This interview was from 2016 and appeared in the print edition of Cosmopolitan

5 - There is a common misconception that pornography is made for, and used by, mostly a male audience. What have your experiences with Sssh.com and the adult film industry as a whole taught you about how females enjoy pornography?

experiences with Sssh.com and the adult film industry as a whole taught you about how females enjoy pornography? My experience has taught me if you try to dictate to people what they want, whether it’s in porn or any other creative medium, you’re likely to fail – if not financially, at least creatively. I’ve learned that our assumptions, however solid we might believe them to be, are just about always arguable, so it’s best not to assume, especially when the tools are right there in front of us to ask. It’s also taught me it’s dangerous to generalize. There’s still this idea out there that women all want the same thing from porn, and it’s just not true; our tastes are just as wide, varied and diverse as those of male porn viewers.

6 - - Tell me about the different types of original movies you make for Sssh.com. How do you try to make these movies different than what other websites are producing? Do you focus on the female gaze?

Each of us who makes movies, porn or otherwise, have our own vision. What I try to do is respond to the requests we get from our members and be as true to their fantasies and desires as I can, while still maintaining my own creative paradigm. I also want to make movies that approach sexuality from a different angle than you typically find in most porn these days. “Gone,” which we released late last year, is a good example. It’s based on a story submitted by a member, but within that, I infused it with emotional content and imagery which appealed to me as a filmmaker. I think it worked out very well, based on the feedback we’ve received. How many pornographers get comments from people talking about how their movies made the viewer cry at the end? Not too many, I bet.

7 - What makes for compelling and enjoyable erotic fiction for a female reader?

At the risk of offering a total cop-out answer, I’d say it depends entirely on what that individual female reader responds to, and not some convenient formula. This is not to say there isn’t a lot of popular erotic fiction that is formulaic, just that in the same way it would be a mistake to think all women who watch porn are looking for the same things. It would be a mistake to think all women who read erotic fiction respond to the same thing. Not every woman loves “Fifty Shades of Grey,” in other words.