Something Dark in the Doorway by Gregory Miller

That was when I started getting interested in pretty women. They all seemed to be tall, given that I was only nine years old. I started to go backstage to see my cousin, and I would see these women walking around naked. I would go to shows, where there would be these dancers and so-called models and topless showgirls. My cousin owned one part of the Dunes Hotel and Casino.

How did your Las Vegas childhood influence your films? We talked to this influential artist and director, now 61 years old, about his life, his achievements, and how he got into porn in the first place. “I was curious about human behavior and subconscious and conscious processes,” Dark explains by phone. And if anyone’s responsible for today’s porn stars looking more like pop singers and vice versa, it’s Gregory Dark.Ĭurrently, the versatile Angeleno is pursuing a Ph.D. Transgressive in his hard-core films (the “Martin Scorsese of the erotic thriller,” as he was once called) and a music-video helmer with more than a hundred credits to his name, Dark became the father of “alt porn,” bringing edge and a New Wave look to onscreen smut. And did we mention New York’s Whitney Museum owns one of Dark’s early paintings?

Oh, and he directed pro wrestler Kane, who played a deranged serial killer in the 2006 horror movie See No Evil. The deal set Dark on a path that would see him bring a new style and sensibility to porn, become a king of soft-core “erotic thrillers” in the nineties, and hit it big as a music-video director in the aughts (think Britney, Mandy Moore, Linkin Park, etc.). It was while directing a Showtime documentary about the porn industry, Fallen Angels, that Dark accepted an offer to direct his own porn film. Returning to the city of his birth, the painter, conceptual artist, and budding filmmaker dove into L.A.’s burgeoning indie-film scene in the early 1980s. Smart, bookish, and visually gifted, Gregory Dark ended up going to Stanford University, where he graduated with a Masters in Fine Art, before heading to New York University’s prestigious graduate film school. Once upon a time in Las Vegas, the Los Angeles-born son of a stripper and an occultist grew up devouring the sex-filled novels of Henry Miller and stoking an interest in beautiful women and art.

Something Dark in the Doorway by Gregory Miller