Matt Zane

Rock ‘n’ Roll Porno King

by Scott Hefflon

Now I don’t mean to get off on a rant here, but isn’t it about time someone made cool porno movies? I don’t mean good, I mean cool. Most pornos are about as sexy as getting a blowjob in a back alley from some aging, battle-weary prostitute. While that does hold a bit of appeal (at least conceptually), it’s far from the way most of us think about sex in our daily lives. Yet this is the industry standard for porn.

Enter Matt Zane. He’s young, he’s rock’n’roll, he started a record label, and he makes pornos aimed at Alterna-Nation®. While not everything with the Zane logo on it is revolutionary, most of it is at least interesting. Novel, one might say. Without calling Matt Zane a pioneer (I mean, is he really going where no man has gone before? It seems he’s going where lots of guys have gone before, he’s just getting there with a clothing sponsor beneath his soon-to-be unbuckled belt), he is throwing new elements into the tired formula of porno making.

While I haven’t seen Backstage Sluts 2, I did see the first one.
The second one’s even better.

Didn’t you have one before that, Crew Sluts?
That wasn’t mine. That was done by the guy who worked with me on these two, Jef Hickey. It didn’t have any rock stars, really, mostly just roadies.

And it had the Frank Zappa song looping during the title credits… Most of your films have much better background music than most porno films.
That was a goal, 70 films ago. I said, “That’s it, no cheesy porno music for me.”

And you originally got into this because your father ran the company?
Yeah. Right from the start, I did MTV-style videos, and I always tried to use great electronic music. From there, I got the idea for Gen X-themed movies with rock’n’roll, piercings, tattoos, dancing, and the whole bit. I thought it was really stupid that there wasn’t any pornography for the younger generation. It’s ridiculous how long we’ve settled for old man’s porn.

Have you seen others start making the kind of films you make?
Oh, of course, and there’re going to be more and more every year. I started something that was inevitable, anyway. I just happened to be the first.

But you started with Zane Entertainment, a company that was already up-and-running. You just changed the direction.
At the time we were in Chapter 11, so it wasn’t as up-and-running as you might think.

What’s the theory behind pumping out, so to speak, so many films per month?
We don’t do as many as we used to. We used to do five or six a month, and now we’re doing two or three. I try to make all my films the best I can. Other people put out crap because it sells somewhat, and they make their money. Why would anyone want to take their time to make two or three good movies when you can make more money making six pieces of crap?

But isn’t there a breaking point where there’s more money in making something good because more people buy it?
I know that I’m making more money because my movies are better and cooler, but other people? No, I don’t think it would affect them. There are just a lot of talentless people in this industry. And you’ll notice that the people who make the good money are pretty talented. So you really have to talk to the people who don’t have the talent. They put out crap. A lot of crap.

Even though it’s not yours, I thought Rock’n’Roll Rocco was really fun.
Oh yeah! Rocco Siffredi is awesome. There’s a guy who really believes in his work. And he’s an example of one movie a month.

Even though the band playing was pretty bad, the movie was fun ’cause he had two chicks going down on him in a backstage hallway while he held a camcorder, they went to costumed sex parties, and all sorts of cool, fun shit.
You have to see Rocco Never Dies parts one and two. Porno action/adventure. There are certain people you can’t deny greatness. Rocco Siffredi will go down as a legend. And there are others, too, who I think are worthy of admiration and compliments. Like Andrew Blake. He makes phenomenal films. I can’t think of any names, but pretty much anything you get that has his name on it is awesome. John Leslie is usually really good. But he puts out some pulp just like everyone else. And for what he does, Max Hardcore is really, really good.

I remember Film Threat distributed some of his stuff, as well as movies and shorts by or with Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch, and all sorts of New York Underground people. Wouldn’t you like to see them do pornos?
I’d really like to see a lot of people do porno, just to see what they’d do with it. Can you imagine if Quintin Tarantino or Oliver Stone did a porno? They’d be great! David Lynch, David Cronenberg…

Do you think those guys have movies, or at least footage, but they just don’t release it?
I have no idea.

So what’s your thing? In your movies I’ve seen tour buses, dirt bikes, tattoos, piercings, live show/orgies… But then I have Tales from the Black Side 3.
That’s not my flick. But I shot it.

What about the Co-Ed Cocksuckers series?
Those are mine.

Those are great. There was one of them, I forget which one, that had a guy walk up to college girls and say, “Hey, wanna study together?” And they go back to his apartment and fuck. He used roughly the same line every time. It was so realistic…
That was one of the Cherrypoppers, actually. They’re our biggest sellers ever.

What’s the set-up? When you say sales, do you mean copies sold in stores, rentals, or mail order?
It’s all of them together. Plus you have the cable market, if you shoot a cable version of your flicks. But you have to shoot a completely separate version of the film to have it shown on Playboy, Spice, Adult Vision, or stuff like that. I’ve only shot five or six cable flicks, and they’re all bigger production ordeals.

To bring it back around, Backstage Sluts seems to be a lot more unified then Crew Sluts, which seemed almost random about which bands were interviewed.
Yeah, Crew Sluts was pretty random, but it was a great idea. Jef went and did it, and he did alright. I had the same idea, but I didn’t know any rock stars.

You’re in a rock band…
Once you know them, it’s not that hard, but at the time, I wasn’t really in the scene. It’s one thing to know people that’re in signed bands, it’s another to get them to sign release forms so you can interview them in a porno flick. Part two was a lot easier to make because people had seen and liked part one.

And you interview some females in bands in part two: Nashville Pussy and Tarrie B. from Tura Santana. Who else would you like to get?
Courtney Love would be phenomenal. Marilyn Manson…

Marilyn Manson was in New Rave or Dirty, one of the “rock’n’roll” porno mags Jef used to work with. Jef doesn’t work for you anymore?
No, he wasn’t happy anymore. When he first came here, we had an idea and we did it. But over the course of a year, as with any business that’s doing well, we grew. We got more people, we got a new building, I started this label… He hooked me up with Ralph Paz, from Metal Blade, as a vice president. But I don’t think Jef liked it anymore because it wasn’t as intimate, ya know? So he quit. He wasn’t fired. We still talk… I wouldn’t’ve been able to make Backstage Sluts 1 or 2 without him. He’s been on the road with so many bands, he set me up with pretty much everyone.

How did your label, InZane Records, come about?
I’ve always wanted to do a label, and Jef said he wanted to do it. Jef’s written for magazines and knows a lot of people in the music business, but neither of us were in the music business. He brought Ralph in, and it was supposed to be the three of us, but Jef seemed to drop the ball because he wasn’t into it or something. So I sat down with Ralph and we decided to do it. Three months later, we’re set to release four bands in the first four months of 1999.

What are the bands?
Empty Grave is being released in January, then in the coming months, December, my band, Society 1, and Ralph’s band, Weirdhead. And we have another three contracts out right now.

What’s the vibe you’re going for?
Heavy music and electronic music. Anything dark, heavy, or electronic.

I recall Backstage Sluts 1 having more punk and hardcore in it…
That’s because that’s who we could get access to at the time. I think half those interviews were shot on the Warped Tour. But we had Insane Clown Posse, Lemmy from Motörhead, and one of El Duce’s last recorded appearances.

Is there a part three in the works?
Not at the moment. Number 2 was such a pinnacle, I haven’t thought of a way yet to top it. I mean, we had Korn, Sugar Ray, Limp Bizkit, and Ron Jeremy… Lynn Strait from Snot actually had sex in the film…

I was always very thankful you didn’t film Fear Factory fuckin’ anyone. I like those guys, but I really don’t wanna see them naked…
I hear ya.

You usually use “professional” porn actors to act out the scenes, why don’t more amateurs get involved?
That’s why I was really proud of Lynn. I’ve been backstage lots of times, and people say they want to be in my films, but then they never seem to call you. I’d be more than happy to set it up, but I’m not going to hunt people down so they can get laid by a hot porn chick, ya know?

I also remember a couple guys from one of the bands getting in on the classic “cold cut-throwing” scene…
Yeah, that was Insane Clown Posse.

That was brilliant. Throwing slices of bologna at a naked chick and having them stick for a few seconds, then fall off… That’s just not something you see every day in real life or the movies.
It’s difficult for me to remember how much fun that stuff was before I got into the porn business; now I’ve done a million things like that.

I liked it cuz it was goofy erotic…
Apparently, all the stories from part one were enactments of what various bands Jef knew had done. Part two I embellished with a lot of ideas I had about what I’d like to see happen on the road. Like one scene where a girl gets so drunk that after the roadies are done with her, they wrap her up in toilet paper, mummifying her, and then douse her in beer to wake her up.

What’s a classic moment you came up with that you’ve never seen anywhere else?
Well… In Sexual Society, we took a groupie into a hotel room, had her on her back with her ass in the air, then I spread her butt cheeks and we played “Quarters” using her ass as the glass. Not that we were going to drink beer out of it or anything…

I remember one of your movies with dirt bikes, a van, and a lot of mountain scenery.
That was The Perverted Adventures of SuperDave. That was a crazy movie to shoot. It took four days, and it was really difficult. But it was fun ’cause when you’re done, you have a movie that has guys on motorcycles jumping over people having anal sex in the middle of a canyon. We have naked girls riding over hills…

Was it SuperDave that trashed the motel room?
That was Rick Masters. That was totally real. Jef said we had to trash a hotel room like Zeppelin, and I agreed. But when we got to the point where we had to trash the room, Jef pussied out on me, man. So we went for it with one light and a camera, and we were running out of there as someone called the cops. I love to wreck shit. Pantera’s videos are where it’s at, man.

How old are you?
I just turned 24.

When did you start doing this?
I’ve been working in porn since I was 16, starting with janitorial, and then duping when I was 18, but I started directing when I was 22.

How long have you been running the production department of Zane?
Since I started directing, two years ago.

You pretty much gave Zane a facelift…
So people say.

What did you do, who did you phase out?
Anyone who was directing for us at the time whose stuff I looked at and said, “I don’t like this.” I changed the movies we released, and I changed the way the company was perceived.

Zane has also embraced the underground, not just representing Alterna-Nation® through Hustler and all the major porn outlets, but by being cool to the cutting edge ‘zine community like Popsmear, Flipside, and Lollipop.
If this goes mainstream, great, but being down here is cool. Everything is more real, more passionate here.

Things get to a level where it’s not physical, it’s not real, anymore. I always dreamed about what Mötley Crüe backstage was about, but the thing is they’re on such a huge stage now, and their eyesight’s probably not what it once was, so they can only really see the first 15 or so rows of the audience. There are thousands of people in the audience – well, maybe not anymore – but they just can’t see all the hot chicks who want to screw their brains out. Back in the old days when they used to play clubs, every hot chick would walk by them at some point during the night.
Very true. Very, very true. We did a flick called House of Flesh II that put everything under one roof, all in your face. We had bondage, piercing, electronic music, rock’n’roll, orgies, booze, beer, pools… And if you watch closely near the end you can see 70 cops bum rush the stage. That’s one of my babies. Believe it or not, part one was more decadent. It didn’t have all the facets – it didn’t have the bondage and the rock’n’roll – but it had the public orgy and a lot more sex. But you have to see the World’s Biggest Gang Bang one and two. There are, like, 178 guys in the first one and 250 or something ridiculous like that in the second.

Is there a world’s record?
Yeah, World’s Biggest Gang Bang. Jasmine St. Clair has it. I like her.