Dee Severe & Jimmy Broadway Interview: BDSM, Severe Sex Films & More

As porn partnerships go, you won’t find very many as productive and passionate as that of Dee Severe and Jimmy Broadway. Together, this husband-and-wife team have forged one of porn’s top fetish labels, Severe Sex Films, the company behind such memorable movies as Cybill Troy Is Vicious and Ms. Grey. (Fans may also recognize Broadway for his many performances in “cuck” roles for various studios over the years.) In this new interview (exclusive to the Adult Empire Blog), the duo discuss Severe Sex Films, cuckold porn, COVID-19’s impact on porn, BDSM, the Severe Sex official membership site, and much more.

How did the two of you meet?

Dee: On alt.com.  See, sometimes online dating works!

Jimmy: We met online in the early days of Alt.com. Twenty-two years later we are still together. I think Alt.com should give us some sort of endorsement contract for that.

Tell us about the beginnings of Severe Sex Films.

Dee: We actually got into porn by accident. We were part of a mainstream short film group, and developing a super low budget movie we could produce ourselves. In the meantme, being lifestyle kinksters, we would go to fetish parties at Passive Arts (now Sanctuary) dungeon in LA.  The owner kept saying I should come work there.  At one point we weren’t having such a great year financially, so I figured, okay then, and got a part time job as a pro Dominatrix. Turns out, the guy wanted to get into the video biz, had done a couple of DVDs he wasn’t that pleased with, and we explained we had mainstream indie film experience. And then we took care of Passive Arts’ Clips4Sale stores, plus produced a number of DVDs for them, making all of our rookie mistakes on someone else’s nickel. One of the first movies got nominated for AVN’s Best BDSM Release and we realized we actually had the opportunity to make a living as filmmakers doing pretty much anything we wanted creatively.  Whereupon we went out on our own as Severe Society Films. In 2011 we moved into our own studio in downtown L.A., and in 2014 we got picked up by Exile Distribution and the late, great Howard Levine. He thought we should rebrand, so we became Severe Sex Films.

Jimmy: I’ve done freelance film and video work since high school in the early ‘0s when I worked for a public access cable station in our school, shooting everything on VHS tape. Working freelance, there have always been up periods and down periods. Since we started dating, we went to fetish parties at a pro dungeon near our home in LA called Passive Arts, and just about every party that we went to the owner would offer Dee a job as a pro dominatrix. Well, in 2005 I hit a low period in my freelance work and he made his usual offer and we talked it over and she decided to take the job. John, the owner, had produced two fetish DVDs before Dee got there, and he quickly learned that we were film makers and asked us to shoot his third movie. We had some lighting and sound gear, we borrowed why we didn’t have from our film maker friends and shot The Headmaster’s Office. In order to get paid we had to have a business, so we chose the name Severe Society Films. (Severe Society had been a BDSM performance troupe in LA before us, and we had gotten to know several of their members through local events.) One DVD became five, and we added four clip stores and we were the video department of Passive Arts Studios. After two years we decided to leave and give it a go on our own, starting with the Tied ’n’ Tickled clip store and it’s just grown from there. In 2014, when we changed distributors from Bon Vue to Exile, we decided to rebrand as Severe Sex.

Were there any classic porn movies that made a strong impression on you or influenced your later style?

Dee: Definitely Cafe Flesh, it was a real movie that happened to have sex in it, which is the way I like to approach a feature project.

Jimmy: They say you always remember your first, so for me it would be Deep Throat and The Devil & Ms. Jones. My dad had them on VHS and I would sneak and watch them when my folks weren’t home. From them I learned that porn, at least then, was just a movie with actual sex in it. Dad later got a tape called Eleven, which showed me that there was a wide variety to sex. The old Bizzarre Video tapes (with the gold foil labels) were my introduction to actually seeing BDSM. And finally, Cafe Flesh, which showed that weird could still be hot.

Every successful career involves a few moments of luck. Could you tell us some ways, if any, that luck, coincidence, or happenstance have shaped your careers in porn?

Dee: Being active on the XBIZ message board and getting to know Howard through that.  We sent him the trailer from our epic Treacherous, and he signed us on the spot.  It completely changed our distribution and took us to the next level as a company.  That, and I was on a panel at XBIZ and I was talking about how we didn’t have a website and needed one, and afterwards Daniel came up to me, and that’s how we got hooked up with Adult Empire.

Jimmy: I’d say that the main one is the beginning. When Dee took that job at Passive Arts, we had no idea that John was looking for someone to make movies for him, and if he hadn’t seen her working on one of our short films during one of her breaks, we might not have ever gotten the chance.

Tell us the story of your stage names.

Dee: When I started working at Passive Arts, owner was adding me to website and asked what my Domme name was going to be.  I had no clue so I said Mistress D (first letter of my legal name).  When I tried to sign up for FetLife, there already was a Mistress D, so I did a Ramones and became Mistress D Severe.  When I stopped pro Domming and became primarily a director, I made it Dee Severe.

Jimmy: Dee was finishing a project and she needed a name from me for the credits. I couldn’t think of anything, so I went with the old game of “your middle name and the street that you live on.” James was a bit clunky, so I went with Jimmy and there you have it.

Dee, in what ways did your prior career as a journalist inform your current career in porn?

Dee: It was actually my sojourn as a mainstream screenwriter that influenced me, mostly by making me appreciate how awesome porn was.  I wrote six screenplays, four were optioned, none were made. And the process was, your screenplay is optioned, you get some money and you’re all happy cause you think it’s going to be a movie. Then the producer makes you rewrite it like 729 times, until it resembles nothing like what it started out as, and you want to throw the script, the producer and yourself off a roof. And then something happens with the financing and the whole thing falls apart and you have to start over. After this happened to me four times, I was just super frustrated by the whole mainstream movie process, I didn’t want to have endless meetings, I wanted to make movies. So every day I get to direct  project we have pretty much total control over, that is a great day.

What’s the key to a good onscreen “cuck” performance?

Jimmy: For me the key is finding some way to connect to my “wife.” If it looks like we just met a half hour ago, which is sometimes the case, then it’s really hard to make it believable that we are married. Sometimes the connection comes from physical contact when we are taking still photos before the video, sometimes it comes from a conversation while we are getting ready and sometimes it comes from knowing each other, even if we haven’t worked together, before we get booked to shoot the scene. I think that best cuckold scenes are the ones that I shoot for Severe Sex Films, because I get to cast those and I pick women that I already know very well.

What’s your own definition of BDSM?

Jimmy: Personally I’m more of a fetishist than a strict BDSM player, and as I’ve gotten older I am much less the pain slut that I was in my 20s. I guess the best definition I can give is it’s a collection of activities existing on a spectrum of Bondage & Discipline, Dominant & Submissive, Slave & Master and Sadist & Masochist. And the groupings can blend, for example I know some masochistic dominants. The main thing is, it’s a range, a grouping, it’s not one specific thing.

Are there any mainstream depictions of BDSM that you’ve found particularly inaccurate, distorting, or harmful?

Dee: Well, the obvious one is 50 Shades of Grey, which is so inaccurate it makes you crazy.  That wasn’t BDSM, that was an unhealthy abusive relationship. BDSM is all about trust and consent, and accepting your kinks, and that movie didn’t have any of that.

Jimmy: 50 Shades is the easy answer here. Over the years there have been a number of “frat boy” movies that completely ignore the matter of consent. And a lot of depictions are done for laughs, a “look at these freaks” attitude that shows no respect for the culture or the people involved. To be honest, in most cases I’ll see a depiction and almost immediately forget about it because it’s meaningless to me. Two notable shows that got it right, the original CSI always treated BDSM and fetishes with respect (their Lady Heather character was one of the best depictions of a working professional dominatrix that I’ve seen on TV) and the original Addams Family series, which showed the love and respect that Morticia and Gomez had for each other in some very heavy BDSM play.

What’s the biggest misconception about BDSM?

Jimmy: That it’s abusive. When done properly, it’s the furthest thing from that. BDSM is a power exchange between two or more people, boundaries and activities are negotiated, and the bottom/submissive is trusting the top/dominant to respect those boundaries and to look out for their health and safety when they play.

In what ways, if any, do you see the COVID pandemic changing the industry in the long term?

Jimmy: More than anything I think that it’s going to solidify the position of the performer as one of the key elements of the industry, no longer just working for directors, but on an equal footing with the production companies and distribution platforms. It’s also going to make the industry safer and we focus on ways to keep COVID-19 off our sets.

Tell us about your animal advocacy as well as your own pets.

Jimmy: I grew up with dogs and cats, and while I didn’t have a pet while I was single (I just didn’t think that I could properly care for one with the hours I was working and a pretty heavy travel schedule), when Dee and I met, she brought two amazing dogs into my life. Since then we have always shared our home with at least two dogs, who bring us so much comfort, joy and unconditional love. As for the advocacy, it’s very difficult for animals to speak for themselves, so we do what we can to ensure that they get the best life possible on this planet that we share.

Which movie or scene best represents the Severe Sex aesthetic?

Dee: My personal fave is Corrupted By the Evils of Fetish Porn (XBIZ Fetish Release of the Year 2018).  I love to make funny BDSM movies because it’s so counterintuitive but it works so well.  Corrupted is about a commercial editor who gets fired and turns to editing fetish porn in desperation, then finds a whole new world where she is welcomed and appreciated.  There were a lot of my real life experiences in that movie, so it’s really special to me.

Jimmy: For me it’s FemDom Dream Date. Fetish is so often presented as something for the sexual freak, with lots of leather and latex and all, but in FDD, Dominik is just a regular guy, and that’s the reality, regular guys (and girls) can be kinky. Plus it’s a perfect example of the BDSM RomCom, which is sort of our thing.

What mainstream movies and TV shows have you been watching lately?

Dee: My beloved introduced me to the Marvel Universe so we just watched ALL 17 movies during quarantine.  I also like creative competition shows (Project Runway, the Voice, Top Chef etc.) and recently discovered that Netflix imported a ton of British shows like that, so have been watching those.

Jimmy: I am a big Marvel fan, but Dee had only seen some of the Marvel movies, so we watched all of them in chronological order. Finished the last week and now we are starting on all of the Star Wars movies. Of course we watched Tiger King and The Mandalorian right when they came out (I love the Child!). We are both big sports fans, but with no live sports on TV, we’ve resorted to things like Tag, Holey Moley (extreme miniature golf) and old episodes of BattleBots. We love the competition, And there are things that I like that she dose’t that I’m slowly finishing up, like Vikings, Better Call Saul and The Deuce.

What’s a porn buzzword that you love? And one that you wish would go away?

Jimmy: The one I love is “butt stuff,” because it’s so inclusive. It can mean toys, or strap-ons or fingers or cocks, straight or gay, CIS or trans, it’s all just butt stuff. The one I hate is “interracial.” I wish it would go away, and take the attitude behind it with it. The fact is, we are all the same race, we’re human, and it shouldn’t make a difference what color we are, we should all treat each other with love and respect as fellow humans.

What fetish or subgenre do you see as porn’s next big thing?

Jimmy: People tend to eroticize their fears (this is why there is an audience for things like Nazi and rape porn), so I think that doctor, nurse and medical scenes centered around the virus could be big. Also, at least in the short term, there is going to be less intimacy in the real world, so anything that fills that gap is going to do well.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one aspect of the industry, what would it be?

Dee: Old guard assholes who still think it’s okay to try to exploit female talent, as well as racist practices such as charging more for an interracial scene.

Jimmy: The way the outside world, especially government and the banking industry views us. What we do is a job. We pay our bills, we pay our taxes, we try to maintain safe working environments and we are here by choice. We should be treated like any other worker in society, but because sex is involved, there is a stigma attached to what we do. We are not evil, or dirty, we don’t need to be “saved”. We provide entertainment, just like a mainstream actor, athlete or musician. We should be treated with respect for our labor, just like any other job.

Talk a little about the development of your official membership site.

Dee: We had the world’s crappiest web site because while we have many other talents in filmmaking, we have minimal experience with IT.  When Severe Sex rebranded, we just took it down.  We were so grateful and happy when Adult Empire built our website for us because their technology is so impressive, and they’re so great to work with.

What is next for Severe Sex?

Dee: I just want to start shooting again.  We are not going to do a feature this year because of the zombie apocalypse, but we started a vignette release I’m really excited about, but it needs more scenes!

Jimmy: Quarantine has given me a lot of time to think about stuff, so once we are able to safely shoot again, I will probably have scripts for all of the scenes in StepDad Gets Fucked 3, and I’ve got a list of fetishes that I either want to try or revisit personally, so you will be seeing those adventures on future Perversion & Punishment DVDs.

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Dee Severe & Jimmy Broadway pictures courtesy AVN.com