We could very well be on a mid-1970s set for a production by ultimate low-budget cult auteur Roger Corman.
Picture this: a secluded mansion in the Valley, lavishly decorated with Mexican antiques and crafts, which is doubling as some kind of educational spa, if there were such a thing. Seven statuesque stunners in full makeup and nurse uniforms. Metallic tables on wheels bearing neatly arranged surgical props — cotton balls, rubber gloves and the iconic hypodermics.
If you want to do this content, everybody is equal, however they identify. This is what the future of porn really could — and should — be, at least the porn I would want to make.
Also, a few old-school nursing caps, those immediately recognizable wimple-like fabric headpieces, which will be part of a quasi-Masonic “capping ritual,” which is apparently how nurses graduate in the ever-expanding Transfixed Cinematic Universe.
The Roger Corman of this operation, of course, is Gamma Entertainment’s chief creative officer, innovative porn auteur and deep-knowledge cult genre movie fanatic Bree Mills, backed by a production crew headed by cinematographer Michael Vegas and his work/life partner Siouxsie Q.
Vegas has a background in nursing, so he’s also helping with the medical lingo for some of the improvised dialogue.
“Bet you didn’t know that my dad was also a cinematographer,” Vegas tells me before going back to obsessively lighting the production stills. “He actually shot underwater scenes in Roger Corman’s ‘Piranha’ and ‘Humanoids From the Deep’!”
It’s all showbiz.
The seven beauties in question are Charlotte Sins, Jade Venus, Kira Noir and Eva Maxim, billed as “Nurses in Training.” They practice their “capping ceremony,” marching up and down in stately procession with invisible stacks of books on their heads, for ultimate cult movie nurse posture. Meanwhile, Jean Hollywood and Khloe Kay, already fully trained, stand ready to pass on their “knowledge,” both in the medical and the Biblical sense — this is porn, after all.
And then there’s the Doctor, played with experienced grindsploitation intensity by kink and fetish legend Dee Williams.
“Are you ready, nurses?” Mills asks the class of 2022. “Now, walk!”
“The Physical: Nurses’ Retreat” is the fourth installment in Gamma’s “The Physical” franchise, a now-important corner of the Transfixed Cinematic Universe that came about rather accidentally.
“The first ‘Physical’ was just a one-off episode we shot a couple of years ago,” Mills explains during a production break. “It was pretty much a standard ‘doctor/patient’ scene with Dee and Khloe, and that was going to be that. But it did really, really well, so we then said, ‘Let’s do a sequel!’”
So “The Physical” begat “The Physical Returns,” in which Khloe Kay becomes a nurse and joins the practice, followed by “The Physical: Final Exam,” where Jean Hollywood is inducted into the profession. Now we are on set for what Mills calls “the grand finale — the biggest thing I’ve done for ‘Transfixed’ and only the third orgy scene I’ve directed.”
“We do need a disclaimer saying ‘This is in no way representative of legitimate medical education,’ though,” Mills jokes.
“The original ‘Physical’ with me and Khloe was a wonderful workday, but we both thought it was going to be a one-off,” Dee Williams tells me. “It’s now a whole miniseries and it’s expanded into this really interesting psychodrama. It went from a psychological power-play scene into something camp and ridiculous, in the best way.”
Mills wanted to have press on this set because she thought “The Physical” saga was a perfect way to shine a light on the way Adult Time originally developed “Transfixed,” and also what it has turned into.
“This particular storyline really reminds me of when we started with Girlsway,” Mills reveals. “We are now building a universe with recurring characters, easter eggs, sequels, prequels — it’s really like a Marvel universe. And it was very much fan-driven: our subscribers want stories. They told us again and again that when they like something they want sequels, repeat characters, all of that.”
“Adult Time members prioritize story,” adds co-producer Siouxsie Q. “We have access to feedback from a large number of members who are interested in them. We try to make stories that matter.”
Transfixed is the only studio Mills currently showruns within Adult Time. Immediately before and during the pandemic, Mills was looking at recurring series she wanted to develop, like “True Lesbian,” “We Like Girls” and “ASMR Fantasy,” to reach her dream of making Adult Time into “a fully inclusive platform.” That also reignited her commitment to the company’s flagship trans-led studio.
“We wanted trans people to feel welcome in all the Adult Time studios,” she explains. “Just because you come in through a door as a viewer, it doesn’t mean you stay within that door. Transfixed, for example, is a lesbian series — we bring in cis and trans women on an equal footing without fetishization.”
“The Adult Time studios should represent as much as possible all the main sexuality and gender preferences and pairings, including pansexuality and nonbinary people,” Mills adds.
Transfixed started in 2018, from the initial kernel of a superstar original pairing. “Cherie DeVille wanted to do a scene with Venus Lux,” Mills explains. “We hadn’t even launched Adult Time — that was January 2019 — but I told Cherie, ‘We’re gonna make you a space to do it. We are going to create a very beautiful space where the fetish is not the focus.”
Four years later, Mills says that she now has a long backlog of cis female performers who are asking to do a Transfixed scene, and that she’s even being courted by some of the agents who, back in 2018, told her not to bother pitching the idea.
Even back then, Mills knew things would come around. As JC Adams wrote in an April 2022 XBIZ report on the state of trans representation in the adult industry, the key change has been the “rapid mainstreaming” of both content and performers.
“This means higher budgets, more involved storylines, more trans performers crossing over into other non-trans-specific genres,” Adams noted. “It means more overall general interest in trans performers and content, as opposed to just a narrow audience segment.”
Mills and Transfixed have played a big role in helping trans transcend being a mere “niche.”
The Adult Time CCO credits the sea change to two factors. The first: “An extremely important shift in power dynamics in our industry. Performers are making their own money through OnlyFans content and they don’t have to listen to the gatekeepers who may have told them in the past that they couldn’t work with certain kinds of people.”
“There’s also a general cultural shift,” she adds. “Gen Z and younger people grow up thinking, ‘You’re trans, you’re cool.’”
These two factors led a pioneering group of A-listers — including DeVille, Kris Scott, Ana Foxxx and Kenzie Taylor — to be supportive of Transfixed’s mission, one of the showcases of Adult Time’s aspirational motto: “Porn done differently.”
What Mills calls “the Adult Time ethos” has been codified in a series of standards designed to ensure performers’ comfort and ease.
“The most important aspect of an Adult Time shoot,” reads the message from Mills that appears on every company call sheet, “is the experience of our cast and crews. I want to check in to ensure everyone’s comfort and satisfaction prior to, during, and after this production day. Please do not hesitate to hit me up directly or via our talent liaison if you have any concerns or reservations about the scene treatment or schedule ... This is how we do porn differently!”
Mills describes the leads in “The Physical: Nurses’ Retreat” as “seven female characters played by performers of diverse backgrounds.”
“If you want to do this content, everybody is equal, however they identify,” Mills explains. “This is what the future of porn really could — and should — be, at least the porn I would want to make. The group of people I work with is really diverse — performers like Michael and Siouxsie who are now behind the camera, trans crew members, people from fetish sets, people from mainstream sets.”
Co-producer and DP Vegas — a 12-year industry veteran who also pioneered fluid sexuality representation for the company with a now-iconic Mills-directed “X-Files”-style scene with Cherie DeVille as a sex-starved, gender-shifting alien — explains that his background as a performer gives him “a better understanding of the limitations on set — how genitals work, how not to wear down performers too much before the scene, letting the rest of the crew know what the models are going through, be there with a wipe or a drink, making sure models have down time…”
“The more informed communication you have with people, the more you help them have a good day,” he adds, noting that he and Siouxsie Q have ramped up their Gamma commitment to seven or eight productions a month.
“I didn’t come into this industry saying, ‘I’m here to fuck, but what I really want to do is direct!’” jokes Siouxsie Q. “But here I am, loving it behind the camera. I spent a lot of time doing advocacy work, and I still feel that’s what I’m doing: making sure that the set is inclusive and the industry is something we can celebrate. I’m ‘gay theater mom” as a producer. What better way to advocate than making sure that things are comfortable on set, as part of a crew that really prioritizes people.”
The non-dirty little secret about porn folks, she adds, is that “we are all theater kids — and Bree is the main one! Everybody wants to be here to do a movie.”
“The first ‘Physical’ back in 2018 or 2019 was the first time that I shot with Bree,” co-star Khloe Kay reminisces. “I was fresh!”
Kay adds that, as she built up her following over the years, “all my fans would tell me about it, ask me about that scene.”
Comparing that initial installment with the seven-person orgy she’s about to shoot, Kay says she’s “grown so much as a performer — I’ve done my time and I’m riding it out. I love the openness we are seeing thanks to Transfixed. It’s amazing to see big star names performing with us and it’s not an issue. Even several big cis men are saying, ‘We’re gonna work with you.’”
Kay understands how larger cultural shifts have made room for diversity and representation when it comes to trans performers. “Before,” she explains, “you’re new and you’re being told by agents, ‘Don’t do it, don’t work with trans women,’ and you have your career dangled in front of you. It can be scary. But people follow — and when a bigger performer does it, the newer performers go, ‘Oh, it’s OK.’”
The win-win, she adds, is that both cis and trans performers gain new fans by working together, something she noticed in one-on-one interactions when signing at the Adult Time booth during conventions.
Dee Williams, Kay’s main scene partner in the franchise, concurs. She says she has seen “nothing but growth” in her fandom after working with trans women.
“I’ve had a front seat in this process of inclusion,” Williams explains. “Twelve years ago I was there when Kink.com started their trans site and I really wanted to work with Venus Lux. I was coming from BDSM and fetish work and it felt transgressive at the time, but now it all comes down to the chemistry with other performers, and also the ability to tell different stories.”
“Bree keeps doing that with Transfixed. She does a good job,” Kay adds. “Because these Transfixed scenes are lesbian sex — at the end of the day it’s just that: two women, performing together.”