Okay you’re not going to believe this one. Today we are slated to shoot the biggest set piece of the movie, the aftermath of a car crash on a mountain road. To even attempt this is pure folly because it is a logistical nightmare and it will be difficult to pull off with our measly budget. But we’re doing it anyway. Thankfully our first remote mountain location has been replaced with a slightly less remote one in Topanga Canyon. It’s about and hour and a half drive from our Wilshire HQ by freeway, but once we get up into the mountains there will be no cell phone service so we’ll be cut off from civilization. Steve our sexy art director has rented two trucks, one for the pre-accident scene and one for post-accident; the latter wreck has been towed to the location by a crazy Frenchman who owns a wrecking company.

I ride to the location with Luis, the soft-spoken Cuban who works for Dark Alley and who is making the making-of video. In the backseat are our models, Francois, of course, and Rocco Giovanni, a cute, personable young porn star from Columbus, Ohio whom I met on Twitter. Everything seems light and gay on our way to Topanga Canyon; little do what know what horrors lie ahead.


When we get to the general location, a seventy acre spread owned by a woman who owns a nation-wide chain of restaurants, I have to choose two specific sites to shoot. The roads are a bit treacherous on the way up, but she has had her property newly paved so it’s a bit smoother. Once I’ve decided on a spot for the wreck, the army of vehicles for our shoot begins to arrive. It’s difficult to fit all the vehicles on the narrow mountain road, and the cube truck has to be left back a few hundred meters, making it a pain in the ass to access equipment.

Steve and his two hot assistants start to figure out with the crazy Frenchman how to place the truck wreck beside a telephone pole right on the side of a steep embankment to make it look like it has really crashed. The first snafu of the day – except for when Laszlo had to spend a half an hour fixing the backseat door of one of our rental cars – is that they can’t seem to figure out how to get the wrecked truck off the trailer. Steve attaches it with a chain to the hitch of his four-wheel drive truck, but it won’t slide off when he drives forward.


The crazy Frenchman is gunning his truck that’s pulling the trailer in the opposite direction, but his tire gets stuck in the soft ground dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. They try and try but it won’t budge. I have visions of the wrecked truck toppling over sideways off the trailer and down the side of the mountain, pulling the trucks of Steve and the crazy Frenchman along with them. Thankfully before this happens, and with the help of about ten members of the crew, they get the wreck off the trailer and start to finesse it into place.

Having got lost on the way to this rather obscure location, the producer and talent are about an hour late arriving on set, so we really have to get moving if we’re going to get our magic hour shots in the can. Of course the cheap car clamp we’ve rented doesn’t work – those suction jobs never do – so we are forced to rig our own little device to secure Laszlo’s little 35mm camera to the hood. We’re shooting Rocco driving the truck and picking up Francois, who is naked, wearing body paint only, on the mountain road.


Even though we told the owner of the property that we were shooting porn, she pretends to be surprised when it’s mentioned today while signing the contracts, so we have to be a little sensitive to the neighbours who have to drive through her property to get off this damn mountain. The driving truck shots are a little rushed as the sun and daylight disappear alarmingly fast this time of year in LA: magic hour is more like magic twenty minutes. We get the shots we need, but not as much coverage as I was hoping for.

After our catered dinner, it’s time for the big car crash aftermath scene, a scenario I’ve always wanted to film. The wreck is in place and the scene has been meticulously decorated by Steve and his cute crew. Now it’s time for Joe our F/X guy to do his thing. Joe has been a little edgy on set, but he has a lot to do with virtually no assistance so I just let him spin. He whips up a nasty chest wound on Rocco, laying dead in the middle of the road, in no time flat. One of our P.A.s, Deborah, the E.R. doctor, gives it her good housekeeping seal of approval for authenticity.


As the hidden smoke machine puffs out some fake steam, Francois emerges from the crashed truck, naked and ghastly, approaches Rocco’s body, and starts to make love to him. Why does such imagery come into my head instead of sugarplums? Well when I was a kid there was gruesome car accident on the highway right in front of our farm. My father and I were the first ones on the scene, and there was a man lying in the middle of the road near his wrecked truck, breathing laboriously. His shoes and one sock had been knocked off by the impact and were lying near his feet as if gently pulled off. It was so weird. He died on the way to the hospital. Why I made it into a zombie sex scene is another question entirely.

From that point on, it’s downhill all the way. We start shooting sex scenes with Francois and his big prosthetic alien dick with the scorpion stinger on the end of it, but the images are so grotesque I myself can hardly process them. I won’t go into further detail at this juncture, but suffice to say that this will not go over well between the coasts, or on them.


When it comes to trying to shoot a fuck scene with Francois using his normal dick, it doesn’t quite seem to fit, so to speak. I’m going to have to figure out some way how to make sense of all this in the next few days by adjusting the concept more toward the idea that Francois is a delusional homeless person, which is still a pretty bizarre premise for a porno. But then again, it’s a bizarre world, and we’ve already seen enough plumbers and telephone repair men in porn. It’s time for something a little more… au current. Actually one of my inspirations is the novel Mad Man by the great black gay author Samuel Delaney, about a man who goes around looking for homeless people to have sex with. So you see, it’s nothing new.

We’ve had to save the biggest special effect, involving a beating heart and a fake alien cock coming, for the last scene. The sun will start to rise in an hour, so we are really rushed again. First we were racing with the sun going down and now we are racing before the sun comes up. What gives? Why is there never enough time in the day when you’re making a movie? I’m trying not to rush Joe too much as he’s doing his best. We finally do get the shots, but only just.


Poor Rocco has been lying on the damp and clammy pavement for hours drenched in fake blood in a most uncomfortable posture. He is a complete trooper and consummate professional, never complaining and gutting it out. He’s really impressive. Francois is stoic and super-professional as usual. We have just enough time for the final shot, Francois’ exit from the scene, before a glorious, misty sunrise illuminates the canyon. Unfortunately by this time the crew is so exhausted and frazzled that it seems like a bad acid trip. After a long ride back to Silverlake, I finally get into bed by 8am and I really hate filmmaking again.

Now I remember why I love filmmaking. What other pursuit allows you to experience despair and jubilation all in one day, and twice over? Jason picks me up in his trusty Datsun and we head for the lofts on Wilshire where the production office is. The air-conditioning there is broke and with all the guys staying there with no openable windows it’s getting pretty funky. Because the big car crash scene has been changed to a location in Topanga Canyon to be shot on Sunday night, we have the opportunity to shoot another full day of Francois in various locations in LA both dressed as a homeless person and as an alien zombie. Sometimes disaster can turn into advantage.

We did have an awesome, experienced First A.D. in place, but he dropped out about a week before shooting when he got a paying gig. A lot of the people who have volunteered to work on this project for little or no money are dropping off like flies because they just can’t afford to turn down other work if it becomes available. I suppose it has something to do with the economy. I guess the economic disaster also explains why there are so many more homeless people than I’ve ever seen in LA.

Anyway, without a real First A.D., the shoot is pretty chaotic today. Laszlo and I are basically doing it ourselves, which is a little distracting. A least we have walkie-talkies and GTS, which makes transportation and finding locations a lot easier. So we head out this morning with our little convey communicating with ten-four good buddies and copy thats.

The first location has sexy homeless Francois gleaning along a chain link fence down on a street that overlooks downtown. I was inspired to play up the homeless aspect of the character by watching Agnes Varda’s “The Gleaners and I” for the first time recently, a meditation on those who pick up waste and garbage and basically pick clean the bones of society. Actually my last film, Otto; or, Up with Dead People, was also about a homeless zombie, partly inspired by Varda’s movie “Vagabond”. So I guess I’m pretty much stuck on one idea, except this time it’s going to be a full on porno. How do you like them apples?

The next location is down at the LA River. We’re shooting guerilla style, sans permit, because it’s too expensive, but when we try to go down a tunnel on Sante Fe Ave. at 6th Street under the bridge to East LA, there are two cops sitting on bicycles at the entrance to the river. Laszlo and Robert and I go down to assess the situation, but when we pass the cops and say hello, they just warn us to be careful of the drug addicts around there! I don’t have the heart to tell them that we’re more concerned about them than of the junkies. We just tell them that we have permits to do a shoot in a few days and we’re just doing test shots. So the cops leave and we bring the whole crew down to shoot LA wandering aimlessly down by the lazy concrete river. We even have Francois with his pants down washing in the river, which looks amazing – kind of like one of those videos Farrah Fawcett (RIP) used to do for Playboy.

We head back to HQ for lunch, where Joe Castro will now apply the alien zombie make-up for the rest of the day’s shoot. We order Chinese as we only have the caterer for a late meal today, but the food takes two hours to arrive. It must have come from the mainland. Francois eats his chow mein in full zombie make-up, and we head for our next location, the backyard of my good friend and fellow Torontonian and fellow Capricorn the artist Karen Lofgren. She’s just bought a cute little place in Cypress Park with a back yard, which we need to string a clothesline across for Francois to steal some clothes off of. We are in and out so fast it’s almost frightening.

Then we head back to the same location at the LA River to shoot the same shots over again of Francois but this time in his alien zombie look. We’re racing against the setting sun for the second day in a row, but we get the shots. Next is the shot of Francois in the back of the truck going through the two tunnels that lead to downtown LA, including the pretty silver one that is featured in so many movies, Less Than Zero being the most memorable. We get the lights rigged and Laszlo and his grip take-off to get the shot (it’s Laszlo’s idea) while the rest of us drive over to our last location of the day, a place called Ms. Donut on Glendale Blvd in Echo Park, to see if it’s still open. It’s one of those great LA locations that looks like it has already been thoroughly art directed. Three different people on the crew tell me not to bother because they say when the drove by it last night at this time it was already closed, but I have a feeling we should check it out anyway. And sure enough, it’s just about to close but the Open sign is still on and the owner’s son says we can shoot as long as we want for two hundred bucks cash. On the way we had passed the pretty silver tunnel and some 40 million dollar film production had it blocked off entirely and there was a huge blimp light hanging over the entrance bigger than our cube truck. How dare they! We were going to shoot there tonight. So I just get Laszlo to shoot in the green tunnel, which looks amazing, and Laszlo and I vow to come back for the silver tunnel shot later in the week even if it kills us.

Meanwhile, back at Ms. Donut, a crazy lady is talking to herself and feeling old all alone in the store. She’s scribbling in her journals and putting her glasses and sunglasses, both pushed back on her head, on and off. Luis who is making the making-of video turns on his camera and has a long chat with her, and it’s clear that she is homeless and schizophrenic, as in fact a large percentage of homeless people are. We try to get her to sign a release, but it’s not registering and she won’t do it. But we certainly get a lot of great audio! She has many delusions, including that she lost her hand in a shark attack (she clearly still has both hands) and that she’s from Mongolia (she’s white). Ms. Donut’s son, behind the register, is taking everything in stride like the seasoned LA donut store employee that he is. Ms. Donut is clearly a freak magnet, which is why I was attracted to it in the first place. Laszlo is getting his lighting on seriously now, ordering around the grip who came with the truck just to prove who’s boss. Before you know it he has the whole location lit up and we shoot Francois coming in as the zombie to buy a coffee. There’s no dialogue in this picture, and the Donut store improvises the line, “Coffee? Coffee?” I guess I can edit that part out later.

On the way back to the place where I’m staying Jason and I notice that the homeless guy Nas.a’s shopping carts have disappeared from where we did the shoot yesterday on Silverlake Blvd. Either he moved on or the city swept them away. I guess that’s why they’re called transients.

Today is the day I dreaded and hoped for: the first day of shooting. I had an apocalyptic dream last night in which we were shooting the film in China. We were supposed to catch a train to Shanghai but Laszlo got distracted by an androgynous prostitute who was gripping two large, home-made grenades, one in each hand. Everyone was clutching some sort of crude weapon or grenade as the world had descended into anarchy. Then a huge explosion blew up an enormous building in the background and big slabs of concrete came hurtling down on everybody. So that’s where my subconscious is at.

This morning we shoot our first scene of the production, with Francois in homeless person attire. The location is beside a freeway entrance on Silverlake Blvd where a homeless person has made his home, a collection of eight or ten shopping carts in a line right beside the busy street. I have driven by the site quite a few times since I’ve been here and it struck me how it looks like a pre-made movie set. Sometimes the homeless black man is guarding his carts, so we must be sensitive to his domain. He lives nearby under the freeway overpass.

We do a couple of takes of Francois from across the street as he gleans the carts before the homeless man shows up. His name is Nas.a, and as it turns out he’s very nice and he says if we pay him he’ll be in the movie, so we do and he is. This is good, since the movie is really about the homeless, even if it is a porno. He tells me his life story, how he got colon cancer in his home state of Oklahoma and was forced to come to LA to get proper treatment, but he couldn’t afford to go back so he ended up homeless. Displaying his two remaining teeth, he says he’s glad it was colon cancer (it’s in remission) and not prostate cancer because that means he can still fuck. He wears an RCA patch cord as a belt with broken camouflage binoculars slung around his hip. We also shoot at the Ms. Donut shop in Echo Park, but that’s another story.

The rest of the day is chaotic at best, but not too abnormally so for the first day of a shoot. It seems that we’ve lost the Angeles Crest location because now they say we would have had to have a marshal monitoring the shoot, which would add another big expense plus the porn aspect might not go over too well with the law. I’m relieved as I had a bad feeling about the location, but now we have to find a new one pronto. Trying to push that reality out of my mind, we forge ahead with Joe Castro’s F/X look for the zombie. He’s playing around with a hand-drawn look, but I have to insist on the air-brushing that we experimented with at Peres Projects, so I make Joe drive all the way back to Van Nuys to get his air-brushing gun and paints.

Delays, delays. Meanwhile Laszlo is looking for one little screw, an adaptor to put his 35mm still Canon SLR camera, which we are shooting most of the movie with, on a big movie tripod. He tries three different stores but no one has it. So we’re an hour and a half late to our afternoon location, which is the same homeless enclave we shot in the morning, but this time with Francois in zombie make-up. Our old friend Nas.a is still there, of course – it’s his home – and as we paid him handsomely earlier, he agrees to perform again. Francois looks great as the alien zombie, and even better when we put in the big gruesome canine teeth smeared with blood that Joe has created from a cast of Francois’ teeth.

Now we are really late for our next location, a graveyard way out in Pasadena. It’s the only bone orchard we could find that we could find for a reasonable rate. By the time we get out there it’s 7pm and we only have about an hour and a quarter of magic hour before it gets too dark to shoot. As opposed to the other night when we visited the location, when the place was empty, this time the cemetery seems to be full of cars. It appears there has just been a funeral, and one of the people who works there isn’t so pleased when Francois jumps out of the car in the parking lot looking like a blood-thirsty zombie. We have to quickly shuttle him out of the area before someone freaks out.

Our cube truck and generator are already there, as is Johnny Law, our dreamboat art director Steve Hall’s dreamboat assistant. He quickly whips us up a fresh grave, coincidentally under a stone with his own name, Law, engraved on it! Lazslo shoots a bloodied Francois in his bloody white wife beater, bloody white trainers, and bloody white socks, and in his hot black wetsuit, walking across the graveyard to the fresh grave where he starts to dig. It really looks awesome, so I guess the first day of shooting wasn’t a total waste. I don’t hate filmmaking as much as I did yesterday.

While out in L.A. Rocco Giovanni took some time to talk to
www.gayinterviews.com and gave a great interview included his current
undead experience. Read more below (taken from GayStarInterviews.com) …

Rocco Giovanni is full of talent and ready to explode in a big way. Being in the business for less than a year, he is already making substantial waves and catching the eyes of some of the biggest names in the industry. Behind the exotic good looks and devilish grin there is a very talented and goal oriented guy with a lot to offer. Rocco was kind enough to grant me this interview the night before flying to L.A. for a shoot.

MATT: Hey Rocco! How are you?

ROCCO: I’m good. How are you?

MATT: I’m good. Thanks for calling.

ROCCO: No problem.

MATT: How was your class tonight?

ROCCO: Intense. I let them have it because I’m going to be gone for a while.

MATT: What kind of class was it?

ROCCO: It’s called Strike, but it’s kick-boxing based. It’s pretty rough.

MATT: You practice martial arts, don’t you?

ROCCO: Yep. Kravnaga is my main focus, which isn’t really a martial art. It’s the Israeli defense force’s hand-to-hand combat. So, it’s pretty much how to kill with your hands and get out of there, obviously. They developed it around 1920 and it’s still evolving into what it is, and now the NSA and FBI are trained with it.

MATT: You started just this year in porn, didn’t you?

ROCCO: Yes and no. I had done two videos with BG East in 2002. They weren’t anything major and I looked completely different. So, last year was the first major, major release that I did with Raging Stallion.

MATT: That was Ink Stain?

ROCCO: Yeah.

MATT: What has the last year been like for you?

ROCCO: It’s been different. People around here, in Ohio, once they found out treated me a little differently. But it really hasn’t affected me personally yet so far as the way that I treat everybody or anything like that. I thought the reviews were kind of funny when I read them, but other than that I got a lot more offers from photographers around here to model for them – legit modeling. Obviously working with Justin Monroe helped a lot with that. And, actually working with him… those are the pictures I sent to Raging Stallion and that’s how they picked me up.

MATT: You modeled for a number of years before you went into porn full time.

ROCCO: Yeah, the big one, like I said, was with Justin Monroe who released a book last year. It won a bunch of awards. He found me on Myspace then asked me to come out because he wanted to shoot someone with a lot of tattoos. I worked with him and got a six page spread in a German magazine, and I’m staying part of the week while I’m out there [Los Angeles]. He’s become a really good friend.

MATT: You really do have quite a few tattoos. Is it a tattoo obsession?

ROCCO: Ha! Well, they say the body is a temple. Why would I want a normal church when I could have a cathedral which is decorated. That’s kind of my spin on that. It started with just a normal teenage angsty psychosis that evolved. When I was eighteen I was able to get tattooed and I did. Now eleven years later and there’s forty-six of them.

MATT: Do you have any plans on quitting?

ROCCO: No, but I have a couple of appointments lined up.

MATT: I guess the analogy would be that even Michelangelo had a chance to paint the Sistine Chapel.

ROCCO: Exactly. I asked my tattoo artist what’s going to happen when I stop. She goes, “you’ll turn to drinking.” Eventually I’ll stop. There are places I don’t want tattooed, like I don’t want my neck tattooed, I don’t want my face tattooed. So, I’ll stop eventually. Until that point, there’s still appointments that have to be.

MATT: Something that is really interesting to me is your fight against cystic fibrosis.

ROCCO: I’m glad you brought that up. My best friend, who is an Emmy Award winning choreographer and who lives in Ohio, has four children. Two of them are living with cystic fibrosis, and I, over 2007, got to spend every weekend with them, so I really got to learn what it is that she as a parent has to go through, but also her kids. It really, really just hit a chord with me. The charities that I choose a lot of times has to resonate with them. And here was this woman who is an amazing choreographer, and amazing dance teacher, and her children have this condition which is fatal. It’s inevitable fatal. The medium age right now is thirty-five. When her first child was diagnosed with it the medium age was twelve. So, you know, you could potentially die at twelve. But, they’re living their lives. The son is an all-star athlete and he’s actually phenomenal. The daughter is also extremely athletic, an all-star athlete as well as an incredible ballet dancer and she’s only seven. To see that and just how much sacrifice goes into it from the parent’s standpoint and the children’s standpoint…. in Ohio the weather is really jacked up. There are days if you have any breathing condition they will tell you not to go outside because it will effect you with the ozone and everything. It really struck me. I realized there are a lot of other things I could probably worry about or I could donate my time and money to, but that one is not something anyone chooses. You can’t make the wrong choice and all of the sudden have cystic fibrosis. You can’t smoke and get cystic fibrosis, you can’t play out in the sun and get cystic fibrosis. It just happens. I learned that now they test for it prenatally because it’s genetic. Since Bill Clinton did the genome map they found the genes which facilitate developing cystic fibrosis. And the amount of people who give their children up for adoption after they find out that their child has cystic fibrosis… the sad thing about that is that the child probably won’t live past the age of three because in that setting they’re not going to get the care that is necessary. So, that’s really why I took that up and why it means so much to me. I actually donate 10% of every film, even though I’ve only done one, to cystic fibrosis research.

MATT: I’ll be honest. I don’t know a lot about cystic fibrosis. I know that it’s a respiratory disorder.

ROCCO: Partially, partially. It not only effects the lungs but it also effects the pancreas. They don’t produce the enzymes necessary to digest food so they don’t take in the amount of nutrients necessary for them to sustain living. At the age of seven her daughter has to consume upwards of 4,000 calories A DAY in order to survive, and every time they eat they have to take enzymes that assist them in digesting their food. The average male requires 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day to sustain everyday life, imagine this little girl, seven years old, having to eat 4,000 calories a day. On top of that, because it’s a respiratory condition – it does affect the lungs – they have to go through breathing treatments two to three times a day, so for approximately an hour a day they have to sit with a mask on and a protective vest which rattles their lungs to stop the mucus in their lungs… it hardens.

MATT: I commend you for doing this. I wish more people had that attitude and would contribute, whether is be cystic fibrosis, AIDS research, cancer research. I think health research and medical development could go a lot further.

ROCCO: I agree, but not everyone’s at that place in their life.

MATT: You were a psychology and sociology major in college. Why didn’t you pursue a career in one of those fields?

ROCCO: Yeah. I was a dancer first, so growing up I danced. It’s hard to make a career as a dancer, although, I was a boy and a classical dancer, which meant I would have had a job, I also new it wouldn’t last that long. And low and behold I turned eighteen and got injured which stopped that career. I originally just wanted to major in psychology but then I had to take sociology and I really liked how they went hand-in-hand. I was kind of an outcast anyway, so it was interesting to see the psychology of the sociology, if that makes any sense – looking at groups of people and why they act the way they do; cliques, even outcasts. If you look at a typical high school you have the jocks and you have the nerds and you have this, that and the other. So that’s what interested me in that. I didn’t stay in school for it because I didn’t want to stay in school for sixteen years before I would have a career. And then I went into fitness, which is what I do now, which, kind of combines all of those because I am able to use my skills in martial arts, anatomy, all of those, as well as psychology and sociology of individuals who are A: healthy, or B: unhealthy and are motivated to become healthy – why are they doing that, eating disorders and things of that nature. Working in fitness, that really tied it all together. Modeling and porn, that’s just something I’ve always wanted to do, even when I was young. I know that sounds weird. I am thankful that I got into it later as apposed to some eighteen year olds do, and they’re like, “oh, yay,” and they make bad decisions, I think are bad decisions, as apposed to waiting until they are almost thirty;I’m twenty-nine; where I can say I’ve already been through this, this and this. I can make a decision and I can say “no.” I can turn things down because I’ve learned that skill.

MATT: I’m glad you brought that up because you did start in porn later in life. I guess your age and wisdom, without making you sound old, because you’re not, has allowed you to make better decisions as to who you choose to work with or associate with.

ROCCO: Absolutely. That’s an industry where there’s a lot of stuff that goes on the is not necessarily positive. I am old enough to not succumb to any of that pressure. I see it, it’s around me. I choose not to do it, and because I’m older I get respect for that. People are like, “oh, OK, that’s cool, we dig that. Good for you. I wish I could do the same thing.” So, maybe I can be an inspiration to them. Who knows? But I definitely am glad I waited as long as I did. I didn’t really choose to wait. I tried, don’t get me wrong. I’ve received a lot of rejection for this, that or the other, especially because from ‘98 to about 2005 all you saw were cookie-cutter guys. I was never that. That’s why I got rejected. Everyone was muscly, blond and tan. I was like Gia… do you remember the model, Gia from the late seventies and early eighties? At the time all of the supermodels were like Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley. They were all blond and she had dark hair and dark eyes. She broke a mold. Not that I’m breaking a mold, but there are other molds I can be in.

MATT: As far as your background, you are half Chinese.

ROCCO: I am. Chinese and Scotch-Irish.

MATT: Is there something that you take away from both cultures that you feel makes you who you are?

ROCCO: I would say that because I am a halfbreed Chinese person… I know I shouldn’t say “halfbreed.” I know people are going to get offended.

MATT: Nah, the Cher fans will love it.

ROCCO: The genes that I took, you know, you think of an Asian person and they can cook and do math and martial arts and they can play the violin, you know, all of the stereotypes. I didn’t get the math gene, but I got the other three. I am a martial artist. I’ve actually studied upwards of five martial arts, and if you put a weapon in my hand I instinctively know how to use it. It’s the weirdest thing. I can cook and I’m very musical. I can’t play the violin, but I’m very musical and I think it helps with my dancing. From the Scotch-Irish side I got a bad temper and I was raised Catholic. I didn’t take the drinking gene because I can’t drink to save my life. Two drinks and I feel like I’m drunk. Heritage wise, when people ask me to identify myself I say that I’m Chinese. I don’t say that I’m white. I don’t say that I’m Scotch-Irish; because the culture is very rich. I don’t have a good relationship with my dad, but I have a good relationship with my heritage and the history of Taiwan, which is where my dad is from. His father left Taiwan in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek…during all of that. I took it upon myself to research that and learn about the history and religions of Chinese and Taiwan. Things like Chinese New Year and why you would wear red but you don’t write in red ink, stuff like that.

MATT: You are an avid reader. Is there a particular genre of books that you are drawn to?

ROCCO: Typically… right now is the exception. I’m getting ready for the Bruce LaBruce film (a zombie/horror/porn movie), so right now I’m reading four books about zombies, so my dreams are really interesting right now, haha. Typically, and any given time I’ll read a piece of fiction, I’ll read a book on some sort of spirituality. I’m very into religious studies and spirituality. I’ll usually read a biography and a book that is based in fitness. I could be about eating disorders or any number of things that are based in the fitness industry; food, nutrition, anything like that. Those are the four kinds of books that I will read. The fiction usually tends towards horror because I like that. And then the biographies are typically about women, strong women. I recently read a biography about Eva Peron, I read a biography about Neferatari and Neferatiti, and every time there’s a biography about Madonna I read one. It’s the same story. I don’t know why I keep reading it over and over again, but I do. Very few about men. I did read one about Chiang Kai-shek, but then I turned around and read one about Chairman Mao’s wife and the Communist regime in China. So, very strong women. They usually turn out political.

MATT: What is it about Madonna that fascinates you? Is it the strong female presence?

ROCCO: Personally, it’s because she doesn’t apologize. She’s not afraid to do what she wants and really doesn’t care if anyone accepts it or not. Then what’s funny is that several years later she may do something that people thought was a flop, but people will look back and say, “oh, that makes sense,” or all of the sudden the music sounds like that two years later but it just didn’t work out when she did it. She struggled… especially this day and age when you can go on American Idol and get a record deal. I mean, she was nobody, and she started out as a dancer as well, which I can relate too, and a contemporary and classical dancer, which I REALLY can relate too. She was raised Catholic, I was raised Catholic. So there are a lot of parallels that I can definitely see there. She’s influenced by a lot of stuff, as am I and it just happens to be that a lot of times they’ll parallel each other; like she’s influenced by Asian culture, I’m influenced by Asian culture. She reads about religion and sites religion as being a driving force for her, whether it’s Catholicism or Hinduism or Judaism. And I get the same thing because I’m fascinated by world religion. She doesn’t like to get stuck in any one place and neither do I.

MATT: You mentioned the upcoming movie with Bruce LaBruce. How much about that movie can you tell me?

ROCCO: Well, there’s a website (www.lazombie.com). I think I can give you a lot of it. It’s about zombies and it’s a very extreme portrayal of zombies. Francois Sagat, who is the star of the film, is an alien zombie who goes through several different iconic scenes. Like, I get to be a surfer who dies and through the miracles of zombie sex comes back to life. So, I get to be a zombie for a minute. My chest is all open and I get to be gory, which I feel so horrible for whoever is doing the makeup because they’re going to have to figure out what to do with all these tattoos. There are some really big names in it. Matthew Rush is in it. Wolf Hudson is in it. Erik Rhodes is in it.

MATT: From what I have read and heard it sounds amazing. Is this going to be a hardcore porn?

ROCCO: An art film. I would say an art film. With all of his movies they are like that. They blur a line. I would say like Andy Warhol but darker and more perverted. So, yes and no. Some people will look at it as hardcore porn. Some people will look at it as an art film. It’s going to blur a line, especially since a lot of the interaction is with someone who is supposed to be dead. It’s not something you would necessarily see in the back room of your local video store.

MATT: Well there’s no sex like sex with the un-dead.

ROCCO: I guess not. It’s like they say, when does CPR become necrophilia?

MATT: What is something that something that people would be surprised to know about you?

ROCCO: What is something that…. uh, I don’t know. I used to be a Prince impersonator. I love Prince as much as Madonna actually. I was a little tall, actually.

MATT: How tall are you?

ROCCO: 5′ 10″ and he’s only 5′ 4″. And I had to wear heels, so I was even taller. I did it in the bar as part of a drag show. About once a month I would go in and do Prince. I even traveled with it a little bit, I mean around Ohio. Actually it’s funny, Chi Chi LaRue came to the bar that I worked at for their anniversary and her and I had a conversation for about two hours. She grew up in St. Paul and she was in that whole First Avenue when Prince was just making it big. She was in a scene of Purple Rain that got cut. So, it was quite interesting. Her and I sat and talked all about Prince. She remembers it too. The next year she came back and there’s a picture of her and I and the drag queen who was the host that I gave her the next year and a CD of a huge one hour mega mix of Prince music. I Twittered her not long ago and was like, “do you remember me?”, and she was like, “yeah, first time I met you was in Ohio.” So, it was kind of funny.

MATT: To have just done one movie with Raging Stallion and then to be cast in this Bruce LaBruce movie along side these other big names, you must be doing something right.

ROCCO: I’m really like a nobody. My first thing was with Ricky Sinz who has won every award imaginable, Raging Stallion man of the year, and I’m a nobody. The only way I got the role in the Bruce LaBruce movie is because he Twittered about it and I responded to him and that’s how that all took off. I can’t say that I’m playing my cards right, but there is something out there that is playing my cards for me and putting me where other people would really like to be.

MATT: To be in Ohio and to have only done one movie, that is significant.

ROCCO: I’m thankful. I’m really thankful. I’m grateful.

MATT: I think there is a lot to come for you.

ROCCO: I hope so, but if not, I love my day job. I love what I do. I love fitness and I love seeing people change, I love helping. And would still probably be doing it if I were to obtain porn star status. I would definitely work in fitness.

MATT: I heard some dogs barking in the background. Are those your dogs?

ROCCO: No, I hate dogs. They’re my neighbors.

MATT: I definitely won’t put that in the interview.

ROCCO: I was scared of dogs as a little kid and I think it turned into hatred as I got older. I don’t try to run them down in the street, but I still try to avoid them as much as possible. You can even put this in the interview. I don’t care.

MATT: I just don’t want people coming up to you on the street saying, “you’re that damn dog hater.”

ROCCO: Oh, I know. Someone will come up to me and throw paint on me or something. I didn’t say I skinned them. I just said I don’t like them.

MATT: If it’s a phobia, then it’s a phobia.

ROCCO: Right, I think that’s where it comes from. But now I’m bigger than most of them. They’re so needy. At least with a kid, after they are a certain age they go off and do their own thing. Dogs never do that. Cat’s go off and do their own thing. I’ve had snakes, they’re like the best pet ever. You feed them like once every other month. But dogs; they’re so needy, they bark, they smell. They’re man’s best friend… well, diamonds are a girls best friend and those are cooler and worth more. Everyone’s envious of you if you have diamonds. No one is envious of you if you have a stray dog.

MATT: Thank you so much for the interview.

ROCCO: Yeah, we’ll Twitter the hell out of it. People are going to be like, “dammit!”

MATT: Yeah, it’s going to be like Twitter spam.

ROCCO: Exactly. They’ll seal with it.

MATT: I know you have to pack for your trip to L.A. in the morning so I won’t hold you up any more. Thanks again.

ROCCO: Thanks Matt. Good night.