This is another interview for Glamour magazine. Its focus was on the very hot topic of ageism in the entertainment industry, specifically, the adult industry, where even the sites within our genre of "Porn for Women", have been accused of playing the ageism card, and not hiring people based on age or appearance. This interview was written in 2014.

1) Tell me about your open casting call for 50+ performers! Could you give me an idea of what the project you're casting for is, and why it's important for the actors to be over fifty?

This project, like all my movies, has been greatly shaped by feedback and requests from Sssh.com members and fans of my films. I get a huge number of requests for performers over 50. Beyond the requests from members, I also want to do my part to fight ageism in porn. I think a powerful way to do this is presenting older performers in a context that isn’t about fetishizing their age -- for instance, relying on the “older woman/younger man” (or vice versa) approach, which has been done to death. And not just in porn -- in mainstream entertainment as well.

It also helps to have the perfect story! It’s a story focused on second chances and finding love at different stages in the life course, which is a beautiful theme and ideal for creating erotica without relying on typical, ageist porn clichés.

One aspect of the story touches on the difficulty of dating in a world which is strangely disconnected – where people keep their phones out at the dinner table, texting people who aren’t there, while almost ignoring the people who are. I think today’s technology has in some ways made dating more difficult – for everyone in general, but most definitely for those of us who went on our first dates decades before social media and dating apps existed.

On top of everything above, I just love proving wrong the notion “It can’t be done” when it comes to porn. People used to tell me there was no such thing as a female audience for porn, too. Nearly 20 years of making porn for women later, I couldn’t be happier about having ignored them.

2) Aging is a touchy subject in our culture generally, and it seems like it might be even touchier in porn, where bodies are so on display. From your perspective as a veteran director and producer, but as someone who works sort of outside the mainstream porn paradigm, what would you say is the current attitude in the porn industry when it comes to aging performers?

The porn industry is a big place, so it’s important to understand I’m generalizing with what I’m about to say: For the most part, the porn industry treats older performers like novelty acts. They are presented as though their sexuality and their desires are something abnormal or unusual, as though older people aren’t supposed to want to have sex, unless they’re “cougars” or “dirty old men.” That attitude just bugs the hell out of me.

This is not to say there’s nobody out there presenting older performers in a respectful, honorable way, just that it’s not the norm to do so. One of the positive ways in which the industry has changed over the years is we’re getting a lot more diversity on both sides of the camera, something I hope is a continuing trend.

3) How do you feel about the "MILF" genre? Do you think it's helpful because it provides more employment and representation for older women, or demeaning because it categorizes them into a niche?

To be honest, a lot of the women cast as MILFs can only be considered “older” by comparison to the women in their early 20s who comprise so much of the adult industry’s talent base. I’ve heard quite a few performers complain they went straight from being cast as “teens” to being MILFs, with no middle ground in between.