Jean Guilloré, known professionally as John B. Root, is a French director and producer of pornographic films, born on November 28, 1958.
Education and early career Jean Guilloré was born in Chambéry. Both his parents were teachers. He spent part of his childhood and teenage years in Cairo, Egypt, where his family had relocated after 1968.CUL.i, Libération, 21 November 2002 He returned to France in 1976, graduated in film studiesEntretien avec John B. Root à propos de "Montre-moi du rose" , culturopoing.com, 23 February 2009 and started working as a cameraman for the French national public television. On the side, he wrote children's literature. Several of his novels were successful in their own right during the 1980s and 1990s.
Pornography During his youth, he had developed a taste for pornography and considered himself a "voyeur". At 35, after several years of marriage, he had a "mid-life crisis". In 1994, as an experiment, he created an interactive pornographic CD-ROM, the first of its kind in France, which was bought and distributed by the French version of Penthouse and met an unexpected success.
He subsequently created his own production company with the aim of developing children's television programs. However, he was unable to find buyers for his projects and, to make ends meet, started creating new porn CD-ROMS. Since he had become relatively well known as a children's writer, he started using the alias "John B. Root". "B. Root" is a play on the French slang word biroute, meaning penis, while "John Root" is a literal translation in English of Jean Racine's name.Carré Rose : interview avec le réalisateur John B Root, eklecty-city.fr, 8 July 2017
For several years, he created a series of pornographic CD-ROMs, two of which won the award for best European CD-ROM at the Brussels International Festival of Eroticism.Jacques Zimmer (edited by), Le Cinéma X, La Musardine, Paris 2012, p. 456 In 1996, he directed for Canal+ his first feature film, Cyberix, which was the first interactive French porn fiction. The next year, he directed Sextet, a more classical feature, which cemented his reputation in the French porn industry. He soon became known for his unusually well-crafted scripts and imagery. His new career, however, caused his wife to divorce him.
He quickly developed in France a reputation as an "intellectual" porn director,Inkorrektes: John B. Root en dvd sur filmdeculte.com and his work was followed positively over the years by cultural magazines such as Les InrockuptiblesLes Hot d'or au coeur d'un X en crise, Les Inrockuptibles, 23 October 2009 and Cahiers du cinéma. He also attracted media attention by speaking out in favor of "quality porn" and insisting that adult films could be a legitimate art form.'There's no reason why a porn film can't also be a good film', The Guardian, 28 August 2002 In 1998, he wrote and open letter to the French Ministry of Culture in which he pleaded that porn should receive public funding like other forms of entertainment.Projection Privee. De B. Root à Trautmann., Libération, 21 January 1998 John B. Root is also the producer of the majority of his films. In the course of his career, he has worked with many notable French porn performers, including Liza Del Sierra, Lou Charmelle, Coralie Trinh Thi, Karen Lancaume, Ovidie or Angell Summers. His favorite male performer is Titof, whom he considers a close friend and who has played the leading man in many of his feature films.Ma rencontre avec Titof et sa carrière dans le X, johnbroot.com, 12 February 2014
One of the notable aspects of his work is his advocacy in favor of safe sex. He has always insisted that his performers use condoms, with the exception of those who are legitimate partners outside their work in porn. He has stated that one of his goals is to avoid sexism and misogyny in his films, by not depicting sexual situations that could be perceived as demeaning to women.#Toutsexplique: On a passé une heure chez John B.Root, 20 Minutes, 12 August 2016
He has also been one of the first French pornographers to use the Internet. In the early 2000s, he created the website explicite.com (later renamed and expanded as explicite-art.com) which was, in the early days of the Internet, one of the most important French porn sites. Over the years, he directed hundreds of videos for his website. For several years during the 2000s he concentrated on gonzo content, as he found the production of feature films to be too difficult and costly. In 2008, he started making scripted features again, directing one each year for Canal+. In 2005, he also started appearing as a performer, mostly in "POV" videos.Quoi ma bite ?, johnbroot.com, 28 February 2014 In 2009, he won the Hot d'or award for best French director.
During the 2010s, his business suffered from the rise of free Internet porn and he was forced to downsize his studio and work on much lower budgets than before.John B. Root, seigneur déchu du hard, Le Monde, 23 October 2015 He managed, however, to salvage his company and kept making films on a regular basis, while being pessimistic about the future of pornography as an art form.Carnets de Root, La Voix du X, 19 January 2016
He has also published in 1999 an autobiographical book, Porno blues,John B. Root trempe sa plume dans le cul… , Technikart, 5 February 2009 and in 2015 a semi-autobiographical novel, Le Pornographe et le gourou.B. Root raconte son « métier de gamin blessé » John B. Root raconte son « métier de gamin blessé », L'Obs, 13 September 2015
Feature films Director (Also producer unless otherwise specified) 1996 : Cyberix 1997 : Sextet 1998 : Concupiscence 1998 : 24 heures d'amour 1998 : Exhibitions 1999 1998 : Sex Dreamers 1999 : Le Principe de plaisir 2000 : XYZ 2000 : Elixir 2001 : French Beauty 2002 : Explicite 2002 : Ally 2002 : Xperiment 2002 : Une nuit au bordel (produced by Marc Dorcel) 2003 : Inkorrekt(e)s 2008 : Ludivine 2009 : Montre-moi du rose 2010 : Dis-moi que tu m'aimes 2012 : Mangez-moi ! 2013 : Gonzo, mode d'emploi 2014 : Des filles libres 2015 : EquinoXe 2016 : Des filles et du X 2017 : Solstix 2017 : Le Salon de massage (produced by Jacquie et Michel) 2017 : La Partouze secrète (produced by Jacquie et Michel) 2018 : Paris Sex affaires (produced by Private)
Producer only 2001 : Destroy Sex, directed by Patrick David 2001 : Orgasmus, directed by Loulou 2002 : Orgasmus 2, directed by Loulou 2003 : Ti'Touch - Passage à l'acte, directed by Titof 2008 : Ti'Touch 2, directed by Titof
Literature As Jean Guilloré For children Le Voyage de Nicolas, Flammarion, 1985 Ghostbusters : Au centre de la terre, GP, 1987 Ghostbusters : Belfry a disparu, GP, 1987 Ghostbusters : L'Étoile et la couronne, GP, 1987 Ghostbusters : Les Fantômes et le magicien, GP, 1987 Tom et les dauphins, Je bouquine, Bayard, 1989 Les Fugitifs, Je bouquine, Bayard, 1991 Peur bleue en mer rouge, Rageot, 1991 Les yeux d'Antoine, Je bouquine, Bayard, 1993 Le Fétiche de jade, Rageot, 1993 Perdue sur Mayabora, J'aime lire, Bayard, 1994 Mon copain bizarre, Bayard, 1995 À la recherche de Frankie, Bayard, 1995 For older readers , Albin Michel, 1993
As John B. Root Porno blues : La belle et édifiante histoire d'un réalisateur de films X, La Musardine, 1999 Le Pornographe et le gourou, Éditions Blanche, 2015
Awards 2008 : European X Award for best director at the Brussels International Festival of Eroticism (Ludivine)X Stars ' Ludivine ' de John B Root : 3 Awards à Bruxelles , 19 février 2008 2008 : European X Award for best screenplay at the Brussels International Festival of Eroticism (Ludivine) 2009 : Hot d'or Award for best director (Montre-moi du rose)
References
External links
(Pornographic) Blog