Moore has been nominated for lots of awards and has won his fair share. He is a certifiable Hall of Famer who has worked steadily since 1992 as a performer, director, producer, designer, computer maven and all-around porn business juggernaut. Add 'em all up and Moore has over a thousand performing and directing credits.
The idea of a happy, horny geek becoming a star, much less a star-maker, in a business populated with perfect physical specimens seems farfetched. And yet it's Moore, a veritable super-geek, who earned the title "King of Cream" and became famous for his copious "Rodney Blast" facial pop-shots.
There's a lot more to Moore than meets the face, however. He was a musician, composer and producer in the music biz, working with such diverse talents as Meredith Brooks, Kenny G and Sir Mix-A-Lot. He still does his own background music when needed and has a "porn musical" in the works.
As a multi-tasking, multi-talented kind of guy, Moore writes, acts in, directs and produces his own movies. He shoots the scenes, edits the movies, designs the box covers, authors the DVDs and launches the websites. Hard work and a can-do attitude paid off big time, with such series as "Goo Girls" and "Monster Facials" enjoying huge sales and bringing Moore boatloads of notoriety. Moore divides his time between Seattle and Los Angeles. XBIZ caught up with the peripatetic auteur in mid-February.
XBIZ: How did you become interested in making movies?
RODNEY MOORE: I got a huge, old VHS camera as partial payment for creating a jingle for a video store in 1991. I had no training whatsoever in either video or photography. However, I had seen tons of porn and I knew what looked good. When it comes to using a video camera, you either have an eye for it or you don't.
XBIZ: How did you break into the porn business?
MOORE: I got into porn at the beginning of 1992. Initially I thought it would be fun to make my own porn, and if I could make a few bucks, fine. The amateur market was new at that time, and I thought I might be able to sell a few scenes. I had no intention of making a career out of it, since I was still doing music.
XBIZ: How was it for you in the beginning?
MOORE: I was very fortunate that the first couple I ever shot were in the business, because I didn't know anything about model releases or anything. Two weeks later I met Randy Detroit, who let me use his place and his lights to shoot, as I had nothing but the camera. Paul Fishbein got me a lot of work shooting amateurs for Odyssey Group, which kept me going. After a while, I became one of the regular suppliers of scenes for a handful of "amateur" companies, like OGV and LBO. At that time, 1992 and 1993, there were four or five guys like me shooting 90 percent of the amateur content in L.A. Before long I got serious and started a production company, hired employees, the whole deal.
XBIZ: Do you do your own camera work? What kind of camera do you use?
MOORE: I do almost all of it, though I'm actually seeking some good camera people to hire. I currently use three different cameras: a Panasonic A100 for POV, an older but much lighter Canon GL2 for POV when my arm is tired and a Canon XH-A1 for hi-def.
XBIZ: Tell us about some of your specialty genres.
MOORE: Well, I shoot plenty of the "normal" stuff, either my own POV work or other male talent with girls. But we also do "Horny Hairy Girls" and "Scale Bustin' Babes" and also have a very popular tranny series and website called Shemale Strokers. I might try some fem-dom stuff soon, as well.
XBIZ: How do you find the "special" kind of models?
MOORE: These days I mostly get models from looking at agency websites here in L.A., though I've been also looking at the newer, smaller talent sites, too. When I go to Seattle, my other home, to shoot, I run ads to find talent. There's something special about doing a scene with a girl who's never shot before.
XBIZ: What's different for you working in Seattle as opposed to L.A.?
MOORE: I've shot well over 100 new girls in Seattle over the years. I can only think of three who have come down to L.A. to do more work. Most of them just wanted to try something different, or fulfill a fantasy. In Los Angeles, you have more of the career porn girls.
XBIZ: You're closing in on 20 years in the business. Where do you see it going? All downloads all the time?
MOORE: A lot of people say DVDs will go the way of the 8-track, but I think there will always be people who want to put a disc in a player and watch on a big screen, or take the portable player to the bathroom. The older crowd prefers DVDs, the younger crowd prefers the Internet. It depends on what you grew up watching.
XBIZ: What is good porn? Why?
MOORE: You could say it's anything that gets you off. That covers a lot of different tastes. I have my opinions of what industry people shouldn't shoot, but that's just me. I've always shot who and what turns me on, figuring that there are enough people out there with similar tastes to enable me to make a good living.
XBIZ: What are you up to now, and where's it taking you?
MOORE: I had a lot of fun recently shooting a vampire movie, and just finished a new vignette series, "Porn Valley Law." I'm working on a feature next month, and hopefully when that's done I'll be filming my porn musical. I'm hoping that it will be a bridge for me back into music. It's an extremely difficult business, but after many years of that, I did something else that I loved, making good porn, and this time, as they say, the money came.
XBIZ: It's soapbox time. Want to rant about anything? Have any advice for newcomers?
MOORE: My advice, though it will not be heeded, is for people to stop shooting anal creampie scenes. Every single instance of HIV that was transmitted on a shoot came from that type of activity. If no one ever shot that stuff, the straight adult industry would be 100 percent HIV-free.
XBIZ: And your message to newcomers?
MOORE: Well, one of the things Randy [Detroit] advised me in my early days was never to side with a girl in a dispute with the director or a male actor. Because if you do, six months later the girl will have quit the business, but six years later the guy will still be in it and he'll still hate you. I found out the hard way how right Randy was.
