Interview: Director Paul Thomas
Interview by Corva Siouan
Throughout a porn career that has lasted over 35 years, Paul Thomas has racked up more than 600 titles as a performer and over 325 as a director. The word “legend” is used often when describing him and rightly so. Last year Thomas left Vivid Entertainment after almost 25 years of directing for them exclusively, and last July he signed a six-picture deal with Larry Flynt’s LFP Video. Thomas moves into a new and different phase of his career at age 63.
Born Philip Toubus on April 17, 1947 in Winnetka, IL, Toubus found mainstream acting success on Broadway with a starring role in Hair and played Peter in the 1973 film of Jesus Christ Superstar. He signed with the William Morris Agency, moved to Hollywood, and landed roles in TV shows such as “Mannix” and “Police Story.”
Frustrated with competition and impatient for success, Toubus grew disenchanted with mainstream Hollywood. While in San Francisco performing in a musical, he met the famous Mitchell Brothers (“Behind the Green Door”) in 1974. It was the height of porno chic and Toubus found the adult industry appealing, so he began appearing in film loops for the Mitchell Brothers. In 1976 he did his first XXX feature, “The Autobiography of a Flea,” which was based on an 1887 erotic novel. Through the ’70s and ’80s, Toubus was one of the perennial porn studs. He mainly used the name Paul Thomas (aka PT), but aliases included Grady Sutton, Russell Ellison, Phil Tobias, and Paul Tanner. Thomas mostly stopped performing after he began directing in the mid-’80s, although he has appeared in non-sex roles.
Thomas is the most award-winning director in the industry, with spots in the AVN, XRCO, and Legends of Erotica Halls of Fame as well as countless trophies for his individual works. In the last decade alone, he’s won Best Director and Best Film at AVN five times each. Thomas’ mainstream notoriety includes the Showtime series “Deeper Throat,” which documented the struggles he and Vivid had with remaking “Deep Throat” as 2008’s XXX murder mystery “Throat: A Cautionary Tale.”
One of Thomas’s recent films is “The Twilight Zone Parody,” released this past August by Paul Thomas Presents and Hustler. We spoke with him about his past, his present, and his future.
“The Twilight Zone Parody” takes a different approach to parody from most, which are simply copying plots from the original.
This actually was based on a “Twilight Zone” episode called “Monsters on Maple Street,” but instead of swingers moving into the neighborhood they were aliens. It is a different approach… I don’t like to be silly. I don’t think silly makes good pornography, I don’t think silly makes good eroticism, and I didn’t want to have to copy characters. I copied a style and I copied a tone and an era, even, but I wanted to have to copy as little as possible. My heart’s not in the parodies, what can I tell you. If it’s successful I’ll do another “Twilight Zone.”