On The Set:  The Goldenrod Resort 2: Singles Weekend

It’s time to return to our dream getaway destination, the beautiful Goldenrod Boutique Resort! This time around it’s Singles Weekend! In the year since we met Dennis (Derek Kage) & Tyler (Trevor Harris) at the resort, they’ve built some momentum and now the place is swimming with sexy singles. Our story this time around features Sleazy Rider (Ryder Owens), Jason (Jayden Marcos) and Owen (Oliver Marks) looking for lust in all the right places.

Hey! I’m Jeremy Babcock, Writer & Director of this sexy sequel to 2023’s The Goldenrod Resort. In anticipation for the release of this awesome new 3-part Feature, I wanted to pull back the curtain and share some stories and images from our week on set.  

The Location

This shoot location is truly one of the most vibrant and unique places we’ve gotten to make a film, so I immediately wanted to try something different for these. Telling a multi-part story centered on the location meant that we could really lean in to using the spaces without trying to make each day look like a different place (which is the norm for a production in the same place over a few days). This location popped up shortly after I’d watched the White Lotus, and I really loved the idea of following guests and staff around a ‘resort-type’ place. So many unique story dynamics to play with, and this idea of a vacation location means people dropping their guard and letting loose!

The original film with Nico, Kyle, Derek, and Trevor had a smaller cast, so I leaned more into kind of an origin story for the location. Getting started, but setting up what I hoped we could make in the future. Luckily, the first films did well enough that we were able to return to the same location for the sequel!  Singles Weekend builds off of the characters we met in the original, but focuses this time more on the guests. I love the idea of all these horny guys coming together with full intentions of hooking up. Then with guests like Jayden, Ryder, and Oliver, it’s a dream scenario of beautiful guys everyone would wish to meet at a place like this!

The Goldenrod Resort films are really unique in the scope of what we usually do for a “Films” type shoot. This was a really unique case where the owner of the property actually reached out to us, asking if we’d like to shoot there. We rarely travel outside of the San Diego area for a shoot, so this was a different level of production for us completely. This is the first time I can recall where we packed up the whole crew to stay together and shoot together for a week. That gave both of these films kind of a ‘Summer Camp’ feel for us, even after the cameras were off. The cast and crew got to hang out together around Palm Springs in the evenings, and relax in the hot tub and patio. Really fun combination of work and play!

Shoot Challenges

After all the planning, it was finally time to shoot! One of my major goals for the sequel was to find new ways to use the space to make it feel even bigger than the first series. I wanted to see new rooms and new spaces to continue to make our mini-resort feel bigger and bigger.  

To build even more on this, I wanted additional guests. One of the most challenging pieces of this shoot was bringing in extras for a big pool party scene. What’s a resort without guests, right?  So I needed one big piece where you get to see a bunch of people together having fun before we break apart into smaller stories.  We were able to bring in some extras (you’ll see Kam Stone making an appearance!), and I think we managed to get 8 or 9 people layered into the montage to show our dream of what the resort could look like in the busy moments. This was never meant to be a place with 100 guests, but I wanted to build the idea of knowing other guests are around that you’re just not seeing as often as the stories peel off. This was easily the most challenging piece of this entire production, but so cool to bring that level of life to the content! Not to mention the EXTRA challenge of having a pool party around a pool that was so cold nobody would swim in the water. If you look hard, you’ll see floaters and feet, but I don’t think anybody ever actually took a full plunge.  

Another unexpected hiccup was crashing the drone on Day 1. We had epic plans of getting new drone footage of the area and the really fun pool and park shots… and then on our very FIRST park montage, the drone got a mind of it’s own and bombed into a tree… You’ll see a few cool shots of Jayden and Ryder playing frisbee that came from the drone, but that’s all she wrote for that one. Luckily we were still able to grab some action shots and get it pieced together – just not as many fresh drone shots as we planned.

Third big challenge of this sequel compared to the first film was weather. First time around we got lucky that it wasn’t TOO hot for our cameras to operate outside. This time around… too cold! An unfortunately rainy and windy weekend in Palm Springs forced a lot of improvising and quick thinking. We had to adjust major portions of all 3 films to accommodate very shifty weather conditions. Our 4-way finale was planned to be outside, but had to move inside when the weather was not fun for naked bodies. Also the general vibe of guys hanging out at the resort naked took a back seat to not having models hate me forever.  🙂 

Special Moments

I like to approach all of these films as a series of really fun moments to be excited about, and each of these 3 films is packed with them! Let’s take them one at a time.

Episode 1.  We started with the sex. Jayden and Ryder is a pairing to be excited about, just by itself, but the sex ended up so hot!  We started it up with a steamy sesh in the shower (cause I love a shower moment), then we got a really hot flip-fuck. These two are both so great to work with, and the chemistry was as sexy as it was fun.  As much laughing as moaning. After the sex we set up our group yoga session. Such a random thing to do, but felt like a nice way to grab some sexy shots with a group, and do something we’d never done. Then… the pool party. Mentioned above how wild it was to juggle that many people, but really happy with the energy it brings to the film. Our park montage with Ryder and Jayden was another fun action moment for the film, too.  Finally, one of the BEST parts of this day was Ryder’s character. I love working with Ryder, and really wanted to let him have fun with this one. Writing him as a tacky cam-bro was a blast. He embraced it fully, and I think you’ll love “Sleazy Ryder.” This is a whole new side of Ryder and he had us rolling with laughter on set.  

Episode 2.  After the PACKED first day, I wanted to shift gears and go sexy and intimate for the second scene. This episode was a unique first for me, attempting to tell a story while also giving the viewers a sexy massage moment.  Huge challenge to mix the two dynamics together, but it came together beautifully. It was really fun to combine story dialogue with sexy moments like this. You really get to watch the chemistry build in real time as the characters slowly drop their guards and build a connection.  It really makes the eventual sex so intense!

Another fun part of this film was the bonus BJ. I think this was the second time I’d tried to write an additional sexy moment into a film beyond the main sex (the first time was “Birthday Sex”). I wanted to continue the story for Derek and Trevor’s characters, and we got to squeeze in a sneaky bonus BJ into the film. A fun added piece that we wouldn’t get to do on a normal scene.  

Fun fact about this one. It’s possibly only time beyond “Breaking Frontiers” that we’ve been able to have five characters with story & dialogue in a scene. Pushing as hard as we could to make this film feel really full and dynamic!

Episode 3.  Of all the fun firsts and ambitious pieces in “Singles Weekend,” this film features the biggest.  A very rare 4-way, and the first to appear in a Films-style release from us! What better way to build off the 3-way in the original, than to level up and add a 4th? The weather forced us inside, but WOW this turned out hot. All 4 guys really gave it all they had, and it’s just so hot anywhere you look.  We ran 3 cameras on this one just to try to capture every sexy angle we could. Really excited for everyone to see this one.  

The fun challenge of any final film for a series is tying up the stories, and this one really came together so nice. I wanted to make the 2nd Goldenrod Resort connect with the characters even more than the first, so we put a lot of effort into the missed-connection romance of Jayden and Oliver, along with the continuing lust between Derek and Trevor’s characters. These two stories overlap in a really fun way that ties a nice bow on all of the stories.  

The Future

Who knows? I absolutely love this idea of a sex-positive resort, and would love to keep telling stories like this. Same location, or maybe even a spin-off? We’ll see!  

Both the original Goldenrod Resort and this sequel are truly a showcase of the amazing talents of the people behind the scenes. Director of Photography Conrad Parker has done such an amazing job on both of these films making this beautiful location come to life, and making all of these models look so sexy both inside and outside of the resort. Along with Big Mike on the cameras, these two deserve all the credit in the world for making these films so insanely beautiful. And an additional shoutout to Leo Sunday for capturing amazing audio in this wildly loud location & Cruella DeMille for the wonderful video editing. This team was such a treat to work with on both films, and deserve so much credit for how great these turned out.

An additional THANK YOU to Jayden Marcos, Ryder Owens, Derek Kage, Oliver Marks and Trevor Harris. These guys put so much work into bringing these characters alive and making these films everything I could have dreamed of. There’s so much talent in this group, I could not be more thankful of everything they did on these films!

Now Go Watch!

You can see The Goldenrod Resort 1: Special Edition in its entirety now on ASGmax.com.  We released the first 3 Episodes back-to-back as a special release.

The Goldenrod Resort 2: Singles Weekend is coming in 3 parts.  Episode 1 is streaming 11/16/24, Episode 2 airs 12/07/24, and we conclude with Episode 3 in time for the Holidays on 12/28/24.