Well, Scott went to another Vivid shoot today.  I stayed home and cleaned my bathroom.  He got to hang out with cool people like Hank Hoffman, a talented guy who looks lke he's poised to be the Steven Spielberg of porn.  I paid my rent and went grocery shopping.  Scott also did an in-depth half-hour interview with the amazingly sexy Savanna Samson (coming soon).  I had a touch of diarrhea and ate a ham sandwich from 7-11.  So you tell me who got the short end of the stick today.

Who is this Hank Hoffman bastard anyway, and why is his life so much better than mine?  He’s one of Vivid’s newest directors.  He’s been shooting all the on-set stills for Vivid for about two and a half years.  If you haven't seen his work, I recommend you go to Vivid.com right after reading this brief interview and check out some of his work for yourself.  He's a great photographer and he really knows how to capture a beautiful woman on film.  He also shoots website content for Vivid.

Here’s a bit of a conversation with Hank and some cool pictures for those of you who can’t read.  Have fun.

SCOTT: You’ve been shooting stills for Vivid a while now.

HANK: About two and a half years.

S: That’s a ton of photographs, isn’t it?

H: Yeah, on digital cameras I wear out the shutter on them within a year.  They’re good for about 20,000 exposures.  And I actually go over that.  I shoot a staggering amount of photos in a year.

S: What do you think your ratio is of good to bad pictures?

 

H: Um, I’m about 9 to 1.  I’ve been doing it a long time.  I was a freelance photographer for fourteen years.  I’ve shot everything from five-time Gold Olympians to stinger rocket launches... magazine covers.  I’ve shot everything.  I worked in mainstream for many years.  I also come from film.  Y’know, the kids today are spoiled because they shoot digital.  They just keep shooting until it looks right and they throw away the bad ones.  When I learned the true craft of photography, I started shooting when I was very young.  I got my first real camera when I was fourteen.

 

S: You had to worry about f-stops and...

 

H: It wasn’t so much that, it was friggin’ expensive! If you took a bad picture, y’know, it cost a lot of money.  So I learned not to press the shutter until I was pretty damn sure it was exactly what I wanted.

 

 

S: If you go to Vivid.com and check out all the still pictures from all the movies, are those all yours?

 

H: Anything shot in the last two years, yes.  I support all of the Vivid directors so I’ve shot virtually every movie they’ve shot for the last two and a half years.  I’ve been the still photographer.  I’ve missed here and there, of course, but largely, certainly for two years solid.

S: What do you like shooting more... dialogue scenes or the sex?

 

H: (long, long pause) Wow.

 

S: Or if you can’t decide, what do you like about directing each one?

 

H: Okay, the dialogue scenes for me are fun because I have fun scripting these... the little bit I’ve done.  And I really do enjoy directing dialogue.  I enjoy getting things out of people that I wasn’t sure I could get out of them.  It’s very satisfying.  I love directing sex because I get to see what turns me on. 

 

S: In a way it’s like you’re a god of sex.  You’re commanding others to do what you want.

 

H: Totally.  In still photography I’ve been taking pictures of naked women for fourteen odd years or something.  I started off in fetish photography.  So I’ve always had that power.  “Take off your clothes, let me tie you up.”

 

S: “Now bend over right there.”

 

H: “Bend over there, show me your pussy.”  It’s pretty amazing.

S: Would you recommend this line of work for anyone who’s interested in photographing women?

 

H: You have to be thick skinned.  If you’re thick skinned, yes.  It’s a little bit like high school.  Really big personalities.  You gotta be able to hold your own.  There are two kinds of people in this world.  There’s the kind of people who had fun being with friends like in the show Jackass, where they beat the shit out of each other and razzed each other all the time and really gave each other a ton of shit and it was fun.  And there’s the kind of people that grew up and just got their asses kicked left, right and sideways, and never had that experience.  If you’re the kind of person who didn’t have fun breaking your friends balls and intentionally hurting each other, you probably aren’t going to do very good in porn.  You know what I mean?  We’re a bunch of fuckin’ pirates... a bunch of pirates who happen to get paid pretty well to shoot people having sex.  You also have to be able to work under fire.  You really have to know your stuff.  And you have to have good people skills.  You can’t be shy either. 

 

 

Special thanks to Savanna Samson.

 

 

Click below to read other great Vivid/Collider interviews and DVD reviews...

 

Interviews: Paul Thomas 01/31/06 - Mercedez 01/31/06 Part 1 - Part 2

Shylar Cobi 01/31/06 - Lacie Heart 02/18/06 - Tom Byron 02/26/06

Hank Hoffman Shoots Savanna Samson - Hank On Pubic Hair

Reviews: Mythology - Out of Place - Karma

Pix: Monique Alexander - Mercedez - Briana Banks - Lexie Marie 

Porn Stories with Ernie: Drugs and Alcohol - Just Light The Dick, Kid