'90s Director Greg Steel Passes Away

CHATSWORTH, Calif.—Former adult director Greg Steel, perhaps best known for co-directing the 1996 Wicked Pictures epic Conquest with Brad Armstrong, died May 29 in New York. He was 50. Though his cause of death is unknown, friend and industry contemporary Melissa Hill learned of it via his Facebook page and passed along the news Thursday to a number of fellow acquiantances via several industry message groups. In her remembrance of Steel included with the group message, Hill recalled that he was directing for Vivid Entertainment when they first met, and she had sought him out because he "was one of the last, trained filmmakers at the time (a fact which was realized immediately upon meeting him)." Hill went on to write, "In 2016, Greg had contacted me through FB, wanting to let me know that he was proud of what I had been doing on LA Talk Radio and for co-founding AISG (Adult Industry Support Group). Unbeknownst to me, he had been following the progress of both. He had asked me to discuss an idea with him, which he had been inspired by, while listening to one of my broadcasts. "We had tentatively set up a meeting together, for the end of January 2017 ... the meeting never took place. His reason???? He had fallen in love with someone new, and he was enjoying his life as a retired VP, as he traveled the country, with his brand new love! Well, of course I was disappointed, but I was also happy that he was enjoying his life and his new love. "I hadn't heard from him since late May, after learning that he would be taking a trip to NYC, to visit John Lennon's memorial ("Church" as he called it) ... so today I went to his FB account, to check in on him, and find out more about his new love. ... What I found instead, put me in shock! While in NY, after visiting John Lennon he died suddenly and unexpectedly. "Rest in Peace Greg 'Steele' I'm happy that you were able to be an inspiration to so many, before leaving this earth WAY TOO YOUNG." Steel was born December 19, 1966, in Los Angeles. After leaving adult, he went on to a successful career in mainstream broadcasting, where he became a leader and mentor to those who worked under his supervision. Some of his other best known X-rated credits include Jenna Jameson vehicles Lip Service, The Wicked One and Pure for Wicked, Sex Gallery for Vivid, and The Craving for Grand Visions. He also directed a couple of titles for now talent agent Mark Spiegler's Five on One Produtions. "He was an artist," Spiegler told AVN. "The guy was a filmmaker. Which means he didn't know what anything cost. He was really an artsy type, and a really good director." Steel's most fruitful partnership, however, was with Armstrong, who recounted to AVN, "We met through Kelly Holland, Kelly Holland shot my first movie, and Greg and her were dating at the time and they had an editing business kind of thing. So Kelly hooked me up with Greg to edit the movie, which was Checkmate for Vivid, it was my first movie I ever shot. And from then, he basically said, 'I see what you're trying to do here, you've got the art part down, you just don't know the shots you need.' Because I really had no film experience whatsoever, I was just talent that said, 'Holy shit, there's gotta be a better way of doing this.' "So we started working together, he goes, 'I think I can help you get what you need,'" Armstrong continued. "So he edited the second movie for me, which was Wildcats. And he came out and helped me out, kind of oversaw the next movie I was doing for Wicked, and then we just kind of partnered up, we said, 'Hey, this could be good.' He'd been around the business for quite a while, he was mostly an editor and he was kind of looking to get more into the directing thing, and so we just worked side-by-side, we both handled the directing, I handled the art, he handled the editing for probably a year, year and a half. "And then we finally got our big break with Conquest, and that was kind of both our big break and our ending. Shortly thereafter, we decided to call it a day. He defintiely taught me the art of the edit and what you needed, and we made some pretty good movies, and then like so many teams in porn and Hollywood, drugs, ego, all that stuff came into play, and we decided to call it a day. And literally he did one more movie for Wicked, and I literally haven't heard from him in 20-plus years. Once he got out of porn, he really got out of porn. And that was that. Conquest was our swan song, and the rest is history."