Gordon B., Son of Richard Pacheco, Makes Adult Directorial Debut

LOS ANGELES—As he documented in a one-person performance piece almost a decade ago, Gordon B grew up the son of one of the top stars of porn’s Golden Age, Richard Pacheco. But some of his fondest memories of life with his dad involve a father-son activity that appears to have little to do with the adult industry. “I grew up going to estate sales and yard sales with my dad,” Gordon B recalled, in an email interview with AVN. “My dad was always on the hunt for the most random collection of things to make art with which he would begin doing as soon as we got home.” But when Gordon made his debut as an adult film director, the affection for estate sales, rummaging through the memories of other people’s lives, offered the inspiration for his first work. His short film Estate Sale Pleasure Hunt premiered online last week, via Erika Lust’s XConfessions site, where it is now available for viewing by new and existing subscribers, at this link.  Starring Daisy Ducati and Mickey Mod, the film follows Daisy’s erotic journey after she discovers an evocative set of old photographs in an estate sale bin. The dusty pictures “immediately elicit curiosity, sexual desire and an impulse to recreate the world she sees before her,” as a synopsis on Lust’s site describes. “Enlisting the help of her partner, Mickey, they travel back in time to the setting of the photo playing the different roles of their sexual muses.” At one point, Daisy hides the photos, and a set of sexually charged love letters, inside a vintage book of “etiquette” written decades ago to, as Gordon says, “tell women how to behave.” “I have a big love for old erotic photos, cameras, typewriters, you name it, and I’m enamored with the long history of breaking with taboos,” Gordon said. “I was drawn to the estate sale location to underline my desire to move in a different direction as an adult filmmaker.” He found inspiration for that direction in the work of Erika Lust, “both her artistry and her politics.” “My goal is to join a movement of artists making beautiful and intelligent adult cinema that arouses while being anti-patriarchal and anti-racist,”  Gordon says. “And I believe this can’t be done without representation of women and people of color both in front of and behind the camera.” For Gordon, that process of representation began with making sure the production had “as many women of color in positions of creative control as possible,” and requiring that all cast and crew members sign a document acknowledging that “any racist acts or comments, or sexual harassment of any kind” would lead to dismissal from the project. “It was the artistry and creative co-leadership of the amazing women behind the camera that made this work possible,” Gordon says, naming on-set producer Lotus Lain — a performer and sex-worker rights activist —  as the reason the production was able to keep “moving along.” He also cited Director of Photography Kristina River, and editor Katja Kulenkampff, who was responsible for integrating the aging, erotic photos of “Mae,” who serves as “an ethereal third sexual partner” with the two co-stars. For Gordon, the makeup of his cast and crew was integral in his effort to create “the adult film that I wish I had seen when I was becoming sexually active,” a motivation which derives from his background in “arts-based sex-education.” For the past decade, he says, Gordon has been working with college students “to creative interactive, sex-positive, and LGBTQIA inclusive sex education theater and short film.” “In sex-ed circles people often express worry about what young people are learning about sex from ‘porn,’” he noted. “It always made me think, what if the porn was intelligent enough that we’d actually want people to learn about sex from it?”  Gordon said that some of the best sex education lessons he has experienced were films “made by Erika Lust and other guest directors" on Xconfessions — a “movement” that he is “thrilled” to join — a movement consisting of “artists pushing for better, humanity-affirming, sex-positive media,” he says. Perhaps not surprisingly, Gordon traces his “sex-positive” approach back to his upbringing, in which he and his sisters were taught “a very healthy relationship towards sex, which we like to say makes us seem fucked up compared to much of puritanical society.” So how did his AVN Hall of Fame father react when Gordon announced that he would direct his first adult film? “My dad was both very helpful and funny,” he says. “When I first told him I was going to direct it he was very proud. Then once he had a little time to think about it he turned into an anxious ‘dance mom.’” But Pacheco eventually “calmed down” after being assured that his son was surrounded with a solid production team, and was approaching the project in an organized fashion. After that, he “gave really great advice about how to tell sexual stories in the most authentically human ways.” Pacheco himself told AVN that he is indeed “Proud to see my son ‘nextstepping’ adult videos into new directions.” Gordon’s “focus on gender and power issues, racial issues, and matters of the heart — in front of the camera and behind — may help our genre come out of the Stone and ‘the stoned’ Age,” Pacheco said. “Maybe it will help us all to be less embarrassed and ashamed of our sexual media and our sexual selves. Good luck with that!” But the “proud daddy” also came up with another suggestion that could add an extra twist to future Gordon B works, according to the director. Namely, according to his son, “the great idea of having a different actor from the Golden Age do a cameo” in each project. “I love giving an homage to the sex-positive generation that came before, to whom I owe endless gratitude,” Gordon says. “I mean, it was Richard Pacheco who first caught me with his stack of Playboys and instead of scolding me, gifted me the magazines and installed a lock on my door.”  Photos by Simone T. (Courtesy of Gordon B.)