This has been a bad year for friends of Sir Rodney. They keep dropping dead. This is what happens when you know too many old guys.

We just learned our friend, the famous director, producer, and porn pioneer Alan Shustak, better known by his pseudonym, Duck Dumont, died yesterday of a heart attack. He was 56. Most recently, Duck’s been running the production company he founded, Red Board (read review), which specializes in BDSM videos. They are best known for titles starring the beautiful and brutal Kym Wylde. Last year Duck showed us a delightful and hilarious video “Just Beat Me” in which Kym brutalizes half-dick moron John Wayne Bobbit (amazing that was his name before his first wife clipped his member - some things were just meant to be). Wylde, having starred and directed a successful series of titles for Red Board, promptly turned around and sued Dumont, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished, especially in the porn business.

Dumont started his career as an aspirant to mainstream movies, but quickly moved into porn and worked with all the prominent performers of his time, including John Holmes, Traci Lords, and Little Oral Annie, all of whom appear in his 1985 movie shot-on-honest-to-goodness-celluloid, “Passion Pit”. Check out Duck’s filmography and you’ll see his trademark humor in the titles: “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am”,”Debbie Does Fem Dom”, and “Old Guys and Dolls”. In all, he directed over 500 porn features, and 400 specialty BDSM titles. The guy created “reality porn” when he got ahold of lightweight video equipment in the 80’s, which is why Paul Andersen said Duck was his inspiration for the Burt Reynolds character in “Boogie Nights”. That’s the kind of guy Duck was; never able to make that great mainstream breakthrough, instead inspiring it out of someone else.

In 1995, using his given name, Alan Shustak did direct one mainstream movie, “Midnight Confessions”, a low budget “C” movie, that went direct to video. This erotic thriller about a radio psychiatrist is chock full of sex scenes, sans money shots (it’s strictly “R” rated) and not much else, proving you can take the boy out of porno, but you can’t take the porno out of the boy.

In the last ten years, Duck settled into the comfortable life of a porn mogul, running Red Board, unafraid and unashamed, a man of maturity, with no regrets to speak of. We really enjoyed hanging out with Alan at the trade shows. He had a ready smile, and always ready to share anecdotes from his storied career. Sir Rodney will miss him.
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tags: duck dumont, pornographers, gonzo porn

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