The Fleshbot Interview: Meet B. Skow, The Real Life Jack Horner

The name B. Skow is a mark of quality in the adult industry. His films tend to aim a little higher, stretch performers a little further, and sometimes, god forbid, make people think. Not content to simply rest on his laurels, Skow continues to push boundaries through his new production company, "Skow for Girlfriends Films." His long-running Brand New Faces series, as well as the new and improved version of it he's doing now called Beautiful New Faces, has introduced us to some of the biggest names in the industry, and his eye for talent is as sharp as it's ever been. His latest film, The Gardener, is ripped directly from the headlines, and is a continuation of themes he first dealt with in another recent film, Sweetness & Light. I had the chance to chat with him recently, and we discussed everything from our shared New Jersey heritage to The Gardener, his thoughts on AVN, and how much he loves Fleshbot (and didn't have to be prompted to say so!)

Tucker Bankshot: Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were ready to hang it up before signing with Girlfriends Films. What about their company in particular made you want to keep making movies? 

B. Skow: They allowed me to come in and do my own thing, under my own label, with my own money, and do what I want, and they would back me on it. I was always fascinated with Girlfriends because of what (founder) Dan (O’Connell) did, because it wasn’t like he copied someone or he was doing regular porn. He had created something that was unusual and he’d built this massive following and I loved that because it was almost like this fuck you to everybody that thought it wasn’t going to go anywhere, and it just blew up huge. People followed it, people wanted to see it. 

Even me, the first time I saw one of Dan’s movies I just thought, that was so weird. And then after that, I watched a ton of them before I started working for them, and in the middle of the first one I was stuck to it, like, this guy is interesting. And they wanted me to do what I was already doing, and that was it. I wasn’t going to hang it up, I was going to take some time off, I was going to go back to New Jersey for a year.

TB: Oh, okay, I wasn’t sure how to read it, so I just wanted to ask about that.

BS: I was going to take a year off, and do some other things, and go back to New Jersey and visit family and things like that. 

TB: Are you from New Jersey? I’m from Bergen County. 

BS: Yeah. I grew up in Elizabeth. It’s funny because I’ve been in California now longer than New Jersey. The day I graduated high school I moved to Hoboken, I got an apartment in Hoboken with friends and I used to take the Path over into New York and that’s how I became a photographer. 

TB: Okay, cool. I did not know that.

BS: Yeah, I love New Jersey. I love the family and the feel of where I’m from, but once you’re there for like a week it’s like, yeah, I’m ready to get back (both laugh). 

TB: Absolutely. So your latest film, The Gardener, continues this trend that’s been really prevalent in your work lately, which is twisted father/daughter or mentor/pupil dynamic. What is it about this taboo subject that keeps drawing you back in? 

BS: I wouldn’t say The Gardener is… Well, I guess it could be interpreted that way, but The Gardener to me is more like what we just talked about. I was born in Newark, which is probably the worst place you could be in New Jersey, right?

TB: Yeah, more or less.

BS: Yeah, I mean, you have friends and everything, that are still there. They still live in Newark and Elizabeth, and to me The Gardener started off that way where it’s like, why would you stay there when you could just hop on a bus or walk or get a train, get a little bit of money, and get the hell out. And then when I started reading about the Jaycee Dugard case in Northern California, and I saw the aerial photos and stuff, it looked so simple for her to get out of there, and she stayed, so that’s where that started from. 

And then I read the book that she wrote about the situation, and it wasn’t anything that I wanted to do a movie about or touch on, I didn’t want to make a movie about that, so I wanted to make it about that feeling of people clinging onto anything just because it’s there. You know, they’re afraid to leave or they’re afraid of what’s outside that bubble. So that’s where it really came from, it wasn’t a father/daughter thing. And then combine that with the feeling of losing a child, and having to spend the rest of your life as a parent wondering where your child is, that was something I wanted to explore in a really overly exaggerated way. 

And those two thoughts were how I started with it, and the thought of being in this horrible situation where all she has is this tent, and you go in that tent and you feel comfortable and safe because it’s yours and you’re there, instead of just climbing a wall and seeing what’s outside of there. That’s sort of what the movie is really about, and accepting the worst. A lot of people accept the worst, and that’s the end of it, they never try to change it. I don’t know why I moved out of Elizabeth, I don’t know why some people do it and some people don’t, there’s a million different reasons, it’s your parents, or it’s how you were raised, and that’s what the movie is about, why people stay in situations that they don’t really want to stay in. 

I did this movie called Sweetness and Light, which was sort of this couple version of that. You know, there’s these couples that just hate each other, but they stay married for thirty or forty years, and why? So that was in my head when I made Sweetness and Light, and then The Gardener was sort of born from that idea. 

TB: I’m gonna jump ahead a little bit, just to keep us on this same track, but it seems as though the industry as a whole has been moving away from scripted films. Are you disheartened by that, or does that bolster your confidence to keep doing what you’ve been doing?

BS: No, I want to keep going and I’m building a following. It’s amazing being here at Girlfriends Films because I’m selling dvds. I mean, no one’s selling dvds and I’m selling a lot of dvds, so people actually want to own my product and have it somewhere. They want to hold it and have it, instead of just being a throwaway thing like every other scene is. So my goal is to do that. If I can get a few thousand people that follow me and want my stuff, I feel like that’s a huge success, especially in the adult business. 

TB: Yeah, absolutely. You remind me a lot of Jack Horner, Burt Reynolds’ character in Boogie Nights. 

BS: (Laughs) Oh, really?

TB: Yeah, well, and I mean this as high praise, that’s one of my favorite movies. But he was concerned about the integrity of things. He didn’t want to shoot something just to shoot it, it had to say something and mean something and connect with people in a different way than just a standard film does. 

BS: Well, I love telling stories. I love it. I love exaggerating things, and telling stories and I love photography and cinematography, so it’s the best way, you know? You have to make the feature, you know? Even if I make gonzo movies, they’re sort of different and they always have something to them. I love telling stories, and it’s funny I don’t see the industry, like it was two years ago, going away from making features. That was kind of why I did it, because I was being told to make parodies, make a celebrity sex tape, and I was just like, oh my god!

Why I decided to leave the industry is that I was shooting this WWE parody with the wrestler Chyna. I’m in a ring with this monster of a woman, with a clit twice the size of my thumb, and it smelled like someone fucking dumped chlorine on my head, there was so much cum in there (Tucker laughing), and I just said, this is so fucked up, I don’t want to do this anymore. And that was it, that was my moment where I just thought, this can’t be it. I’m 40, or you know, whatever age I was at the time. So I left about two hours before filming ended and I went home and started thinking about what I was going to do. 

TB: Obviously, having lived it you probably don’t think so, but that’s a great story, probably one of the best taking stock of your life stories I’ve ever heard. 

BS: (Laughing) Yeah, well it’s the truth. If you ever watch that parody, you’ll understand immediately (both laugh). 

TB: You’ve worked with a lot of performers that were right on the cusp of becoming the next big thing, Allie Haze comes to mind, and now Jessie Andrews seems headed in that direction as well. Can you tell us a little bit about how she was to work with? 

BS: The first time I ever saw Jessie, when she first got into the business, and I thought she was so beautiful. A lot more beautiful than any other girl I’d ever seen in the industry, I just couldn’t stop looking at her. It was this weird kind of thing because Jessie’s a beautiful girl in her own, unique way, and you just go, wow! So I’ve always liked her, and then she’s doing a ton of crossover stuff, you know, she’s a dj, she’s got a jewelry line, and it’s not like she’s dj’ing for ten people, you know, she’s traveling around the world being a dj, and getting paid crazy money. She’s also designing jewelry and designing apparel, and all that, and then she contacted me saying that she wanted to be in one of my features, I wanted to do it immediately, there was no question about it, because she’s super talented. I couldn’t have wanted anyone else for that part. 

And then when I met her, I don’t know what it was when I met her, of course she was younger and didn’t have all the success she has now, but I was so happy to make this movie with her, to have that opportunity. I thought she was done with the industry, she wasn’t around and she really wasn’t shooting anymore. When she decided to do it, I wanted her to sign a contract saying that she wouldn’t do it again, to make sure that this was something special, and she was really cool with that. She said, if I ever do it again, which I probably won’t, that’s fine, so we made a deal and that was it. 

TB: That actually ties into my next question which is that she signed a contract to work exclusively for you for at least a year. How validating is that for you as a director, to be able to lock down a tremendous talent in her prime? 

BS: It’s amazing. You know, it’s another thing that I want to do that the industry isn’t doing, something that’s been fading away, is the contract girl. I think it’s cool as hell. Now, Jessie is not my contract girl, so don’t mistake that, she can work for other people and do other scenes, she just can’t do anal scenes, my contract is different, and I feel like the contract that I signed with her will be the future. And already there’s copycats, I think Hard X just signed Siri to an anal contract, two months after I signed one with Jessie. 

But the way that things are now with the internet, and people stealing everything, you lose that. I enjoy the way it was back in the 90s and the early 2000s, having contract girls. There were these beautiful girls, and these companies were the only ones to have them, and just the boxcovers that they were doing and these amazing ads on Sunset Boulevard. They had these beautiful girls and we were making them stars, it was just such a great time to be making these films. You had to go there to see that girl, you couldn’t see her anywhere else. Now you can see any girl anywhere you want, you can see her on your phone, on a train, anywhere you want. 

So I liked the idea of really going back to that. I also signed a girl, Lilly Evans, a really beautiful young Latin girl. So she’ll only do boy/girl for me, she can do girl/girl elsewhere, but her contract says that she’ll only do boy/girl for me. And she’ll be part of Beautiful New Faces 3 which comes out at the end of September.  

TB: Awesome, there again we’re segueing into another question that I had, which is about the Beautiful New Faces series. It’s extremely interesting and I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the genesis of that project. 

BS: I started it a long time ago and it was called Brand New Faces. There was a whole line of Brand New Faces, and it was 90% real. We went out and searched and found girls that had never done a scene, never been filmed, never did a video, even some that had never been photographed nude, anything. I would bring them into my studio, make them feel comfortable, and leave it totally up to them if they wanted to do the scene, they didn’t want to do the scene, then I’d introduce them to the guy, and I think that series is now up to like 45 or 46, they’re still releasing them. 

The only thing I didn’t like about it was that we didn’t get beautiful girls, most of the time, we did sometimes, like Riley Reid and a lot of other big time girls who did their first scene with that series. With Beautiful New Faces I wanted girls who, I’ll shoot them once and be like, holy shit this girl’s amazing, you know, everything about her, her look, her personality. It’s girls that are in the industry because they want to be. So I do a fun interview, I try to get it to where when you watch Beautiful New Faces, even if you’ve seen this girl before you’re going to see a totally different side of her. I’m not gonna ask her cup size, I’m not gonna ask her where she’s from. You really get to see the girl’s personality, who she is, what she’s about, and I dig hard, you know? The other day, somebody asked me, how do you get the girls to stay on set, why don’t they leave? So it’s done in a good way. 

TB: Well, I saw the first one and I thought it was great and now that you said there’s going to be a third one, that’s fantastic. 

BS: Every girl that we shoot, I have to know them, I have to meet them. We usually shoot a girl/girl scene first or I’ll put them in one of my other movies in a featured role, you know, not a main part, just a girl that doesn’t have sex or something, and if they catch my eye or I hear them talking, I’m always listening to them, and then when they’re acting and stuff, I think they have something. I book them and we shoot a scene, and then every four or five girls, we’ll put them together and put out a movie. So that’s how the series started and we’re up to three, and now I’m shooting four next week. It’s doing amazing. 

TB: You tend to work with a lot of the same performers over and over again, Maddy O’Reilly, Evan Stone, Alec Knight, AJ Applegate, Kurt Lockwood, Riley Reid, the list goes on. Do you feel like you have a stock company of people you can always count on to do your films, no questions asked?

BS: Yeah, but that’s moviemaking in general, you know? Hollywood has the same five guys and they can’t even find new ones, they just hang on to the same ones, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, it’s all those guys forever. It’s because you know the people, you know what you can get out of them, you know how to push them, and you know where you can bring them. But I think that’s normal, that’s Hollywood, and moviemaking in general. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, they all do the same thing. It’s sort of like back to the past, it’s a comfort thing. It’s the same reason I work with a small crew, I make my movies with me and three people, and it’s just because I’m more comfortable in that situation, and when you’re comfortable you usually do good stuff. 

TB: It’s funny that you said that because the way that question had started initially was I was going to ask you if you considered Evan Stone the Robert DeNiro to your Martin Scorsese, but as I was looking, there’s a lot of people that you work with all the time. 

BS: Yeah, no, no. I mean look at Scorsese, even he’s moved on to DiCaprio. So I think that’s normal life. I love Evan, Evan’s great, and I feel like I get stuff out of Evan that no one gets out of him. Evan’s a project, I want to push him and fight with him so bad, and get into all these different things with him. But I like Steven St. Croix, Kurt Lockwood, the guys in this industry that really enjoy the acting part of it, you know, telling stories and do stuff, to get out of their shell.  

TB: You’ve worked in a number of different genres from parody to position specific films to what you’re doing now. Do you have a favorite genre to work in and does that line up with your personal tastes, or do you prefer to direct one kind of film and watch another?

BS: I like cinematography, like I said, I used to be a photographer, and I like features, but I think if you watch one of the very first movies I did called Miles for Needles, which was a feature. Evan Stone was in it, and this was ten years ago or twelve years ago, but I honestly couldn’t say that I have a favorite. I stress about every movie I make. The pre-production is so stressful, but once I’m behind a camera, it’s the best feeling ever. And I think if you watched anything that I do whether it’s a gonzo, or a whatever the hell they call it now, all-sex bullshit, or whatever it is (both laugh), I would love for people to know that B. Skow made that film. 

As far as what I watch, it’s totally different than what I make. Last night I watched a little Asian woman jump around in a costume, and every once in a while you’d get these little flashes of her pussy, so yeah, that’s what I watched last night (both laugh). And I would never make that.

TB: (Laughing) I was gonna say that doesn’t sound too interesting to shoot.

BS: It really caught my eye out of nowhere and I sat there and watched it for eight minutes. There was no sex, no nothing, just this Asian woman that didn’t even speak English. It was Japanese porn and she was just jumping on a couch for eight minutes, and she would laugh, and she fell. I think Asian porn is so interesting to me. They really fucking love sex, it looks like these guys if they don’t have it they’re gonna blow their fucking heads off. Some of the really amazing gonzo shooters, like I think about Jules Jordan, when I first saw his stuff, he shoots some really original stuff. And that’s how I felt watching these Japanese guys, like, this guy’s gonna fuck the wall! (Both laugh). It had that sort of feeling of it. I mean, the Japanese, they spend like an hour on a nipple, you know what I mean (both laugh). They’ll just sit there and gnaw at a nipple for an hour, it’s so interesting to me. 

TB: Well, I think that because their society is so repressed in public, and they have to be so formal with everything, that once they get behind closed doors all bets are off.

BS: Yeah, I love it. It’s really interesting because I’m trying to figure out what I love about it so I can do something interesting with it. I haven’t figured it out yet (laughs), but that’s why I keep watching it. I’m interested in finding out why they’re like that and everything. But yeah, I like shooting, I like being on set and having that camera in my hand, it’s when I’m most comfortable is behind that camera just talking. I’m a totally different person if you met me out somewhere, I wouldn’t say a word to you (both laugh). I avoid parties, I avoid everything. I’d be happy not leaving the house or my office.

TB: I can totally sympathize with that. So is there anyone you haven’t worked with yet that you’re dying to work with?

BS: No, because I’ll work with anyone. I would’ve loved to have worked with Belladonna. I don’t think that far ahead, so my honest answer is no, there’s no one I’m dying to work with (both laugh). 

TB: Okay, that’s a legitimate answer.

BS: When I come up with a script and an idea, then I’ll call their agent and I’ll say, I want her for that no matter what. Then I’m dying to work with. There’s a whole bunch of people I’m dying to work with, like Karla Kush, AJ Applegate, I’ve worked with them, but I want to work with them in a different way. I love Maddy O’Reilly, I love Riley Reid, I could shoot Riley Reid every day, I really could. Jessie Andrews, she has that same thing where I could work with her every day. 

That was another thing I loved about Girlfriends was, could I do boy/girl under this label and not destroy their fan base? And I had to be really careful about how I made my movies in the beginning, I had to come in really gently, and incorporate lesbian sex into my boy/girl films and it slowly turned into what it is now. But I took my time with it and I thought about it, I didn’t just book people and do scenes, I planned it out with Dan and Moose. So there’s a lot of people that I love working with and I’d love to do other things with. 

I’ve done really cool stuff with Riley Reid, I’ve done really cool stuff with Maddy O’Reilly. I thought she was totally ripped off at AVN (for Daddy’s Girls), I thought they were total pussies, and I am on record as saying that AVN is a bunch of pussies, they didn’t even nominate the movie because it had a blind girl in it. If you watch her part, she plays it as well as the best actress in Hollywood would’ve played that part.

TB: Yeah, I agree 100% on everything you just said.

BS: Even during the sex scenes. The girl is amazing during the sex scenes, we talked about it, figured out how to do it, she stayed with it, and I was just amazed watching that, putting it together, and editing it, and I was just amazed by what she did. I just think this industry is so fake, and there’s so much bullshit in it that they didn’t reward her for that. No one’s ever done that before, in the entire history of porn, and it wasn’t just done as a joke, it was actually the opposite. I wanted people to feel bad for her. Daddy’s Girls wasn’t even an incest movie, it was about two horrible fucking fathers. I just wanted to make a movie about two of the absolute worst fathers you could ever have. 

TB: (Laughing) Well, you succeeded.

BS: Yeah. And we just finished writing Daddy’s Girls 2, we’re shooting it in mid-October. And three, it was originally written as a three-part thing, so we’re doing two and three at the same time. We’ve got everyone back (begins laughing), it’s gonna be so much fun, it’s not gonna jump the shark. The stuff that we’re doing in it is going to be really fun and out there. 

TB: Well, that’s all the questions I have for you, thank you so much for chatting with me today.

BS: Absolutely, I love your site. I’m always taking screen grabs of the pictures that you guys get, and your stories give me so many ideas. Half of my desktop is full of stuff that I pull from your site. I love whoever finds those things, you find great photos and give me great ideas all the time. 

TB: That’s great to hear, thank you so much. We feel like we’re working in a bubble sometimes, so it’s really nice to hear that.

BS: Oh yeah, I love it. There’s always shit going down on Fleshbot. I even love the celebrity stuff, I love everything. I don’t know where you guys find this stuff, but it’s a great place to look for stuff.