SexHerald: What sort of movies does Black Mirror produce? What’s the goal of Black Mirror?

Joe Gallant: It’s kind of a New York City porn think tank. Now, especially in the last half-dozen features, I’m trying to comment on things happening in the culture—politically or sort of pop culture or sort of cultural metaphysics, I call it. One we did was Contract Girl, about porn star assassins. We shot that during the Republican National Convention, where rival porn producers hire porn star assassins to take their rivals out. Killing Courtney Luv was a reworking of Media Obsession. Ultra Vixens NYC was about Lizzie Grubman and sort of her exploits when she hit those people in the van and did a little time. Not too much bad happen to her, but she has been as famous as ever.

It’s kind of a comment on celebrity. This is all within the context of porn. The new one, Ave X, is very heavy. It’s very political. I’m moving into the areas of cultural/political/adult cinema, which I don’t think has really been explored. There’s a lot of potential to comment on things that I find that the L.A. crowd tends to mostly keep stuff hermetically sealed. They don’t refer to their time and place much. So, I think porn has tremendous opportunity to do that, to comment on time and place, in the context of an adult film.

SH: How long did you have the idea to make Ave X? Was this long time coming?

Gallant: Yeah it is. It’s based actually on a cable series that I had on Manhattan Neighborhood Network in 2002 called Black Mirror. It parallels the story I used for that, and I wanted to expand on it to create this particular version. So, a lot of the imagery and the sort of intent comes from the cable series that was written right after Bush; the post 9/11 paranoia is where I got the premise for Black Mirror, initially. I’ve just sort of built on it for this version.

SH: I think Ave X can stand out on its own without the sex.

Gallant: I think so, too. I couldn’t agree more.

SH: Do you want people to be shocked when they watch Ave X?

Gallant: No, I want them to think about things. I want them to see it as an evocative piece of film and think about what their government is up to. If anything, that’s my mission.

SH: The leads—Veronica Jett, Kimberly Kane, Tommy Pistol—did you have them in mind specifically for the leads?

Gallant: Yes, very much so. A lot of the other parts were cast and recast a couple of the times because it was a very hard movie to keep a cast because there were a lot of cancellations and dropouts, and people not being able to make it at the last minute. So, it was actually the hardest movie to make so far because of that. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t turn out well. I think it turned out really good. Surprisingly good.

SH: Do you consider yourself alt?

Gallant: I don’t know what alt is. From what I understand, it’s a couple of people that have marketing campaigns and publicists behind them, and that doesn’t make them bad, it’s just that it’s not a movement. It’s a marketing gimmick. I’m not being dark about any particular people, it just seems that you can’t create a movement in anything in like a year, and expect it to come from an organic place.

The thing is the title. . . the shtick of it is they created the brand before they even found the directors. They’re scrambling to find directors to fill this alt-y niche rather than like French Neu Wave which already had six, seven, eight established directors that were working. In the ‘60s, American Neu Wave already had a half-dozen or a dozen strong directors, household name directors working before they called it a movement. It’s like they branded a new movement in like a month and then they’ve had to scramble to find people that might or might not be alt-y. It’s a marketing shtick and it’s going to fade like any one trick pony, and what shakes out of it will be some good movies.

I’m more about living like the pirate days of ‘70s New York, when there was no particular label and you made really transgressive, dark, disturbingly real films. That’s what I love. My background and my age is such that I’m all about ‘70s New York. That’s my time and there was a realism and a grittiness and a directness to the films. I played a lot of music in the mid ‘70s New York. A lot of jazz and all through the ‘80s. People weren’t chasing a dollar, they were chasing concepts. That’s what made it.

SH: Do you feel porn today has lost a lot of its grittiness, that it’s only concerned with profits?

Gallant: Oh sure, of course it is. A common commodity. That’s why these big corporations have quiet, third party porn divisions. They’ve all got their hands in it and they don’t want anything that’s going to be too out for Middle America. What they don’t understand is Middle America loves out. A lot of people that live out in the country that love cool gritty dark disturbing shit. Eventually they’ll have to play to that, I think. It’s not all going to be Vivid or ClubJenna. [Laughs] You never know what’s going to take off or not. The best thing I’ve found is just stay true to yourself. Eventually, you’ll be discovered.

SH: Will porn in New York City ever reach the same level it did back in the ‘70s?

Gallant: Actually, it’s very much at the level that it was in ‘70s. There are a couple of people here, and there’s a movement. It’s a small scene. And it’s actually just like ‘70s New York now, in terms of who’s in it because there’s not that many people and the people who are doing it are very committed. The girls I use are very committed to it. And because we don’t have the resources, we have something better—we have a really cool committed group of pirates. It’s great.

SH: Which performers do you like using in your films?

Gallant: Dino Bravo, I love working with Kimberly Kane. I’ve liked working with Erika Cole, and I like working with—she’s been in a lot of my movies—a girl named Lucy Lucy who’s in a lot of my movies. Veronica Jett is a delight, and I loved working with Sandra Romain, she was awesome. I look forward to working with Sasha Grey. She’s going to be in the next one, she’s going to be fun.

SH: Where do you see the future of Black Mirror?

Gallant: I’d like to evolve it into something called Black Mirror Films. I’d like to really do independent films. The sort of films that are entered in film festivals and showing up on IFC. I did porn to learn how to shoot film, really.

SH: At the end of Ave X, it says ‘To Be Continued.’ What happens in part 2?

Gallant: It’ll be a complete, bloodbath rebellion against the cartel, the fascist regime. It will be very redemptive. It may even hint at the possibility of the rebels finding an autonomous zone in the Northwest, where they can live in an encampment and have access to mass communications where they can beam their messages of love and good sex and unity.

SH: Anything in closing you want to say about Ave X?

Gallant: I think it’s one of the first movies to incorporate hardcore politics and hardcore anal, and I think it breaks new ground because I think it’s showing the possibility of using porn as a vehicle for cultural discussion. People should keep an open mind and watch it and enjoy it.