An Evening of 'Stockholm Syndrome' With James Deen

PORN VALLEY—Here's the thing: When James Deen invites you to his house to give you a private screening of his proudest directorial effort to date, upon which nobody else has yet laid eyes, you go. So on a recent Friday afternoon, once my duties at the AVN fortress were done for the day, I went to the House of James high atop a Valley hill, from whence the King and his cats rule over all that they survey. Welcoming me into the expansive modern manse with "Wanna beer?" and an aside that one of his cats "is being an asshole today," he suddenly called to mind Oscar Isaac's character from Ex Machina in a remote sort of way. The sudden appearance of a robot maid followed by a choreographed disco routine would not have seemed out of place. James ushered me to his office, where his monster Mac suite rests upon a stately wooden desk free of any clutter. On the matching shelves behind his chair, a giant model ship is housed in a clear display case; in the left-hand cabinet, enclosed by a glass door, stand his AVN Awards, a couple of them broken in two, with the broken halves laid neatly and artfully to the side of their bases. We sat, and James excitedly went about pulling up the movie he has brought me there to see: Stockholm Syndrome, a full-fledged feature starring Remy LaCroix as a woman who gets kidnapped by James' own criminal character and then, as the title would suggest, falls in love with him. "Do you want to see the trailer first?" James asked. "The trailer is really cool, so you should watch it first, so that after you watch the whole thing and it's not as good you can be like, 'But wow, you made an awesome trailer!'" I acceded to his wish, and immediately saw that the man was not lying: this was an awesome trailer. I was now officially jazzed for the movie. And he wasted no time in getting it rolling. Without launching into an all-out review of Stockholm Syndrome—I'll save that for its actual release—I will say that James has every reason to be as proud of it as he is. Not too long ago, he commented to me in his trademark throwaway manner that he learned how to make movies from Paul Schrader (the hallowed director under whom he worked in The Canyons), and the truth is, no matter how serious he may have been in that comment, Stockholm Syndrome has a moviemaker's aesthetic that's on another level from a great majority of what comes out of adult. And it really isn't all that surprising, given James' bouncing enthusiasm for the project. I once interviewed Eli Roth, and the way James spits out rapid-fire exclamations of delight about the tiniest details in his movie reminds me of how Roth passionately jabbered about the one he'd made.  "You see those bursts on the windshield?" James asked during a scene where he's driving Remy around at night and reflections from streelights shoot up the glass as the car passes under them. "Those were happy accidents. I love happy accidents." During another scene, a sort of three-way between Remy, Steven St. Croix and Kalina Ryu, James pontificated about the care he took to capture the gradual change from day to night over the course of the sequence in the background scenery through the plate glass window behind the performers. "That's really fucking hard to do," he boasted. "Nobody else will notice, but that's what I care about." He also gushed repeatedly about Remy's performance. "I exploited Remy for her acting abilities, because she's really fucking good," he said at one point. "Well she did win Best Actress from us," I told him. "That's why I used her, because she's a really fucking good actress," he replied. Once the movie was finished, James asked, "Do you want to see the trailer again? The trailer is really cool." And so we watched the trailer again. In a sense, I suppose it might be said that James had in his beguiling way managed to kidnap me that Friday night and inflict me with my own case of Stockholm Syndrome for Stockholm Syndrome. OK, that really should not be said. My apologies for just saying it. But I do maintain that the movie is a major accomplishment in James Deen's career, and that his eagerness to show it off is more than justified. Stockholm Syndrome arrives from James Deen Productions and distributor Girlfriends Films September 7. The movie will also be released in five weekly installments on JamesDeen.com beginning the same day.