Years ago I got a screener copy of Troma Films “All The Love You Cannes”. It was a documentary about one of Troma’s yearly trips to the Cannes film festival. It was meant to be an instructional guide on how to promote your independent feature at Cannes. What it turned out to be was an hour and a half of Doug Sakmann fucking shit up. The movie was so funny. This guy Doug who worked at Troma pissed off or pissed on anyone who came near him. He was brilliant. I suddenly was a huge fan. I emailed Doug as soon as I finished watching it to tell him how great I thought it was. He sent me tons of other Troma movies to review for Driven By Boredom, but soon after that he parted ways with Troma to start his own company, Backseat Conceptions. Anyway years later Doug and I have become friends. I have followed his career since the beginning and I have to say I am pretty pleased with his choices. I sat down and interviewed Doug in January on his way back from the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. He was with one of his collaborators, Joanna Angel promoting her porn films. Her film Joanna’s Angels 2 had won Best Sex Comedy and her discovery Tommy Pistol had won best male newcomer. But let’s start at the beginning: Doug’s life post Troma.

Doug had spent a lot of time on the Warped Tour touring with the Troma Bus. He met musicians, Warped Tour organizers, and tons of cool people on the way. He loved it and wanted to go again. He talked to the Tour organizers and a bunch of the bands. He decided to write a film with the Warped Tour as the background. He spent a summer in 2003 following the Tour and filming a gory punk rock road movie called Punk Rock Holocaust. The film was such a success that he made a sequel the following year. And this is where the porn comes in.

After Joanna Angel saw Doug’s fucked up film she wanted him to do a Horror-Porn video for her website BurningAngel.com. It was Halloween and she wanted to do something special for her fans. So Doug filmed a short movie called Re-Penetrator. For those of you who have seen Re-Animator, picture that, just with fucking and even more gore. The film was originally meant to be just a web video, but Joanna’s hosting company banned it. Her host (and many others) told her that they could not show sex and violence like that. Porn is fine, violence is fine, but the combination is not. This caused a major controversy and put a lot of attention on both Burning Angel and Doug. They released the film on DVD and since then Joanna has released probably 10 other films based on her website, several of which Doug has assistant directed. Doug’s second attempt at directing porn was another horror-porn this time based on the Exorcist: The XXXorcist! This time his film was many scenes and a much more ambitious attempt. He is currently casting his remake of Evil Dead which will be titled Evil Head. The film will be over two hours long with actual plot and adventure! He is remaking the film completely, just adding a lot of porn. I personally cannot wait. The thing is, I don’t know when he could possibly have time for it.

Doug Sakmann is one of the busiest people I have ever met. When I talked to him, as I mentioned he had just come back from the AVN Awards. During that trip he got drunk and was kicked out of the hotel he was staying in for smashing a coin slot machine with his fist. He paid for the machine, but was asked not to return. He did return in order to crash the Burning Angel party. He wore a fake mustache and sun glasses, but was spotted anyway. He was arrested and barely skipped town with Jack the Zipper. After a week in LA shooting for his photography project, Post-Mortem Pinups, he went out to Ohio to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame where some Punk Rock Holocaust props were inducted as part of a Warped Tour Exhibit (the sequel will premiere at the Rock Hall in August). He then went back to Philly where he lives to work on his game show Strip for Pain. Strip for Pain works like this: A guy gets on stage. A stripper then tortures him with fire, electricity, whips and so forth. For every pain that he endures, the girl gets naked. Brilliant. He is pitching a PG rated version to several networks, but performs an X rated version live at parties in NYC and Philly. Also his company Backseat Conceptions just held their annual Backseat Film Festival in Philly, which will come to NY and Baltimore in the coming months. And on top of everything else, he is developing Punk Rock Holocaust 3!

So the point is, Doug is a genius. Watch out for everything he does, because I am sure it will be both sexy and violent, and we all know how good for you sex and violence is. Yum