Casting Couch by Jacky St. James

In my office at New Sensations, there is no casting couch. There’s just a chair, shoved up beside my desk. Walls covered with a mixture of inspiration quotes and adult movie posters.

My civilian friends laugh when I tell them I’m casting a new feature film. They say, “How does one cast a porno?” They assume, like so many, that porno is just all the crap out there crowding the tube sites. The endless thumbnails of breasts and penises that all blend into one another.

I take my casting seriously though. It means a lot to me. For me, if I don’t believe the dialogue, I couldn’t possibly believe the sex, and if I can’t believe the sex, I can’t get off.

I want to buy into the relationships between the characters. I don’t want to suspend disbelief and say, “Even though that girl completely mispronounced ‘heart arrhythmia’ I completely buy that she’s a doctor!” No. I’m not that person.

For me, my casting couch in porn involves a bit of intellectual foreplay. I bring the performer in. Read them. Talk to them. Give them direction. See where they’re at emotionally and intellectually. Can they see beyond the words on the page? Can they understand the emotionally complexity of a character? Can I buy them as the character I wrote? Do I want to spend upwards of 17 hours on set with them or will I finish out the day having pulled all my hair out.

Wow. Did I totally just kill the fantasy of what it means to be a porn director?

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About Jacky St. James

Jacky St. James is an award winning writer and director for New Sensations.

She is known for creating a wide range of films, from romantic comedies to edgier all-sex releases, with her most acclaimed titles being: The Submission of Emma Marx, Torn, and Our Father. 

Throughout her career in adult, she has been an advocate of couple's-oriented pornography and has been featured in several popular mainstream publications including Salon, Jezebel, Slate, The Huffington Post, and others. St. James shares pictures, clips, and stories about her successes and debacles as a woman working within the adult industry on her website, missjackystjames.com.