Toronto – from www.eyeweekly.com – A long-time columnist, author and now pornographer, Tristan Taormino has won several awards for her innovative films, be they instructional (Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide To Anal Sex), gonzo (her reality-based Chemistry series) or long-form (2009’s Rough Sex, featuring Sasha Grey, nominated this year for a Feminist Porn Award).

A polyamorist queer filmmaker and former porn performer, Taormino says her sexuality is “continually evolving every day.” EYE WEEKLY spoke to the filmmaker as she drove into the Pacific Northwest for a speaking tour.

Q: In the Chemistry series and certainly in Rough Sex, you’ve developed a style of pornography that is performer-driven rather than scenario-based. Why was that appealing to you?

A: Since the beginning, I felt like I wanted to make it a collaborative, participatory experience. I don’t have any interest in people showing up and me telling them what to do. I’m interested in them bringing their sexuality to the table — these are the things that I like, these are the toys I like, these are the other performers I like.… Obviously, you need performers who are up for that challenge, and interested in exposing themselves in a different way.

Q: Porn actors might fear exposing themselves?

A: I think in some ways, many performers have cultivated a persona. I’m asking — can you drop that today and show me a piece of your real sexuality? For some performers there is no difference, and they bring themselves to their work every day. The whole interview part of my porn is about creating these three-dimensional characters, where the viewer can get insight into who these performers are. Bad porn is when everyone’s acting like a sex robot. It’s both uninteresting and unerotic, there’s nothing to draw me in.

Q: How do you go about filming a sex scene? Do you storyboard it, or just let it happen?

A: For my sex education series, absolutely yes, a tonne of planning goes into that — and while there isn’t a script, there are certain things I have to hit on. If it’s a fellatio video, I’ll make a list of 20 fellatio techniques and sit down with a performer to see which of them appeals. For my reality series Chemistry — it was impossible to know what was going to happen — so we would just follow the action with two or three cameras, in order to get a lot of different angles. For every film I do for Vivid Entertainment, I’ll have an XXX hardcore edit and a softer cable cut for television, so there has to be enough coverage. If you’re looking for spontaneity, it really sucks if you have to make your actors do it over again! My scenes are usually a little bit longer, 20 to 25 minutes — so the actors are probably having sex for two hours. That’s with stopping and starting, where someone needs to pee and someone needs to get water. It’s a lot more complicated than people think.

Q: The Hitachi Magic Wand plays a big role in Rough Sex. One thing that’s very striking is your emphasis on genuine female pleasure…

A: I just think there isn’t enough of it. If anything, feminist porn does two things — it responds to the dominant images in porn and tries to create new ones. So certainly, showing real female orgasm is a response to what’s missing in a lot of bad porn. Frankly, I’d like to see a more complex representation of men’s pleasure. In porn, the cumshot is the ultimate signifier of male satisfaction, yet there are rarely any close-ups of a guy’s face. I also try to add anal pleasure to the mix as often as I can in straight porn. It’s about expanding the vocabulary of male and female pleasure — what that looks like and how they can achieve it…. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t use the Hitachi Magic Wand in pornography. It’s very noisy, and you can’t take the noise out in post-production. Some people don’t like the idea that there’s always going to be a cord in the shot. But I’m okay with covering up half a vulva if I’m going to get an awesome orgasm out of it.

Q: Novelist Thomas Pynchon is your uncle. Has he seen your work, and would you ever consider collaborating?

A: I’ve sent him some DVDs. He finds it interesting, I’ll leave it at that. I think he understands that I’m trying to do something different, although I don’t know how much other porn he watches. He’s busy and has his hands quite full, so I can’t imagine us working together in the future. Now that I’m not having sex on camera, it would probably be more interesting for him to write a story and for me to direct it. I certainly can’t afford the rights to any of his novels.

Q: Really? He wouldn’t let you do a sexy Gravity’s Rainbow for comp-lit majors?

A: I should speak to the head of Vivid about that! It might be a real mis-market though.