The Santa Ana winds are blowing as we drive through the gate of Tommy’s Funhouse, the legendary mountaintop porn house in Newbury Park, California. Inside, we find director Jim Powers in the middle of a typical shoot day.
“It’s a really chill place to shoot because Tommy’s a really cool homeowner,” Powers tells XBIZ. “But it was so windy out today that it was just brutal. It totally messes with sound. So I did a wild tracking thing where I shot the performers from behind and followed them inside. That way, the editor can just drop in the audio. Hopefully, I didn’t fuck it up too much.”
Following his usual MO, Powers is shooting two scenes today. The first is for Devil’s Film.
“It’s called ‘Lesbian Anal Creampie Cravings,’” the director explains. “It’s one of those conspiracy thrillers where the aliens are coming and it’s the end of the world. So this lesbian figures, ‘What the hell, might as well take a creampie up the ass!’”
Happy Accidents
Powers originally fell into the adult business in the fall of 1990. He was working as a stockbroker when that year’s major financial crisis hit.
“The company I worked for went under,” he recalls. “Everybody went under in those days.”
Then a friend in Florida, who used to own a brokerage, concocted a scheme to make money filming kickboxing movies. When Powers arrived in the Sunshine State to lend a hand, his would-be producer pal had already fired his director after finding out that he’d produced porn featuring Traci Lords. The producer was afraid of getting involved in the porn business because he presumed the Mafia was somehow involved.
Still, he had to unload 100,000 VHS tapes — and the best bet for moving that many units seemed to be distributing adult videos.
“The next thing I know, I’m meeting Buck Adams, and I’m back in California filming a porn movie,” Powers marvels. “It was all accidental.”
The Gang’s All Here
Powers typically wakes up around 5:30 a.m. on a shoot day, which usually means going to bed before midnight. This particular morning, he spent a good chunk of time heading to his storage unit and loading up his car with equipment, then making a pit stop to get some tinfoil in order to make a hat for one of the conspiracy theorist extras.
“We had our girls in makeup by 8 a.m.,” he notes. “By 9:30, we were finishing up everyone’s paperwork. Around 10 a.m., the girls started taking still photos and talking about consent with the guys, and we were shooting by 11 a.m., which is fairly typical.”
Powers doesn’t consider himself to be the most tech-savvy director, but he’s feeling partial to the Canon 200 camera he’s been shooting with lately.
“It’s 14 to 70 millimeter so it’s not super zoom, just a good lens that’s very versatile,” he explains. “It’s a $7,000 lens, so it has a lot of stuff I can really work fast with, and it has a servo on it, so I can push in and out.
“It’s a nightmare when you don’t have a servo on your lens,” the director confides.
Powers usually works with a small crew: grip, makeup artist, PA and still photographer. He tends to stick to the same people most of the time, depending on their availability. He’s been working with his still photographer for roughly a decade now, a shutterbug known as Wolfgang Fuck because he happens to be a chef too.
“He’ll cook up hamburgers, turkey burgers and soy burgers in butter so they’re very good on the stove,” says Powers. “Shrimp, tacos, shrimp tacos — you name it. It’s definitely better than ordering from some mid-tier restaurant.”
Powers has been working with his grip for even longer — nearly 25 years, off and on.
“He’s quit a few times over the years, and he’s always reinventing himself,” Powers says. “We call him Ron John Shingles now.”
MILFs and Menageries
For Powers, it turns out, shoot days are actually the easy ones.
“It’s the days in between that are the biggest pain in the ass,” he laughs, “Because then you’re running around scouting locations or doing errands.”
Not to mention writing scripts, uploading footage, editing stills and booking talent — all while the next upcoming shoot looms large. Tomorrow is another ‘MILF Overload’ video, part of the Adult Time series Powers has been helming.
“A lot of times, you’ll lose somebody the night before a shoot, so you have to replace them in the morning,” Powers sighs. “But as of right now, it looks like smooth sailing, so I’m not going to jinx it. The scripts have been sent and everybody has been booked for a while now. Hopefully, they all make it.”
If his wife is asleep when he gets home, Powers says, he’ll upload video footage for the editing team at Gamma or prep for the next day. If she’s up, they might watch a movie together.
His other downtime activities include playing bass guitar in his punk band, Killroy, which played at a festival in Europe last summer. He and his wife also spend time caring for a horde of pets, including dogs, cats, fish, ducks, desert tortoises and a pigeon.
One thing Powers doesn’t do is attend a lot of industry events — though he admits to enjoying the XMAs, given the proximity to his home in Southern California.
“I like that you don’t have to shlep to Vegas for it,” he smiles. “I try to hit X3, too, because that’s a lot of fun. I like stopping in at the hotel and meeting people for drinks and so forth, so I usually swing by.”
‘You’ve got to be a pervert to do this’
Looking ahead, Powers expects soon to direct some OnlyFans shoots for Adira Allure.
“She really wants to get back out there again, so she’ll probably do a lot of squirting and pissing content,” he says. “So that’ll be fun.”
He’s also looking forward to seeing how his Gender X movie “Transpirella” performs at the upcoming XMAs.
“That was a really cool one,” he enthuses. “It’s going to be hard to top that one this year — but I’m going to try. I’ve got some ideas. I can’t tell you what they are, but I’ve been bugging them about something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and they finally let me do it, so I’m looking forward to that.”
After three decades in the business, Powers has come to view the key to longevity as approaching each day with a sense of renewed excitement.
“Just in case you die on the way home, you want to have at least spent that day making a memorable scene,” he reflects. “It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, just make something funny or sexy. Don’t just phone it in.”
Any other important lessons learned?
“The truth is, you’ve got to be a pervert to do this,” Powers observes. “You can’t come into porn just to make money — especially if you’re behind the camera. You also can’t take it too seriously, or you’ll kill yourself. I try not to take a lot of things personally. You can’t let people upset you in this business, and you can’t be vindictive if they do.”
Nor does Powers seem particularly fazed by the onrush of changes, like the creator economy and AI technology.
“Every time you think there’s nothing new, something new comes along,” he shrugs. “Though a lot of it is recycled! Everybody thinks these record-breaking gangbangs on OnlyFans are new, but come on — that’s what the ’90s were all about.”
Powers wraps the lesbian creampie scene around 2:30 p.m., and the crew breaks for lunch. After eating, they’ll get to work prepping the next set while the talent practice their lines for a Gender X scene called “Trans Honey Trap #5,” Powers says.
“It’s a yoga scene,” he adds with a knowing smile.
