LOS ANGELES — Holly Randall Productions has officially premiered its genre-defying featurette “Broken Butterfly: The Perfect Shade of Blu,” directed and co-written by Jeffrey Jeff Hart, and starring Jewelz Blu.
“Broken Butterfly” follows on the success of 2024 XBIZ Featurette of the Year “Hopeless,” the previous team-up between producer Randall and longtime creative collaborator Hart.
The erotic psychological thriller was written specifically for Blu as an acting showcase, and co-stars an ensemble of noted industry acting talent including Charlotte Sins, Codey Steele, Lumi Ray, Casey Calvert, Lexi Luna and Seth Gamble.
An invitation-only premiere was held over the weekend following an elaborate viral marketing campaign involving mysterious videos and a custom Twitch stream.
The campaign mirrored the feature’s plot by blurring fiction and reality. Hart has asked the press not to reveal plot specifics, but according to Blu, the psychological thriller explores identity and memory in a way that should please fans of ambiguous, surreal films like “Black Swan,” cult anime “Perfect Blue,” “Lost Highway” and “Memento.”
“I would describe it as having some similar elements to those movies,” Blu tells XBIZ. “I play myself, and under one interpretation you may think my character is having a psychotic break. I start a new job, I change my hair color, but parts of my old self keep popping up everywhere around me. That’s the mystery throughout, with a meaningful sex scene and a final twist that I won’t spoil.”
Hart and co-writer Kyle McQueen’s script for “Broken Butterfly” challenged the popular performer, who is noted for her gonzo prowess and colorful streaming authenticity.
“The script definitely put my acting to the ultimate test,” Blu notes. “I was doing a lot of method acting, although I have no professional training at all.”
She singles out two of the most intense moments for her character, Juliet.
“I cried real tears,” Blu reveals. “I got myself into this headspace so I could give a real performance, and that was crazy and very surreal for me. The script called for Juliet to have a mental breakdown and I told Jeff, ‘Okay, you know what? I’m going to cry for real. I don’t know how, but I’m going to fucking do it.’”
Blu says she feels proud of having pushed herself to her limits with the role.
“The crying on camera was a very cathartic experience for me,” she says. “Now I definitely want to do more things that involve acting, to continue challenging myself.”
Hart tells XBIZ that he was always confident in Blu’s ability to do justice to the character he and McQueen wrote for her.
“Me and Kyle have been very close for probably 15 years, writing and editing together,” Hart explains. “Earlier this year, he sent me this treatment idea. I was at a hotel for awards season, having breakfast with Holly, who had produced ‘Hopeless.’ When I read it, I was like, ‘Gosh, this is fucking crazy, don’t know how we’re going to pull it off.’ But within a week, we started prepping it.”
Hart had previously enjoyed working with Blu, and had come to appreciate the blue-haired model’s distinctive presence.
“Once you are closer with people, one-on-one, you get a feel for their vulnerabilities, strengths and weaknesses,” recalls Hart. “One thing I noticed with Jules was that she took direction very well. I would give her feedback, and she would instantly switch and give me what I was asking for, which is really hard to do for most actors, not only in adult.”
Hart admits that what the script was asking of Blu was “absolutely insane” but says he was adamant that she was the only one who could make it a reality.
“If Jules had said no, the project would not have happened,” he attests.
Hart set up a four-way call with Blu, Randall and McQueen and launched into a 30-minute pitch.
Blu’s answer: “I fucking love it. I’m fucking in!”
“Holly Randall Productions isn’t a giant porn company,” Hart notes. “This featurette is self-funded, similar to ‘Hopeless.’ Everyone did this as a passion project. The crew got paid, and then talent had an option to either get their normal rates or a percentage of profit share. So some of the talent in this film, including Jewelz, have a cut of the profits, which I think is awesome.”
For the next seven months, Hart developed the idea, touching base with Blu every couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Steele, Calvert and Ray came on board, all veterans of the award-winning “Hopeless.”
“These are some of the strongest performers in the industry and I love all of them,” declares Hart. “Casey was a shoo-in for the role of Juliet’s therapist, and Lumi’s role — as a therapist in training, subbing for Calvert’s character — originally didn’t exist, but I knew that I needed two things. One, I needed Lumi to be in the movie. And two, there was a point in the movie where we needed a very specific story beat that I knew she would be the one to deliver. I worked back and forth with Lumi to create what her monologue was and the result is the one key scene that grounds this story.”
For that scene, Hart marvels, Ray had “no crutches.”
“Nothing, no one to work off of,” he adds. “It’s just her and the lens — and the results will astonish everyone.”
For the story’s most slippery character, a sexually adventurous co-worker who slips in and out of Juliet’s identities and realities, Sins was the right choice, Hart says.
“Like with Codey being Juliet's partner, I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing that role but Charlotte,” he recalls. “She is a Spiegler girl and the only cast member with an agent, so it obviously took a little bit of convincing because, although she’s central to the whole story, this was not a big role with a big payday.”
Sins delivers one of the most memorable performances in the film, effortlessly conveying the mundane reality of Juliet’s office life, then becoming an alluring and menacing succubus in the movie’s more surreal moments, including the sex scenes.
Hart conceived one key sex scene as a cinematic tour de force, which required elaborate behind-the-scenes choreography by Blu, Sins and Steele in order to pull off the complicated shot in one take. At the premiere, Hart screened a BTS clip disclosing the visual trickery necessary to achieve the desired result, to the amazement and delight of the cast, crew and audience.
Producer Randall tells XBIZ, “What Jeff accomplished with this film, on a shoestring budget while taking on the bulk of the responsibilities, is truly impressive. His ambition, work ethic and undeniable talent never fail to amaze me. I am incredibly proud of both him and this project.
“I don’t think anyone is prepared for the ride we have in store for them with ‘Broken Butterfly,’” she adds.
Hart thinks that viewers will find “Broken Butterfly” a welcome alternative to the usual porn paradigm of “five minutes of story, 40 minutes of sex.” The title includes only one full, 40-minute sex scene — a threesome — alongside 40 minutes of pure plot featuring occasional, plot-justified shorter sex sequences.
“It all comes down to story,” Hart observes. “Especially nowadays, with so much content through sites, Instagram feeds, Twitter feeds, TikToks... Not that it’s not good content, but there’s just so much of it that it’s like, ‘How do you get people to care?’
“I still think people care about the story,” he concludes. “They want to believe in the characters, they want to feel like they’re a part of it. With ‘Broken Butterfly,’ we did exactly that.”
To watch “Broken Butterfly,” visit HollyRandall.com.
