Bree Mills: porn icon? With her signature specs, crisp diction, trademark hairdo, and singular creative vision, Mills is as recognizable a behind-the-scenes player as any in the industry today. She is synonymous not only with Adult Time, where she serves as chief creative officer, but also an entire brand of intelligent, forward-thinking porn. Whether this iconic status is a happy accident or part of her master plan all long, well, self-professed “evil marketers” never divulge their secrets . . . or do they? We were pleased to have the chance for an in-depth chat with Mills late last year.

In this new interview, she discusses leadership and vision, Adult Time as the Netflix of porn, the rise of big data and analytics, the risks and rewards of doing things differently, porn genres in danger of growing stale, being a “bad pornographer,” pornstars and acting, Jane Wilde’s Stars, 2019’s Teenage Lesbian, meeting wife Sara Luvv in 2016, the pros and cons of being a public figure, and her upcoming plans.

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Select interview highlights

On leadership:

Well, I definitely am the “crazy woman standing at the top of the mountain” as my team affectionately refers to me — or driving a very fast car with everybody kind of hanging on to the back of it. I’ve been told that as well, over the years. And one of the things I would hope that has evolved over the years is that everybody’s gotten in the car, everybody’s climbing up the mountain. But, you know, this has been a journey, where Adult Time is today, it has been a journey of about the last eight to 10 years, since we started venturing into our own content production as an adult company.

On Adult Time’s status as the “Netflix of porn”:

So when I first pitched Adult Time as a concept [ . . . ] I definitely had done a lot of research into streaming platforms as a distribution model. So I was seeing what was happening in mainstream entertainment in terms of the obviously the launch of Netflix, but also a lot of Netflix’s competitors. And there were a few things about Netflix that I that I really latched on to again the content engineering opportunities, which have always been like a huge part of of Netflix’s strategy I found really interesting. And the ability to give users choice — breaking down the construct that just because you came in from this doorway means that you only watched this thing. I was pretty convinced that that wasn’t the case, that there was a lot of cross viewership between between markets. So some of the some of the some of the things that had been publicly disclosed about Netflix strategy was part of my thinking going into the presentation. But there are a lot of things about the the adult industry that are quite different that are still quite different from mainstream streaming. So we never have labeled ourselves as [the Netflix of porn].

But when I was sharing details about the project in an AEE panel, and a speech I gave got picked up by somebody at The Daily Beast who wanted to write an article about what I was talking about, which was really the future of of the online distribution with a adult and bringing it closer to streaming. And that journalist ended up putting out an article that really helped us in terms of building early exposure, and they called us the Netflix of porn. So since that time, you know, that’s sort of become what we’ve been known as. And in many ways, we are, but you know, we’ve been very careful never to label ourselves as such, and there’s quite a few differences as well. So we certainly don’t want to suggest that we are a carbon copy of that.

On the risk and reward of doing things differently:

Everything is a risk, right? You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, right? So everything, at least in my career, in terms of projects that I’ve led development, usually, whatever you’re gaining in that moment, you’re really just learning something to apply forward to the next. So if I look at, again, the sort of trajectory, every project that we that we launched, following the success of another was applying the lessons that we learned. So going into Adult Time, yeah, it was, it was, it was a pretty radical risk. Because we were, we were taking our traditional portfolio that was a bunch of individual studios with individual member areas, catering to specific things, and we put it all together, and that was a big business risk, because a lot of the growth of our business traditionally had come from the ability to potentially upsell one customer base to another product and a lot of growth through having different doors.

On VR porn:

VR technology is rapidly increasing in quality and decreasing in cost and accessibility. And I think that  what we’ve done within VR as an industry up until this point, is probably just the tip of the iceberg of what we’ll be able to do in the future. So I think that that’s an area that also Adult Time is readying itself for starting this year, just as a platform to be able to offer VR channels, not necessarily to produce original VR content, but certainly that that’s one of the spaces that we want to go.

On animated porn:

This is the space that I’m kind of creatively, really interested in. And I would expand it to not just be like 2D or 3D animation, but hybrid live-action animation. And just in general, looking at what we can do in terms of content enhanced by VFX, by even, you know, practical effects. I really like the company Hentaied and the work they’re doing. I think it’s really innovative, very cool. So  that’s a brand that I think is kind of doing some interesting things. And we’ve done a fair amount of work in 3D animation over the last couple of years.

On watching porn:

I don’t think I’ve watched porn as a consumer in a long time. It’s just because well, one, I know a lot of the people, so maybe get some people off [on that], but for me, I’m like, “Oh, God, I know those two people don’t necessarily get along all that well” or whatever. Mostly if I watch a porn scene, I’m like, “Where did they get that location?” or like, “Oh, man, their lighting is on point.” So I consume a lot of content but not in the traditional way that that our fans do. But that’s okay, because I have a good healthy dose of it. And my relationship with it is always going to be a bit weird because I’m always thinking about making it. I’ve come to peace with that.

On pornstars and acting:

One of my favorite things to do is to go check out our Pornhub channels, especially for projects that are there are more serious in our acting like Pure Taboo. If you go and look at Pure Taboo Pornhub comments, at least half of them are people that are shocked: “Why did I watch this all the way through? Why do I care about [the story]? Why are these people so good? Why can they act?” And to me, that is the best, being just being able to put our work out and to positively influence people’s perception, not just us as an industry but more importantly, people’s perception about sex and sexual identity and gender identity as a whole. That’s a tremendous power that we have. So I love letting the work speak for itself.

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Bree Mills 2022 Interview: Mentoring & Empowering Creative Voices

Full interview transcript

Intro and Adult Time background

Dallas

Hello, and welcome to the Adult Empire Podcast. I’m Dallas, your host. Our guest today is the chief creative officer at Adult Time. She is Bree Mills, and she joins us now. So the first thing that I was wondering about in that text interview you did with us not too, too long ago, when talking about your role at Adult Time. You said you were, I think somewhat tongue in cheek, you said you were like “a crazy woman who sits at the top of the mountain looks to the sky and yells,’ I have a vision.’” So I wondered how has that vision evolved since you took on that position of Chief Creative Officer?

Bree Mills

Well, I definitely am the “crazy woman standing at the top of the mountain” as my team affectionately refers to me — or driving a very fast car with everybody kind of hanging on to the back of it. I’ve been told that as well, over the years. And one of the things I would hope that has evolved over the years is that everybody’s gotten in the car, everybody’s climbing up the mountain. But, you know, this has been a journey, where Adult Time is today, it has been a journey of about the last eight to 10 years, since we started venturing into our own content production as an adult company.

So my parent company has been around since really the early days of the internet. So Gamma Entertainment was one of those the first on the scene on the technology side. And for the first dozen years, as an organization, we really focused on partnering with existing studios and popular performers and running their websites. But you know, that’s sort of where our involvement ended. We were the web technology partner. We would be the online marketing partner. We were not making the content ourselves. So we decided at a certain point, you know, just in the growth of our overall business that we wanted to explore, how it would impact the growth of the business if we were to develop our own IP.

And at the time I was, I was either still the marketing director or the creative director at the company at that point. I had one of those titles. To be honest, the last project that I worked on before venturing into porn production was I helped worked with an architectural design firm for about a year to build our corporate offices. So I mean, that might tell you a little bit about just my personality. I love to just dive headfirst into creative projects and kind of create things, you know, out of nothing or to kind of start things from scratch.

So when our president was experimenting with this idea, I raised my hand. I was like, you know, I would love to do that — having never been on an adult set before, you know, really being completely naive to what I was was putting myself up for. But I’ve always been extremely creative. I always loved writing. I have a marketing background. I’m an evil marketer at heart. So I love trying to figure out what what motivates people and especially within the world of porn, I’ve just always been fascinated with what gets somebody to a point where they’re not just consuming your brand, but they’re buying into it. They’re subscribing to it. And then the nuances between a foreign viewer and a foreign subscriber which are really interesting to me.

So I got the green light and I kind of dove headfirst and, and in the first few years developed Girlsway as a studio, which became a very successful studio in the lesbian market. And that kind of got me to meet a lot of people in the industry work with a bunch of people in the industry. I actually met my wife [Sara Luvv] and moved to LA so I completely got the bug and moved to LA and then was so inspired by just the talent on the ground that I really wanted to push what we could do as a production company. Because I’m a really lousy pornographer and I fully identify as a lousy pornographer. I love making movies. I love being creative. So the fact that it was adult content wasn’t really my main motivator. My main motivator was there’s all these cool people we can tell really interesting stories we can explore sex and sexuality, which as subjects are evergreen subjects you could talk about forever. And I’m really interested in them as subjects.

But when it got down to like the sex itself, that’s has always been where I tried to bring good people together who have chemistry and who have good experience so that I can help set them up for what they deliver as a strong sex scene. So we built Pure Taboo, which really kind of put our name on the map, I would say in a larger way, because it was in in the straight side of the industry, and it was a very unique product to enter into the market and has arguably been our most successful, single studio brand. And again, I was just so motivated, I think I pitched Adult Time to my partners in November of 2017. And we launched Pure Taboo in September of 2017. So it kind of goes to show how rapidly I was climbing up this mountain. And, you know, we took a couple years to really develop Adult Time as a product.

And my idea of bringing it to our team was really, from a creative standpoint, as a creative, I wanted to have a platform that was much more flexible to develop different ideas than a single studio site, which is very committed to the niche that it’s serving. And  so as a creative, I wanted to have a space to kind of pursue all the ideas in my head, and the ideas of the creatives around me. And of course, by that point, we had been really assembling a great team of writers and people behind the scenes and content. And also an evil marketer, I wanted access to data, I wanted to be able to beta test things, and I wanted to be able to challenge the pay site model, you know, which is very, historically very siloed. And you need to deliver that one thing and deliver it consistently. And I wanted to be able to have a space where we didn’t have to do that. We could run a season have a series or we could just try something out, or we could release a film, we can experiment with the way we are releasing a film. So that was my intention. I was, of course, I have amazing people that I work with, who really helped flesh out a full vision for adult time as a as a business. And it has now become, of course, our master brand and our kind of biggest project.

And I’ve always been really focused on trying to help build up the team, so that it isn’t just me on the top of the mountain. Again, we’re all climbing that that together. And so my role today and how it’s evolved is i I’m still involved in a percentage, about half of our productions, I have a direct hand in, as mostly as a producer, I do direct. But the mass majority of the volume of the work that I’m associated with, I’m more of a producer and a writer, and I work with crews to really try to build up their skill sets and their autonomy. And so that there, what I say is they need to outperform me in the member area. So if their scenes are doing better than the scenes that I would have directed, we’ve got a win. And so I oversee about half of our content production now in certain series, and I’m show running a couple of specific series that we’re developing right now. And otherwise, I’m there to kind of provide mentorship and leadership and all things creative. So that includes brand that includes working really closely with our content team, and with our marketing team on what are we making? How are we making it, which is super, super important to us and our brand value? And how are we putting it out to market? So I feel it’s a long winded response to your question.

The Netflix of porn

Dallas

No, that’s perfect. So I know that Adult Time and associated brands have often been referred to as “the Netflix of porn? Was that something consciously in your mind to aim to originally? Or did that just kind of develop and you heard that label and you said, Well, it kind of fits, but that wasn’t necessarily what we were always trying to do.

Bree

So when I when I first pitched Adult Time as a concept, again, this would have been in 2017. So this was a few years — even I think we officially put it to market in the beginning of 2019. I was definitely had done a lot of research into streaming platforms as a distribution model. So I was seeing what was happening in mainstream entertainment in terms of obviously the launch of Netflix but also a lot of Netflix’s competitors. And there were a few things about Netflix that I that I really latched on to. And the content engineering opportunities, which have always been like a huge part of Netflix’s strategy, I found really interesting. And the ability to give users choice was also something, breaking down the construct and constructs that just because you came in from this doorway means that you only watched [that].

I was pretty convinced that that wasn’t the case, that there was a lot of cross viewership between markets. So some of the things that had been publicly disclosed about Netflix strategy was part of my thinking going into the presentation. But there’s a lot about the adult industry that is quite different, or adult streaming, that is still quite different from mainstream streaming. So you know I never wanted, and we never have labeled ourselves as that. But when I was sharing details about the project, that speech I gave got picked up by somebody at The Daily Beast who wanted to write an article about what I was talking about, which was really the future of the online distribution with adult and bringing it closer to streaming.

And that journalist ended up putting out an article that really helped us in terms of building early exposure, and they called us the Netflix of porn. So since that time that sort of become what we’ve been known as. And in many ways, we are, but we’ve been very careful never to label ourselves as such. And there’s quite a few differences as well. So we certainly don’t want to suggest that we are a carbon copy of that.

Big data and analytics

Dallas

You mentioned being an “evil marketer.” And you talked also about the rise of “big data,” all the analytics that we have these days. All this information that’s now at our fingertips, but might not have been 20 or 25 years ago. Do you think in some ways, there’s a downside to all of that data in terms of it kind of becoming a bean counter type thing, and maybe reducing a certain amount of spontaneity in content or things along those lines?

Bree

It’s very good question. And I think, in ways, it definitely has. If you look at the evolution of adult distribution in the last 20 years, it’s undergone a really radical change, the same as music and mainstream television, and anything that has been impacted by the digital wave. So when adult production became much, much more focused on online first distribution, which, with the introduction of tube sites, particularly in the first part of the 2000s, that really changed conventional distribution, because we could no longer compete with people being able to access content online and largely for free.

So that really changed how people produced content and became much more about trying to chase the trends. And oftentimes, those trends were, as you said, created and inflated, and in a way certainly manipulated – not necessarily purely organic. And certain companies did really rise in that era to dominate data and to really influence trends as a result. But it also led to the rise of what happened say in the years that I started directing, or the years that Greg Lansky kind of started with his venture and a few other big producers, when a market goes in a certain direction, oftentimes, the easiest thing you can do to stand out as a brand is to take the trend and take it and do it differently and take it in an opposite direction. And so I think like with me, I could look at a lot of the trends that were happening –everybody’s seen a stepmother seeing three million ways from Sunday at this point. That’s probably one of the that’s probably the most inflated trend of the last 10 years. We know it’s existed since Egypt so it’s not it’s new and as a narrative. It is a very evergreen, popular taboo narrative, but it was all being done in that kind of click-baity way. And so I think what made a big part of what made Pure Taboo successful was taking the trend, but changing the tone. And as a result, creating something that was very recognizable in comparison to its peers, and was actually delivering more authentically, what people who liked that genre want to see.

And I think Lansky did the same thing with different kind of hardcore sex niches that had previously been very popular. But let’s say with anal, it was considered much more kind of a little bit of a harder fetish, a harder niche, and with Tushy went in and made it very glamorous and really beautiful. And all of a sudden, that was where you as a talent wanted to shoot it. And so same trend, but different tones and different positioning.

And so I think that there’s ways that we can compete against, there’s ways we could just fall into perpetuating the same narratives and trends and all the time, but those of us who are innovative look at well, okay, how could we do it differently. And that really has become I mean, Adult Time’s slogan is “Porn done differently.” And it is more than just a slogan. It’s the question we ask ourselves with every strategic decision, is, are we really moving the needle with this? Are we just doing status quo?

The risks of having a grand vision

Dallas

Yours is obviously a very singular vision. And I think it’s safe to say that it’s been embraced. I mean, just today, I think I got the press release, touting the 49 nominations, you got to at XBIZ or AVN, or the two combined? I don’t remember. So obviously, you’ve had a lot of success, and popularity with critics with audiences alike. But was there any concern on your part originally, that despite how finely wrought your vision was that it would just flop the people wouldn’t get it? And boom, you’d have to do something else or something along those lines?

Bree

I mean, you know, everything is a risk, right? So, but I’ve always been, I’m a big believer [that] you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So everything, at least in my career, in terms of projects that I’ve led development, whatever you’re gaining in that moment, you’re really just learning something to apply forward to the next. So if I look at, again, the sort of trajectory, every project that we that we launched, following the success of another was applying the lessons that we learned, and so going into Adult Time, yeah, it was a pretty radical risk.

Because we were taking our traditional portfolio that was a bunch of individual studios with individual member areas, catering to specific things, and we put it all together, you know, and that was a big business risk, because a lot of the growth of our business traditionally had come from the ability to potentially upsell, one customer base to another product, anda lot of growth through having different doors. And having it all put into one could have been the end of us, but thankfully, both myself and my partners felt that the industry was due for, we were heading towards the same wave of change that was happening in other industries. And even from an operational standpoint, you can’t grow and you’re spreading yourself so thin with so many different individual brands to manage. And that hunch that people will, especially for, again, paying poor and subscribers value, would continue to become a very important thing was they were all indicators to us a sort of mega trends that we wanted, that we felt more strongly would pay off if we did it than if we didn’t do it.

And we were very fortunate that it worked out for us, and sort of now what the challenge is, is how do we maintain a balance between the master brand and the growth of the master brand, and still supporting those flagship brands that are very much a big part of our history, and also still a very valid source of subscribers for us. So, that’s a bit of the era we’re entering into now.

Porn genres: opportunities and challenges in roleplay, VR, animation, and more

Dallas

I know that one thing you did in your earlier days with gamma was kind of revitalized as a massage line that the company acquired. And I know that that that particular line had been sagging or not quite giving the audience what they wanted that at that time. Are there any other genres that you look at the industry today and you think you know that one might need a rethink or some sort of reevaluation of what the way we’re approaching it, be it family roleplay or something like that?

Bree

Well, I think within the markets where we already have kind of a flagship brand, what’s important, and you could probably look at a good number of our flagships right now in question, what was working in 2016? And is it still relevant in 2023? And if not, what can we do to align the content mix coming out of those flagships to be more relevant there, that’s always one of the challenges with again, when you have a niche that you’re serving, the most important thing is consistency. So you need to understand what are those like five bullet points that you have to have in every single release to satisfy that that particular kink, and you got to deliver on it every time. And if you start to slip from that, then that it becomes not worth that subscriber’s investment. And certainly, if you’re not providing something else, that’s better, that’s going to kind of retain them, then you have a good chance of losing them.

So I think there’s certainly always room for innovation, and not resting on your laurels. And I can think of a couple of markets that we have, where I would say, you know, part of us, we look forward to the next year of programming, shake up by taking a few risks to see if the future audience is going to be better served than necessarily just that legacy audience. And that’s always a challenge in terms of markets that are out there that that I find very interesting, and are either due for innovation, or just due for expansion.

Three come to mind. Well, four come to mind. The first is within the broad gay market. So that’s one of the markets that Adult Time is beginning to develop original content for it’s our first year. So it’s still a fairly conservative budget, we’re really just testing a few series ideas to kind of see where we’re going to hit and be able to build traction there. But that’s another market. That’s big, but it has a lot of established players. But I think there’s a lot that can be done to kind of shake up some of the formulas within that market.

And then the others are very interested in the VR market, especially as VR technology is rapidly increasing in quality and decreasing costs and accessibility. And I think that, again, what we’ve done within VR as an industry up until this point, is probably just the tip of the iceberg of what we’ll be able to do in the future. So I think that that’s an area that also Adult Time is readying itself for starting this year, just as a platform to be able to offer VR channels, not necessarily to produce original VR content, but certainly that that’s one of the spaces that we want to go.

And then last is the animation space. And this is the space that I’m kind of creatively, really interested in. And I would expand it to not just be like 2d or 3d animation, but hybrid live action animation. And just in general, looking at what we can do in terms of content enhanced by VFX, by even, you know, practical effects. I really like the company Hentaied and the work they’re doing. I think it’s really innovative. Very cool. And so that’s, that’s a brand that I think is kind of doing some interesting things. And we’ve done a fair amount of work in 3D animation over the last couple of years. So we have some original series and some great creative partners on the animation side that are doing a lot of the sort of futanari stuff, which, again, I just find super fun and really interesting. So, you know, it would be really cool. And I’ve started to experiment like a tiny bit with this. But again, just the idea of like, what can we do with live action footage that’s enhanced with animation, especially to serve certain kinds of fantasies and fetishes that you can’t do just with live action. So I think that that’s something very, very exciting to me and kind of my team in general when we’re looking out into the future areas that we want to dive into.

Dallas

I’ve heard a lot of pornstars say that animation porn is really the only kind of point that they can watch because they know everybody and it takes them out of the moment. Now, I don’t know — did you have that similar experience? I know you’re not involved in front of the camera necessarily, but is it the same sort of thing?

Bree

100%! I don’t think I’ve watched porn as a consumer in a long time. And you know, it’s just because, well, one, I know a lot of people so maybe get some people off, but for me, I’m like, Oh, God, no, that guy. Oh, I know, those two people don’t necessarily get along all that well, or whatever. If I watch a porn scene, I’m like, where did they get that location? Or like, oh, man, lighting is on point. So I consume a lot of content, but not in the traditional way that that our fans do, but that’s okay. Because I have a good healthy dose of it. And my relationship with it is always going to be a bit weird, because I’m always thinking about making it so it’s not quite the I’ve come to peace with that.

A “bad pornographer”?

Dallas

I think it would be an interesting experiment for fans to try to watch porn scenes in the way that people like you or me who are involved in the industry in some way. We’re not watching it for titillation. So we’re noticing, like you said, those interesting set dressings, or what’s this location or things like that, the sort of the side aspects. I’ve heard you say — and I think you sort of hinted at this already — that those are the things that interest you, period. You’ve joked that you’re a bad pornographer, or whatever it is, because you’re more interested in the side of the periphery almost, or what some people would say is the periphery.

Bree

Well, I love storytelling, and I’ve always  loved that. So you know, being able to help to set characters up in a situation and work with the actors. That was that was really my first love in this industry. Or, you know, beyond being fascinated by consumption, my first real love and passion in this industry was just just letting the talent shine within the community because there’s so much talent within the acting community, in adult. Hust the athleticism and performance skills and and the crew, that’s always been super motivating. So finding projects that are going to push people to shine has been a massive motivator for me. And at this point in my career, it’s the main motivator. Like I said, I’ve been on the stage, I’ve been blessed. I’m good. I want our teams to be able to experience that I want like, the breadth of our projects to be released to not be released by me but be re released by you know, the different creative teams that we work with. So yeah, that’s, that’s a big, big motivator for me at this point.

Pornstars and acting

Dallas

I think one of the biggest clichés about pornography is that porn stars can’t act. Now, what would be your rejoinder to just the person on the street who’s still laboring under what I think we would both agree is a is a misapprehension?

Bree

Oh, yeah, well, I mean, one of my favorite things to do is to go check out our Pornhub channels, especially for projects that are there are more serious in our acting like, like Pure Taboo, if you go and look at Pure Taboo, Pornhub comments. At least half of them are people that are shocked. “Why did I watch this all the way through? Why do we care about — why are these people so good? Why can they act?” And to me, that is the best, just being able to put our work out and to positively influence people’s perception, not just us as an industry, but more importantly, people’s perception about sex, and sexual identity and gender identity as a whole. That’s a tremendous power that we have. So I love letting the work speak for itself. So riveted by their performance. Do you know that that was all improvised? Because that’s usually the layer that really people get hung up on. I haven’t written the dialogue for years. I really stopped as soon as we started Pure Taboo because I realized whatever hand lines I write, when a writer writes, especially for the type of productions that we run, where we’re usually shooting something over a day. And the people that are booked for that shoot are booked for a lot of other shoots. So they haven’t we haven’t done six-month long table reads and script revisions and most of the time, they’re kind of showing up. Maybe they’ve looked at it the night before. You know, you’re kind of dealing with it what you’re dealing with on the day of. So I realized that it was way better to just be a good storyteller. And to help contextualize for our actors they are, they are in the situation, what their relationship is what they’re feeling, and then work with them to flush out the dialogue, in their own words into as much as possible to bring their own emotion and their own experience into it. And so that’s what really worked with Taboo.

And I’ve applied that to a lot of my other pretty much every other narrative project I’ve done since it’s just more believable. And those performances are the ones that make people — that’s why in the award circle, I think they pretty much created the featurette category, because there’s just so many Pure Taboo episodes, acting worthy nominations that they had to find a spot for. So it again, doing something differently within, you know, the same industry to make a change. I think that the way that we treat acting, and by taking it seriously ourselves, that helps to perpetuate against that stereotype.

Dallas

Right? I think sometimes something that a lot of people forget when they’re sort of doing that comparison between an adult movie and a mainstream movie that, like you mentioned, the production schedule for the mainstream projects are so much longer, and they’ve spent a lot of time getting that performance out of that actor who may not intrinsically be better than a typical porn actor. They just didn’t have that amount of time to sort of work at it necessarily, or there’s editorial magic that happens in Hollywood all the time. You can save a bad performance in editing. I think that’s something that people sometimes neglect to consider, of course, and I recommend that people check out the podcast interview you did with Holly Randall, which I think has been correctly termed as a nice masterclass on making pornography. That was about four years ago. You’re probably due for a revisit to Holly’s podcast.

Bree

Yeah, it’s been it’s been a bit like I said. just had Jane Wilde go on behalf of a film that her and I worked on together this year called Stars. And so again, I would rather her be able to go and talk about that story on kind of on our behalf and then a subsequent masterclass, but I would anytime Holly wants to invite me back. I’m very happy.

Working with Jane Wilde on Stars

Dallas

So, Stars, I know, that was obviously a big project for you this year. Talk a little bit about the development of Stars.

Bree

Yeah, so Jane and I have worked together pretty much her whole career. So I’ve known I’ve known her as long as she’s been around. And I remember, this was in the early days, because she would have begun performing about 2017. So this is like, you know, in the heyday of Pure Taboo, and she just came up, and she was such a fan of the series that I remember that she was an extra on a film that I did, and she just knew all the episodes, I was like, Who is this, you know? Who knows the series better than I do. I was just kind of always sort of impressed by her level of enthusiasm and dedication to the type of content that was important to me. And, you know, but we worked, you know, as director/actor for a long time. And she had written something for Pure Taboo. So that was something that we had collaborated on a little bit. But she came to me at the beginning of 2022 and told me that she wanted to share an idea that she had. And I always tried to take meetings with talent, when they want to bring an idea. Can’t always greenlight it, but at the very least, I can help them with some feedback or to give them some templates that they could use to help refine their idea. I always try to you when someone’s going to be proactive, especially in the talent pool, say, Hey, I have this idea to do something further or different in my career, it is kind of my duty to try to help mentor them. So I always try to take those calls.

And by the end of that first call was she shared with me her story. I had heard parts of it in the past. I had not heard it in full. So when she shared with me that she wanted to be able to go back and kind of do what I had done with my own autobiographical film a few years earlier. By the end of the call, I said yes, because it just it made sense on a lot of different levels. First and foremost, for me personally, being able to empower people to use our medium and as a source of not just creative development, but as a source of art is healing, right?

So yeah, I work out all of my shit through the stuff that I make. So I get that. And if somebody, if somebody has an interesting story to tell that first and farmers will make an interesting movie, plus, it’s going to give them a chance to develop skills, plus, it’s going to be an opportunity for them to manifest their experience and help grow from it. And it aligns with our brand values of doing porn differently. And empowering creatives. It was checking all the boxes. Plus, it’s Jane, Jane has a huge audience in Adult Time. She’s one of our most popular performers, she’s always worked very well with our internal team. So it was it was kind of a no-brainer. And, you know, much like I would have expected from someone like Jane, she was 200%, throughout the entire project. So originally, she came to me, she said, I want to work on this with you, will you direct this project, and I’d love to be involved in writing it and being in it. So I said, Yes, we worked on the script together. It really was her script, again, my job was just to help her shape and format it. But she really had the final creative direction. And when we went into film it, I didn’t want to put the pressure on her to have that kind of additional creative responsibility. But in the back of my mind, I had made a decision that my role as the director on set was to really help her direct. So you know, when it came to planning every sequence of that film, what I would do is I would say, Okay, this is what we’ve written. Jane, what is your vision? You’re our historian, you are our driver here. What do you want to see, and then our creative team, which included Michael Vegas, and Suzie Q, who are two of the producers that I work with, we brought it to life.

And it gave Jane the space without the pressure of being labeled the director, the space to share her ideas, and, you know, really make the film itself, her vision. And she had some very specific things that she wanted to do in terms of the look and the tone and the cinematography. And we were very influenced by Shaun Baker, who is, of course, an amazing independent filmmaker. And we really wanted to put it out as just one film, that was another thing that she wanted, she’s like, I don’t want to slice this into parts. I don’t want it to be a 40-minute sex scene when realistically, it’s probably a five minute part of that movie. I want to make a movie that has sex in it, but we’re making a movie. And of course, you know, I’ve been playing around with different release formats for a long time. So I’m like, yes, let’s do that. So we filmed it. And during the filming, which was super, super smooth and easy, and just a good production, everybody being very faithful and sensitive to upholding Jane’s vision, but also there’s some traumatic stuff in the story. So making sure that as well that we were just supporting Jane as, as a colleague, and as a friend and as a human. And at the end of it, I, after we finished the last take, I took her to the side, and I said that, you know, I want to officialize your role as the co-director to this. It was, again, evil marketer, it was my plan the whole time. But I wanted her to do it without the pressure of having to do it. And she did an amazing job.

We released the film in September. It did extremely well on Adult Time. It was, I think our top-viewed release of the month. I think it’s doing quite well with critics so far. And again, it’s really Jane’s film, the whole team came behind to help her make it. But what I’m so proud about is that when you look at the shots, when you look at everything that’s in the final product, this is not a vanity product. It’s not a project where we just attached a star to it and then did the work. She did the work. And it really is representative of her talent on that side of the camera, in addition to in front of the camera where she does, to me, she carries the whole film as the character. So I’m just so incredibly proud of what it represents in terms of what our talent is capable of doing. When companies get behind them as more than just sex acts or hot bodies or whatever, when we really go in and support their creativity.

Teenage Lesbian

Dallas

So did you see pretty strong connection between this project and Teenage Lesbian, which I assume is the movie you were mentioning there.

Bree

Yeah, well, you know, I got put on this kick for a few years, right. So, so in 2019, when I made Teenage Lesbian, I actually it was I made two big films that year, it was the year I don’t think I can ever repeat. It was immediately followed up by pandemic. But I was going hard that year. I was, again, using my art to heal and process. And I wanted for a long time with Teenage Lesbian. I was feeling like, you know, within, within the lesbian market, that there was, you know, in, hey, like, I helped create girls way so the all the traditional porn tropes that are associated with the lesbian market, or that are definitely male gaze porn tropes, you know, I felt like there wasn’t there, again, there, it’s not much of an alternative, that tells stories that are really authentic, but still really hot and great chemistry and all those attributes that we know, make a lesbian project successful. So I wanted to make a movie that was going to be very different in tone that was going to be really authentic, while still kind of hitting on some of the perennial trends that we knew. So I decided that the most authentic way to tell a story was to tell my own coming out story. And I came out at the end of the 90s. So that that really was like a period of time, that’s in our near, you know, in our sort of in our recent past, broadly speaking, but so much has changed in the 20 years since that time to now. So I wanted to sort of put up put it out as a meditation for like this as a slice of life for a young, gay person at this time.

And if anything to kind of educate my peers in the industry, who are Gen Zers, and didn’t know that Ellen came out in it ’97. Tthere’s all these things that again — so much has changed in such a short period of time. So I put it out there, and I was really floored by the success of it. I did not think that was going to be the big one that year. It was more of a kind of a sleeper. But I think it’s still one of the most viewed things in Adult Time and really changed a lot of people’s perspectives on what adult content could be. And for me, it really, really shifted my own personal direction, where I became much more aware of the positive impact that we could have with adult content. And most if not all of the projects that I’ve done since have been influenced by what I learned through that in terms of just helping empower people to tell real stories, again, using our influence to tackle real subjects related to sex and sexuality, and empowering other creatives.

So Casey, which we with Joanna, which was Casey Kisses’ biography, that was another one. Obviously Stars is another one. I like to really work with talent on stories for Pure taboo or True Lesbian. So the series was just telling realistic stories in a feature at format, which is a series we’ve been running for a couple years. So I’ve been massively inspired by what we discovered from doing that project differently.

The poetic in everyday life / meeting Sara Luvv / porn as sex education

Dallas

You strike me as someone who definitely would, or does and can appreciate poetic moments in life moments in life, that have a certain poetic character them character to them, or certain almost narrative character to them, as if they were in a story or something like that. So are there any particular moments in your life where you thought, wow, that is very poetic that that happened that way? Or that’s almost like it would have been in a movie?

Bree

Oh, boy. Yes. I think the biggest changes personally, for me, you know, in conjunction with my professional trajectory, would be directing my first Girlsway features. So coming to LA, I was definitely still wearing rose-colored glasses at that point. So I had a very narrow view of what adult production was, but the experience by which I was greeted, was so positive. It was like, I grew up doing a lot of theater and it really reminded me going back and doing theater projects, because for that week, I would fly in every four or five months. It was like, everybody was so excited. We were making a movie it. It really helped me catch the creative bug. So that was quite a pivotal moment, I think, particularly making the film The Turning, which was our big Girlsway feature. And the first time I tried to do a professional movie, that was one meeting, my wife [Sara Luvv] was another one. So we met, my wife is a farmer performer. But we met in January 2016. Very, very unexpectedly, at on the last night of the expo. And I was in a point in my personal life at that moment, which was, I would say, messy, to say the least, and, and just meeting her even though it was, you know — we happened to sit beside each other at a dinner. We’ve never stopped talking, since we’ve married for five years. So you know, that was a real, and it got me to LA, which helped to develop your TV, which helped to develop Adult Time and all that stuff. So that was that was a pretty pivotal moment. And then I, we have two daughters, so you know, having kids.

And I think the the process of having kids, particularly two girls, really — I feel  in my first few years, producing content, I was very focused on the “what.” So I saw this talent and was like, What can we do with it? What how can we push the narrative? How can we push the production quality? How can we, how can we really make products that are next level in terms of the competition. Was very, very focused on the “what.” I was pretty naive in the beginning as to the “how,” and over the course of my years, I realized, not just how important the how is, but how absolutely critical it is, and the how is not just how you run your sets, how you manage your productions, and the experience you create on the ground making stuff. But it’s also just your decisions behind what you what you put out. And I don’t believe that we are accountable for sex education as an industry, but there’s no doubt that we’re the default form of sex education in Western society. And when your content is being viewed by millions and millions of people there, there’s a responsibility there, whether it’s mine to have or not, it’s a responsibility that I take.

And again, I see the influence of our content on people that are growing up, both in terms of how to have sex, but how to identify as a sexual being, those two things are massively influenced by what they’re watching. And there’s no sign of that slowing down. In fact, if anything with digital culture, there’s just a greater and greater emphasis on how you look how popular you are, how quickly you can get ratings, how if there’s a lot that’s going into society routed around how you look and how you act. And so I think that how we make our content should always remain a spectrum. So you know, we should always be able to have the really silly tropes, the girl stuck in washing machines, and the the stepmoms and all of that, there’s no reason why that doesn’t have a place to exist. But there’s an importance between that and also having a balance. So content that is something that can be positively modeled — I’m doing a series this year, called The Yes List, which are stories all about how to have conversations about sex. And rather than making them a PSA video, like, hey, civilians, you should probably talk to your partner about what you guys are going to do before you do it. It actually will make your lives and sex lives better. But rather than making it a PSA, let’s just integrate that into the stories. So we can we can model realistic things that happen between people and show them examples through our stories of how those characters navigated, and, and discovered the importance of bringing communication into their bedrooms. Okay, so it’s still going to be super hot sex, great chemistry, all kinds of different niches, but we can also kind of positively influence people and I think that there is a need as adult content creators to provide a balance because at the end of the day, it is still what people are looking to learn. And we have that influence we might as well use so I do feel a much greater sense of a social responsibility at this point?

Dallas

Do you ever have moments where you say, you know, gosh, I didn’t ask for that particular responsibility. I just want to tell my stories. I don’t want to have to have that one. Are there are there ever moments of frustration along those lines?

Bree

Maybe there have been at times, I mean, like, again, crazy woman chanting from the top of the mountain, right. So I like I definitely have a Messiah Complex. So I love feeding into — we have social responsibility, this is part of our mission. So that doesn’t really, you know, that doesn’t necessarily, I don’t get tripped up about that, you know, I will sometimes get impatient about, you know. You can lead by example, in the industry, if you’re the only one standing up for something that can sometimes get frustrating.

But I’ve learned over the years that it’s much better to kind of just quietly go back behind the scenes and try to make further change, rather than standing up on a pedestal as an individual. So I don’t know if that’s a frustration, more is like a learning curve. So again, a lot of the work that I see that has come out of Adult Time since his launch is representative of us, learning from some frustrations and going back to the drawing board and figuring out well, how can we just kind of quietly change the game behind the scenes you

Messiah Complex?

Dallas   

You mentioned there jokingly about your Messiah Complex. And there’s also a fun moment, I think it’s in Women’s World, where there’s little in joke about President Mills or something like that, on the TV. There’s a newscaster announcement or something like that. So I was wondering, obviously, you’re a very pretty public figure at this point. And you do a lot of interviews like these. Most porn fans would probably recognize, you know, your name. So, do you ever feel like you have to be “Bree Mills,” the public figure who is a certain thing and a certain personality that people expect. Is there that kind of almost a simulacrum, if I’m pronouncing that word correctly, of yourself that you kind of have to match up to and sometimes you’re like, you know, okay, I gotta be Bree Mills, you know, Chief Creative Officer today, with this certain new vision and this certain thing I need to put forth. Is that sort of part of your evil marketing plan?

Bree

Yeah, no, no, for sure. The key to success is to put yourself in a lot of cameos, that’s how you get to become a recognized figure. There were years for sure, there were a lot of years where I felt it was important to hold the baton and lead the parade. And a lot of that resulted in where we are now. So looking back on that I see that there was a lot of positives from it, but you know, the higher you grow as an individual figure, the more difficult that it is. And I am as a human being behind the name and the brand, I’m somebody who is pretty sensitive and pretty introverted. So, you know, getting a lot of attention, it’s weird, because I seek the attention, but I’m actually a fairly reserved person.

So I had to battle with that a little bit, especially as we grew, in general awareness and popularity — people assume I make every single decision, which is which is not true. What I realized was when you are the face of a company, whenever something goes wrong, it’s on it really is on you, and that that when things aren’t going right, and it’s on you, that can be a very overwhelming position to be in and maybe one that you didn’t necessarily think was going to be what it was.

So I’ve had that, within my own career, I have had those moments where every finger is pointing at you and you realize, oh, the buck really does stop with me. But I would say that that in the last couple of years sort of post-pandemic where we all had to kind of reevaluate what is this thing called life and what am I doing, I’ve come to peace with the fact that the buck does stop here. Okay, so if it does, then let’s own that. So as a company, we’ve done a lot of self reflection on, especially when it comes to our brand and our brand reputation and the what and the how of what we do, it does end up falling back on us, so it’s incredibly important that those are the things that you keep the closest grip on. And as we had grown, things that had been had been a little bit looser just because we were growing so fast, so really reclaiming ownership over that. And also kind of giving in a little bit to like, like I always say Bree Mills is a character that I play the characters not very far off from who I actually am and that makes it easier to play, but you know, part of the reason why I think we all poke fun at Bree Mills a lot within a lot of our work, myself included, is just just because when you when you do become so synonymous with it with a brand, it’s kind of like looking for like the Hitchcock cameos or the Stanley cameos or what have you so at this point kind of embrace that. I’m a bit of a a bit of a mascot and you can have fun with that. And because I’m less physically on sets now it does make me a bit more of an enigma figure and that I enjoy. I like that a lot of people have heard of me but not too many people really know me so I just want to embrace the mystery of that going forward. I’m cool with that.

Dallas

Could be like [director] Mason. She seems like kind of an enigmatic figure.

Bree

I think she’s definitely the next level. I’ll be like, you know, Mason or Daft Punk or something.

Dallas

There you go. Yes. But in the meanwhile, you can be the Stan Lee of porn, I guess, maybe? I don’t know. I guess he had a few scandals at the end of [his career].

Bree

Yeah. I am very I am happy to be the Stan Lee. Of course, I’ll embrace that. Definitely.

Conclusion

Dallas

Well, I know we’re winding low on time here. Unfortunately, I know, there’s a bazillion topics we could get into, including further parallels between you and Stan Lee, who knows. But I just wanted to give you a chance to first of all, preview anything awesome that you have coming up that you might want to mention to people who are listening. And also just to tell people where they can, you know, catch up with you on social media and find out find out what your what you’re doing next and all that good stuff.

Bree

Cool. Well, Adult Time is always the place to check out. Because in addition to our flagship brands, we have a lot of original pilot projects and series in development. So it’s always a place to go to if you’re interested in sort of checking out new things and being able to be very participatory in terms of the content that you consume. At Transfixed is the trans studio that I’ve been show running. That is doing tremendously well. And my favorite thing about it is again, Transfixed was created as a safe, beautiful space for cis and trans women to work together at a time where there really weren’t many opportunities. Now, it has really grown into one of our fastest growing brands and the lineup of performers that want to work for it is longer than I have updates for. So I’m super happy at the growth of that we just launched our first film on Transfixed called Office Misconduct, which is currently killing it in the platform for rattle time. So again, if you’re a fan of if you’re a fan or a fan of lesbian content, or you know, traditionally a fan of trans content, or you’re curious to discover, that would be a great brand to check out in that film is seemingly hitting it on all marks with their audience. So that would be a great first full-length film. Again, we released it as a full-length feature in one shot in the platform. And we’re heading into our holiday season [Note: interview recorded in November 2022.] So lots of fun releases coming up our brand ambassador program, which are you know, talent that we really recognizes as being part of our family.

One of the things that we do with our ambassadors is co-develop projects with them. And so I’ve just finished co-developing a project Lauren Phillips, about lesbian power dynamics and BDSM relationships, which is super cool. That’s going to come out within the next couple of months. And we’re just about to announce the renewal of another one of our brand ambassadors who I’m super excited about and her and I will be developing a project in the new year, which is really focused on curvy girls and on really creating a beautiful showcase product to feature that body type. So super excited with just in general what’s coming up and add Adult Time is your destination for all of it. And you can find me online. I’m on Twitter and Instagram @breemills and I’m also on TikTok @por director. I haven’t posted on there in a little while but just because I’m probably one strike away from being deleted. So I’m giving it a break. But there’s lots of content, especially you want to see content more in my personal life. My wife and I, we do a lot of jokes on there.

Dallas

People can always go to Adultempire.com, they can type in the name of any of your various brands, or your name to find your various directorial efforts and find all sorts of good things to watch there as well. Well, Bree Mills, Chief Creative Officer at Adult Time, it’s been a great pleasure.

Bree  

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

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