As a director, you can count on Ike Diezel to be prepared.
The night before a shoot, Diezel makes sure his lenses are clean, his batteries are charged, his memory cards are formatted — and that he has enough douches for his performers, having already touched base with their agents the day before. He also checks to make sure that all of his paperwork is organized and that W-9s have been printed out for the cast and crew.
Perhaps most importantly, he makes sure he has the right kind of lube for each performer, as many request specific brands.
“Fortunately, I perform too, so I know what performers want,” says Diezel. “It’s the directors who have never performed before who have no idea what the performers want. Most want Pjur because they hate cheap lube.”
Diezel has indeed been on both sides of the camera, having begun performing about 15 years ago. He enjoyed a steady career in front of the camera for his first five years, before acquiring a taste for directing in 2015 and spending the past decade honing his chops. He still shoots content and performs on occasion, but these days he is more focused on calling “Action!” than getting action.
Focus is important to Diezel. If bills need to be paid or groceries need to be bought, he makes sure to take care of all of that ahead of a shoot so he isn’t distracted during production. It also helps that he owns his own equipment, including a Sony camera, sound gear and a lighting package. That way, he rarely has to deal with outside vendors on the day before a shoot, typically a busy one for him.
He also tries to get a good night’s sleep, as he knows he’ll need his energy the following day. Working out helps with that.
“I’ll go to the gym the day before and run a couple miles,” he shares.
Diezel typically wakes up early — as in 5:30 a.m. — to check the gold and silver markets, but luckily for his cast, he lets them sleep in a bit.
“A lot of directors will start shooting at 7 or 8 a.m.” he notes. “But I prefer 10 or 10:30 a.m. because in my personal opinion, I don’t think girls want to wake up at 7 a.m. and go fuck a stranger.”
As a weightlifter, food is important to Diezel, so he tries to be mindful of that on set.
“I let people order whatever they want on set, within reason,” he says. “But a lot of the girls just get smoothies. Or they’ll order a full meal and then just leave it in the microwave for tomorrow.”
The female performers arrive on set around 10:30 a.m. and spend 60-90 minutes getting their hair and makeup done while a PA helps Diezel prep the set. He says it’s rare that male talent will spend time in the hair and makeup trailer unless it’s a big feature, which might require a bruise or a tattoo to be covered up — though he tends to shy away from features.
“There’s too much ego in the features,” he confides. “I can’t be on sets where people take themselves super serious. It drives me nuts. That’s my pet peeve.”
Diezel prefers to maintain a looser vibe on set.
“I’m a musician, so usually I’ll get a vibe for what kind of music everyone listens to and get some good music going,” he says. “I think it’s really weird being on sets where there’s no music. It’s just silence with a bunch of strangers! I like to play metal, but I try to accommodate everybody. I’ll put some smooth electronics on for some background noise. If there are too many different personalities, I’ll just put on some mindless synthwave or something.”
Once everyone is out of makeup and Diezel has checked his gear, he sits them all down to go over everything once more before showtime.
“I tell them, ‘Allow me to direct you.’ Because I know the scripts can get overwhelming sometimes. That’s why I try to shoot paint-by-numbers and make it real simple for everybody. When someone has shot with me a lot, they know how I shoot — some people are more scattered, but I’m very meticulous with the way I shoot.”
“A lot of directors have a real firm shtick, but my method as a director is to try and make it feel like everyone’s hanging out with their friends, to make the day easier. I don’t think people realize I’m doing that, but that’s my method. I want a set where it just feels like everyone’s hanging out, which could sound unprofessional, but it’s actually difficult to [pull it off].”
Diezel says his shoot days typically last four to five hours, not including makeup time, and his team will edit a 30-minute scene out of that footage.
While Diezel says he prefers to run a small crew -- “If you can do everything yourself, why wouldn’t you? You make more money that way.” -- there isn’t enough time for him to edit everything, which is why he works with a few trusted collaborators.
Diezel said that a 10-person crew is a luxury — one he sees young filmmakers too eager to rely on.
“When people start directing, they’ll have, like, 10 people on set. It’s like, what are you doing? You’re splitting your budget with 10 people? I don’t understand. There’s one camera. And there are 10 people. It makes no sense. I think it’s just hubris, is what it is. I don’t know what else it would be. Those filmmakers only last a few years before they get fired or disappear for going over budget.”
Of course, accidents happen, and directors do go over budget sometimes, but Diezel considers that an amateur move, and he definitely counts himself as a professional.
“I don’t have any amateurs on set. I hire pros, so they know what they’re doing,” said Diezel.
That goes for both the crew and the performers, especially the male ones, who only get one chance to deliver their money shot on camera.
“I only hire the best dudes,” said Diezel, who will hand his performers baby wipes upon the so-called “completion” of a scene.
“I’ll help them get cleaned up, and then I’ll always walk them out and make sure they get to their cars safely. I don’t want a PA doing that. I want to make sure it’s a good experience for all of the performers. I wouldn’t have lasted this long if they didn’t have a good experience, you know?”
Once the shoot is wrapped, and Diezel has packed up all of his gear with the help of the PA, he’ll load up his car and listen to a podcast of some kind on the way home.
“Once I get home, I do my bookkeeping first — my taxes and accounting — and account for what I spent that day. And I do my taxes every day that I have a shoot. I go over all the footage before uploading it to a server or to whoever hired me. And then I go to jiu-jitsu.”
Diezel has been practicing jiu-jitsu “on and off for about 15 years or so.”
He says he appreciates the sense of community that the sport provides him.
“When people are new to the adult business, they tend to only talk to and hang out with people in that industry, but I’ve learned how to separate church from state,” says Diezel.
“I don’t mean that in a demeaning way, I just have to unplug from the porn business sometimes, so my community of people is usually the jiu-jitsu community, or fellow musicians, as I go to a lot of shows. I have to because if you’re a producer or a director and you’re just doing this 24 hours a day, you’ll either burn out or hang yourself.”
Diezel says he takes solace in music, having played the guitar since he was 12. He loves listening to metal, but these days, he’s also become something of a podcast guy, though he tries to maintain a balanced media diet.
“When I’m lifting weights, sometimes I’ll listen to a right-wing podcast, but then I’ll listen to a left-wing podcast to determine who’s full of shit or not while I’m at the gym. And then I’ll run a couple of miles and listen to metal during that time — Merciful Fate or Pantera, something like that — and then I’ll go to the sauna.”
“I usually pick an old metal band and listen to all their records back to back for a few days. And once I get home, I usually take my dog on a hike or something. Her name is Zoey, and she’s an English Bull Terrier. She’s six years old, but I just rescued her, like, two months ago.”
Whether Diezel is shooting or not, he says he typically eats a New York strip steak for lunch every day. There may be an off-day when he eats chicken, but he tries to eat a lot of red meat and mix in some carbs, like some kind of potato dish — and an avocado for good measure.
In others words, you won’t catch Diezel in the drive-thru at McDonald’s or Burger King, though he does admit to cheat days when he’ll wolf down an entire pizza or splurge on a carton of ice cream.
He stays on top of his health, getting blood work done once a month to stay on top of his cholesterol and hormone levels, and he gets an STD test every two weeks, just like active performers.
“I may be primarily a producer these days, but I’m not a perfect angel. I’m still gonna have sex every now and then. I’m surrounded by women,” said Diezel, who is single as of this writing.
“I stay on top of my testing because I shoot content, too, sometimes, and I still know how to shoot POV really well — probably better than most.”
Diezel admits it can get lonely sometimes in Las Vegas — his family is spread out across Texas and New York, and most of his friends remain in Los Angeles — but he’s made friends at black metal concerts, feeling a kinship with those in attendance.
“I like a lot of European black metal bands and going to rare metal shows that no one likes to go to.”
If anyone asks about Diezel’s day job, he usually tells them he’s a photographer, though it depends who’s asking — and where.
If you’re at Home Depot, people recognize you. If there’s a bunch of construction dudes, every now and then, people will be like, ‘You’re the Pornhub dude!’ But if you’re at, like, Walgreens, nobody recognizes you.”
Diezel said he’s recognized less often since he began to cut back on performing, but he’s happy to shoot OnlyFans content with performers he has known for a while, though he’s more selective these days.
“I’m not going to shoot content with someone I just met, just because of cancel culture and all that shit. That’s another reason why porn got too complicated. There’s a lot more paperwork, and the testing protocols are really a lot different than when I started. I decided to stop performing because it was becoming too much work. And I got into porn for the fun of it.”
Diezel has been in the business since he was 25 or so, and he’s very happy with how his career worked out, but he’d like to wrap it up in the next 5-10 years, as he has other plans he’d like to pursue.
“It’s time to start taking them out,” said Diezel, who said he doesn’t want to overstay his welcome.
“The sad part about the entertainment industry is it just becomes a job after a while. It seems really exciting when you meet someone who doesn’t know anything about it, but then you try to explain it to them, and you’re like, ‘I do accounting and bookkeeping as soon as I get home, just like you do with your other business. So it’s not that exciting.”
“Yes, your first three years in the porn business is very fun. There’s a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, and a lot of partying. But when you’ve been doing it as long as I have, people start looking up to you and stuff, so you gotta set some kind of example, I guess, as lame as that sounds. I never thought I’d be the old guy saying that,” Diezel says with a hint of introspection.
For now, Diezel is eager to set that example, saying he prefers directing to performing because it’s “a lot more work, and I like that. I like staying busy. It suits me better because I’m a workaholic, so I feel comfortable having a full plate. When I was performing, there was so much idle time,” said Diezel.
In other words, there was plenty of time to get into trouble.
Diezel cleaned up his act when he started directing, which forced him to accept responsibility for other people.
“I kind of like it. When I was performing, I was a fuck up. I was fucking up too much.”
It wasn’t until he found himself in the middle of the August complex fires in Northern California that Diezel found himself forced to confront life without any vices.
I was in the middle of that shit because I had a weed farm up there. And my house burned down. Everything burnt. I lost everything, and then I had to restart [my life]. It sucked because you couldn’t get insurance on cannabis farms at that time.”
It was a difficult period in his life, but he came out the other side stronger, smarter, and better prepared to help others reach their full potential.
Diezel still heads to the bar to enjoy a beer every now and then, but he does so responsibly, having taken back control of his life.
Today, he shoots roughly 15 days a month, with a day off in between most shoots.
“That way, I don’t lose my mind.”
With that, it’s time for Diezel to take a walk with Zoey, who looks like she’s going to lose her mind if she doesn’t get a bathroom break soon. Diezel has her leash and a poop bag ready.
Like we said, he’s always prepared...
