Producer/director David Lord was a guest on Rebecca Bardoux’s show Friday night. During the course of conversation, Lord mentions the time that his mother asked him about the five AVN awards he had just won for a Wicked movie titled Euphoria.
“She says, son, isn’t there something you want to tell me?”
“I go no, not really. She says I heard you won a bunch of awards why didn’t you tell me? I go, mom, because there’s chicks getting choked out and ass fucked in the movies I make.
“She turned and said, David, whatever you chose to do in life as long as you’re the best at what it is I’m very proud of you. That was a super cool thing to hear from your mom.”
Before he got into porn, Lord labored in rock bands.
“Every guy in my bands was in telemarketing- pens, toners, things of that nature,” Lord explained. I saw an ad in LA Weekly that said telemarket adult movies. I’m like that sounds cool.”
Lord answered the ad and talked to the late Harry Young [great guy] who was a sales rep at the time for Western Visuals. Young hired Lord who did sales until 1996.
“I worked for everyone,” says Lord. “Arrow Film & Video, the makers of Deep Throat and Devil in Miss Jones. I worked for Zane Entertainment. I worked for everyone.”
Lord was at Private USA and before DVDs became the rage, Lord moved CD Roms for them.
“I convinced the owner of Private USA [the late] Bob Tremont that DVD was going to be it, you should do it now. He, in turn, with me convinced Private to do Pyramids 1, 2, and 3. We were literally the third adult DVD ever made. Then I kinda became this adult DVD guru.” Lord explained.
“I was the first guy ever to produce a double-disc. I was the first guy to ever produce a gay DVD. I was the first guy to ever produce a bondage DVD. I was the first guy to do multiple audio languages.
“I was one of the pioneers of DVD. It was me, a guy named Bruce Whitney over at VCA and another guy by the name of Jim Monroe over at Vivid. And we were the three main guys who were the DVD gods. We knew everything about DVD and produced some really great stuff.”
Lord heard through the grapevine that Wicked was looking for someone to come over, produce DVDs and create their department.
“I think they had three titles out. I think I actually sent a FAX over to Steve Orenstein and Joy King over there.”
Lord was hired and worked for the company for about five years along with Brad Armstrong, Jonathan Morgan and Michael Raven.
“They had all the big boys- all the big directors over there and all the big productions. I learned from the best on how to make movies. I used to shoot all the BTS so I used to sit, watch, listen and learn and I really didn’t take vacations all that much. I would take a vacation and work. It was a great learning experience for me.”
From there Lord went to Evil Angel.
“John Stagliano gave me my directing break. He let me direct two movies over there. I caught the bug and never looked back.”
Lord’s been directing since 2004. Asked if he ever performed in front of the camera, Lord says he’s done some POV blowjob-stuff. [Oral Overloads from Adam & Eve.]
“But I’ve never actually been in front of a camera doing a scene. I’ve acted in a lot of movies just like non-sex roles, but I’ve never done the deed so to speak. You want to see my penis, you can call me.”
Bardoux asked Lord about the Hungarian hooker scandal he was dragged into.
Both the LA Times and LA daily News reported in 2008 that Lord had been arrested on suspicion of “tricking” Hungarian women to come to the US and work as prostitutes in a Sherman Oaks brothel.
Lord was arrested on suspicion of making false statements on an immigration application related to a sham marriage involving a woman named Agnes Jerges. According to court documents, Jeges actually worked as a prostitute for Angela Csutai, 33, of Van Nuys, who allegedly ran the prostitution operation.
Csutai purportedly operated a brothel employing Hungarian women out of a Sherman Oaks apartment complex from 2004 to 2006. Csutai was formally charged with perjury and making false statements on an immigration application in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury.
Like Jeges, Csutai was suspected of entering into a sham marriage with a U.S. citizen to gain legal permanent residency.
Lord explained what happened.
“In 2005 after I left Evil Angel there was a company, I won’t mention the name, that screwed me over over quite a large sum of money. I was a desperate, and a friend of mine, a female, said why don’t you marry a Hungarian.
“You can make X-amount of dollars and they’ll pay you monthly. You’ll be sitting pretty. So I said I’ll meet this person [Jeges]. She was very nice. She told me her story and what her deal was. I’ll do it. Two days after I committed to this woman a buddy of mine called and said, hey, do you want to go to Japan for 27 days? It pays $10,000.”
Lord was all for the deal and decided he didn’t need to marry the woman after all but because he made a commitment, he was determined to keep his word.
“I ended up marrying this woman and two days later left Japan for a month. It was quite weird. Unbeknownst to me, she was brought into the country allegedly by the Hungarian Consulate to work out here for a prostitution ring.
“We were under investigation from the moment I laid eyes on her. I was never a part of a prostitution ring. It would be awesome if I was, but I wasn’t because I would have had a helluva lot more money. But I was never a part of a prostitution ring. It was the woman I married…she was part of it and then quit. That’s basically the story.”
Lord said the experience cost him $50,000, five years probation and 400 hours of community service.
“In a lot of ways it cost me more than a real marriage. That was a great life lesson. In retrospect I would have done things differently but I learned so much from that mistake and won’t do it again.”
Bardoux said from the sound of the story taken on its face value, it wasn’t the David Lord she knew.
“I married some girl that never lived in my house,” Lord continued.
“It was the Dept. of Homeland Security agents that came and talked to me. They came and arrested me and released me the same day. That was the extent of it. What I was formally charged with was felony perjury. I basically lied to them.”
“Again I wish I was running a prostitution ring. I would have had so much money! It would have been great. I would have had houses and cars and all that. It’s funny because I live in Reseda and all my friends are going, ‘you running a prostitution ring? I never got any of these prostitutes. What’s going on?’”
Lord said it was quite comical the way the press “fabricated this big story.”
“Any time there’s the law in pornography they want to blow it up to sensationalize it. I laughed. They’ve done it to Kayden Kross. They’ve taken little tiny stories and blown them up to be these huge things. I think at one point they said Kayden Kross was a slumlord and she had five different houses. All this stuff.
“She went partners on one house and she tried to get her money out of it. The guy locked up her money somehow and she couldn’t get rid of it [the house]. She had to take him to court and that was the court proceeding, her trying to get her money. They take these stories and twist them so they sound really awesome.”
[Because I reported on that story, I talked to at least five principals in that case who had quite different versions of events than the way Lord had just summed them up. I also talked to a handicapped Vietnam Vet who lost his house in that whole mess. He blamed Kross for everything.]
Bardoux brought up another of Lord’s earlier projects, Grindhouse XXX.
“I’m a huge Tarrantino fan. I’m a huge Grindhouse fan,” Lord said.
“So is Andre Madness. Me and Andre were for five or six years the two main directors over at Adam & Eve. We were pitching this title.”
Lord suggested to Madness: “Why don’t we have one of the characters from my story leave my story and go into your story and get killed. He goes it’s a great idea. We actually made fake trailers. We did a trailer called Easter.”
Lord then called Lee Roy Myers to ask if it was alright that his name be used.
“We did this trailer of a bunny that just gets crazy and shoots everyone.”
Lord said the movie went on to win a mainstream horror movie festival award.
“Then on I went to win the Best Comedy at AVN which to this day I don’t understand because between the two movies there’s like 30 or 40 people that end up dying. We stabbed people in necks. We behead people. We kill all these people and they gave us Best Comedy. I guess it was a dark comedy.”
From the sounds of it, Bardoux isn’t too keen on rabbits and Lord explained about “the furries.”
“There is a movement in the sexual arena where peoples’ kink is to dress up like big, stuffed animals, whether it’s a bear or a bunny rabbit or a duck or a chicken. Usually furry creatures, and they have sex with people.”
Bardoux who’s very “vanilla,” said she prefers flesh-on-flesh so that kink wouldn’t work for her.
Lord also talked about “baby play” where guys like to dress in diapers.
“That’s fucking creepy to me. It’s just so creepy.”
Bardoux said it was just as creepy for her to do a movie where mother and daughter have sex.
“But they say at the beginning of those movies- both actresses- this is only a movie. This is not real. They do that disclosure at the beginning.”
Lord had a female friend in the industry that he had talk off the ledge.
“We were having dinner and she’s going, “Oh my God I’m freaking out. I had to do this scene where I have sex…
“Up until the end of the scene you don’t know that it’s just her stepson. [The scene lends the impression that it’s her biological son.] She said it was the creepiest thing she’s ever done. She was really fucked up about it.”
“She was going I’m never doing one of those again. That’s fucked up.”
Bardoux, who no longer does webcamming, related that during her webcam experiences, young guys would want her to pretend that she was their mother.
“I couldn’t do it, but it was too tough for me. But there was a lot of it. Too freaky. In my old age I just want real flesh next to me. Anything else it doesn’t really work for me.”
Asked what her favorite sex position was, Bardoux answered, “I just like to crawl all over.”
“The only one I hate is the reverse cowgirl- I wish you directors would get rid of that.”
[I wish there were a national moratorium on blowjobs in porn movies.]
Lord explained that the position was “all-girl” and it works for an underneath shot where you see all of the girl and “no dude.”
The reverse cowgirl is fucking useless in your personal life,” Lord concedes, noting that if guys are insisting on this position they’re just torturing their partners.
Lord also explained that he took the name Lord because he’s a huge Star Wars fan.
“When I was figuring out my porn name a friend says why don’t you call yourself Dave Vader. That’s the stupidest name ever. I’m thinking Lord Vader and then it’s David Lord. That sounds cool. My name is from Darth Vader of Star Wars.”
Bardoux asked him if it was true that he owned a hair salon. Lord said he owns both a tattoo shop and a barbershop/hair salon.
“Being in the industry and watching the industry change over the past two decades I’ve never seen it go through what it’s going through now. I’m a workaholic and I wanted to diversify and do stuff other than adult.
“I love what I do and the people I work with so I would never turn my back on it, but I wanted to do something different. If you eat chocolate ice cream every day sooner or later you’re going to get sick of chocolate ice cream and try a different flavor.”
In an attempt to diversify, Lord said he’s a big car nut including hot rods.
“But the whole theme of the tattoo shop is hot rods- Custom Culture- the Fifties era is considered custom culture.”
Lord had a shop in Hollywood which he shut down because he hated the drive and moved the enterprise to the Valley in Reseda.
“And on every corner in Hollywood there’s a tattoo shop, sometimes two.”
Then, when Patricia Kennedy called with a business opportunity for him involving a barbershop in Woodland Hills which the owner was looking to sell, Lord jumped on it. Along with a business partner he took over the shop and moved its location further into Woodland Hills.
“The business is doing phenomenal and there’s talks of us opening up a “Chop Shop” in downtown Vegas,” he added.
Bardoux suspects that Lord’s made a lot of money in porn.
“I did for a long time and needless to say I pissed a lot of it away,” he agreed.
“Because you think that gravy train’s always coming, and I was young and naïve. Again I wouldn’t change anything for the world. I’m glad I pissed all that money away because now I really value what I have. I think about how can I maximize and get the best out of not only my situation but the situation for my employees, the situation for my actors; how can I can get the best for them and myself. I love trying new things and doing new stuff.”
Lord also announced that he has just formed a company called Rock Star Entertainment.
“We have a 24 picture distribution deal with Adam & Eve.”
Lord also said there’s a possibility that he’ll be shooting for Penthouse.
The topic got on to trends in porn and “brutal sex.” Lord said if a customer wants that kind of material he knows that Jules Jordan will provide it.
“In that era of adult [the Nineties], the guy that was the brutal guy was John T. Bone. He was doing the really disgusting stuff and hardcore wasn’t that crazy yet. He was making movies on the French Riviera and he wasn’t peeing on girls’ eye sockets quite yet.
“But John T. Bone was the guy doing the filthy, disgusting stuff. Then you’re Anabolics and Redlights came along and Rosebud with Jules Jordan who was a work-for hire guy. Then it became second nature. It totally shifted but it all comes back around.
“It’s like music- one big circle.”
On the subject of DVDs, Lord, because he’s an acknowledged pioneer of the genre, was asked his opinion.
“It’s days are numbered,” he said candidly.
“I think IP TV, Apple TV, VOD, is definitely going to be the way to go. I don’t think that DVD will ever fully go away. I think people like having something tangible in their hands. I think people like the collecting aspect of it.”
“I come from vinyl and LPs. I love vinyl. So there’s something to be said for the tangibility of DVD, but it’s dead for all intents and purposes.”
Lord thinks AEBN, Fyre TV and other VOD-style companies will emerge as the key delivery platforms for the future.