James Deen is such an eager interview that he spends almost five minutes thoughtfully answering a joke question. So, for the record, the practical difference between filmmakers Paul Schrader (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Affliction) and Robby D. (Asslicious, Whore it Up) is that Robby D. tends to be “a lot more hands on”.

The amiable actor, calling the Georgia Straight from San Francisco, adds: “They’re both great but very different.”

It might make the rest of us titter like overgrown school kids, but the 27-year-old performer obviously cares about adult cinema, and adult cinema has taken very good care of him. He’s their golden boy. But the big story here is that Deen (real name Bryan Matthew Sevilla) is promoting his debut in a mainstreamish film, The Canyons.

It’s a fascinating development for a few reasons, not least of all because Schrader is his director on the madly buzzed about psychosexual thriller. Going back to Taxi Driver (which he wrote) and early efforts like Hardcore, Schrader’s work is drenched in male guilt and shame, not to mention a reactionary sexual bias.

Yet here he is, on the possibly declining edge of a long career, making a $250 thousand digital feature with a damaged starlet (Lindsay Lohan) contractually obliged to get kinky with the biggest name in porn. How’s that for a mythic narrative arc? “That is definitely a very cool look at it,” Deen acknowledges, deadpanning that somebody should write that story, maybe a journalist. But he’s too classy to get caught up discussing the Last Temptation of Paul Schrader.

“Paul is an enigma. The one thing I can say for sure above everything else, and the one thing I know to be true, is that he’s a genius,” he says. In this case, there’s no question that Schrader has demonstrated a certain degree of genius in bringing attention to his movie. If The Canyons is a long way from his best work, it’s easily his most talked about, probably in 20 years.

In June, the film was tapped to open the Venice Film Festival, prompting Deen to send another thank-you email to his director. Says Deen: “He wrote back something along the lines of, ‘Hey, man, I was worried because of the 4,000 pornos you’ve been in. That’s a lot of bad acting. But you’re the one that got you the role. You’re the one that has the acting skill.’ It was a very flattering email, and it makes me very happy. I did my director proud. That feels better to me than any kind of mainstream thing; the satisfaction of a job well done and an ‘attaboy’ from Paul fucking Schrader.”

The brilliant part of all this is that Deen, having taken a few big-time meetings since shooting The Canyons (“It’s at least 10—if not more—times more disgusting and horrible than the adult-film industry,” he says of Hollywood), doesn’t really give a fluffer’s fuck if he ever makes a “real” picture again.

“I don’t mean to be arrogant, but I’m pretty successful at my other career,” he says, chuckling. “I’ve done alright for myself, so I don’t really have that hunger, that need to play the games and all that stuff that a lot of people do. In addition, I’m not trying to be a big Hollywood actor, you know? I did this movie because I love this movie. I love the concept; I love the story. I love the idea of working on a Bret Easton Ellis script, and I love playing that character.”

And if the multiplex never beckons again?

“I go back to my horrible life of having sex with beautiful women on a daily basis and doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was a child,” he answers. “Woe is me.”