The denouement of Drive sees Angela White fixed to a cross, her Rubenesque body suspended high above a sea of sweaty, writhing figures. It is an arresting image—one of many comprising this porn epic that, at 3 hours and 29 minutes, clocks in one minute shy of The Irishman. Unlike Scorsese’s decades-spanning crime saga, the film cleaned up at the Oscars (of porn), taking home Best Cinematography and Best Director for its helmer, Kayden Kross.
At 34, Kross is the greatest director in porn, having won AVN Director of the Year honors back-to-back. Her oeuvre is marked by its artistry and ambition, putting to bed the tired stereotype of porn filmmaking as a crude, unskilled enterprise. “I would like my content to continually improve so that it cannot be differentiated from Hollywood,” she tells me.
Her adult films are also known for their bold female protagonists—a recalibrating of porn’s traditionally male gaze. “In the past, it was men tricking women or coercing them to get to their end, which was a sex act. But now, the stories are changing,” she explains. “I love when it’s the woman who’s the predator. That is so much more fun for me. And if the woman is the predator, she’s interested in her own pleasure.”
As the creative force behind Deeper, a subsidiary of Vixen Media Group, Kross has been front-and-center during the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused the entire adult industry to halt production. She’s helped VMG launch an “Intimates” series, allowing quarantined stars to feature in premium at-home content, as well as a $250,000 relief fund for struggling XXX workers. “When the world changes overnight, we can also change overnight and meet it,” she says.
Kross’ journey to the top of the porn pyramid began in an unlikely place: a horse ranch. She was working as a trail guide in Sacramento when the ranch purchased a tiny pony for kids to ride. But the pony was not broke, and would buck every child right off. “Because I weighed, like, 80 pounds, I was the one that rode him,” she remembers. The two formed a bond, and when the miniature pony bucked a trainer off its back—fracturing the man’s pelvis—the ranch owners decided they’d send it to slaughter in exchange for $800.
“I was in tears,” she recalls, “and I had just turned 18 not even six weeks prior to that. I told my roommate the story, and she said, ‘Well, you should just go be a stripper and you’ll make all the money you need in a day.’ So I did that, made all the money I needed in a day, and got the pony. I made $850 my first day.”
Kayden Kross on set
HandoutInstead of making $7.25 an hour at the ranch, she remained at the strip club—Rick’s Showgirls in Rancho Cordova, California—and discovered she enjoyed performing. An adult agent found her there, signed her up, and two weeks later she was on a porn set.
But her first love has always been writing. During her years as a contract girl, she’d fly out to New York City every week to attend a writing workshop taught by the legendary Gordon Lish, and has since written columns for The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Nylon, and more. “I wanted to be a writer but people are more and more visually-driven and less and less interested in books, so there’s just not a lot for writers to do or places for them to go—and people are always trying to bring down the pay,” she says. “Plus, there’s stigma with my history in adult, so I didn’t know how I could get to a place where I could monetize writing.”
So she began writing adult features. The first came courtesy of her longtime partner, Manuel Ferrara, who came home one day and asked if she would help helm his next feature. That became Misha Cross Wide Open, one of the top-selling adult features for 2014. If that weren’t enough, it earned her the XBIZ Award for Director of the Year (porn’s Golden Globes, if you will). A few years later, Kross launched TrenchcoatX, a premium adult video site, along with the adult performer Stoya.
“And then I caught the [directing] bug,” she says. “I was sitting on all these ideas and no company would hire me to do them, so I made them with Trenchcoat. They caught the attention of Vixen Media Group.”
One of the things the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare is just how mainstream the adult industry is, with C-list celebs turning to the amateur camming site OnlyFans and Beyoncé name-checking a virtual strip club. Heck, many of the most prominent Republican politicians have ties to the industry, from Trump’s alleged extramarital dalliances with adult stars to Ted Cruz’s Twitter. It’s a far cry from a decade ago, when Evil Angel CEO John Stagliano stood trial on federal obscenity charges brought by the George W. Bush Justice Department.
“I don’t think Trump or Ted Cruz want to be known for that but then the logical step that follows is, when that party attacks it, some of the most prominent figures in their party are tied to it, so the hypocrisy is so out of control at that point,” offers Kross.
One of the most glaring examples of porn “dipping their toes in the waters of adult,” as Kross puts it, is the emergence of Maitland Ward. A former Hollywood actress with prominent roles in The Bold and the Beautiful, Boy Meets World, and White Chicks, the 43-year-old is the hottest star in the adult world, recently taking home three XBIZ Awards—including Best Actress and Best Sex Scene—for her work in Kross’ Drive. Kross describes Ward as her “muse,” and says she’ll “absolutely” be the lead of her next big feature, whenever she can film again.
“I’ve made a lot of progress with it. I’m filling up notepads with ideas,” Kross says of her next adult opus. “The big warehouse sequence in Drive lasting 90 minutes, where Angela [White] is going body-after-body, you can’t plan something like that anymore. But I’ve got a big idea and high hopes.”
And Ward couldn’t be more excited. “I’ve been asked if I’m worried that I won’t be able to create in mainstream again because I’ve done porn. It’s actually the opposite. I wouldn’t be able to go back, the way I wanted to, if I hadn’t met Kayden Kross,” she says. “I can envision a time with her, in the not-too-distant future, where there are no walls separating adult and mainstream art. And trust me, one day there will be an Oscar on her mantle standing proud in the sea of AVNs.”
