Not Another Day at the Office: Inside Pure Taboo's 'Simulation'

This feature appears in the November issue of AVN magazine. Click here for the digital edition. LOS ANGELES—Producing adult entertainment isn’t all glamour and air conditioning. Sometimes, it’s a hot August day in Chatsworth and the set location is in one of the aging industrial parks that sprawl across the San Fernando Valley. There was no clue the securely fenced warehouse space was being used as a filming location. Inside the nondescript building, half the warehouse was packed with various props and miscellaneous stuff, while the set space was built out like an office interior—work desks with computers, plain walls with a clock, office chairs, and a bulletin board with calendar and motivational mottos printed out on copy paper. Off-camera, a couch where a few crew were sitting, drinking bottled water and hoping to catch a cool breeze off one of at least ten electric fans that churned the air. Dee Williams and Gal Ritchie, the two actresses on set that day, were dressed in office attire—and, somehow, not breaking a sweat—waiting for the action to resume. Director Ricky Greenwood conferred with his cameraman and assistant about the blocking for the next scene. A sex scene had been shot earlier in the morning when it wasn’t so hot, so the rest of the day was all dialogue scenes for the Pure Taboo feature Simulation. “I think the last feature they did was with Tommy a few years ago—Anne in 2018. That was the last one they did, and after that, they haven’t done a feature. So, this is the first one in a long time,” Greenwood told AVN. He referred to AVN Hall of Famer Tommy Pistol, a regular in Greenwood’s productions and who was on set that day. It turns out Greenwood was a fan of Pistol long before starting his career as a sought-after multi-award-winning indie adult director. The veteran performer was shocked when Greenwood confessed that the first adult movie he ever purchased was Burning Angel’s horror comedy Re-Penetrator (2004), starring Pistol. “Re-Penetrator was my third scene,” Pistol recalled with a nostalgic wince. “We shot that in Philly with Joanna (Angel).” The kitschy adult parody of the 1985 horror movie Re-Animator must have planted a seed in young Greenwood’s mind. He started experimenting with adult film shorts in 2008 (under the name Olaf Svenson), eventually making his feature directorial debut as Greenwood in 2017 with Confessions of a Sinful Nun for Mile High Media. Since then, he’s racked up hundreds of directorial credits and dozens of industry award nominations. He made his directorial debut in 2017 with Confessions of a Sinful Nun for Mile High Media. Since then, he’s racked up hundreds of directorial credits and several industry awards. In January, he was awarded the AVN Award for Best Directing Portfolio—Cross-Genre. Greenwood also accepted the AVN Grand Reel trophy in 2024, for the second time in a row, for Digital Playground’s Machine Gunner. Pistol was also the star of Greenwood’s holiday horror-themed short film in 2021, The Bargain, for Adult Time, which raised the director’s profile with a sex scene that paired starlet Ashley Lane—made up as mythological Christmas monster Krampus—and Pistol. “After we did Krampus, I think that’s when a lot changed for him. Being it was a horror thing, with Ashley Lane in the Krampus outfit and makeup—hooves and eight feet tall—it was very intense. A lot of people were like, ‘We don’t know’ about the idea, but then once he did it and they saw it, I think from there, pieces started falling into place about how good he is,” Pistol said. Greenwood explained the concept for Simulation, a futuristic psychological drama. The lead character, played by Oliver Davis, is a man with a boring job who uses virtual reality simulations as an escape from his humdrum, beta male existence. He has a crush on a friendly co-worker, played by Ritchie, but lacks the confidence to approach her in real life. So, using a virtual reality program designed by another co-worker (Pistol), he creates a VR version of her that he can have sex with. When he grows more confident as a result of his VR affair, his office crush starts to pay attention, and he finds himself torn between simulated and real life. “So, we’re playing with the fear of men in the workplace who fantasize about co-workers, deepfakes...” Greenwood surmised. Ritchie, who plays the office crush, has also worked with Greenwood a lot. “I was on a cowboy feature he did last year and a Dorcel feature earlier this year, and I’ve worked with him a lot for Adult Time. I love Ricky,” Ritchie said. “He’s a good mix of letting you get into the character yourself, but [he] also gives good notes. He doesn’t overstep, where you don’t feel like you can make the character your own, but he isn’t too laid back where you get too carried away.” A Spiegler Girl who hails from the U.K., Ritchie emphasized that she did not seek a career in adult entertainment to hone her acting chops, but she’s learned to enjoy scripted roles between being booked for gonzo scenes. “I like to do both—because, for me, the reason I got into the industry was definitely for the sex. But it is fun to do roles that are character-based. I get to play a VR sex robot in this, which is actually really fun. I’ve never done anything like that before, so that was really fun to do something that was very different and that you don’t get to do much,” she said. “[I get] like a lot of gonzo scenes, which I really enjoy—which is why it’s nice to do a mix of both, so you don’t get sick of either. It’s like the best of both worlds.” A fan-favorite MILF, Williams portrays the boss and seems a natural for the role. Her background as a dominatrix for companies like Kink.com is good experience to add a bossy edge to William’s performance. “In this, I’m the main character’s boss,” she said. “I did a sex scene this morning, and my portion of the thing—he wasn’t actually having sex with his boss, he’s having sex with a VR representation of his boss. I like anything with a psychological twist to it, so I thought it was a very hot set-up for the scenario.” That’s what Greenwood likes, too—the twist. In a cinematic genre generally considered by critics to be trite and repetitive, he just wants to do something different. A recent feature release for Dorcel, Alive, is a romantic country-western musical with an all-star cast. “When I do a feature, people expect that—they expect a story, acting, something a little bit weird, because I always tend to do something unconventional... something different than what we normally see, so I think there’s an expectation. I cannot just give them a regular office love story. “I like to do features. That’s what I love about porn,” Greenwood continued. “I collect, like, old seventies porn movies. I like the movies with a story. They were originally creative. My favorite of all time, for quality reasons, would be Behind the Green Door. “The one that I really enjoyed was called Let My Puppets Come, an old movie from 1976. [Director Gerard] Damiano did it. Basically, a bunch of puppets owe money to organized crime in New York City, and so, to pay back the crime boss, they decide to make a porno.” Puppets? Sounds like an interesting concept for an upcoming feature for the indie director. Simulation, starring Ritchie, Williams, Davis, Pistol, Lucky Fate, and Vanessa Sky, will be available in December from Pure Taboo and Adult Time. Photography by Manny Bucks