingly powerful thing. We decided to take those stories and that information and let our imaginations run wild. We always storyboard the ideas to make sure the family tree doesn’t get too narrow, but we have managed to capture a certain “fly on the wall” element in our filming that makes people uncomfortably interested.
What sells?
Realistic sells. If a there is a tryst that shouldn’t be taking place, for example, it isn’t going to last for 45 minutes and have five position changes. That’s just not realistic. If I have sex with someone in a bathroom stall, there will be one, maybe two, positions and then done. We try to have realistic reactions to unbelievable situations.
Also, sex is supposed to fun! People seem to have lost their sense of humor in many cases. Funny things happen when you’re trying to have sex, during sex and after sex. We always try to have some element of humor in our stories without sacrificing the eroticism of the scene. We think our viewers are above average in intelligence. They appreciate wit.
What sort of responses have your films drawn to date?
Fans from our early camming days still write to us. We also have fans who just found out about us yesterday.
Our fans are absolutely amazing, and we have always listened to what they’ve had to say. We owe a great deal of our success to them. Although I don’t respond to all emails, I do personally read each and every one of them and take advice and suggestions accordingly.
This is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and everyone doesn’t have to like everything. I think we are just different enough that people like what we bring to the table.
Your company espouses “ethical adult production.” What does that mean?
We try to bring elements from non-adult business practices into the adult production end of things. We respect people’s time and property and expect them to respect ours. We have people on-set for a minimal amount of time and rarely waste time. When we get done with the day, we have other things to do, and so do they.
Since Day One we have always offered condom use. We keep our talent circle very small and work on a referral-only basis. We treat people with the utmost respect. I have been on sets where I have been verbally harassed by crew members and have heard stories from other girls about worse. We work with a minimal crew, and that kind of behavior would never be tolerated.
We never try to take the easy route if it means someone gets taken advantage of in the process. For example, we don’t play favorites with our content distributors. They all get the same content at the same time unless it is exclusive content. Everyone has the opportunity to get exclusive content.
What are your limits when it comes to taboos?
Taboo is defined as “not acceptable to talk about or do.” That leaves a lot of area to play with, doesn’t it? What is taboo to one person isn’t to someone else.
Our initial releases were in the “blended family” genre where lust collides with opportunity, and to say they have done well would be an understatement. We can’t keep the titles in stock and are replicating at a very aggressive pace.
Our new all-girl releases have come out of the gate with screaming success as well. We were not sure whether this section of the market was over-saturated, but it seems as though our fans love the taboo side of the girl-girl genre also.
Something we always try to keep in mind is that sometimes less is more. Often the hint or idea that something might be wrong or dirty is more seductive than actually spelling it all out. The blanks the viewer fills in are very important, and imagination is a powerful tool.
Next month we will be coming out with a pseudo-reality-based swinger series call Real American Swinger Stories, in which we take real swinger stories and have them portrayed by adult actors, using the real swingers whenever possible. We will see how our fans like them and go from there.
And after that?
We would like to expand into an outdoor adventure series. Jay and I are avid scuba divers and love underwater sex, as well as sex outdoors. We’ve found there is a market for that, and we’d like to explore it. Also, we are looking at few other mild fetish areas. We look forward to seeing where our fans take us.
