Conversations with Evolution Erotica's Ivan E.
To helm new creampie series
--Gene Ross
ADULTFYI.com

Porn Valley - If all goes according to plan, Ivan E. Rection should be helming his first series for EvolutionErotica starting next month. Ivan comes to the adult business by way of the old "X" Show which aired on the FX cable channel.
"We called it The Man Show Lite," says Ivan, who attended film school in Santa Barbara for four years. That's right, film school. Academically, that makes Ivan actually one of the few qualified to be directing adult movies, and his first project is scheduled to be, presumably, an ongoing cream pie series titled Inside Job.

"Tom Byron came up with that one," he says. Up to now, Rection has been shooting behind-the-scenes footage for DVD extras along with an occasional scene to shoot as circumstances dictate.

"The first call I got from Evolution was to shoot behind-the-scenes and when I arrived, they asked me if I could do P.A. work as well," he remembers. "I didn't have a problem with that. It's such a small crew that you pretty much wind up doing everything. Then, maybe two and a half months ago I asked if I could start shooting and possibly get a line. They let me shoot bonus scenes. That was Tommy's idea to let me do that and see how things work out."
Obviously it's been working out. Rection said the first time he shot a bonus scene was an opportunity that occurred when Byron came down ill. "I was thrown into it," he recalls. "I get this call while I'm doing my P.A.-stuff. I'm told come to the office we need to talk to you. Remember when we had this conversation about you possibly starting to shoot? Well, here's your chance. Luckily the the first two people [Scott Styles and Jackie Moore] I shot were very helpful and they did a great job."

Rection says he's anxious yet a little nervous to tackle Inside Job when the opportunity finally arises. "I'm a perfectionist. To me, having something to do that's mine, I'm going to throw everything into it. I've been jotting down ideas and buying props for it." Rection's entree into the adult business is a self-described weird, roundabout story that involved XPW wrestling.

"I worked on the X Show. I was camera-utility. We were the first guys on the set to set up the cameras and stuff like that. We ran the cable for the camera guys, and if the camera guys decided to leave early, we'd shoot. I became good friends with one of the hosts on the show who was a big wrestling fan, John Webber. Then one time I went to an XPW show and loved it. I got John hooked on XPW. What happened is that he went to XPW to train and he actually still wrestles."

[By way of mentioning, The X Show would occasionally do porno reviews and once had Lizzy Borden on in a segment serving to educate guys on how to hide their porn stashes from their girlfriends. Rection remembers Borden taking Polaroids with the crew holding her boobs.]

Rection: "Extreme had sent a bunch of porn movies over to John Webber and he gave them out to the crew. The first Extreme Associates movie I saw was Cocktails. I couldn't get through the whole thing. Whoa! And I saw The Pornographer and loved that."

According to Rection, Webber started taking him along to his training sessions at Extreme. "My brother [Ricky Dynamite] who was doing a lot of Internet wrestling reporting got hooked up with XPW helping them along with their website, doing Internet P.R. work. The funny thing is the only show we ever paid to go to was the first one, after that we got comped through with The X Show or because of my brother who worked for XPW."

Then Rection got involved with XPW. "One time Sabu who was wrestling for them at the time, invited some Japanese wrestling fans who were in town for a couple of WWF shows. He did his own little show for the fans at the XPW warehouse and that was the first time I shot camera for them. They loved it and XPW asked me if I would come to the next show and shoot ringside. I did that for a couple of shows."

When Evolution was created earlier this year, Rection's name came up and he got a call from Kevin K., the general manager. "They remembered me from the XPW days and I got a call to shoot behind-the-scenes," he says. "My first day of work was for Apocalypse Babylon. I came in towards the end of that project and then worked on Meat Pushin' in the Seat Cushion. Then a couple of months ago they asked if I could come in full time. So, on the days we weren't shooting, I'd be editing or doing office work."

Gene: So, basically you were a mainstream guy that got corrupted by porn.
Rection: Exactly! I was always intrigued by it. But I didn't know anybody or how to get into it. I knew XPW and Extreme Associates were one and the same thing. And I always wondered if they'd let me come in to watch and learn, but I guess I just never had the balls to ask them to do it. Luckily, they approached me because I don't think I would have ever approached them. I wasn't sure what would happen. Luckily it worked out.

Gene: Most people tend to get in this business by accident.
Rection: Right.

Gene: Ever think in a million years you'd be doing this?
Rection: No. I thought it would be something interesting to do but never imagined that it would happen. The closest I came to doing something like this was right out of film school. I worked on two movies that were shot for Cinemax. They were softcore. It was kind of interesting in that a week out of school I got this job. In five weeks we shot two features and it was interesting because everyday was a sex scene. It was softcore but still a sex scene. There were boundaries but I was always curious what if there were no boundaries. The first day on the set was nerve wracking, you might imagine but was okay once you start concentrating on your work.

Gene: Tell me a little about film school.
Rection: I went from '93 to '97 and strictly shot on film. When I graduated I jumped into doing my own personal projects, mostly horror stuff. We had a successful short film that actually won some awards and went to film festivals. What was funny was, the last thing we completed, we shot a sex scene for it. It was feature shot on digital video and we were thinking we have a lot of action, we need a sex scene. We asked a friend of a friend. We didn't actually hire this girl in person. She was the only one to get paid on this project. We figured we had to pay. No one's going to do it for free. When she arrived, she wasn't what she described to us.

Gene: That's shocking.
Rection: We shot the sex scene and edited it. It just didn't work. At first the girl was nervous about taking off her top. Then she was, go get me a bottle of vodka, which is kind of strange.

Gene: Sure she wasn't a porn star?
Rection: We got her some vodka. Then she loosened up too much but we couldn't use any of the scene. We have it somewhere. If anyone wants to buy our feature [titled, The New Chapter] and they want a sex scene we'll put it back in. We're still shopping it around. If I had the sources I have now about a year and a half ago, we'd have had a helluva sex scene!

Gene: Would it have been relatively easy enough to give this project a film look in post?
Rection: We tried but what happened is it got too grainy. Some of the scenes look good but others, the blacks weren't rich enough. They were milky, kind of grayish. We lost a lot of detail on certain things. We just kept it as is. But we're still shopping it around and it's a long process.

Gene: How'd you get hooked up with The X Show.
Rection: Work was real sporadic. Through school, one of my friends was working on a TV show. I had no experience doing TV or video but he brought me in as a grip-electric-utility guy, kind of a jack-of-all-trades. Then when the X Show came around we shot the pilot for it. Luckily it was picked up and they brought in the original crew. From that point on it was two years of wonderful work. There were a lot of things that we couldn't get away with, which The Man Show being on Comedy Central was allowed to do because they had more leeway. We had limits. One time we had a huge vagina on the set They got away with that which was pretty interesting. Then we had a penis puppet at one point and there'd be confetti that would come out of the top of his head when he popped. It was hilarious. But there were limits and we couldn't compete with The Man Show. They were on once a week and we were on nightly. It was a hour-long and it was real difficult to come up with new things.

Gene: Are you learning anything from Guy Capo or vice versa?
Rection: It's kind of back and forth. With Guy I'm learning a lot about how to shoot. He and Tommy have different styles. Guy, to me, is like a real filmmaker. He's got all the paperwork, he carries his own equipment, the joke is Guy's a good guy. He really is. He's legitimately a really nice guy. He cares for his crew and his cast. Any time I have a question, he'll give me a suggestion. He teaches me about the porn stuff and I talk about the technical stuff I can bring in. So we balance off each other. I like doing P.A. work for him because that's what we do the whole time. He's a great resource.
And Tom Byron's like the encyclopedia of pornography. The first scene I shot for Tom I edited it and was real nervous. It was given to Tommy to watch. I didn't hear about it for two weeks. Then one day I showed up at the office and Kevin asked did Tommy talk to you about your scene? My heart's beating hard. Then they said Tommy really liked your scene. That made it easier for me. Because those two weeks was like waiting for your final exam wondering what is the teacher going to say. And that was important to me because I really want to do this. I enjoy doing it. It reminds me of how my filmmaking friends and I do movies. It's low budget, you shoot, you leave. It's more of a family-type of atmosphere. I like that and want to do that. But I'm still learning. Every day I show up and I'm nervous. Luckily everyone's been very helpful. I've got about ten years of loans to pay off! At least I'm holding a camera.
[Rection's site, IamIvan.com, designed by his brother, is currently under construction, and will be fully functional by this weekend.]