Violent Porn - Three Perspectives

In all the recent debate about violent porn, the missing element has been first hand accounts from the people involved in making it so…

In January AVN printed a comprehensively overlooked interview with Kahn Tusion, director of 2000’s ‘Rough Sex’, a movie the adult industry has withdrawn from sale due to concerns over its extreme content. He works with JM Productions, distributors of the now infamous ‘Donkey Punch’.

His interview isn’t online so I’ve gone to the effort of transcribing it here:

Is Kahn Tusion the Most Misunderstood Man in Porn?

If the adult business is an industry of pariahs, then middle-aged, well heeled Kahn Tusion is a pariah among pariahs. “Respectable” pornographers speak of him and his degrading, male-dom ‘Meat Holes’ line and other series for - what else? - his Pariah Productions (distributed by JM Productions) in hushed disdainful tones. Their attitude is indicative of Porn Valley being in some aspects a pretty vanilla place, clueless as to the ways of more sophisticated BDSM. Yes, Tusion is a sadist - primarily an emotional one, but with some physicality - whose fetish is getting inside the heads of his girls, finding their weaknesses, then pushing their buttons until they melt down in a flurry of tears and running mascara. But it’s all consensual. In other words, standard operating procedure in the fetish world, only with the sex roles reversed (funny how none of Tusion’s critics ever voice concern about BDSM titles in which the men are degraded). He’s also a self avowed misogynist, but tellingly, counts many women among his friends. Besides, let’s give this brutally honest, frequently funny guy points for owning up to his hostility toward the opposite sex. More denizens of the 91311 be as frank and self-aware. This interview represents an attempt to get inside his head.

AVN: Are you the most misunderstood man in porn?

Kahn Tusion: Yeah. Absolutely.

AVN: Why?

Tusion: Well, because the opinion of me has been taken by a mob mentality. People say some terrible, disingenuous, untrue things about me, and it just perpetuates from one person to another, all by people that have never worked with me. Of all the people that have worked with me, a larger percentage have positive things to say about me, as opposed to the normal experience with any other porn director. I’m more straightforward, more candid and probably more generous than most porn directors out there.

AVN: What’s the stereotypical opinion of you by people that don’t know you?

Tusion: Ultimately they believe I take advantage of the girls, which is absolutely untrue. Under no circumstances do I take advantage of the girls. Not only so I shoot only girls that are interested in an erotic experience derived from degradation and rough sex and/or slightly violent sex, but I vet them from top to bottom on every single behavior prior to the scene beginning.

AVN: And you respect their limits correct?

Tusion: Oh, God yeah. Absolutely.

AVN: If a girl says to you prior to a scene, “No you can’t slap me in the face,” will you slap her in the face?

Tusion: Absolutely not.

AVN: OK. Do you ever push those limits?

Tusion: Yes I do.

AVN: I once asked you, “Do you hate women?” and you more or less admitted you’re a misogynist.

Tusion: Correct.

AVN: Elaborate.

Tusion: Well, I’m angry. Ya know? And I take that anger out during my shoots. It’s the way I express myself. The interesting thing is it’s a… it’s a devil’s bargain. It’s what does it for me, and I find girls that it does it for them also. And so we’re kind of very similar to, ya know, those parasitical relationships in nature in which separately we’re just pretty ugly people, but together we seem to satisfy each other’s needs.

AVN: Do you enjoy beating up women?

Tusion: Yes I do. Who wouldn’t, for Godsake. It’s an e-ticket, baby.

AVN: What are you angry about?

Tusion: Oh, well, ya know, the hard life.

AVN: Seriously, do you have issues with women, I mean anger towards…

Tusion: No, absolutely not. I’m generally angry. Obviously I suffer from the classic symptoms of all S&M participants (our good friend Lord Master Damien notes that the correct expression is S/M - Ed.), I’ve got self-esteem problems.

AVN: But you say you have a lot of women friends.

Tusion: I do. It’s interesting. Very frequently… what drives me is fear of not being accepted. And so my behavior is almost an extreme self-destructive attempt to drag out the worst opinion of me. Now after doing that, frequently the gals I work with have a positive opinion of me. And then that relationship we have evolves into something, a more… more of a friendship. And consequently, I’ve worked with probably 120 girls. I’d say I probably have a very, very close relationship to 20 or 30 of them.

AVN: And how about the rest?

Tusion: They think I’m a creep.

AVN: Now I’ve been to several Meat Holes sets. You’re not all that interested in the sex itself. You’re much more interested in getting inside these girls heads, right?

Tusion: Correct. Yeah. I’m interested in their journey of depravity. The depravity is just the end result, and that’s always the same. There’s always double anal and eating the cum out of another girls asshole. I’m interested in the journal(sic). What particular road they took to that depravity.

AVN: You’re well off. You don’t have to do this for a living. Why do you?

Tusion: Because I’m addicted to it, as all porno actors are. If I thought 15 years ago that the most alluring, desirable porno girls in the world would be having relationships with me, I would have laughed. I would have said that’s not possible. So yeah, that’s why I do it. And I could never give it up.

- Mike Ramone

Kahn Tusion’s Rough Sex 1 for Anabolic Video worn AVN’s Best Speciality Release - BDSM in 2000. It has since been pulled from the market.

Five days ago Alex Devine, who was in Donkey Punch - directed by Tusion’s label mates Cram and Grip Johnson, publicly commented on what making that movie was like in a thread over at the Extreme Girl Forum.

“DONKEY PUNCH was the most brutal, depressing, scarey(sic) scene that I have ever done. I have tried to block it out from my memory due to the severe abuse I received(sic) during the filming. I had been made to believe that the scene was going to be more sex, penetration, and rough as opposed to being ‘beat up’ with a few penetrations. The guy, Steve French has a natural hatred towards women in the sense that he has always been known to be more brutal than EVER needed. I agreed to do the scene thinking it was less beating, except the ‘punch’ in the head. If you noticed, steve(sic) had worn his solid gold ring the entire time, and continued to punch me with it. I actually stopped the scene while it was being filmed because I was in too much pain. I begged for him to remove the ring but he refused. That almost made me walk off the set and say ‘fuck it’. I sucked it up and wanted to finish so i would be paid. With the ring on his hand still, we continued the scene.

**Now i am not sure how much you all know about me, but I have had some major surgeries on my head. One was on the lower back right of my skull…. The doctor never replaced the bone there because it grows back on its own. It had been several years since that surgery, and i now have grown a strong cartilage in place of my missing bone.

I had specifically explained that Steve could not hit that spot, and that anywhere else on my head was fine. I explained this to him as well, showing him on my head the places. He acknowledged the request of mine.

As the pop happened he punched me several times in the head. Exactly where he was told not to. He did it with the ring on too.
*you can hear me scream in pain ‘wrong side! ow, ow, wrong side!’ in the movie and trailer.

I had to re-do the pop shot/donkey punch for ‘better footage’ while in pain, and he wore the damn ring again.

At the end of my scene they had me sit on the couch with the directors and explain that I was ok and was willing to do the scene. I was in tears

I sincerely hope that no one enjoys that scene. I want to cry when I think about it.”

For those speed-reading as far as I’m aware Tusion wasn’t on the Donkey Punch set. This is simply a way of comparing first person accounts from a producer of violent pornography and a performer who chose to be in it.

The last word goes to ‘Gunzo’ over at Adult DVD Talk.

“Hey, I know… why not leave her clothes on and just beat the shit out of her instead! That’s not been done in porn before! Just too bad we can’t piss on her at the end, damn those conservatives!”