The adult film business is unique in that it has usually focused on women as the figureheads and main stars, and therefore often relegated men to the background.

Over the last years, I’ve spoken to many female adult actors – from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and it’s been interesting to see how their memories, experiences, and lives were affected as the sex film business changed. 

But I also wanted to hear from someone on the other side of the equation – and find out what it was like to be a male in the business, perhaps a partner of a major sex film star, or someone who was a performer, director, or agent in the business.

Bud Lee is unique in that he has been – and still is – all of these things and more. And what’s remarkable about his life is that it mirrors the history of the industry itself: consider this – after meeting and marrying Hyapatia Lee, one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, they appeared in adult films together, before Bud became a director for adult industry mogul, Harry Mohney, directing large and expensive productions like ‘The Ribald Tales of Canterbury’ before working for Vivid Video, one of the biggest production companies of the era. Then Bud married Asia Carrera, one of the biggest names of the 1990s adult film industry, making films for Playboy and Adam and Eve, before becoming a talent agent. Today he’s still filming, for performers wanting content for their OnlyFans accounts – a far cry from the golden age, and a stark reflection of just how much the business has changed.

All this from someone who had no background in the sex film business before he met Hyapatia back in the 1970s – in fact he was a plumber who’d briefly considered divinity school and a theological life.

This podcast is 65 minutes long.

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Bud and Hyapatia Lee