Hot Movies Article by Don Juan DeMarko
A few years ago, I had an editor place upon my desk an assignment to take a look at a company that was doing things above and beyond and just had been covered in The Guardian. Now, this editor I was working for had seen it all when it came to the world of adult entertainment, as they had been in this industry for well over ten years. Needless to say, they had seen every fad come and go. My favorite of the tales that my editor loved to tell was that she had been around when working on the fetish side of adult entertainment meant you didn’t work on the mainstream side—and I mean not at all There were worlds within worlds inside of porn. To a certain extent, there still are. My boss was a person that was not surprised by much, and that is what made looking into this new company called Anatomik Media so enthralling.
I won’t go as far as to say that when you are paid to review and promote XXX cinema, that you lose a little bit of passion for it. What I will say is that no matter what you do in life that spells out the word J-O-B and helps to put a roof over your head, you will find times when there is absolutely nothing that will inspire your day or your work ethic. It is in those times that a writer, director, or performer must find something that rekindles their fire and spirit. That is what happened the day that I first pressed play on a production from Anatomik Media.
On the surface, this company had charming box covers, lengthy scenes to download, and a selection of genres that numbered well over fifty. Porn fans will take one look at the HotMovies page for Anatomik Media and the first thing that any diehard fan will notice is that there are porn star pairings that you see nowhere else: Dee Williams and Sasha Heart, Karma RX and Chanel Preston—porn superstars that for some reason or another, big production companies decided would not be a good fit, all despite the fact that all four performers are women who love sex inside as much as they do outside the industry. These are starlets known throughout the “Twitter-verse” for being the porn stars that are in this business for all the right reasons, giving their fans what they want with a dose of reality on top of how they show a little skin. It was a pairing like this that I first had a chance to review, and what was so amazing about this production was that the performers all came from different modeling agencies. They were performers who were all in the same category of younger talent, and they all were climbing the ranks of the XXX world in ways that have earned them star status in today’s industry. The sex was mind-blowing. There was kink that I had never seen before, and the sex was shot with enthusiasm and no restrictions. What I truly remember was seeing Jane Wilde getting to be Jane Wilde for the one of the first times in her career. This is what led me to the HotMovies Spotlight. I had been told by many of the girls that this company was owned by a husband-and-wife team who loved to be as perverted as they were. Believe it or not, that is very rare in the XXX world. It was then that I knew I had to get to the bottom of what made this company something so beloved by not only myself, but the women who I had just watched have the kinkiest sex of their career onscreen. I was on a mission and what started to come about again was that same excitement that I had when my editor first gave me that great assignment a few years ago.
Travelling deeper down this lust-filled rabbit hole, the first thing I discovered was that owners Rhiannon and Dan had something even more unique than I could have ever dreamed of on their hands. The premise of Anatomik Media, at least by my take, was that this passionate couple were not really company owners. Well, they are, but moreso, they are like directors for the fans who are the true producers of many of the scenes you see within their banner. Yes, that is right. How Anatomik Media creates their XXX productions, it all begins with their clients. It is the client who holds all the power and whose imagination is catered and cared for by true film professionals, and artists who have been in this game of creation for a very long time. Speaking with Dan and Rhiannon, I could tell in a heartbeat that filmmaking was in their DNA. This beautiful couple, whose adult cinema can stand up to anyone else’s on the market, their goal was to spread acceptance, passion, and non-judgment. That is what I saw on the surface as I began to research my subjects. Their product was as much about making fans understand that it is normal to love the things that turn them on as much as they would the erotica within the scenes they were creating. So much was starting to make sense to me now, and it is here that Rhiannon and Dan take us to the core of what Anatomik Media is. As I sat them down for a nice long chat, it dawned upon me: a married couple creating erotic cinema! I wanted to begin with how that union began first. Love is such an intricate part of this business. It is that love for erotica that brings more people together than you think, in ways you could never imagine.
“Well, we actually met in a band in 1999. For me personally, it was love at first sight. Now, Anatomik Media, that would be the brainchild of Dan all the way from the beginning. At first, I was a webmaster and I worked as both that and a photo editor. Then, after a while, the company that I was working for needed content. They were looking for the basic stuff, amateur-style content. Dan, he just happened to have a background and degree in photography that they did not know about. So, they were pleasantly surprised. From there, we basically started up a content business. We were providing content for a lot of different sites, and we started to get custom content ideas and requests and it just sparked our interest in customs. We did our research and decided that is where we wanted to be and that is how it began. It was fascinating, those first couple of requests that we got were quite simple. It was wrestling, oil-wrestling type videos, very simple. Then, we were contacted by a client and wanted this really nasty blow-bang, and we just dove straight into some kinky shit.”
Of all the people I have met in this industry, Rhiannon and Dan made one of the biggest impressions. Their laughter, their joy to make these amazing, nasty, kinky videos, it is what separates them from any other company in the adult marketplace. The biggest praise I have for this amazing couple is that they are able to turn fans of this industry into something more than fans. They get to become a real part of this business. More than that, they give their clients a place to be themselves, a place to be safe and share what it is deep down inside them, sharing what excites their imaginations. In my days of buying porn in the nineties, I would have never thought such a place could have ever existed. Anatomik Media is as much the fans’ work and love as it is Dan and Rhiannon’s. This is innovation.
“We really feel like it is a collaboration with them. Our clients come to us with an idea, and we work with them. We are here to help guide them through the process, but in the end it is all us collaborating. We want to help them find a product that we hope that they will love, we really do. We love the humanity that is involved in the process. It is a process that they really come to enjoy. There is a lot of personal interaction, and we see that almost like hand holding. We think that is what makes the difference with what we make.”
I do not think that it is any secret, most porn fans are not able to share their love for what they enjoy with many people around them. It is just too taboo. In most instances, it is not due to the fact that the person a fan chooses to share this passion with does not watch porn. It is a social belief that has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years that to engage in sex is wrong, even with yourself. I honestly had tears in my eyes as Rhiannon and Dan told me stories about how some clients come to them with a very timid demeanor, or in some cases a little hesitation, showcased with blunt characteristics when planning out a shoot. The intimacy of what these two producers create with their fellow lovers of erotica is something that makes their company special and unique. They basically bottle what makes this industry grand. To work in a business where the service that you provide actually helps a fellow human being to grow, there is no other business in the land of entertainment than can boast such things.
“Oh, absolutely. There are many times when our clients will come to us, and they may feel a bit apprehensive about what their interests are, and they might feel embarrassed, and they do not want to talk about it. Many times they have never talked about it before with anyone. It is a very daunting thing, and our philosophy has always been to just be as open and accepting as we can. I think that accepting our clients for who they are, it helps us to make a great video for them. We always tell them that we hope to create a safe space for you to have this exchange and go through with this process. We find that expressing that really helps them to open up. It really puts them at ease.”
Speaking with Rhiannon and Dan, I was taken back to a time when I met a great love of my life in this business. She was a fetish performer who I told that I would change into a hopeless romantic before I ever accepted anything that had to do with BDSM or fetish. How wrong I was. What this great love of mine taught me was that I honestly had that passion to take my mind to further places that I wasn’t the most open to or knowledgeable about sharing with someone. There is a deep intimacy that I think many people never explore in themselves when it comes to sexuality and yes, porn. Hearing them speak about people’s fear of discovering themselves sent me back to those days of discovery. I see a production like Ass Party: You’re Invited, starring Jane Wilde and Paige Owens and right there I see that deep thought and guidance. Jane and Paige are more than “Spiegler Girls;” they are actually good friends. To create a sex scene that has food, anal, lots of things that require love to look great onscreen, you need performers who share something that makes them want to bring that much, if not more with their scene partner. They have to be looking for something bigger to go on top of an orgasm. I asked them about what they thought about that view I had, and what was within this scene and others. When you see their pairings on the HotMovies page, you will see why I had to know how they went about casting these epic productions.
“I think that no one sees the heart of the industry. Everyone watches porn, but no one wants to talk about it right? What we hear from a lot of clients is that they feel that they finally got to have a release for the first time in their lives with us. We actually hear that a lot. That is why we want our clients to have the most input as far as casting is concerned, always. There are times when they have certain performers in mind, and they just do not fit the bill. We put a lot of thought and research with the agents, we ask around with other people that we have worked with, and then we try to steer them in the direction of people that we think will bring the most to the scene. We want the best possible outcome. It is again, sort of like a collaboration. We have a set of performers that we work with, and we know that they are great, and we know that we can trust them. These are the performers that we recommend to them in particular. There are only certain performers that we really feel take each fetish seriously enough to treat it as something that is so important. To treat it as something special for this one individual and not everyone gets that. The performers that do, they make all the difference. When it comes to Jane and Paige, we were really pleased with their performance. Like you had mentioned, they are friends and I think that made a significant difference. That was Jane’s first experience being in a dominant role, and she just got it; she is a natural. She has that sort of personality. She is playful, yet so much more. She has such a great future in this business.”
Let’s talk about those performers that “do” for a second. Common starlets cast in these scenes from Anatomik are Jillian Janson and girl/girl superstar Sasha Heart. These two performers give a lot of insight with just their presence and frequent casting into this process with Rhiannon and Dan. What this industry insider can tell you, these two women are starlets who love what they do. I mean really love what they do. Their heart, compassion, and happiness within every scene they shoot, it is almost like an industry lore, but the true reality few know is that their true personas are anything but a fable. Jillian, she is that supermodel starlet who loves sex and enjoys elevating her own sexuality to many, many places. From the day that I met Jillian, I noticed that she never, and I mean never looked at any kind of work in this business as something she did not want to learn about and experience. No wonder she has been in these Anatomik creations from the beginning. Sasha Heart, she is a woman who is the same way: a starlet who would be as kind to a fan on the street as she would a producer on a porn set. She would make you smile in a flash and put your comfort first. Those are key ingredients that make all their work so passionate and sought-after for years. It is my opinion that these women have had the longevity they have had because of exactly what Anatomik’s mission statement is. I asked Rhiannon and Dan to speak about both these ladies to the fans to give them a deeper insight.
“Both of them make things so comfortable for everyone to engage. We love Jillian and what we can say is that the camera loves her. With Jillian, it is obvious that she has a passion for this business. She is a woman who can be the most wonderfully intense performer. She just runs with it, she dives in head-first. She is a person who goes all out! Sasha Heart, oh, we just love her too. We adored her from the moment that we met her. I think the first time we met her was back in 2012. She was one of the first models that we used when we first began shooting content. We were shooting for a year straight, so it might even have been 2011. She was with us from the start, and the first thing we thought after making this content with her was that she was just so funny, sweet, and adorable. We want everyone to know that Sasha Heart is a national treasure. She has a very positive side to her that makes her so fun to be around. We say again, we really want everyone to know that she is a national treasure.”
When you walk away from an Anatomic Media production, you feel as if you have been under a rainstorm on a sunny day, if that makes any sense. You feel something new, something never before felt… something chaotic and beautiful in most instances. These two great minds and eyes take you on a ride that I think is like no other on HotMovies. Seeing a company whose mission statement is to always bring something out that both awakens fan and performer alike, there is nothing more real or sexy than that. In many instances, porn has become all business. Hell, there are many places in the world that have taken out the love and artistry to focus only on financial growth. Rhiannon and Dan talking about Sasha Heart being a national treasure proves these two are an institution of acceptance within the sexual human spirit. It is something that connects to everything. No matter what star you love that brings you to their products, you will discover something that you have never seen before and that is within yourself, as well as the stars that you love. How many companies can you say that about in today’s porn world? The HotMovies Indie Spotlight is a project about what companies take you to places that you may not know exist. This is a porn company that can take you on a journey that is the equivalent of travelling to a faraway place you have never been, and isn’t that what porn should always be? To me, their fetish films do what few things can in this life: showing people that they are as normal as the next person. That is what you will get when you purchase a scene, or become a producer yourself by working with this amazing company. I asked Dan and Rhiannon in close, what is your mission statement? What do you want your journey in this industry to be when all is said and done?
“Now, I will be honest. After looking at what was going on at the time when we first began Anatomik Media, I thought that there was an opening for us to make the best customs that were out there. We saw that, and we just went for it, you know? Making the best possible work that we possibly could. That is something that goes all the way from our customer service to the end product. That is what we strive to do the whole way. We are all about growing, learning, and I think that allows us to be the best that we can be and become what we are capable of. Fetish, it is something that is different for everyone, to each person, and that is who we are and want to be with our clients. We want them to know that it is about what you want it to be. Better than what society decides fetishes are, or what fetish is supposed to look like. Whatever it is that you want it to be. Fetish it is not just whips, chains, and bondage gear. It is also shaving, creampies, and having sex with two foot-long gummy worms. To us, we feel really fortunate when we get to make those kinds of connections.”
My last question I had for Rhiannon and Dan was what do they have left to create? What kind of fantasy is left to live? Their answer was one so grandiose, I still smile thinking of it today as I write this article. Their fantasy is to create a porn commune, a place that has all of us lovers of porn getting to bask in the things we love. Can you imagine that? People, performers, and producers from all walks of sexuality, living together and getting to enjoy the safety of acceptance. That article from The Guardian that began my research, it spoke about how much these two dedicate to the industry. They are people who have inspired and been inspired themselves by people like Casey Calvert and many others. People who eat, sleep, and breathe this industry. Anatomik Media has something here and it is one of the great ideas and cutting edge thoughts that will help take this industry and your fantasies as fans to amazing, kinky, and passionate places no could have ever dreamed of.