Coming Attractions 9780300159295

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Coming Attractions

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Corning Attractions The Making of an X-Rated Video

Robert J. Stoller, M.D., and I. S. Levine

Yale University Press New Haven and London

Copyright © 1993 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. The script of Stairway to Paradise is reproduced by permission of V.C. A. Pictures, Inc. Designed by Ken Botnick. Set in Times Roman type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printed in the United States of America

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stoller, Robert J. Coming attractions : the making of an x-rated video / Robert J. Stoller and I. S. Levine. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-05654-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-300-06661-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Pornography. 2. Erotic films. 3. Stairway to paradise (Motion picture) 4. Sex oriented businesses. 5. Sexual fantasies. I. Levine, I. S. (Ira S.), 1952- . II. Title. HQ471.S75 1993 363.4'7—dc20 92-31836 CIP

Contents

Co-Author's Note

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Part One Introductions 1

Introduction, Stoller

3

2

Introduction, Levine

7

Part Two Foreplay: To Do or Not to Do 3

First Prelim (as in Boxing): Bill

4

Second Prelim: Ira Looks Up

5

Semi: Ira Hustles

15 43

51

Part Three Tumescence 6

The Shooting Script: Stairway to Paradise

63

7

The Main Event: Here, without Doubt, Is What Really Happened, Maybe: Holliday 76

8

The Main Event: Here, without Doubt . . . : Ira

9

The Main Event: Here, without D o u b t . . . : Sharon

10

The Main Event: Here, without D o u b t . . . : "Jane Waters"

11

The Main Event: Here, without D o u b t . . . : Nina

12

The Main Event: Here, without D o u b t . . . : Randy

13

The Main Event: Here, without D o u b t . . . : Falco

91 102 119 139 169 177

Part Four

Detumescence

14

Porsche: Does Porn Exploit?

15

Truth and Consequences

16

Ira's Last Stanza

17

Conclusions: I, Ira Wraps

18

Conclusions: II, Why Not? References Index

vi / Contents

216 229

241 243

201

233 236

Co-Author's Note

On 6 September 1991, just a few weeks before this book would have been completed, Dr. Robert J. Stoller was killed in an automobile accident near his home in Pacific Palisades, California. It would be difficult to measure the extent to which his death impoverishes us all. The world of ideas has lost a wonderful scientist whose work carried on the finest intellectual tradition of Galileo, Darwin, and Freud. Like them, he allowed his fearless curiosity to lead him to those remote frontiers of inquiry more hospitable to the darkness of ignorance, dogma, and superstition than to the illumination of scientific fact. Like them, he met resistance from the defenders of the established order and was falsely accused of propagating subversive opinions for reasons of personal perversity. Modest and a bit shy by nature, Stoller never courted the controversy that surrounded his work or exploited it for the riches and fame that, given his eminence in the academic world, could so easily have been his. Indeed, he was troubled by the harsh response to some of his ideas, lamenting to me the "sadistic" reactions they inspired in some of his colleagues. It was purely out of his desire to understand the very least understood aspects of human behavior that he undertook his solitary trek into the interior of that vast Mato Grosso called sexuality. And it was wholly out of his own courage and integrity that he was moved to report back to us all, honestly, what he found there. It is from their unassuming truthfulness that his observations derive their power, which is already felt in the changing diagnostic criteria used to evaluate sexual disorders and the treatment given to those diagnosed under those criteria. As his pioneering works become the teaching texts of future generations of researchers and practitioners, so will all of society benefit from Stoller's insight. In the process of his explorations, he came to know and befriend a particularly isolated and marginalized community of sex-industry workers and other sexual nonconformists, to whom, among other irreplaceable things, he was a caring and compassionate physician. The scores of people he interviewed in his office for his studies were

vii

indeed people to him, not faceless experimental subjects whose only importance was evidentiary. Time and again, I saw him intervene gently but effectively to ease and even save the lives of the often-troubled individuals who came through office 37-375. To cite a single instance, readers of his book Pain and Passion (Stoller 199Ib) may recall the account of the vulnerable dominatrix "Tammy" and her harrowing, and ultimately successful, struggle with drug addiction. What, with typical selflessness, he did not bother to mention was his own role in getting Tammy admitted to in-patient treatment, despite her lack of funds or insurance, his daily visits to her on the ward throughout her hospitalization, and his continuing concern for her well-being long after she had ceased to be an active participant in his investigations. That was but one life he helped to preserve. I could name many others. For those so fortunate as to have enjoyed Stoller's friendship, the place in our hearts that we must now fill with his memory instead of his presence is vast. Of the kind of friend he was, you hold the proof in your hands. I had been going twice monthly for several years to offer my thoughts anonymously, with every expectation of continuing to do so indefinitely. When Stoller first suggested to me that we might collaborate as authors on this book, I was astonished. He felt it appropriate, he said, "because the ideas in it are as much yours as they are mine." Why, I wondered, would a man of his stature risk the dilution of his own credibility by sharing a dust jacket with so obscure and eccentric a figure as myself? With a characteristic laugh, he waved away my concerns for him, pointing out that those inclined to reject his methods and conclusions had already done so and that, as a tenured professor of psychiatry, there was not much they could do to him. His only apprehensions, predictably, centered around the possible ill effects I might suffer from the surrender of my confidentiality. Given such an inspirational example, I could hardly offer less. I realize that I could never duplicate the contributions Stoller would have gone on to make to this book had he lived. I have concluded it as best as I am able to do so alone, drawing for guidance upon the thoughts he so generously shared with me in the too-brief duration of our partnership. I hope the result honors his spirit as we honor his memory.

viii / Co-Author's Note

Acknowledgments

Dr. Stoller*s acknowledgments would undoubtedly have been many and are, alas, unknown to me. Mine are few, but certainly heartfelt. First on any list must be Sybil Stoller, who graciously permitted me to complete this book on my own. My warmest thanks go also to Flora Degan, Stoller's longtime secretary, whose efforts in helping me to organize our research were simply indispensable. I am equally indebted to Gladys Topkis, Stoller's editor at Yale University Press, whose vote of confidence in an untested co-author made the consummation of this ambitious project possible. A word of thanks is definitely due Russ Hampshire and V.C.A. Pictures, producers of Stairway to Paradise» for their help and support. Most especially, I offer my gratitude to the persons whose perceptions enliven these pages: Bill, Falco, Jane, Jim, Nina, Porsche, Randy, and Sharon. In the hard weeks after 6 September, they made time in their pressurized lives to complete the review and approval of their interview transcripts,, setting aside their doubts and differences to help give our friend a proper farewell. I. S. Levine Los Angeles, 1992

ix

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Part One Introductions

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I Introduction, Stoller

Ira Levine and I met about five years ago. He was one of a group of sadomasochists who met to teach me about S-M.1 He was then and has remained a master of the principles and techniques of S-M. His art is measured not only by those on whom it is delivered but also those who would watch. In S-M porn,2 he has worked as a performer, as one who prepares the performance off-camera, and as a scriptwriter. He has also occasionally worked for the X-rated Industry, writing scripts for straight porn. During the years that he has informed me regarding sadomasochism, he has continued to work for the porn people—always dependable, intelligent, ambivalently enthused, and attracted to the broader social and moral issues inherent in porn production. We enjoyed talking together. He found me a good listener despite a vast lack of information and enjoyed my naïveté (to give it a benign label), especially when he saw that notwithstanding prejudices, distastes, incomprehensions, and arrogances, I enjoyed the education. He, being articulate, was a wonderful teacher. He always, even when depressed, speaks rapidly, firmly, clearly, unhesitatingly: the words pour forth. His attention never drifts. He smiles and chuckles a lot, in two ways: to express goodnatured humor or bitter-wry-sarcastic-regretful humor. He has bipolar (manic depressive) disorder, never with psychosis, episodes always being related to life events. No matter how depressed, he speaks with the same energy, speed, and cleverness. His depressions—until his mother's death, since which time they have been of less frequency, intensity, and duration—were sometimes on the dangerous 1. I prefer that we use S-M throughout the text rather than S&M. The punctuation is critical; the ampersand implies that recreational sadism-and-masochism is rigidly bifurcated. In fact, most S-M practitioners play both roles, depending on the circumstances; and, in any case, elements of the other are present in the performance of either role. Let sadomasochism cover the whole range of ideas and behaviors under discussion.—ISL 2. I shall use porn to refer to the product of the X-rated Industry: photographs, movies, and videotapes of adult men and women performing, not simulating, erotic acts (Stoller 199Ib). 3

side of suicidal thoughts. They always remitted, however, with good news, not with the passage of time or with drugs. (Untoward reactions to drugs led to their discontinuance. Other psychiatrists or therapists treated him, not I.) This brief orientation, coupled with his introduction, which follows, leads to the start of our present story. But a further orientation—what brought me to work with Ira— should also help. In the late 1950s, I began studying the origins, dynamics, and pathology of gender identity, an interest that after some years expanded into a study of the erotic excitement of my gender-disordered informants and patients.3 Just as I had never thought of studying gender identity or, later, erotic excitement, I never expected to study erotic sadomasochism or porn. In each case, I entered the subject without conscious enthusiasm. If someone had asked why, for instance, the study of pornography had no appeal for me, I would have said that I found no questions inherent in it that were important and still to be answered; that its production was the work of villains; and that I had plenty to do without getting entangled in a new area of study. Then, moving into the search for the dynamics of perversions, I came on the idea that an essential feature in creating erotic excitement in perverse people—not just sadomasochists—was hostility, strongly or weakly experienced: the desire to harm their erotic object (whether human, part human, or nonhuman). Progressing from the perhaps easier task of observing the grossly aberrant to that of making sense of what people call "the normal," I found, as have other psychoanalysts from Freud on, that no line can be drawn between the abnormal and the normal. In fact, we can show that comparable dynamics, though different in intensity and appearance, are found in those who are manifestly (that is, "visibly") perverse and those who are manifestly not. Freed from the tyranny of "normal," you will find sadomasochistic themes throughout all kinds of erotic excitements (not to mention the rest of human behavior). With that idea in place (Stoller 1976, 1979), I was—at least intellectually—prepared to look more closely at sadomasochism. It took "only" nine orten more years to begin actually to talk with erotic (i.e., perverse) consensual sadomasochists. The study of pornography had an equally slow progress. In the early 1960s, a fetishistic cross-dressing informant (a transvestite) left with me several pieces of his pornography. At first uninterested, I filed them away, but I returned to them a few years later, when I had come to understand better some of the dynamics of gender identity, including cross-dressing. I realized that a person's pornography—which is, of course, his or her published favorite erotic daydream—is built from life experience. The pornography is, then, a biopsy ofthat person's psychic life or (to use a different metaphor) a drilling core that delivers to the investigator the person's history as it is deployed, or compacted, to produce erotic excitement (Stoller 1991b). Pornography has in that way become for me an efficient and surprising entrée into understanding erotics.4 Then came an idea. Since the hypothesis that hostility—the desire to harm: cruelty, anger, revenge, humiliation, and so forth—is central to erotic excitement (the grain of sand around which the pearl of excitement accretes) and is typically more so in males 3. Informants are those people who talk to me without therapeutic intent; they may come in only once or regularly for decades. Patients are people who are hurting and want my help. 4. I have occasionally, in treating a patient, used the pornography as an insight generator, by sitting with the patient who describes what he or she sees. More precisely, what he or she imagines, interprets, finds important and necessary in the mass of communications that make up any piece of pornography.

4 / Introduction, Stoller

than females, and since it was based on the too-few informants and patients with whom I work, I decided that pornography would be a good "statistical" test. If pornographers understand their audience, hundreds of millions of people worldwide, if they have the dynamics right, they are financially successful. If wrong, they are out of business. So, I thought, I should talk to the people in the porn business: straight or gay and lesbian, S-M, or other sexual preference. They—the producers, writers, directors, and performers—will have in their heads the evidence necessary to check out the hypothesis. So, six or so years ago, I began talking to these people and have continued to the present (Stoller 1991b). I knew that one had best enter the study of pornography with an open and gentle heart or be swamped by one's own morality (i.e., neurosis, hatred, and fear). Having by this time been introduced to the practice of ethnographic field work, I saw, as the network of porn informants grew and as their stories cross-checked and meshed, that I was into an urban ethnography of pornography, logistically easier to undertake than are the classical ethnographies (West Hollywood is closer than Papua New Guinea [Herdt and Stoller 1990]). Then, as the porn network grew, independently, I saw a second ethnography of sadomasochists form. Since a number of the people in these studies overlapped, I also had a superethnography going. Ira represents that present state, for he inhabits both disciplines enthusiastically. As you will see, he more than represents them; he has for years been at the center of his S-M community, and he is, with his intelligence and sense of responsibility, well located in the X-rated Industry. Having worked in the regular movie business and hoping still for a significant career in Hollywood, Ira is not a stranger to movie making. But familiarity with that business should not be necessary for the average reader of our story, for what counts is not to know how to use a camera but to know what it feels like to make a porn film. Can you rely on the accuracy of this report? For most readers, accuracy here is no more important than when reading a novel; you may read more for entertainment than for information. But those of us who want to be accurate, who search for generalizations derived from reliable observations, cannot afford false descriptions—a dreadful weakness in the "sciences of man" such as history, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis. For, in those disciplines, the original raw data are not available. The evidence is circumstantial, hearsay, no matter how convincingly presented. Our audience is at the mercy of the way we tell our story. The transcripts that follow exemplify this. Whether aware of it or not, the reader, despite our hyperboles, dramatizations, and jokes, has to trust us. All you have in hand is the printed word. You do not even know for sure if we exist, if we talked together, if these are the words we spoke. Without our inflections and body language, how can you know that the words truly convey our meanings? How, without listening, does one tell a sarcastic from an untwisted remark? I have edited the tapes from which the transcripts are derived. You cannot imagine, if you have not done such work, how differently spoken language reads from what it was when spoken. How can you know if Ira and I honored the truth? Which truth? Whose truth? To what extent does removing the "urns" and "ans" deplete a sentence?5 (You have, in fact, some protection, since the tapes are 5. Rules for reading: ". . ." signals a strong pause as one searches for the right words; parentheses enclose asides spoken at that moment; brackets are for words added later, in the process of writing the book, as well as for ellipses that represent dropped text. All comments and footnotes are RJS'S unless noted otherwise.

Introduction, Stoller / 5

preserved, and so it is possible for an outsider to judge the accuracy of our presentation. In addition, each transcript has been read and approved by the participant(s) it records. Each informant had the right to modify the transcripts; so some rough edges of speech and sharp-tongued gossip have been smoothed down, a planing that may give a slightly golden glow to the proceedings. I can brag, however, that these concerns with scrupulousness are rarely attended to elsewhere in psychoanalysis or ethnography. In fact, some philosophic systems say that to play the game this way obscures the greater Truths: when committed to Truth, one need not be truthful. (These issues are discussed further in Colby and Stoller 1988; and Herdt and Stoller 1990.) The reader will soon sense an idiosyncracy that must be weighed in here: a different informant would not only tell his tale differently but would have a different experience: work with different personnel, in a different setting, with different skills, a different time frame, different finances, a different script, different aesthetics, and in the hope of a different product. All porn films are not created equal. Of course, the same, in spades, can be said of all professional movie making; yet we believe one can draw useful conclusions about the process of porn movie making from the particular case. In my situation, where the overall goal is to understand erotic excitement, the particular case speaks to the general theory: the idea that an element of harm energizes erotics. Porn movies are like all other movies, even documentaries: they are fairy tales, with the same powerful trick that defeats our judgment: seeing is believing. It may be that that same illusionary experience, above all else, gives porn its power to excite and to aggravate. Ira's and my project here is to display the hard work—and the failure of the hard work—behind the balletic ease of these erotic performances. Still, if you want to put aside these academic concerns, you will nonetheless have in hand the report, not described in this way before, of an interesting phenomenon at work in our world.

6 / Introduction, Stolier

2 Introduction, Levine

Welcome to the world of X-rated video. Check your expectations, preconceptions, and received ideas at the door. For all its sensational visibility, the professional subculture you are about to enter remains largely mysterious and widely misunderstood. Regard with skepticism observations relayed from posts in the field, filtered as such observations are through the observers* partisanships, mine included. After fifteen years of close association with the sex industry, of which X-rated entertainment is the most public branch, I shall not presume objectivity. In the frustrating battles of my "real career" as a writer, this business has sheltered me in a succession of "day jobs." I've worked the phones for an escort (read "call girl") service; managed three different S-M clubs; rigged bondage for magazine layouts; and written, directed, and performed (in nonsex roles) in X-rated videos. It is logical that I protect those who have protected me. Believing that honesty best defends a good cause, however, I am not obligated to justify every aspect of the X-rated trade. As you shall see, I am a friend, not an apologist. Nonetheless, consider my remarks a corrective to the great body of opinion mustered on the other side. Though X-rated videos may at times appear haphazard, they do not just happen. They result from the labors of a unique group of men and women who both shape and are shaped by the process. As above, so below: the X-rated world has many structures that parallel those of the greater culture surrounding it. It has its own aesthetic, based on our culture's worship of the physical ideal, of youth, beauty, and bodily perfection. It has its own ethic, in which personal loyalty, professional dependability, and coolness under fire are the most admired virtues. It has its own etiquette, which emphasizes personal fastidiousness, an appropriate sense of physical intimacy, and respect for the differing preferences of others. X-rated society has its fads and fashions, celebrities and scandals, its inside jokes, its odd pruderies, even its own language.

7

These factors and others contribute to what you see on your home screen. That cassette you are watching documents a spontaneously created physical performance, more related to dance or gymnastics than to conventional film or theater. Elements of drama or comedy may be used to stage this performance, as music structures ballet. But the act of sexual intercourse is the real subject matter. Tawdry settings and hackneyed scripts aside, X-rated performances represent extraordinary displays of technical and sexual virtuosity. Consider the skills required of the men and women who make thèse videos. The men must be able to maintain erections for two hours at a time and then achieve orgasm on command. The women, on whom the camera pitilessly fixes, must have sex in unnatural, uncomfortable positions, also for hours, dividing their attention between the camera's demands and the needs of the men, for whose successful function they are in part held responsible. Somehow, the partners must create a bubble of privacy within which they connect despite the formidable distractions of lights, cameras, tape decks, and the crowd that operates the equipment. The skills of the crew are hardly less miraculous. The cinematographer must somehow follow the unscripted actions of the performers, keeping the focus precisely on what is called "the money shot"—the image that most completely conveys the sense of what is happening—without becoming obtrusive and stopping it from happening. The boom operator must keep a long, unwieldy microphone pole close enough to the action to record the performers' every whisper and moan without intruding into the camera frame. The video director must shoot in one day what a film director shoots in eighteen weeks. Even the scriptwriter must work within a challenging set of parameters delineating who will do what with whom, where, and when. These complex tasks are executed in a tense atmosphere of unregulated competition, constant financial insecurity, and unpredictable physical and legal risk. Are the rewards proportionate? Perhaps for the producers, though I suspect the profitability of the porn industry is generally overestimated. For the performers and technical personnel, a typical day is fifteen hours, and anyone, cast or crew member, who goes home with $500 is doing well. It's safe to say that no one in the X-rated trade enjoys a standard of living remotely approaching that of any contemporary of equal accomplishment in better-accepted art forms. Moreover, the peak earning years in the X-rated Industry are brief, and there are no pension plans or readily available second careers for superannuated porn people. Why, then, do they continue to crowd their way into what is already an overpopulated, undercapitalized, unstable market? Contrary to the inflammatory rhetoric of porn bashers, external coercion is not a significant factor in recruiting talent. Knowing the legal risks involved, producers maintain meticulously documented evidence of the players' voluntary participation in every project. And with an unending stream of aspiring performers passing through their portals, producers need not impress the reluctant into service. The choice to do porn is economically logical at the time it is made. For young people attempting to emancipate themselves—perhaps from troubled homes—the alternatives may seem few. Members of an overcrowded birth cohort, heirs to a shrinking economy, and products of a barely functioning public education system, otherwise ordinary eighteen-year-olds may face no brighter prospect than bleak subsistence in regimented, dead-end, minimum-wage jobs. But if those eighteen-year-olds happen to enjoy a certain degree of physical attractiveness and other gifts the X-rated Industry 8 / Introduction, Levine

needs at that moment, plus a willingness to use those attributes for sex entertainment, a quick, if not easy, dollar can be made. Lack of experience is not a problem. For performers, the first years are the best, when novelty value brings high day rates, and whatever glamour this way of life has to offer is lavished on new talent by ferociously competitive production companies. Moreover, the X-rated Industry is indulgent toward rebellious, eccentric, nonconformist personalities of the type that conventional employers shun. It is a sweet haven for talented misfits. To quote a female X-rated star who had managed a fast food outlet as a teenager, "At least in the pom business, they don't expect you to wear a paper hat every day." Or, for that matter, a blue pinstripe suit. Still, there remains the question of why the young people of porn do not choose the paper hat or the suit, as most others in their circumstances do. The answer lies in the treacherous territory of individual psychosexual orientation. For most people, the idea of performing sex acts in public for money is inconceivable. For the people who do it, it is perfectly logical. In chapter 15,1 speculate about why this might be so in ways that may be troubling to some of my close friends but that seem warranted from my observations as well as from the testimony of others in this book. If it is valid to speculate in this way, those who make their living in the porn business need not be too distressed, nor need those who crusade against it get much comfort. That the root of an adult individual's choices may lie in genetic programming or early history does not necessarily impeach the legitimacy of those choices. By modern standards, Mozart was an abused, exploited child. Still, he took joy in the music he made, first under duress and then freely. The knowledge of his distress then does not prevent us from enjoying his music now. The direst situations can be the raw material of artistic expression. There may or may not be laughter in heaven, but I would not expect to find much art there. Sex and art are impulses that are, in many instances, naturally brought together by the struggle of life. If you grant porn performers the dignity of having decided to express their individual natures in their peculiar ways— much as you have—you still retain the right to judge for yourself the wisdom of those decisions. Is porn bad for the people who do it? It certainly exposes them to profound physical risks, but so do firefighting, coal mining, and operating a video display terminal. It compels them to make harsh ethical compromises, but so can investment banking, atomic physics, and screen writing. It subjects them to the maraudings of heartless, greedy, and dishonest employers, but so does selling used cars and insurance. The organizing principle of a market economy is that people will do things for material compensation that they would not do otherwise. Any job is hard, even one you enjoy. That's what makes it a job. To do most jobs, we give up something within ourselves. A job is degrading if it makes you feel degraded. I felt degraded when, as a newspaper reporter, I routinely pretended to befriend people to get them to tell me things that would help my stories but damage their lives. Working as an X-rated picturernaker, I have felt creatively excited, occasionally sexually aroused, usually overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated—but rarely degraded. I do not feel degraded by creating images of people having sex (one of the better, more interesting things people do). Granted that I see the experience through male eyes and that I do not perform actual sex acts on camera, it is still not hard for me to imagine worse occupations. Is porn bad for society? Though its detractors claim that viewing porn leads to Introduction, Levin« / 9

antisocial behavior, well-made studies (e.g., Donnerstein and Malamuth 1987) have not demonstrated such a relationship. That some people who use pornography commit violent acts no more accounts for their behavior than it does for the behavior of millions of nonviolent people who also use it. It may or may not be significant that pornographytolerant countries such as Japan and Denmark enjoy comparatively low levels of social violence, including domestic violence. Demographically, most porn (a not inexpensive luxury) is consumed by married, middle-class, white males over thirty. If porn does stimulate violent impulses, you could expect a high concentration of typical porn consumers among the perpetrators of violent crimes. In fact, this category of person is sparsely represented in crime statistics to date (U.S. Department of Justice), except, perhaps, in the area of securities fraud. As Gore Vidal once said on the David Susskind show, "If pornography incites to anything, it is the solitary act of masturbation/' Nothing so benign could be said of political and religious forms of expression, the freedom of which our system vigorously defends, knowing that they have littered the history books with corpses. Even if porn does not encourage violence, some would argue, it is still a bad influence because it portrays sexuality as brutal, animalistic, and depraved, specifically in its treatment of women. I wonder if those who offer this argument have ever actually seen an X-rated video. Ordinary video porn (though not all pornography) could be better taken to task for depicting unrealistically Utopian sex. Sex is regularly shown as consensual, mutually pleasurable recreation, initiated mostly by women and divorced from context or consequences. X-rated videos are set in an erotic never-never land with everyone always in the mood, without headaches, and with simultaneous orgasms as common as handshakes. Even sadoerotic pornography, that favorite target of porn prohibitionists, mostly displays only mild aggression in clearly fantastic situations. Though S-M porn may not be to everyone's liking and may distress many viewers, in intensity, explicitness, and believability, the violence it portrays does not approach the levels seen in mainstream commercial cinema. The difference between real and depicted violence is as distinct as, and maybe more than, the difference between football and war. I would not make any bold claims for pornography as a vehicle for social reform; the medium is too primitive and limited for that. But it can be argued that it serves a somewhat liberating educational function in a puritanical culture. A basic message of most porn, though not all of its subgenres, is that sex can be an interesting, enjoyable, natural, human pastime. Should that be controversial news? Porn amounts to one group's ideas about sex. What are its known ill effects that we must sacrifice our whole society's freedom of speech to prevent the expression of those ideas? Of interest to women (even those strident in their hostility): cultures with the harshest laws governing erotic life are the most retrogressive in protecting women's rights. In Saudi Arabia, you can buy neither my work nor Andrea Dworkin's. I doubt that porn could ever put our way of life as much at risk as would a serious attempt to suppress it. It is my wish, though by no means my conviction, that a greater understanding of what pornography really is and how it is actually created will dispel some of the lurid misconceptions surrounding it. By focusing on a particular project, the production of a video called Stairway to Paradise, this book attempts to take the reader inside the

10 / Introduction, Levine

process by which pornography is made and to introduce, one by one, its creators, the living, breathing individuals behind the masks of our prejudices. My hope is to give my part-time occupation a human face. Pornography is the work not of devils but of human beings. Let debate on the subject be framed with this awareness.

Introduction, Levine / II

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Part Two Foreplay: To Do or Not to Do

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3 First Prelim (as in Boxing): Bill

Okay. Let's make porn. Before focusing on Ira, listen to another experienced hand in the porn business. A man in his forties, Bill has worked on dozens of porn films—movies in the earlier days and videos more recently. Like Ira, he is fired up by rebellion; protected by a mordant sense of humor; blessed with keen intelligence; amused by his own wry exhibitionism—of the mind, not the flesh; seduced into eternal wariness; energized by hyperbole; both consoled and battered by too much skill in avoiding long-lasting love; and on the razor's-edge of self-destructiveness: fuck it, fuck them, fuck you, fuck me. But he and Ira handle the politics of culture and of soul differently. Bill grandly denies caring about what happens to anyone in the universe except "the kids," the performers he avuncularly protects. Ira, contrariwise, is unendingly concerned with virtue and evil. They also express sharply different aesthetic sensibilities of how porn should look and feel: Bill likes junior-high horse-around; Ira would create erotic art if he were funded. Obviously, everyone making a porn film will inject his or her unique style into the material, despite the confines of the genre—the required number of lesbian, oral, orgy, and couples scenes (more or less blurred in the editing process). This sense we shall try to stir impressionistically by giving you the flavor of Bill's way before displaying, at greater length, Ira's. Bill (William Margold) has been my informant for seven years (Stoller 199Ib). Because he is at the center of the X-rated Industry—agent, scriptwriter, performer, director, producer, journalist, film reviewer, essayist, spokesman—he has let me look into his business as almost no one else could or would have. He does this not only because he is a natural enthusiast of life and likes being listened to but because, if I let him speak in my published writings, I add to the pile of "immortality" he is 15

Bill

RJS Bill

building up. He is an unending rebel who uses the making of porn as his field of honor for battling society. If pornography were ever fully accepted, he would transfer his work to some other venue of fantasy, such as journalism or history. He has few illusions, one of which is that he has no illusions. Social Science on the march: we ethnograph. We are, here, early on in our work together.—RJS Right now the XRCO [the X-Rated Critics Organization] is mounting its drive toward Valentine's Day—our second annual awards. The Heart-on Awards. We're going to have a lot of people from the Industry there. It shows the concern and affection that we have for the kids in the Industry. There are approximately two hundred titles in contention, like Orgasmic Orals, Lascivious Lesbian Group Girls, Kinky Copulation, all this stuff [categories] I made up, and now it's becoming generic. Nothing particularly racy. We're not allowed to show anything, because liquor is served. There will be some modest nudity, like the Heart-on Girl this year. We're going to have some singing, a little dancing, maybe even a little striptease show, and the awards will be given out. [. . .] Our awards, we like to believe, honor "the heat and the meat" of the Industry, the honest, true erotic awards. No pretensions, no aiming at legitimacy. We don't want to be exonerated by Hollywood; we want to heat Hollywood up. That's the whole thing. I created the organization, but it is an organization that has garnered some respect. It is a very honest one. You cannot buy any award in our organization, because we don't charge anything for nominations. That's why there are so many nominations. Because each critic, fifteen altogether, was allowed to nominate a minimum of two and a maximum of six in every category. I will not allow that again next year because I'm going crazy. I spent hours upon hours upon hours of my Christmas vacation [. . .] watching some of the worst hardcore1 I've ever seen in my life. But occasionally something comes along that excites me. Not so much turns me on as excites my mental processes to get me on the phone to call Holliday [friend, critic, "the historian of the X-rated Industry": he will arrive here in a while] to say, "Did you see this?" "Did you see that?" An example is Jail House Girls, which got two throwaway nominations but is essentially a legitimate movie from our industry with hard-core sex in it. It is extremely well made but passed over. Another example: one sex scene in ... Marilyn Chambers' Private Fantasies Number 4. The first sex scene is extremely hot. It's been nominated and could be in the final four. The opening blow job, the opening oral sex scene, by Little Oral Annie on an anonymous dick in Inside Little Oral Annie is fantastic. You can literally see the throbbing orgasm into her mouth. You don't see the external ejaculation, but you can see the balls rising, the tube swelling, and the cock swell and explode in her mouth. Her cheeks balloon out. You only see that stuff in our business. That should gain some acclaim. I like being patted on the head. That's the whole thing. The XRCO is a very exciting organization because it honors the kids in the Industry, giving it to who really deserves it. What are you in the organization? I'm the motivator and generator. But the rules are set by a committee. I helped create it. In 1984, we decided to create an organization called the Paladins of Porn to pro1. Hard-core is footage of people having intercourse, complete with genital close-ups. If you do not actually see the hydraulics—even if the players are really performing intercourse—it is soft-core.— ISL

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mote truth and honor in the X-rated Industry for the betterment of American viewers, stuff like that. A really nice little statement I wrote. Well, the Paladins . . . there were five originally. Only four left now because one Paladin changed jobs and could no longer hold his head up high. The critics are not as honest as you may think. They have affiliations and factions that they have to toady to. I have never accepted a bribe. I have written lies, but I have never lied in a review. I admit I have written feature stories which are a crock of shit, but I have never written a review of a movie saying a movie is good because I had friends [in it] or because I was affiliated with it. Tve destroyed a lot of movies—only in print; that's got me in trouble, because I write honest reviews. They get very unhappy when I do that [destroy by criticism] because they resent my truth. That upsets me. I'm not going to lie to the public. I owe it to the public. We owe it to them. [In order to give some sense of the ethnography hinted at in my introduction and to orient the reader to my desire that informants know what will be reported about them—how observations are shaped for creating a report—I have not edited out the next passages.] Let me interrupt you. My secretary has been typing tapes which you gave permission for. Sure, sure. And I have edited the material. Will you, then, read the material, correct it, edit it, delete or add, or if you want—if it's what you must do—forbid me from using it. Oh, F11 never forbid you. The material has your name changed, some things have been made vague. You may not care. If you want to, you can change it back, but I have been struggling to keep you from being identified. I want to be identified. [Continuing] easily. For example, I changed football to baseball. I didn't name Vista del Mar. I call it 'The Hall" or something. I didn't give the exact names. With other people, you can't use their names. Why? Because they have a right not to be identified. So I gave fake names. The people in our industry? No, not the famous people. But, for instance, you mentioned some guy who was a big brute, like a Hell's Angel. You gave his name, and I changed it. Oh, he wants his name in public. Well, I don't know. I don't have his permission. Anyway, I'm orienting you to what I have done. I have modified it to increase the confidentiality. You have to read it. If you say to me, "No, I don't want that," you own the material. You can put back what really identifies you [. . .]—

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Any name I have told you in the X-rated Industry is a stage name anyway and is public domain. Anything about my past is public domain.[. . .] Anonymity is a slap in the face. I want the immortality. Immortality is not anonymity. [Laugh.] I love it. I know you do. But I also want you to know that you might be running risks. There are no risks. There could have been and there isn't now with your mother. Well, okay. Let's go on with that. Mommy is dead. Bill / 17

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But she wasn't when you and I were talking. [He had not learned of it, weeks before today's interview.] Who cares, she deserved to be then. I can't be a part of your revenge against her. It's not revenge. It's a fact of life. I can't be a part of your fact of life with your mother, but if your mother is dead, that's a lot easier. You have no brothers or sisters? None. You have a wife, she's a public figure also. Exactly. So you will read it, and I hope you will enjoy it. It's yours to do what you want with. I'll bring it back, I guess? Yes, please, with the corrections. And I want the additions. All right. I will keep giving you, not the privilege, but it's your right, as I go along. Whether it gets published or not. Okay. As far as Mommy . . . about four weeks ago I decided to probe into my past a bit further. So I went to talk with my aunt. I remembered where she lived. I went looking for her. I knocked on the door; I have not seen the woman in probably ten years. She said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "lwo things. One, I want to know is my mother still alive?" She said, "No." So I said, "Well, I felt that I'm supposed to know these things, and if a parent dies, aren't I supposed to be told?" She said, "No, we didn't figure you cared." I said, "Well, that's really great." You know, typical. It's perfectly fitting that my mother would die without bothering to tell me, which could be called paradoxical. I asked her then quite frankly, "I want to know about my genealogy because it would be nice." My theory is that I was not adopted, that I was indeed my aunt's child and that my mother assumed motherhood because my aunt, back in 1943, could not have an illegitimate child. If there is any resemblance at all, it is more to her than to my mother. My aunt is probably the brightest woman I have ever met in my life. Even in her eighties now she is very sharp, very, very sharp, never wavered. We had a fourhour conversation. There is a lot of hatred, resentment of me, the fact that I became the black sheep, the fact that I didn't become an upstanding family member, that I didn't become an upstanding member in society, there is resentment that I scoffed at Juvenile Hall, that I scoffed at any kind of legitimate work, that I went off into the X-rated Industry and sullied the Margold name. It's fascinating. My mother died on Halloween night 1980. She had been extremely sick, and she had of course not contacted me since April 1976. I left the old lady with this thought: "When you want to see me again, you call me." I made the overture. "If you ever want to see me again, you call me." But now there is something underlying all of this which is extremely fascinating. My mother had wanted to be a writer, she had struggled and struggled and struggled to write. For all the time I've known her, she had been writing and rewriting and rewriting this goddamn children's book about Hot Diggety the Dog who was going to be the emissary of peace and all this kind of stuff. Well, she finished the book a week before she died, and it sits now with this lady doing absolutely nothing, collecting dust. I expect that the book is fairly well written. I would like nothing better . . . I think it would be a hell of a human-interest

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story. I just have to figure out a way of exploiting this angle: an X-rated son rediscovers his G-rated mother with a book that may be of some value to somebody. An Emily Dickinson-type thing. Locked up in a trunk is this book which should be read, particularly at this time in the world's turmoil and problems of peace. My mother's specter still hangs over me, and I'm almost trying to do something for her now, although in the last ten or fifteen years, she didn't do much for me. But it's not resentment. It's just the fact that I was under the impression when somebody dies you're supposed to be told. I didn't understand why I was never told about this. They didn't want to have you in their lives. But that's not right. Isn't there a legal obligation to tell a son that his mother has died? Probably not, I don't know. That's ludicrous. Well, that's a different story. But you know damn well that they drove you out because you're a black sheep. So did you get any clue about whether that woman is your biologic mother or not? She wouldn't say. Did you ask? Yes. Directly? Yes. And she said? She didn't say; she was evasive. It wasn't no and it wasn't yes, she just went on to another subject. She said, "You know, it's not your concern." "What do you mean it's not my concern? This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." [. . .] My father, being a very famous Jew, would have other very famous people, some Jews, over for dinner. We lived in Washington, D.C., where he was a judge. My mother told me that enormous hams were served. Then they'd pat me on the head and I'd be put to bed. And then they would talk about the New York Yankees. I guess that's one of the reasons why I'm a Yankee fan. One night, my father, who had very high blood pressure—he was only forty-four years old—suffered a heart attack. At that very moment, while the doctor was beating on his chest, I staggered out of my room and came across the hall and watched my father die. You remember this or you— Oh, I remember it, because here's what happened. This is vivid. I had a dream that night. My father was sick before I went to sleep, coughing and sweating. I remember him coughing because he was telling me a story. This is vivid. I went to sleep that night, and I had a dream about my father being cooked by cannibals in a large pot. This is a pretty good imagination for a four-year-old. (I must have read a comic book or seen a book, who knows where I was exposed to the cannibal image.) I saw him being cooked and sweating, the same sweating face that I had seen when he was reading me the story. So I got out of bed to go tell him that he was in trouble. I walked into the room, and there was my mother in the chair and the doctor pounding on my father's chest. My father had a huge belly at this point, and the doctor was pounding away, and I didn't say anything. I turned around and went out. That apparently was the moment my father elected to die. My mother said I came downstairs the next morning (which I don't remember) and told her that she should Bill /

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have gone instead. So that started the rift. F m willing to bet that it's a figment of her imagination, that statement. F m just not that sharp, even as good as I am. I don't think at four years old I was that quick. We went to Hawaii. I guess I began to rebel; I don't remember being a particularly rebellious child. I remember doing very well in school. My mother was beginning to fray at this point. She could not handle any kind of human relationship. So she figured she might as well find me the best possible place to stay. We came back to the States and I went to Black Foxe. Military schools and I just didn't hit it off. I did not need to be told what to do, nor did I need what was being ingrained upon me, what was known as "becoming a man." I told my mother about these things and she didn't believe it. So finally I just ran away. One night I got up and I left the school and went out for a walk, and they went and got me and brought me back, and I went out again. And they went out and got me and brought me back. I used to run away on a regular basis, and here I am this little six-year-old kid running around the streets of Los Angeles. I'd just walk around and finally they'd come. I told my mother I didn't want to go to boarding school. So we tried to live together. I went to public schools. My mother and I just didn't get along. So I would spend more and more time on the school grounds. My mother rarely saw me. I seemed to have a way of going to school on Monday morning and not coming home till Friday night. Because what I would simply do is go to school, and then after school I would make enough money off of two-cent cash-in bottles that I would sell to go and sleep under the pier. And the school never seemed to care as long as I was getting extraordinarily good grades and I looked clean and healthy: I took clothing off clotheslines. My mother sort of tolerated all of this. I came home on the weekends because I figured that it would be nice to clean up and go back to school on Monday prepared. She would try and beat me, hit me. She just slapped me around and called me a bastard and wished I was dead. I figured that all kids went through this so I had to accept it. She put me through a window. I have little scars on my hand to prove that. Then one day she hit me, and I slugged her and she went flying over a couch screaming and yelling. I said, "You'll never hit me again." So I walked out of the house, and she put me in another boarding school. This one used to put you in the basement, keep you in there with water dripping on you, real great stuff for a kid. I tried to impress upon my mother I didn't like these places, but she kept on sticking me in one after the other. Finally she said, "Maybe California is wrong; we'll move back to New York." She stuck me in another boarding school. But then that school burned down. Some idiot kid, you know, arson or something. So I ran away from the one they moved us to. That running away was very involved: I walked from Harrison, New York, to Brooklyn—my mother lived in Brooklyn—on the railroad tracks, really dangerous. I walked into the tunnel to Grand Central Station. I remember the expression on these people's faces when I climbed out from the track up where the trains stop. Here I am, now dirty, "Where did you come from, kid?" "Oh, I came from Harrison, New York." I walked to Brooklyn, knocked on the door, and said, "I'm home." "Oh, my God." Go back to school, did it again. So finally we came back to Southern California. We tried again. I guess I continued to say no until finally on June 30, 1956,1 was carted off to Juvenile Hall. Then I went to Vista del Mar, and then, ironically, I did try and live with her again 20 / Bill

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when I got out of high school in I960, but it was intolerable. So Tve been on my own from September 1960.1 caddied at a golf course, made golf balls, worked at the post office, sold dog food door-to-door, sold everything door-to-door, ran a phone room [telemarketing], learned how to con society by selling it [people] things they didn't need, got a college degree in journalism, wrote for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook for about a year and got fired because I asked for a raise. (I would have been a nice movie critic if they had just given me that raise.) I was happy making next-tonothing, but I just wanted a little bit more because I was doing a lot of work. Then I worked at Juvenile Hall, and then I got in the X-rated Industry. It's very simple. You found yourself. I guess I found myself. I found a place where I thought I could create and be left alone. But see, I figured in the X-rated Industry there were no rules. Apparently there are rules everywhere, and I hate that. Why should there be rules where we're breaking them? We're breaking the law. So why should there be rules? It's the ultimate paradox. We are illegal. So there should be no rules. I should not be told what to do in my business. But business means rules. Then I hate business. There is no place where there are no rules. I won't abide by rules. That's a different story. What you need is rules. In order to play out your life of not conforming. What would you do if there were no rules anywhere? You'd be lost. Your style, your skill, your talent, your genius is to work, highly effectively, against rules.2 Yeah, that's true. There has to be a cage that I can continually rattle. There's got to be a cage out there. Money, money, money, money. The money—the ultimate power—destroyed ultimately, corrupted. Yesterday I met a girl. She had come to me because she knows I'm the best. She says, "I want you to put together some projects for me. I'm to be the executive producer." I said, "Okay, kid, but I'm going to tell you what I told Drea [his wife]: that power has to always be a toy and never a weapon or you'll destroy yourself." And she looked at me and her eyes welled up with tears. It's interesting. I talk to them as children, I really do, and they know that I really care. So she said, "Okay, I'll try to remember that." That's all I can do. I've got to warn them because this power—power in the hands of a fool—just totally destroys these people. It's the same thing with the money. The poor kids can't handle the money they're making. They're making tremendous amounts of money. Do you realize what $1,000 a day is? Cash? You know, that's a whole lot of money. Why don't you make pornography for women? Because I don't believe that women are the No. 1 buyers of this material. They put up with what the man brings home. In some cases we do make couples' movies. Some adult films may well be made for women, but they are truly ordinary videos. They are not hot, they are daringly unhot. I have a friend, Candida Royale. She is quite pleased about being a spokeswoman in the Industry. She lectures at colleges about the wonders of porn. I just got a call, in fact, from another woman, Nina 2. In porn, the fetishizing process is applied not only to the realities of visible anatomy but to the realities of family life: there is no generational (oedipal) friction. The characters, regardless of age and alleged power assignments, are unattached children, siblings free of parental—societal—pressures. Bill / 21

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Hartley. [See chap. 11; also Stoller 199Ib.] Nina does not have any aspirations to make films, she just wants to be in them and enjoys being an X-rated performer. When I explained to her my theory that we deal in heat and meat, she said, "That's right. That's all we are: pieces of meat. And some of us didn't get any further than hamburger." That's what I want to hear. We know we are [meat]. We know our limitations. So we have to provide to the world a catharsis or release. As she put it, with all the fears of disease today, with all the fears of recrimination today, with all the fears of people of our introverted society, we're giving home entertainment. So you can stay in your house, and the X-rated Industry will provide sex to many, many people. It's turning people into hedonistic hermits: you grab a video, run home, slam it into your machine, never have to have any contact with anybody else in the world, and, by sheer attrition, one of these tapes is bound to get you off. You've achieved your orgasm, you go to sleep, you've had your sex for the next month. A magic carpet ride. There will [in the future] be no need for us to be the taboo industry. And then when there's no need for us, we're gone. But right now there's a need. Hopefully in my lifetime there will continue to be a need. One way or another, I'll help feed that flame which roasts the butt of America and, for that matter, the butt of the world. I get a kick out of that. No one ever died from an overdose of pornography. That's going to be carved into the backside of America. I'd even like to bring more violence into my creations. I'd like to bring what I call erotic terror: the stabbing in the shower in Psycho, the ax murder in Dementia 13. I'd like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we serve a purpose by showing that. The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that, because they get even with the women they can't have. We try to inundate the world with orgasms in the face. Then the audience doesn't notice that all the films are basically the same thing. No one cares. Kay Parker [ex-porn queen; see Stoller 199Ib] says they notice; they care. She wants to do more than that. She is a wonderful human being. She has been a confidante to the public. I've also talked to them: they tell her what she wants to hear, and they tell me what I want to hear. I think that they would tell Kay anything to make Kay happy, because they don't want her to be unhappy. You would not want to see Kay cry, be concerned. You want Kay to smile and be bubbly. I just think she's great, but I think Kay doesn't know. She's fun. As much as the Industry loves her . . . She says a lot of nice things, but she doesn't say anything because she's Kay Parker. I get out and say too much, because I'm Bill Margold. We need someone between Kay Parker and Bill Margold. That would be better. Z [a porn king who has worked with her] says Kay is a boring human being. Well, Kay is not boring. She's charming, fascinating, and could light up the darkest of caves. She was just born with that inner light. But as a spokeswoman for the Industry, I'm not sure she's the best thing we have to offer, any more than I am. I'm just there all the time, ready to make a fool of myself whenever I have to or make statements whenever I have to. ... Kay's reason for getting into this was, I think, pixilated adventure, a thrill. She had had a very staid life, a very reserved, normal, almost cloistered sex life until this business exploded her. So she, like me, is going through an adolescent period at a

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late age and has discovered that the wonders of sex can be a toy; as long as it's not turned into a weapon, you can enjoy that toy for whatever it's worth. Video demands constant production in order to survive, because videos have the life expectancies of mayflies. They are no more valuable than today's newspaper, which is worthless by tomorrow unless you want to wrap a fish in it. I did this thing in a wheelchair [a shot for Hustler's "Bits and Pieces" monthly photo section featuring off-the-wall setups—W.M.]. They gave me a girl to play around with, and of course it's natural to get an erection. Theoretically, I couldn't have an erection because I was supposed to be paralyzed. So we had to hide the poor thing. It wouldn't go away, but it had nothing to do with the damn storyline. So she was having a blast because the damn thing wouldn't go down. [Frustrated sound.] I can't help it. I can't hide it. It was son of cute. They were getting a kick out of it. That's why the following shot we did with the bagel and the cream cheese . . . You've got this big dick with cream cheese all over it stuck into a bagel. I told somebody who was Jewish, and he got all upset, saying I'd denigrated the religion. I said, "What the fuck you talking about?" And he said, "The goddamn bagel." He also got upset about the piece in The Meatlocker where I played Pork Chop and wore a yarmulke and put "Kosher" on me. [Speaks Hebrew.] I said a little Jewish prayer, and he got upset and said it was a horrible thing that I did, how dare I revile our religion. It's ridiculous. Religion is to be made fun of, that's what the whole purpose of religion is. It's a joke in the first place. My religion is the Yankees and the Lions. In January 1982, at the Las Vegas CES [Consumer Electronics Show], Seka [a porn queen] paid me one of the ultimate compliments of my career. She was holding court, signing pictures, and she spotted me across the room. We had not seen each other for a year, a year and a half. She pushed the people away, pointed across the room, and said, "That's Mr. Pornography." Then she waved me over and hugged me, people standing around. Though I had been on a lot of tapes, I've never had the recognizable fame of Reems or Holmes or Leslie. It was great. We hugged and kissed, and that brought over other children: Tiffany Clark ran over, "Daddy, Daddy" and hopped in my arms. Lisa de Leeuw came by and said, "Oh, Leather Dick, Leather Dick." People were doing, "Who the hell is this guy?" and I was famous. Seka, of course, defies almost all the rules for a porn queen, because she really enjoyed everything she did. This is not a woman going through the motions, this is a woman who enjoys sex, is truly an animal. How did you know? I worked with her. This woman was turned on. They don't cheat on that. She sucked cock with a voracious appetite. This was a woman who really enjoyed cock sucking and responded with muscle reactions and twitching and spasms when I would go down on her. I have had moments of fleeting fame. I held court in Chicago once. I was running a booth for "Fantasy Follies." They gave me the microphone, and I began pontificating on porn. A throng showed up. "We deal in meat and heat." You know, the whole thing. "We've got to stay in the gutter or we're going to go down the drain," this kind of stuff. They were cheering and yelling, it was fantastic. That's what I want to do. I really want that. That's the recognition that I want. Not the financial rewards. I want the adulation. And I've had people say thank you, that I've entertained them,

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they really like what I do, and they're amused by it. That's the character I play in some films. You probably recognize it in me. When I was in high school, that's the kind of character I was. I was that nerd. I was the square. I was the introvert, even though I was relatively well proportioned and was even running cross-country and playing flag football the last year of high school. . . . While I was not a wimp physically, I was unsure of myself. I was a very retiring, bashful, rarely outspoken type. I used to take pen to paper to speak out. It got me into trouble. My English teacher dared to tell me that I plagiarized an entire review of Battle Cry, which I had not: "You could never have written this well." And she gave me an "F' on my term paper. I wrote a scathing letter to her, calling her a prejudiced old bitch who just wants term papers she doesn't have to read, she can just grade. My paper would make her think. It was a history of the New York Yankees, with bibliography, footnoted to hell. I'd even stolen and ripped stuff out of libraries and stuck it in there. It was a fifty-page paper. She gave me an F, She said it was insufficient, it was trivial. I told her she was trivial. So I got thrown out of her class and had to sit in detention the whole A-12.1 got a D in English on my final report card, which was ludicrous because I used to get A's in English. And this woman challenged me. So I wasn't going to take it. I was becoming more extroverted. I got out of high school, and the Service turned me down, which was a blessing because I probably would have gone back into my shell if I had to deal with another parent figure. Then, after a couple of years of living hand-to-mouth, I went to college and discovered journalism. I discovered a way of venting my thoughts. I loved looking at my byline. And when they offered me the chance to take over the journalism society, I demanded to be president, was elected five semesters in a row, and then when they wouldn't elect me any more, I disbanded the club. [Laugh.] I said if I can't be president, this club doesn't exist. The adviser said, "You can't do that." I said, "Do you want to bet?" And I did. I defied her and she hated me to her dying day. [He has brought in a video to introduce me to the realities of porn. The tape is inside a box.] R|S Eilt RJS Bill RJS Bill

Tell me about the box. Is there anything I should know about that? Do you sell it or do you rent it? You can rent or sell. And what's it sell for? $79.95. Which means that a store will probably sell it to you for about $40. They'll give you a deal immediately when you walk in the door. And they rent it for what? $5.00, $2.00, $1.00. They don't care. All right, I'll give you the genealogy of this. Once upon a time, a year ago, a guy named Donnie Dark wrote a project I immediately called Cunning Coeds. . . . Alliteration. It's easy on the tongue. It was originally called The Girls ofSummatita. So we have the whole coed, sorority-type situation. The project was conceived as a movie about a woman whose house housed sorority girls and is now under threat to be torn down by—of course—a greedy bureaucracy that is going to turn the place into a parking lot. I wanted to use some nice exteriors; it was to be a simple, two-day deal. I formulated the video in my mind and waited patiently for a producer to come along to provide the money. In January, after Space Virgins and Passionate Lee had

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been made, I sat down with a company called IVP and explained to them what it would cost to make the video. In reality, I was still with Drea at that point; she acted as sort of the producer of the video; she got the money together. I formulated the video, cast it with Bunny Bleu, Sheri St. Clair, Rene Summers, and I don't know what guy—Billy Joe Green or whatever his name is. The girls get the starring and the boys got— Absolutely— In this situation. Well, in almost all cases, with the exception of when we use the King, which is John Holmes, or perhaps Jamie Gillis or John Leslie, the girls must overwhelm and dominate the starring and, of course, dominate the box cover. The box is plotted out and shot during the making of the video. This is the wrap-the-shit-in-cellophane-and-sellit-as-chocolate theory. No matter how bad the tape is inside, if you like to look at the box, then you might buy it. So what I did to make you look twice at the box is photograph the girls upside down. You know, it's better than a lot of the boxes on the market, not as good as some. Why do the girls have clothes on? They have to. You're not allowed to have nudity on the box, because the box could go into a Wherehouse or Tower Record Store. So you cannot show genitalia, and you cannot show nipples, and of course you cannot show any hard-core sex on the box. They have to be pristine but still pulsating. They have to grab you but not rape you. Why is Drea not listed as the producer? Drea didn't care if she was, and as this video turned out, no one did. Drea wound up editing this; it was reedited. This video had a lot of trouble, not the least of which was when we were about to start shooting, the cops came and said we couldn't shoot there. Not that we were doing anything wrong; it's just that the neighbors of the person whose house we were shooting at didn't like us. How did they know? Because the van was sitting outside, and all kinds of people were going in and out of this guy's house. So how did they know it was porno? Well, they put two and two together. This guy whose house we were shooting at is a very close friend of mine. We had shot Hot Chocolate at his house. There were all kinds of problems with the making of Hot Chocolate» not the least of which entailed my being rousted during a Detroit Lions-Tampa Bay game. I was hanging on to the phone while the cops were questioning me. I was being rousted for child molestation in one house while hard-core pornography was being shot in the house next door. I don't think I ever told you that story. It's a very strange story. The second day in the shooting of Hot Chocolate the Lions were playing Tampa Bay in Detroit. If the Lions won the game, they would win their conference for the first time in my fan life. There was no way I could see the game, but I had arranged with the Detroit Lions to hear the game over the telephone. I had called them. I cried over the phone. I begged them. They said, "Good, call up, we'll give you an open line, all you have to do is pay for the phone call." So to not bother the shooting going on in Gil's house, I went next door. Gil had a key to the next-door neighbor's. I'd met the next-door neighbors, I had met their dog, who seemed to be very happy with me. This is one of those man-eating bulldogs. If I had been breaking-and-entering, the dog would have eaten me alive. This dog was Bill / 25

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sitting in my lap. I got on the phone, I was listening to the game. Very harmlessly listening to the Lions game, and they were winning and I was happy. This little girl wanders into the house. She says hello to me, I say hello to her, and she wanders out of the house. The next thing I know, in come cops, in come the neighbors, guns are drawn, I*m being interrogated for child molestation, blah, blah, blah. I never let go of the phone. I was listening to my game, hopping up and down. The cops ask me what F m doing there. I tell them I'm listening to a game in Detroit. They call me a liar. I gave them the phone. I listened in on the other side so I didn't miss any plays. They said, "Goddamn, you are listening to Detroit." So I said, "Now just leave me alone." Well, two hours later they finally realized I wasn't molesting anybody, but all this stink resulted in Gil never being allowed to shoot in his house again: we went back there in January '85 to shoot this poor thing, and the neighbor—the nosy person who called the cops in the first place—retaliated. Why did they think you were molesting a child? I'm not sure. In fact, the kid sat down and watched television, and they just thought the kid had disappeared for a period of time. The kid had wandered in the front door, which had been left unlocked. The kid had wandered into the house that she didn't even live in. You know, now if that dog had not known her and had not been sitting in my lap, that dog would have eaten that child. But no one ever brought that up. And I thought it was hilarious. It was a great day for me because the Lions finally did win the game. I was on the phone, the whole thing cost about $45, and when they finally won, you know, I was so happy, hopping up and down, I began crying, I really did, because I had been waiting for so long for the goddamn team to win the thing, and I was all alone in the house by that time, and I just cried a little bit because to me it was worthwhile. I attach, as you well know, much more affection to the New York Yankees and the Detroit Lions than I do to any people in my life, because they really don't hurt me that often and they can't hurt me that deeply. Okay. So Cunning Coeds was made. There were a lot of problems with making this movie. But the bottom line of the movie is that it's three girls who are attempting by hook or crook to save their sorority house for the woman who runs it. I cared a lot, but I was done in by a lot of things: incompetent help, warfare on the set, technicians, a man who sat there and kept on telling me I didn't know what I was doing to the point that had I not wanted to not hurt my hand, I would have smashed him in the face. I don't usually hit people, but I told him if he didn't shut up, I was going to hit him in the face. He finally shut up because I was doing the best I could under tremendous problems: cheap lighting, cheap cameras, and second-rate help, because I didn't have a lot of money to work with on this budget. I was not given an inordinate amount of money. This was done for approximately $18,000. That's not the normal amount of money because it costs about $25,000. So I was short-changed right off the bat. I didn't make a whole lot of money on this. The script was $400. For everything that I did I made maybe $1250. This guy Billy Joe Green in this movie took an awful long time to do his job. Yet he had the audacity last December, I hear, to go into a producers' meeting and refer to himself as a stud. This guy under pressure is a, let's say, a wilting weed. He does not function under the kind of pressure that we're used to. We need to have as many cum shots as possible. We finally did exact one from the poor man. The wonders of editing. You'd never know we had any problems.

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One more question. Do you get anything beyond your fee for— No, of course not. You don't own any of it? No. It's like asking would I get any residuals for robbing a bank. This is illegal, the making of this was illegal. Somebody's making money on it. Well, no. This company [laughing] . . . This company had all kinds of problems. Thank God, this is one of the few times where I got out while the going was good, because this company apparently is now under federal investigation for problems beyond my wildest dreams. I'm glad I'm not involved with it in any way, shape, or form, because I knew what I had gotten myself into. I knew that the people running this company had no idea what they were doing. I was amused by them. I told them both that "you have no idea what you're doing. Just allow me to make one [film] for you and then I'll try and do another." But then it got to the point where I couldn't work with the people. I figure that, as with almost anybody I've ever met, I can outtalk and usually browbeat verbally. But I would have hit them all, I was getting so frazzled at these people who hated the performers. I figured I was being given a chance, and I wouldn't squander the chance. At least the film came out and went on the market. It's been ripped apart by the critics and justifiably so. The organization [production company] ripped it apart to the point that they didn't even see it. They just hacked it to shreds. [Starts film.]

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The music is ... Did you steal somebody's record or what? No, I'm trying to think where this music came from. I don't know. Now that's your voice [hearing Margold's voice on the film soundtrack doing the voice of Mr. Stubbs, a teddy bear]? Yes. There's a college. Now where is that [in reality]? Glendale, I guess. You just go out in the street and shoot it? Sure. I would have used UCLA but—[explaining film as it goes along]. Is it jiggly because it's poorly made, or because of the machine that it's in, or just this particular tape? This tape came from the bookstore, and it probably has been shown so many times that it's— Wearing out. "Directed by William Margold." It's a nice credit but it's— I can't hear what she's saying; I couldn't get a word. What she's done is she's looked up an ad for phone masturbation, and the guy is going to get her off over the phone. Now she has on a wedding ring. Is there any reason for that? I hope that's not a wedding ring. Just a ring. That's me by the way [shot of an anonymous masturbator]. Now she's acting there, is that right? She's not really— No. Bill / 27

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But you get the impression that she's phone masturbating. [Music playing constantly and loudly.] The way a movie is done—in fact, I invented the formula for it—is to shoot all the scenes in this room first, then that room, and then another room. I never have to go back and relight any set. So you see many scenes in the living room, but they were all shot at the same time. The phone masturbation scene is in there because I was going to shoot outside the house and the cops—we had to go away—I never got any of that. So when I went to shoot on the second day, I added all that stuff to lengthen out what I had not been able to shoot before. That phone masturbation scene was never there in the script, just added. I have an ability—I am amused by it myself—I can adjust to situations faster than anybody else in this business. When I need to cut, or add, or lengthen or eliminate anything, I find a way to do it. I invented the narrator long after the script was written; long after the first day was shot, I invented the masturbation scene . . . to lengthen the movie. But all the stuff in the living room is shot at one time. You'll see many, many sequences in the living room. All the stuff in the bedroom was shot at one time. All the stuff in the offices you're going to see was shot at one time. The first day we worked about twenty hours. I worked until about four in the morning. . . . Where do you get the girls? The girls come in. ... They answer ads for Pretty Girl International, a theatrical talent agency. Another agency is World Modeling. [Looks at box.] Bunny Bleu is the little tiny one here, that's Sheri St. Clair. I discovered the little roly-poly one that masturbated. Her name is Rene Summers. She is known as the Cabbage Patch Kid of porn, but I call her Spanky because she's like Spanky McFarland out of "Our Gang." Because she's chubby? She's very round. Sheri St. Clair is a fascinating person. The first person who ever directed her, in fact, was Drea in a thing called Little Girls Talking Dirty, which I wrote. She's now a superstar. And Bunny is one of the most loved people in our industry. She is not particularly talented when it comes to acting. She has what I believe is a learning disability. I think she's a product of a rotten education. I think that she is one of these people who was in high school just long enough to get out of high school. . . . She really is scared of dialogue. An interesting incident took place during the making of this. She had a block paragraph to say and was terrified, absolutely petrified, by the dialogue. So I began to hack out the lines. You can see the relaxation settle into her after she knew she didn't have to learn as much. And finally, when she had about four to words to say, she was delighted. But she's an absolute doll. I've never had sex with any of these three girls. I probably never will. There are many girls in this business now that I can't work with because I'm in sort of a patriarchal position. I can only work now with people who are either new or legends that were around—established legends. The ones that have adopted me, like during the making of this, I could have easily punched in the core. But both Rene and I knew it wouldn't be right because then I would have violated the relationship I have with her. I'm not into it for the sex. I didn't care, but it would have hurt our relationship, because we're pals. . . . And Sheri . . . Sheri is fascinating. She has personalities coming out of every pore: she came to the L.A. video party last year in Las Vegas holding a bible. We've got some problems with this girl, and yet she is the anal queen of our industry. She takes a lot of dicks in her ass.

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We've had our problems lately. We're not as close as we used to be. Sheri and I were very close for a while, and then I told Sheri that she wasn't as hot as Amber Lynn. We were doing three videos in May, and she cried and got very unhappy about that. And I said, "You're not; you have your own personality, your own presence, but you're not an Amber Lynn." (Amber Lynn is one of our radiating sex goddesses and bums up the screen.) Sheri doesn't burn up the screen. Sheri is a chum, but she's not hot. She reminds me of a heifer. If you walk into a barn she is always grinning and making the same noise: "ooh," "aah," "ooh," "aah," "ooh-ooh-aah-aah [makes "shishing" noise] "ooh-aah-ooh-aah-ooh-aah-ooh-aah" ["shishing" again]. She never gets hot, she just goes through the motions. I don't really think that that's what America wants, but apparently America is very comfortable with her, it's like inviting a chair into your living room. She doesn't pose a sexual threat. If you want to jack off on your chair, everybody's happy. I hired these three because they were friends. I was comfortable with them, and I needed to do it at a reasonable rate of money. I couldn't invest a whole lot of money in them. I think I gave Bunny $500 a day, Sheri $500 a day, Rene $500 a day, and Tamara, who is not on the box [i.e., her photograph is not on the box that contains the tape]—it makes absolutely no sense why she isn't—I think she got $750.1 use the man, Gary, in a lot of things, because he has an "instant dick," no problem. This man has rock-hard . . . He's very good at what he does. He's not a great actor but he's good enough. And he was cheap [laugh]. That's a $300-a-day body. Plus I cast this Billy at this point who was living with Drea and me and I guess cuckolding me to boot. I dug my own grave in that situation. I wanted them to look a bit alike: the dean and this slightly gray-around-the-temple, pompous-ass-looking type, which I figure mayors and deans look like. She's enjoying this; she's allowing them to work on her. But it's all acting [for the woman]. I attempt to show the woman deriving pleasure before she has to provide pleasure. So at least the audience sees that the woman has fun first. That's based on my own belief that you have to make the woman happy before you're allowed to be happy, because it's supposedly harder to get a woman off. In some cases it is, and in some cases it isn't. [Gives explanations of technical aspects of lighting, etc. Loud, loud music continues.]

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But oral sex, I believe, is the backbone of our business. The fucking is secondary. I like a lot of oral sex in films. And he [the actor at work at the moment] has this habit of pounding on people for some reason. You mean with his hands? Yes. I've never understood that—that da-da-da-da—drubbing on the genitalia. You couldn't train Babe Ruth to hit home runs any more than you can train X-rated performers to be hot. So once a sex scene starts, I don't direct the actors unless they are fucking up or getting in the way of each other. I allow them to create their own heat. In a sense, I give them a match and allow them to burn down their own forest. All I do is just go from one camera to another, allowing them to keep as comfortable as possible and create as much heat and hard-on as possible. Both cameras are running, and I look at a monitor and switch back and forth, one monitor to another, three monitors altogether. Bill / 29

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You don't edit it later? Oh, yeah, we do later on, too. But we have three tapes: a master tape plus single A and single B tapes. In some cases, if the sex scene runs fluid, you don't have to edit it. But in most cases that doesn't happen because eventually one camera may be on a ... It may be shooting the ceiling for some unknown reason. . . . And when they come down, I've got to go to a cutaway, I've got to ... make my transition more interesting. But I can't just bring the camera down or you'll see a horrible blur. They've got to set it up and adjust. Now I will milk the sex scene for as long as I can, particularly with somebody as pretty as this, because it's the last you're ever going to see of the woman. And she's just working? That's right. She's working for a buck, she's not enjoying her— Tamara herself is—has been—a prostitute, she has had tricks, she performed sexual acts for money, but she's also very special and she's a very close friend of mine, and I think she's incredibly hot. She has an interesting look about her. By "interesting look" you mean acting? Yes, she creates an interesting . . . That's a good cum shot, intercut with his face to prove he's going off, which gives you a sense of added peak. And she enjoyed the cum shot, it's a good, spurting cum shot. Jack him off, essentially the camera is jacking off the males of America. [Much music.] Bask and glow and then we get another cum shot on her ass, he's got both cum shots, he's got the money shots in this whole set-up now. Mandatory lesbian scene now. Almost no reason for this scene to exist except they've been studying for too long trying to find a way to save their house and now we get a nice lesbian scene. Do you tell them what to do? No. Since I've never been a lesbian, I've no idea what to do. They aren't either, or are they? The large one is trisexual; Bunny just does what she's told. What's trisexual? She'll do [try] anything, I suspect. I think you would be fascinated with her. She's adventurous. I'm nuts about her. The first day I met her, I told her she reminded me of an oversized Girl Scout. . . . I pegged her right on the head: this is a woman wrapped up in morality who makes X-rated films. I think you'd go nuts with a woman like this. I like my lesbian scenes essentially languid; I like them very relaxed, very enjoyable. Now I've seen a major gap in my video. I'll have to replay this. I believe we went from a woman who had nothing on her chest to somebody who had a nightie . . . No, I guess I'm wrong. You're telling them to be languid? I'm telling them to enjoy each other and to experiment with each other's body because they're not hard-core lesbians here, this is the first time both of them supposedly . . . "Don't fist-fuck each other in your first scene. It wouldn't make any sense. Be gentle." Now that was out of focus, but that's all we have, I guess. And, of course, Mr. Stubbs [toy bear, Bill's alter ego—the child who observes; in his films, there will be at least one shot of Mr. Stubbs; in his newspaper articles and reviews, the bear is noted, quoted, or given a byline; he has dozens of toy bears in his apartment, most of them gifts from his fellow workers] witnesses the entire situation.

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But Mr. Stubbs is my automatic cutaway. When there's something going wrong, like a blur, or any kind of angle problems, cut to the bear watching them, a mute witness to the whole thing. How many times I've cut to that bear will prove to you how many times we had trouble in making this scene. . . . [Unending music.] Oh. Cutaway! That meant what? That meant there was a problem with the transition then. You'll notice now there's a transition, see. First she was nibbing her vagina, and now we cut back and she's going down on her. If we didn't have that, in order to prevent us seeing them climb over each other, we cut to the bear. It's the easiest out in the world. A lot of people don't use it. A lot of people prefer to show the struggling, which makes no sense. Who the hell wants to see anything awkward? Who wants to see the game plan? You just want to see the game. America wants to see open vaginas with tongues and fingers. I'm giving them . . . That shot's ridiculous and God knows why they left that in there. Why does it happen? Don't you have highly professional cameramen? I told you I was sabotaged here. I had bozos operating this. This lesbian scene was shot about midnight. There were a couple of tired people here. Again, forgive my lack of information. Why, if there's that much action on a genital, is the woman not feeling anything? Well, what are they supposed to feel? Some people may not like oral sex. Some people might have put some type of douche in or vaginal lubricant that kills feeling. This is not a good scene: no moaning, no groaning, no passion. And I think it's over. I hope it is over. No, I guess it's not, it will continue on. I'm not a fan of lesbian sex myself, but I had to get my lesbian scene out of the way and this was a good place for it. If I was going to drop an anchor on my goddamn show, I would drop it here and then get out. And you'd never have to be bothered by it again. You will, however, see another lesbian scene that is much hotter than this, but it's a lesbian scene that's been transposed into a three-way. That comes later on. So they're just kind of wrestling and rolling around? [Totally lost as to the story line.] What was the first scene with this guy? He was the dean who was agreeing to tear down the— Oh, the dean was agreeing with the businessman— The dean and the mayor. Oh, the mayor. [Dialogue.] They don't rehearse, they just go to it, is that right? I get one or two rehearsals, but they can't even read. [More film, music, and dialogue. Man and woman struggling to create sexual intercourse.] How big a crew is around? Okay, there's about seven people altogether. In the room. While it's filming? In the room while it's filming. In the room that they're in, there was only one camera, just the cameraman, because there's no room for two cameras here, too small a room. Everybody else is watching it on monitors. They [performers] are by themselves pretty much? Yeah. In fact, they were by themselves a whole lot because he had problems [no erection]. I left him alone for a long period of time. When I do hard-core I always get myself up. I never let anybody touch me unless I want to stick it in. But other people like to be played with and like to be fondled. I don't blame them. He happened to like her. So I figured what the hell. This was early in the day, let them enBill / 31

joy each other. As bad as this is, and I'm quick to criticize it myself, it's above 50 percent of the stuff on the market. At least it has some modest character definition, has an interesting transition, and there's a story, there's a reason for it to happen. You haven't seen an unmotivated sex scene yet, theoretically. It was interesting, that sex scene with the two guys and the camera; what I did not see in my final piece of footage is a scene where they're eating her and their tongues were about that far away from each other. What I was attempting was a homo-admirational situation. Right now, on the market, and I've just seen the first two tapes, are the first bisexual tapes, they call them Bi-Coastal and The Big Switch. They feature heterosexuality and bisexuality. I think that's bringing another sexual stratum out of the closet, so to speak. There are a lot of people who want to see a bunch of pretty girls with prettier guys, and prettier guys doing things to each other. They're welcome to it. I watched both of those tapes yesterday and found them uniquely hot. Unique is the word. I've seen homosexual tapes, but I'd never seen the bisexual tapes. So for a while they'll corner the market just like the black tapes—Hot Chocolate, etcetera—that we created cornered the market for a while. I was very impressed with them. But one of these guys didn't want any part of bisexuality. So you could see his tongue wavering and not interested in touching another man's tongue. I wasn't really attempting to get any homosexuality or even bisexuality. I was attempting to get that male bonding using the vagina as the glue, an interesting concept. I just tried for something a bit different. I think these things out, you know. I'm proud of that. I want some reason for things to happen. Coming from the real world and reviewing real films, I want people to at least be entertained: "Oh, look at that shot." Now it's also my firm belief that in some cases [turns sound off] people watch videos at home without any sound on. I really believe that the public watches these things in their bedrooms, in the middle of the night. This noise and the moaning would carry out to the next-door neighbor; they don't want the next-door neighbor to know [what] they're watching. So we can watch the rest of the sex scene like this and you can see what I'm saying. This allows you not to be altered by the music. What I'm saying here is you can build up in your own . . . Oh, I think the man's going to try, maybe not—but obviously that is not an interested cock. It's not a happy dick. He can't keep it up. He admitted to me later that he cared for her so much he couldn't fuck her as essentially an inanimate object. He wanted it to be more fun than work. It W work, it's very, very difficult for a man to get up, get in, get out, and get off on cue. The pressures are incredible. I don't put the pressures on them, because I'm very easy to work for, but there are directors who scream at you. They'll say, "What the fuck is wrong with your dick? You worthless son-of-a-bitch." It's bad enough if ... All right, you got a cum shot out of a limp dick. At least you got the cum shot. The audience will be pleased. But worse is if this is being filmed in a larger room with the crew standing around saying, "Come on, you son-of-a-bitch, get the goddamn thing off," or people wandering around talking about their plans for the next night. It's analogous to coming up to the plate, full count, and having to hit a home run. You've got an indifferent audience [crew]. [Sound on. Dialogue. Spanking scene. Desultory dialogue.] Nonetheless, you get what you need to see; these are the essential ingredients of hard-core. At least I had the sense to change her outfit so it's not the same dress. 32 / Bill

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There are directors who don't even bother to do that. I just watched a horrible film: the woman is in one room with her hair up, but by the time she gets back to the other room, her hair is down, then her hair is up, then her hair is down, what the fuck is this? They don't even care; there's no continuity. I really and honestly believe—this is a horrible thing to say—that this tape was sabotaged by the company, because the underlying ingredients of this company almost are determined to destroy [it] from the beginning. That's too vague. Why would they—if they've got their money in it—why would they— They don't care about their money. The money comes from suspicious sources. What do they care? Tax write-offs, laundered money. What's their motivation to sabotage it? They didn't listen to me from the word go. I told them I was in trouble, and they never cared. I said you're throwing money away. And they just said go ahead and do it. And I was so unhappy because I take pride in this and my name is on it. Even if my name wasn't on it, I'd still take pride in it. Yet they seemed determined to do my tape in. And it is mine, it's my kids, I adore this as much as anything else. I would not take it on the island. Stop. What do you mean "on the island"? Holliday is preparing this book on the history of the X-rated Industry. He has asked some of the influential people, "If you had to go to an island with twenty-five tapes, what would you take?" I would not take Cunning Coeds unless it was to knock coconuts off a tree. But this is still one of my bastard children, and I want it to be as good a child as possible: you get different types of sexuality, not too much repetition, a lot of different positions. This [on the screen at the moment] is a better lesbian scene than the last lesbian scene, a woman more interested in arousing the genitalia. The first lesbian scene was a chummy lesbian scene. But this is a viperish woman: the secretary trying to take advantage of the poor little coed. I told them to act more intense, whereas in the first lesbian sequence, the women were just having fun. Tamara is a conniver, and Tamara really thinks she's putting one over on this little girl, she's getting away with something here. So she's gobbling her up as if this is a turkey dinner, sacrificial-lamb city. Now we go into blurs again. Now we [the women] climb up on a chair; the choreography isn't the worst in the world. I still don't like the tattoo but there's nothing I can do about it. Tamara is an ornery lady who is mandatory about that tattoo. She uses it as a badge of honor. You can't take it off if it's a real tattoo. You can cover it with makeup. Maybe your audience wants it. I think it cheapens Tamara, but that's Tamara's choice. There's nothing I can do about it. [Music. No dialogue. Action.] If you ask them if they enjoy what they're doing, are they really getting off, are they really getting into it, some say yes and some say no. I don't know what the truth is. I really don't. I really don't know if they derive physical pleasure. I think what turns them on, the bottom line, is the glory. The exhibitionistic thrill, that they can do it and nobody else can. I know that—there we go, we've got the legs, at least Bill / 33

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anonymous legs at this point—I have derived sexual pleasure if I'm with somebody I like, but the ultimate pleasure is glory. That I'm doing it and / know that it's going to be seen. That increases the thrill. How will the outside observer . . . If I saw that [scene], even with your explanation, I would wonder what the hell is that guy doing there [why has he shown up in this scene]? "Who is he?" that's what they're going to say. Oh, I see: I should be asking that. "What the hell is this guy doing there?" And then we find out that it's the mayor. Why would you not know if some of the girls get pleasure or not? Because you never ask? We don't ask them. I'm not going to run up to them and ask, after they've done a sex scene, "Did you enjoy that?" What are they going to say? "No, it's the worst thing I've ever done?" In the real world, people go to bed and say, "Did you have fun, dear?" "Oh, yeah." And they go to sleep. Well, I don't think that the X-rated performer really gives a damn if the performer with him had any fun or not. They've done their job. You don't ask the ditch that you've dug if it enjoyed being dug. You don't ask the hamburger that you just ate if it enjoyed being eaten. I really believe that 99 percent of the pleasure derived is cinemagraphic, is immortal, is the glory, is the egotistical pleasure, the exhibition and the narcissism, that they have gotten away with something, that they put one over on society, mocking society, mocking morality, mocking social acceptance, that we are the last rebels in America, that "we can do this and you can't. So we're here. And you're not." It's true for you. It's not for them? They're not going to say much, I can't ask them. The tragedy is that a lot of my people don't have a mind to come from. If they come here to talk with you, they'll put you to sleep. But you can get into them because you can crack walnuts open. I've got a lot of walnuts in this business. If you meet other people in this industry, maybe you can find out if they really do enjoy . . . They'll tell you they enjoy it, but I don't believe way down deep that's the reason. They're not doing it for sexual gratification, because God knows they don't need that. It's mental, it's mental gratification. It gives them a reason to exist, acceptance, gratification, glory, acknowledgment. They are on the screen, and the rest of the world isn't, and they're doing something the rest of the world can't: they're shocking the world. They didn't shock the world when they were kids, they didn't shock the world when they were sitting in the classroom. But they're shocking the world now. How many people have a chance to jam an electric prod up the ass of America? We can do that. We can shock. We can bring America to its knees. We can jolt them. More power to us. It's the greatest thrill in the world. The bottom line: I consider myself incredibly lucky to be in this industry, incredibly fortunate to be with these kids. I do really care for them. I'm immensely proud of them and I want them to have a chance. Maybe somebody who is more perceptive and has the tools can get in their minds to find out just why they do this. My reason why they do it (and no one has disagreed with me) is: the playpen of the damned, the overaged juvenile delinquent, society's last rebels, and all of this. I don't believe it's only for the money, I really don't. So now you see [in the film] the full circle here. They've all taken pictures of everybody blackmailing everybody else [part of the story line]. So it's building toward its, thank God, quick end. But this scene is not bad: a girl sucking a guy while he's fucking somebody else, another American male fantasy. I'm sure that many men

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would love to have two women. I have a feeling that he couldn't function with one let alone two, but at least he's a strong enough stud to enjoy this. Of course, you [the performer] have to take your mind and stick it off in a bookcase somewhere, because you're not allowed to go off when you want to. You're going to go off when I [the director] tell you to go off, or at least you're going to go off within the vicinity of the time that I ask you to go off for the purpose of the camera. This is not easy: This angle is not the easiest for somebody to screw in. It's an interesting angle. America probably watches that, then makes their wives bend over. And then, screwing their wives at the edge of their beds, they throw out their backs. I'm probably the cause of thousands of dollars of back problems for the stupid men who tried to emulate this. These positions are not to be duplicated. We screw in positions that monkeys are envious of. Now that's pile-driving sex. That's as good as you're going to get, the gynecological Grand Canyon shot. Eiffel Towers and Grand Canyons. Holes and poles. Some people need to be led through the motions: if you see somebody masturbating, maybe you'll start to masturbate too. The bottom line is: I want to get America off, that's the whole thing. If they can jack off to something I've created, or something I'm in, that's even better. That's a rare treat. It's interesting, because I was at the bookstore on TUesday and a guy came up to me and said, "I saw a tape your wife did and I saw a tape you did" (both of us directing them), and he said, "Your wife's was a piece of shit, but I liked yours." I said, "Really?" and he said, "Yeah, that was a good tape." That makes me feel good, that was really fun. I just got a good review in a magazine. I'm amazed. The tape only took one day, but there was a trick to that; I did three of them in three days, shooting scenes for all three videos in one [room] and [other] scenes for all three videos in the next room. It's nice to have a compliment. Nobody likes to be ignored; that's what it's all about. So why do you say "for video"? Because video has limitations of time. We only have two days to make the whole film. Some people take a day to shoot an entire sex scene on film. Why? Because they have five or six days to make their movies. Why do you have less time with videos? Because they have a very small budget: $18,000-$20,000. So why not do it on a larger budget? Because there's no money in it. Tape life expectancy is very, very short. I see. Well, they [on the tape being reviewed] are going to try again now. This was against my better judgment. In fact, this fails, I believe. He's supposed to do two sex scenes. This is a disaster. This was the same evening now, and after having failed in the bedroom, we moved into the living room. You saw he couldn't get it up once, but I figured I'd give him another chance. I don't like to have the man go home thinking he let me down or failed in their own mind. Because then he goes home and chops his dick off. I always remember when I didn't function: November 1972. It was after I'd already done hard-core, in October 1972,1 didn't function. The only loop3 I ever tried to do. 3. Loop: a taped or filmed sequence that shows sex acts out of context and can be endlessly repeated, having no story or dialogue.—ISL Bill / 35

I was worried so I went home and jacked off three times: I functioned, I was happy, and I never had the problem again. To this day the only reason I figure that I didn't function was because I wasn't going to derive the glory from doing that loop that I would have derived from doing a film. Something in my mind said 1 shouldn't be doing this, because I'm not going to get any real good credit for it. That had to be the reason, because I've never failed since. My mind knows: I shouldn't abuse my talents. But this man obviously is no more interested in doing this than I am in flying out the window. We're closing in on the end of the movie here. At least you get a general idea; everything is played toward the camera. We don't hide any of the sex. Nothing is left to the imagination in hard-core. The definition of hard-core is "lay it on the line." This is not R-rated material, this is triple-X penetration: something hopefully getting up, something hopefully getting in, something hopefully coming out, something hopefully going off. "Hopefully" in this case is: "You can continue to hope until hell freezes over, this dick is not interested." . . . [Video ends.] RJS Bill

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Well, that was interesting. Let's have a debriefing. First of all, the end of that tape goes back to the bear saying, "So those are the girls of Summatita and one of their many adventures," because, of course, I planned to do another adventure. "Should have done," is what you're saying. Yeah. I shot it. It's not there. This poor thing went from my hands to Drea's hands, taken out of her hands and, as I say, the company that put this out had a death wish. They just simply threw this tape out on the market. Will the public care? What makes some sell more than others? Do people talk to each other and say, "Hey, you got to get ahold of this tape"? A little word of mouth; the box helps, promotion. This company is a small company. So it couldn't promote. How do they promote? They send out flyers; they alert the major distributors throughout the United States. I think they perform acts of graft. If the term payola of the 50s means anything to you, I guarantee you payola exists in the video industry. I guarantee you certain distributors are, let's say, "juiced along" by video film or videotape companies to promote their stuff over other people's. I think that graft exists on every level. Well, let me read this to you. I'm so proud of what I said here. This can act as a debriefing also. [He reads the statement he read to the President's Commission on Pornography on 17 October 1986.] I am honored to be a part of this historical endeavor, but I feel that I must preface my brief statement with an ominous headline: Welcome to Salem-by-the-Pacific In a society that is drug-infested, violence-wracked, and polluted by chemical greed, might I respectfully remind this commission that no one has ever died from an overdose of pornography. For over thirteen years, in capacities including actor, agent, critic, director, publicist, and scriptwriter, I have been extremely fortunate to be a part of the adult film

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industry. My multifaceted participation has been tremendously rewarding: creatively, mentally, and physically. In reference to the latter form of action, please note that my acts of natural emotional expression were performed opposite an adult partner who was always consenting to participate in a similar, or, via scripting and direction, an accommodating manner. The adult film industry is an entertainment training ground and an innovative force that is dedicated to enlightening, arousing, and fulfilling its audience. That it garners an audience seeking to be thrilled and vicariously titillated places it on no lower a populace-pleasing plateau than a highly competitive sports e v e n t . . . or a national election. And while detractors will accuse adult entertainment businesses of harboring a criminal element, I suspect that the aforementioned thrills also have their share of detractors . . . and accusers. In fact, unlike the mainstream, dare I say "legitimate" film industry, the adult film world, having risen from the eight-millimeter underground to bask in mainstream videotape recognition, scrupulously polices itself, refusing to allow the use of children, animals, and graphically violent or grossly aberrant recreations to produce the huge profits that many "legitimate," R-rated motion pictures gleefully exhibit. To this extent, considering the industriousness and perseverance of the adult film industry, forcing it back underground would only result in encouraging unconscientious factions to spuriously create and unpalatably supply lesser materials of a far more objectionable nature. This would produce a grievous chain reaction, tantamount to the lengths that a thirsty populace went to get anything even faintly resembling alcohol during prohibition. The world has seen the light of adult film expression far too long for any commission to tell it that it must now be blind. I welcome your questions.

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In other words, if the X-rated Industry is going to be attacked, you can just as well attack sporting events and national elections. There is as much corruption in them. But there isn't sex. But sex is used in those industries too. Sexual bribery, for political favors. Sex is a tool in the real world, pleasure in ours. Sex is a practice in our situation, something we promote as an entertainment medium. That's why I always refer to myself as the Reggie Jackson of porn. I just play with a different bat and ball. In fact, I directed a tape under the name of Regina Jax, a thing called Showdown in the Erogenous Zone, a wrestling tape we did in July. What? Showdown. Wrestling. What does that mean? Wrestling, female wrestling. People rolling around on the floor. There's sex in it. Oh. So this tape [the one we have just played] was not promoted, was n o t . . . Payoffs were not put in. Palms weren't greased. People didn't bend over for us. This tape just died. It may be as well that it did. Supposedly some two hundred tapes a month are dumped on the market. The poor public is inundated. Is it in stores now? Oh, sure. So nothing dies. Bill / 57

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I will keep it for historical significance. For your curriculum vitae. Yeah, it's proof-positive that I made something. There's also the shot of me jacking off, which is good for the history books. What's the best that's ever been made? I would have Holliday recommend to you. I trust his judgment. . . [Jim Holliday: the self-acclaimed historian and sometime journalist of porn, a producer and writer, a shrewd pseudorube who, like his friend Margold, stands peripherally at the center of the action.] Misty Beethoven, Take Off— Take Off is a name of a film? A film. If you want a deviant film, I would recommend The Story of Joanna. If you want a cult film, I would recommend Night Dreams. What I'm still looking for is: What does the person making the movie know about the audience, what the audience thinks? It would seem as if there's no question, it's right there on the screen. But I'm not sure that there isn't more there. What do you people who are making these movies know that makes you decide that she combs her hair on the left rather than on the right? See, if you show—this is my hunch—if you show that tape in rural Nepal, they may not get a certain amount of what's going on. It may really be bizarre to them, though they'll know it's sex. They're supposed to know. No way. There are all kinds of subliminal signals, understood in one culture but not another, that are going on in this. I want to know what's going on in people's heads. That's why I say, "What's happening with the girls?" "What's happening with the fellows?" "What's happening with the director?" "What's happening with the photographer?" "How do they feel about the crew being there?" "How does the audience respond?" Do you get what I'm trying to get [information on]? Well, I'm a strange person to ask those questions to, because I'm so open about what I do. I have no trouble (a) expressing myself, or (b) finding the reasons that I do things, because I understand what motivates me. My feeling is that what motivates most of the performers is this desire to do something against the grain. You're not understanding me. Granting that, you also have in mind an audience. You do a lousy film by your standards for what makes a good or bad film. That's what you were talking about the whole time we were viewing this film: this wasn't right, the light wasn't good. In that way, you're in communication with your audience. It wasn't just cock and vaginas, no way. No, of course not. You have a slice of Western culture, let's call it America, in your head. The more you're out of touch with that, the less money you'll make. The more you're in touch with it, the better the movie you make. So when you rate one as the best of all, you're saying that whoever made that movie had high communication with an audience, into the fantasies of the audience. I want to get to the fantasies in the audience. It isn't as simple as you say. You just take it for granted and therefore think it's simple. I think I'm taking it for granted because I've been doing it for too long. And that's what I'm trying to make you stop doing. Well, I did point out certain positions that I wanted to show America. I gave them the fantasies of the two guys and a girl— Do you understand how much information you have compacted into what you take for granted? I want to untake-it-for-granted, just like slow motion expands our

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knowledge of what's happening. I'm trying to slow down your action and expand the details. I'm not interested in the fact that they're fucking each other but that you've got access to information that you don't even know you know about. But you do know about it if my questions are asked. You say your performers don't know anything. But if I ask the questions, then they'll discover what they already know but couldn't articulate. That's what you're going to have to do: crack the walnuts I give you. Well, it's an interesting experience. It was good to explain some of the stuff. Now I can see I got maybe 50 percent of what I wanted out of that tape. Do you see what you're saying there: you're telling me that you have a tremendous amount of information about the audience that looks at your product. So when you say, "I got about 50 percent of what I wanted," you point to the other 50 percent—all kinds of information, ideas, fantasies that you have about your audience— What I believe an audience wants to see. You know that you can't know your audience completely; but if you're totally wrong, then you're not in the business any more. That's true. At this point, the last four things I did were spanking videos, just straight spanking stuff. It's a whole different psychology. There's no sex whatsoever, just spanking. The next thing I'm going to be doing is . . .I'm not sure what it is. It's very slow this month. Next month sometime something is going to happen. . . . What about women and porn? Right now women's porn is primarily these books that they sell millions and millions of copies of. The Harlequin novels? Or whatever they call them. Why wouldn't you want to make movies that would tap into that? Because I don't believe that there's a market out there for that. I don't believe that women are standing in line waiting for videotapes to be laid in their hands. A woman wants to see attractive men. I think these bisexual tapes which are put out by Catalina Video have broached that area. . . . I probably could put together a good script and direct an interesting bisexual video. Women, I believe, want to see attractive men. Perhaps they want to see men with each other, but I think they would like to see attractive men doing things to women that they could believe would be them, whereas we would like to believe that we're the guys doing things to women; that's the masturbatory thrill. The book that I'm thinking of [not this one] will have two parts [—it turned out differently]. The second part will be about the making of porn [which became Porn, Yale, 1991], about which you know so much. I shall use Fay [a woman to whom he introduced me, the subject in another study (Sex Dreams)] as an example of someone you thought had the [necessary] heat and then discovered she didn't have it in the right form. See, once again, as you go through the criteria for who's the right woman, you're running through what you imagine the audience wants. Well, Fay had some potential. I met some more. I met another that has real heat. She has problems, but you know, everybody has mental problems. She has real problems; she has hang-ups. No sexual hang-ups, none whatsoever. She has had a kid and she has a boyfriend. She has stretch marks on her breasts, but we used her for spanking things. Then I used her for an R-rated movie, a legitimate R-rated movie that I'm in with her. . . . It was a fascinating experience for me, because in the middle of the movie I'm interviewed while I'm performing with her, not R-rated material, but still there's Bill / Î9

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sucking tits and stuff like that, having fun, and a lot of what I said to the [Méese] commission will now be in an R-rated film. So the gospel of X continues. But there are so many people that I'd like you to meet. I don't know how many of them want to do it [the sampling problem too little noted in ethnography], because it's scary. What, to talk to me? Yeah, sure. I mentioned it to a couple of people, and they said, "Oh, no, I don't want to go there" [UCLA]. A lot of people are so stuck on themselves that they don't want to share anything. But they don't have anything to share, that's the problem. We were lucky with Fay. I will continue. Stasha might be interesting; I think St. Clair would fascinate you; Puffy's worthless, there's nothing there. You'd be bored because she'd have nothing to say and that's the problem. She's just a nice marshmallow, and there are so many nice marshmallows running around the San Fernando Valley now, that's the problem. But I really believe my industry has a lot to say, it's just that there's so few of them who can say it. There's a girl coming down from San Francisco named Nina Hartley [see chap. 11], who is one of the new darlings of our industry, and she's really hot. And I'm discovering her more and more as I watch these hundreds of goddamn tapes that I have to see [for the XRCO awards]. I told her today that she stole films, literally laid waste to entire performances by other people, just by being on the screen with them. She burns them up. And she is hopping up and down. She sounds like a nice person. She has told me she wants to be a spokesman for the business. So I'll call her bluff, and let's see if she'll meet you. Let's see if she's a person who will be very happy to admit her name in your book. She wants the glory of being a spokesman for the business as much as I want the glory of being a spokesman. I feel that I do speak for the Industry in that regard because I've been in it long enough on every type of level, and I'm speaking to you now as I spoke to the commission. I sat there and I poured out my soul to them and won them over.4 And that was the nicest thing of all, that I did win them over. . . . I want to see people enjoying my business. They're willing to smile at you but they'll— They didn't smile at anybody else. I know, but I don't think it's going to change anything. Oh, no, it's not going to change anything. I said, "Welcome to Salem-by-thePacific." We're sacrificial lambs. They're not going to get our industry. What's going to be sacrificed through all of that is all the telephone sex and stuff like that. That's doomed. Because it's too accessible to anybody; kids are listening to it; it's too mainstream. A sacrificial lamb. They're not going to be able to knock our business out. I warned them, if our business is knocked out, it goes back underground where it becomes so insidious that it proliferates and becomes incredibly money making and profitable. If they're worried about corrupting society's mores, we will destroy every one of their mores if we're given a chance to go hog wild. Right now, we censor ourselves, but if we're told that we can't exist any more, all the wraps go off; we'll go hog wild. I'm sure our industry will corrupt itself even further than it is. Why wouldn't it go back to where there wasn't any or hardly any? Why couldn't they stamp it out? 4. Is Bill so egocentric that he fully believes this? Or is this a crack through which a drop of ragerevenge or implacable obstinacy-pride (self-destruction to prevent feeling humiliated) seeps through?

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How can they? How much was there in 1930? A lot more than you know. Could be. But there wasn't as much. You say there are two hundred [videos released] a month. Yes, but there were still smokers, stag movies, it wasn't as commonplace, but I guarantee if you wanted to find hard-core in 1930 you could. I wanted to do a little video about that called Underground. There's so many projects I want to do. It frustrates me that the Industry is scared of me and my ability to outthink . . . most of the people. I don't think they trust me because I'm so eager. I really think that my zeal terrifies these people. Two weeks ago a guy called me. He said, "I liked Hotter Chocolate, and I want you to write some more scripts. I'll give you a title. Write me a script." And so he gave me a title, and immediately I thought up the idea, thought up what would happen, and he said, "Oh, oh, I'll call you back." I've never heard from the guy again. I didn't go, "Well, I have to think about that. Gee, I don't know if I can do it." You give me something to do, I'm not going to sit back and act like a fool. I can't play dumb. There are a couple of times where I will be marginally subordinate if it's worthwhile. At the Hollywood Press [a magazine for which, at the time of this interview, he was reviewing movies and writing stories on the X-rated Industry], I'm slightly subordinate, because they're nice people. So I go in there and play a dumb gringo with them. They're Mexicans, they're Puerto Ricans, they're South Americans, and they get a big kick out of me. I'm their black sheep. . . . But I really think the Industry is scared of me, and they're scared because (a) I tell the truth and (b) I'm excitable; I'm excited. I've said it before: when they're scared enough about you, they can take you out. Is that true or not? I don't think it is. Why not? I'm worried about you. Because every time somebody says, "You're never going to work again," there's always another organization comes along and says, here's something to do. Well, they'll break your legs. They can't break what's already broken. My knee hurts. I've got pains up and down here. That's why I don't intend to do hard-core that much any more. I know that I'm not a stud any more, because I . . . First of all, I'm from the old school. The people in the Industry now seem to enjoy being played with and sucked on and manipulated in order to get up. I'm from the old school of getting myself up. When I even attempted to do that in Chastity, it insulted the girl I was with. She said, "Oh, no, no, let me do it." I said, "No, let me do it." "Why? You don't think I'm good enough?" Oh, Jesus, do I have to try to explain to them what I was doing? These people [women of the new school] seem to take a great deal of interest in helping the guys, at least showing that they're the ones who did it. In fact, in many cases they can't do it if they did it all day long, because it is in the mind, and there are many, many ways to unlock the zipper to the mind. That's the whole thing. And I have my own way; this hand has been my best friend since I first discovered masturbation. It knows my cock, it knows the pressures I need, and I can get up that way. It's such a marvelous business, and there's so much to do in it. Yet I feel stymied that I'm not allowed to create to my fullest extent. That bothers me; it really upsets me. I am in the position now, hopefully. I went to San Francisco a couple of weeks Bill / 41

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ago; it's very nice; a prime example: people paid my trip up there, gave me a room, I had a meeting on Sunday. And we drove back. I didn't spend anything. They wined and dined me so they could listen to me talk about what I knew. Also we had a meeting where they're going to utilize what I know and hopefully put together a production company. Whether this takes place or not, it was an experience that, had I not been in this business, no one would have ever cared. But they really paid attention to me, and I get a big kick out of that. When I want attention paid to me, the bear comes out of his cave. That's what it's all about. Most of the time I prefer people to come to my cave. I know that this is your [RJS'S] cave, and in a sense we're very ursinelike in this situation. You will some day have to venture into my cave to see [I did. His description below is accurate.] . . . In the old days, if you'd come to my office, you would have been fascinated. Because my office . . . Well, one day I'll show you a film that has my office in it, or maybe I'll bring interview tapes that I've done with people like Roña Barrett or Stanley Siegel or Paul Wallich or stuff like that or Wally George. You can watch some of that, but you'll have to come to my house someday for no other reason than to watch a videotape there, because in that surrounding it is so charming and so offputting. You expect to come into this hedonistic hellhole, and you walk into a house [apartment] that's full of bears. You have all these books; I have a bear to match every book you have. Bears hanging off the ceiling, bears; you sit on the couch, bears fall on top of you. I have bears that talk. . . . All right, let me interrupt. We've been at it a long time. It's fun. Do you want to experience the Industry on a level of—I don't know how much field research you do—but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for you to go to Las Vegas for one day . . . [RJS flinches.] I know, okay. Thanks a lot. Four days: the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth of January, the CES—Consumer Electronics Show—is being held in Las Vegas. Now we have been relegated to an area ofthat show, the X-rated Industry. . . . I would jump at a chance to do this: In Las Vegas for those four days, and all you'd need to do there is one day, and I've got a pass all ready for you, you wouldn't even go under your own name, I'd give you a nice name. You could go up there as Har D. Core or Regina Jax. You could go as B. Stubbs, you can be B. Stubbs. [Mr. Stubbs, remember, is the bear he uses in his films.] Come and see how the people in this industry are appreciated by the real world. . . . If you could come to the show, see these people in their surroundings. I don't know anything about the real world and how it works, but obviously you have some money given you to go spend it on investigatory situations. You got to! There's got to be grants or some kind of expense [account]. I don't have five cents in grants and never have. They don't give you anything as an expense account? No. That's sort of sad. Not quite true. I can go down and buy tapes [blank, not porn; I might lose tenure if I bought the latter] at the local store. That isn't the problem. I don't need grants. I don't need a grant to sit and talk with you. I don't need a grant to go see your place. I don't need a grant to watch a filming. That's not a problem.

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4 Second Prelim: Ira Looks Up

Life is looking up for Ira. He is disengaging, without bad wounds, from an erotically furious S-M affair with beauteous Tammy (see Stoller 1991a), emerging from the lower depths of poverty, insightfully separating from his recently dead mother, finding respect in the pornography world: growing older and wiser. We meet every two weeks for two hours of conversation. He reports in, in medias res.—RJS ISL

I was in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. When you're surrounded by people who study each other's faces for a new line or blemish, you see how important externals are in our business. They are that business. Even more than the regular film industry, where physical attractiveness is an obsession but where the obsession is balanced by an obsession with talent. But in this business, that's the sole focus of the performers' attention. And they do a remarkable job of making themselves physically appealing. Many of them as raw material are not that wonderful. A few are—male and female: they'd be strikingly beautiful no matter where. But most are ordinarily attractive and do everything possible, like through cosmetic surgery, to make themselves appealing. Mostly they're regular-looking people, well packaged. And packaging was what our part of this show was about. Within that greater realm—electronic hardware, computer software, video products, and so forth—is a section devoted to X-rated video. It rotates [each year] from hotel to hotel; no prejudice against it. The same wonderful people who bring you Las Vegas bring you X-rated movies. Most of the X-rated production companies have booths where their product line is available—for the operators of chains of video stores, for mail order shippers, for whoever buys these products—to see the products. Each booth has one or two female stars who sit around in revealing attire and give autographs with semilewd inscriptions to passersby. The vast majority of the people who line up for these

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autographs are in no way related to our industry and have nothing to offer. Which makes, after a while, for an exhausted, cranky girl, I mean because . . . They're signing autographs on a piece of paper? No, an eight-by-ten photograph of themselves. As if they were Hollywood stars. Absolutely. And they like that part, that moment fraught with ambivalent emotion. On the one hand, it's flattering to see a line of drooling lechers here to get your signature and spend two seconds looking down your cleavage. On the other, it's, "When will these guys go away?" The same mixture of flattery and disgust that public adulation makes anyone feel. So they pose for pictures and sit in guys' laps while the guy looks ridiculous and a friend takes his picture. What do they do with these pictures when they get them home? Put them up in the office? Who do they show these,things to? I suppose they fantasize having sex with these women. But I can tell you that having sex with these women is extremely difficult to do unless in the context of paid employment. I say this as someone who's known many of them for years and had sex with a select few. Almost everyone [male] has an objective, someone [female] they've worked with once and want to get their hands on now: some great thing is going to happen. It doesn't happen. People sit in the booths all day and sign autographs. Meanwhile, they make deals with producers and other [business] things. At night there are big functions orchestrated by the companies. Everyone gets dressed up, and they stand around, drink in hand, and make deals just like at the Cannes Film Festival. Then when these things break up, they stagger back to their hotel rooms and collapse. I saw one or two people get lucky and have a little fun, but not much. The division between the performers and creative people versus the business people was never clearer to me. The atmosphere in porno gatherings overall tends to be predatory, with the rules of street culture in force. What you have are bosses, primarily male, trying to get a little more than they're paying for from talent, primarily female, trying to give them a little less than they're buying. That many of the performers are profoundly insecure, broadly dysfunctional, and frequently in desperate need of a few hundred bucks' worth of employment renders the contest fundamentally uneven in many instances. But sermonizing aside, this show is an occasion to see how big and how extraordinary this whole phenomenon is and what a peculiar bunch of people we—the performers and creative people—are. Talk to us and we'll tell you it really isn't the money. Our official line is that we do it for the money, but get us to be honest and we admit we have other needs that compel us to do this. The ones who come into it solely for the money are very young, not very bright, and don't last long. They quickly wear out, in it for a year or two and then out. But for the long-time insiders, it is a life-style and a family. These big, industrywide events have elements of a trade show and of a family reunion. "Great to see you. Haven't worked with you since such-and-such. What have you been doing?" Like greeting long-lost cousins with whom you've had quasiincestuous relations over the years. Backslapping, hugging and kissing, renewing acquaintances. The nice part: we have shared this peculiar thing. To validate each other, to tell each other that what we are is all right. So there was a fair amount of that. I've gradually worked my way in by doing various jobs perhaps a little better

44 / Ira Looks Up

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than expected. And being Sharon's roommate hasn't hurt. Sharon got the award for Actress of the Year, and my friend Rad got Director of the Year. These are not S-M films . . . No. These are regular things. . . . Sharon has matured greatly as a performer. She's always been a steady, well-liked, good performer. But in the last year or two, she's come into her own, giving great performances. She's just chewing these pictures up. Just walking onto the set and taking these pictures over. A star. She's acquired a polish and confidence that's hard to beat. A first-rate actress.1 Not just fucking? Acting! The fucking is all well and good, but the Industry respects you for how you function throughout a picture, sex scenes and the other scenes, your performance overall. And her performances overall have grown enormously in depth and sophistication. She's taken that terrine native charm of hers and really made the most out of it. So, I seem to be getting on reasonably well in the business now, having been found a reliable, decent sort, at least by our prevailing standards.2 I will continue to learn about the nuts and bolts of film making. This is better than the UCLA Film School. Many Hollywood directors started out making B pictures, which were in their day roughly the equivalent of what we do now: small budgets, no stars, short production schedules, lots of corner-cutting, do a lot with little. There are talented people here learning to make videos on twenty and thirty thousand dollars each, at most. And it's still movie making. Still trying to make little stories, trying to make attractive visual products, learning how camera angles and lighting gags work, how to work with performers. A valuable education. In Hollywood film making, you get an idea, you fight like a dog for ten years, and some remotely similar thing finally gets made if you're lucky. Here you sit down with someone over lunch and shoot the next day. Since no one has time to waste money on development, you end up making pretty much the thing that you agreed to make.3 Not only that, but the Mediéis are the patrons of your industry. 1. Before my informants brought in their work, I "knew" (that is, had no doubt—trusted my opinion despite having no knowledge) that acting ability, or even valuing acting ability, did not exist in porn. One needed only the willingness to be photographed in this intimate behavior. Though that arrogant judgment may have been more or less correct then, it can be modified. Now I agree with my informants that there are, alongside (literally) the awful ones, performers who are competent actors and actresses beyond the sex scenes. The good ones—Sharon strikes me as quite winsome—would, I think, be employable in Hollywood. 2. ". . . a reliable, decent sort"—an opinion with which I agree. We are here at what many readers will consider the heart of the matter: can anyone be decent who is into this crude, rebellious, adolescent, selfish, phony, naughty, degrading-both-to-performers-and-users, physically— infectiously—dangerous behavior that is controlled at the top by thugs? If we start with the opinion that pom is evil, puts out a product meant to corrupt society, and is created by sophisticated, antisocial people, then it follows that only radical surgery will keep the cancer from spreading. Meeting the people, however, can spoil the purity of that vision. Moral judgments on qualities such as "reliable, decent'* are, of course, subjective. Even more, within a person will be both "decent" and "indecent" qualities: clean shoes need not signal a clean heart, a racist may respect his mother. This chaste housewife consigns perverts to hell; this pillar of the church sells shoddy concrete to the Department of Highways; that porn hater cheats on taxes. This is so familiar, so obvious, so trite, so important. 3. It ain't necessarily so.

Ira Looks Up / 45

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Absolutely. They're right there to say, "Good. Go ahead. Do it. Call me when you're done. Here's five thousand bucks. Get out of here!" That's exactly what I want. It rather resembles the old days of B picture movie making. A catalog of minor stars all accessible to you without going through agencies and waiting in line for them to get through twenty other projects. And you've got technical personnel; low-budget screen writers. You make a dozen phone calls, your repertory company is assembled, and you go ahead and do it. And, as with the old B pictures, you work with the same people over and over so you have a good idea who can do what. I wasn't kidding about the Mediéis. Most of them were thugs . . . who gave money to artists, who were glad the thugs were around to give them a few bucks to make their painting [the next day]. Yes. These guys are patrons of a sort. Like the Borgias and Medicis, beneath a thin veneer were guys who, though they got where they were by hacking other people up, were not stupid. You don't become a millionaire in a tough business by being stupid. They recognize that hiring someone smart is better than hiring someone dumb. Creative suggestions do sometimes get a hearing. For instance, at WHO [a bondage video producer] we may shoot a video in black and white. Probably just one terrific novelty product, a nostalgic period piece in the spirit of Irving Klaw, Bettie Page.4 Black and white. A fun piece. I wouldn't try it with a regular X-rated picture: in the regular-fucking pictures people want to see that hideous, supersaturated color, and anatomical close-ups. But for a B&D [bondage and discipline with no hard-core sex] picture, the high contrast black-and-white thing . . . just perfect. So that's the situation I think I'm finding myself in, with ideas that, if I can ever make real movies, will be very useful. I'm experimenting with performance art techniques that I learned in my downtown art world associations, ways of getting over the traditional rough spots of making X-rated pictures. Since they started to shoot video, they think they're making episodic television, soap opera segments, and situation comedies. Which means lots of talking-head scenes, where people sit around and attempt to advance the story line by yakking between the commercial scenes where people are fucking. Fast-forward material.The yakking scenes are useless, garbage. We need to telegraph that information quickly and cleverly and get to the set pieces. We're doing burlesque or ... something closer to improvisational theater. Use the story to set up the opportunity for our performers to perform. Sex performance is like a circus art, more like an athletic performance than acting. So, deemphasize the dramatic elements (which don't work well anyway) and emphasize the athletic performance. Treat it like circus, like burlesque, like variety theater. The expository material does roughly the same thing as the MC or the comic who comes up between the stripper acts. The interlocutor who says, "Moving right along folks! Now we're going to have Sally Rand and her fan dance." Is this what fell into place in Vegas? Being the friend, of Sharon, having a lot of experience in the business, doing wonderfully with WHO, ingredients that fell in place in Vegas? 4. Klaw was a 1950s soft-core porn photographer. His pictures were advanced for his day but seem mighty tame today—smiling models standing around in their underwear, tied up, wrestling, lying about. Bettie Page was his most famous model. They were broken on the wheel of congressional rectitude but are now—a bit camp—once again popular.

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Yes. And then there was the Hustler thing,5 which turned out to be a pleasant surprise for all concerned. Here's what the situation was. Rad's A.D. [assistant director] had been his girlfriend, Terry, whom he'd been with for about four years. She was always the guy who took care of the details that Rad forgot. He concentrates with ferocious attention, the way artists do, but only on what interests him. And lets everything else slide. Terry's job was to take care of all those things. Rad had not made a picture in four years without her. So since they had broken up, he was apprehensive about doing this without her. On the first morning of shooting, Maggie, the production manager, a tough, tough girl with long experience in this business, said to me, "Keep Rad feeling okay. Make sure that he gets enough attention: his glasses, his script, his glass of water, whatever he needs." I took care of Rad; it went well, and everyone was relieved. I do not delude myself that it will be a long, good time, but there will be a honeymoon period, a year or two when I might be able to make a picture or two I want within this genre, have good relations with most people, and make a decent living at an indecent trade. But it won't last forever. It shouldn't. I shouldn't spend too much time doing this. [He is still there, five years later.] Well, it's not selling coke. You're not going to kill anybody. No. But it does concern me that we might be enabling people to endanger themselves in a somewhat similar fashion. The risks are relative, of course, but they do exist. The performers are at risk. In fact, the sex that the performers do in these pictures is neither terribly safe nor terribly unsafe, it's somewhere in the middle. For instance, they do unprotected penetration, but virtually all the orgasm shots are external. A fairly low level of fluid exchange. There are some precautions taken: spermicides, sponges, invisible precautions the audience can't see. And most producers now require proof of a recent Hiv-negative test result. But if only one or two infected male performers somehow manage to keep working anyway, something very bad might happen. And since these are my friends and I care about what happens to them, I worry. The fact that, like drug users, a lot of them tell me they know the risks and can handle them makes me worry even more. I think it's interesting, by the way, that, so far, the performers are continuing to test negative repeatedly, despite what seems like a lot of high-risk behavior. If I were an ambitious young researcher at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] who didn't care about the political correctness of his work, I think I'd be out here setting up a study of some sort.

5. Hustler: a raunchy porn magazine, farther out on a continuum that starts with Playboy or Penthouse. Recently, it has put its name to a series of porn tapes. Hustler has nothing to do with these productions; makes no suggestions regarding casting, scripts, or content; provides no money or support; gives only the strength of its name. These films—straight pom, not S-M, gay, or other déviances—are, Ira says, top quality (in contrast to most pornography). But the people making the films have been dismayed by the sales. The customer, perhaps confused by the flood of careless product in pretty boxes, has no way of knowing the "excellence" of the Hustler series. The weak sales performance of this product, Ira says, is not due to the fact that the audience is made up of "rainwaters" (or what Jim Holliday [Stoller 199Ib] calls "lunchbuckets"), the Untermenschen of our civilization, who are happy with trash. Ira thinks that even these bedraggled souls would join the highclass ladies and gents of the suburbs and townhouses in turning on to well-made porn if they all could be reached by proper means of distribution—if, before purchasing, they could know what they were getting.

Ira Looks Up / 47

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Will you ever be performing? Not in hard-core. A.D.ing and writing, but never fucking. They wouldn't want me, and I wouldn't want them. As a performer, I stick to bondage pictures. Why are bisexual guys in straight porn movies? Because bisexual movies are a major growth sector in the Industry: bi-circus films, where men and women all do it together; films that are all anal sex sequences (special award category for this at the AVN [Adult Video News] awards); the other is S-M fetish and specialty films, where I feel the most comfortable working. I'd like to break down the barriers between that and regular X-rated films, mix the fetish and specialty elements, do fewer anals, less sexual intercourse, do less risky stuff. Move toward titillation and further from dangerous sex. Of course, not everyone agrees with me about this. Bill Margold says there is a hunger to see people do high-wire acts, drive race cars, do high-risk sex. How did you and Sharon become friends? Oh, we've been buddies for years. We went once around the track. Nothing went wrong. Just nothing went particularly right. I'm not her type; she's not my type. I don't go for the all-American-girl type. She's too girl-next-door for me. She, on the other hand, goes for cute boys younger than her. I'm not cute. I'm interesting. Interesting guys have never been her thing. And then there's the S-M thing. I like someone who gets hot doing S-M, not just, "Okay, I'll do this once for fun." I want an enthusiast, and she would never be. So we just said, "It was nice, not something to do again." We genuinely like each other and have from the first minute we worked together. We're people who have had bad trouble in the sex and romance department. The friendship department is a better department for us. We're better friends than lovers. Lovers come and go, but we hang on to our friends. She's able to form close attachments of a nonsexual nature, as am I. But as soon as they turn sexual, it's trouble. We always really enjoy each other's company. It's great. She's stuck in a relationship with this miserable, street-hustler type. He lives in her apartment, helpless, wretched, no car, no job, no money, no place to go, and not moving out. Sharon wants him out. Meanwhile, I am stuck in a place I despise, idiots stomping over my head, derelicts sleeping in my car. Living downtown is interesting [ironic voice], but living in a cultural institution [the postmodern Art Forum] run by Stalinist women is not a lot of fun. I'm anxious to get out of there, but I've no money, no credit, no job. This is a situation that can be fixed: two people who get along well, each with a problem the other can solve. Sharon has money and is afraid to live alone. She wants company but not a lover. She wants to get out of her colorful little hovel in West Hollywood where she was living with this guy. And she always needs someone to organize things for her. So it was a natural. Sharon said it first. "Let's be roommates." It came partly from the picture that we did for Merlin [1991a, 1991b], where we played roommates. Everything we looked at, our response was very compatible. We found a nice two-bedroom apartment with lots of extra space, not expensive, in a part of Hollywood where not everyone wants to live. Sharon was a bit resistant at first, but I said, "People are too nelly about these things. If they had lived downtown [as Ira did] for the last year, they would know this neighborhood we're talking about is almost Beverly Hills." What's she worried about in this neighborhood? Traffic. Weird street people. Not cozy like West Hollywood. But spending more

48 / Ira Looks Up

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money because a neighborhood is reputed to be a neat place to live makes no sense tome. So we agreed that this was the right apartment. Twelve hundred a month, six hundred apiece. It's what we're each paying now. But I needed some front-end; she needed help getting moved. We were candid with the owners about who we were. They weren't fazed. We're going to try and make a go of living together. Of course there are rumors already about what this is going to be like. I'm surprised there would be rumors. In your business, why would that be anything for gossip? Isn't everybody fucking all the time? It sounds so bourgeois. . . . No, no, no. They are bourgeois about these things. Not to mention that X-rated performers don't have sex lives for the most part, outside of work. Most are pretty sexed-out by their jobs and have, in my opinion, lackluster sex lives. There's always plenty of gossip, however, and we are both known for odd preferences, hers for young guys and mine for S-M, and neither for liking the other's thing: I'm exclusively heterosexual S-M and Sharon's vanilla.6 So there's probably some conjecture, all of it unfounded. Sharon and I aren't each other's type, romantically speaking. Sharon is pretty much an unabashed hippie: crystals, natural diet, all that sort of thing, my view of which is so jaundiced. And she sees me as a meat-eating, beer-drinking, spiritual primitive. Will she leave you alone about that? Sure, and I'll leave her alone about her vegetarianism. She says, "Please don't leave raw meat on the kitchen counter. I get sick when I see it." I said, "Fine. Just understand: checkout time [for boyfriends] is noon." We can talk frankly to each other. We do get on famously. We understand that though we're friends, our infatuations and romances, when they're going on, have a higher priority. I hardly saw her in Las Vegas, because when she wasn't at the booth signing— surrounded by a mob of drooling idiots—she was frantically pursuing this little fellow, trying to get him to have sex with her. We had one dinner and lunch together, but the rest was five minutes between this and that. Each of us refers to the other's sex life as The Project of the Moment: "How is your Project going?" You're like siblings. Yeah, but with an incestuous element. You hang with the gang and you see how strong it is. It's very, very strong. The girl I described to you on the phone this morning [S-M model], a classic example. She has every indicator of an incest survivor: obsessive-compulsive behavior, bulimic and anorexic, drinking and drug problems, disastrous relationships, including one that produced a child, angry feelings toward the child and the child's father. She says that when she becomes close to anyone she starts to hate them, inexplicable rages, terrible nervous mannerisms in her speech and body. Amazingly, like most of us, she's cool on the job. In a social situation, she's totally unstrung; but when she comes to work, she is on time, she's pulled together, she looks good, she's smooth as silk to work with. Never a problem. Because it is the validation they receive for sex. That's the frame. It puts borders around it. It's [the modeling situation] not real, but the validation is real. It couldn't 6. Vanilla is a term used by S-M people to describe conventional, non-S-M sexual intercourse and those who engage exclusively in it. RJS would have described himself as "vanilla," whereas I, obviously, could not do so about myself.—ISL

Ira Looks Up / 49

be more real, because at the end of the day, Don gives her money. Not the validation that comes with "I love you," with someone making emotional demands or failing to answer hers. It comes in a concrete fashion, as concrete as someone giving you a lollipop for letting him feel around under your skirt. It's a metaphor that applies in the lives of sex performers. They're mostly people who have been given things in the past in return for their sexual behavior, and this is what they're getting now. You have a broad academic agenda [i.e., finding out what makes people tick]; I have a narrow, ferociously focused personal agenda: to discover why we live the way we live. I am as much one of them as they are. I am as much Tammy as Tammy is Norma, as Norma is this girl, as this one is Sharon. I have the same thing that they have: when I start to become close to someone, I start to hate that person. Once I let myself need someone, I expect betrayal and want to nuke her before she can do to me whatever people have done to me in the past. Next time I come in I'll try to bring Sharon. She's doing a low-budget feature, trying to move over to regular movies now. "My character lives all the way through the movie." She says it's the first time this has ever happened. When she's in straight pictures, she's always the hooker who gets stabbed in the first reel. In every picture, she's required to show her tits. They hire porn actresses to be the girl who gets stabbed in the first reel, lethally punished for her sexuality. That's the wholesome view of the sex characteristic of legitimate motion pictures.

SO / Ira Looks Up

5 Semi: Ira Hustles

In reviewing this material I find much that is personal and therefore alarming. I also find much that is digressive. My own, overbearing voice tends to make me more central to this book than I was to the process of making Sharon's movie. But the patient reader will ultimately be rewarded with some telling glimpses into the world from which Stairway to Paradise emerged. We pick up shortly after my return from the Las Vegas trade show, where the initial contacts for Stairway were made.—ISL 151

I got myself to the point where I was able to go back to work. This was the Hustler shoot. There's this guy, Radcliffe, a longtime professional in the X-rated Industry. He's directed pictures, produced pictures, written pictures, edited pictures. Rad is not an S-M person, but he likes dominant women. He just likes them. I've known many men like this: sexually attracted to dominant women even though without a conscious desire for S-M. They're not S-M people. They don't want to be submissive to a woman. This kind of guy has great difficulty allowing that to happen but is attracted to the challenge and power of the feminine mystique. Rad once lived with my old friend Mistress Medea, the person who brought me into the S-M business.1 They had a vanilla relationship. Then he was with another 1. (This description covers only heterosexual places.) In brief, a business with three parts. The first are B&D establishments, buildings with several rooms equipped for B&D S-M practices, plus kitchens, dayrooms, bathrooms, storage rooms. The owners are men or women, the employees women. Some of these clubs are primarily emporia of prostitution, others disclaim such intent. Second are the private practitioners, women who offer their services as independent entrepreneurs, usually in their own apartments, in a few cases going on outcalls. These ministrations, different from those of some B&D establishments, may include sex—orgasms. The third element of this business is pornography, which consists of still photographs of women (who may or may not be into S-M in private life) in B&D and S-M poses and films—these days, videotapes, since they are cheaper and easier to make than regular movie films. (See Stoller 1991a.) SI

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girl [who was] sort of into the scene, generally as a dominant. And then he became interested in Cass, the dominatrix [a former professional2 submissive]. Rad wanted to do a series of short fetish pictures3 with her. However, she complained that there's tons of female-submissive bondage pictures but no female-dominant pictures on the West Coast. There's one company in New York that puts out female-dominant videos, but none on the West Coast. Here's my theory: Heterosexual men don't like looking at pictures with a man as the sex object. In a B&D picture, the dominated person is really the sexual object. We satisfy both dominant and submissive sexual tastes by showing women dominating women. So men who are into being dominated identify with submissive women without feeling that their gender identity is compromised by identifying with a man in that position. Our distributor claims that when they made female-dominant pictures, the sales were very low. Maybe they just didn't make good ones. Maybe guys were embarrassed to buy them. I don't know. Anyway, Cass suggested to Rad that maybe there was a market for this erotica. And Rad said, "Let's do it. Let's put together a lowbudget package. I'll get the financing, we'll put the talent [performers] together, and we'll see if we can make any money at it." So Cass said, "I want these projects to be scripted by Ira; he's my friend and his work is good." So Rad and I made a little deal for me to write story outlines for six pictures for Cass.4 He and I sort of hit it off: he liked me better than I liked him, at first. I didn't trust him. I've since come to trust this gentleman to a considerable degree, though my overall skepticism toward people in the business remains unchanged. Anyway, he pointed me to Hustler's videos. Hustler doesn't make videos, but they license their name and they promote them: a pass-through promotion deal in which the producers of the movies promote Hustler's products, and Hustler promotes their products. They get the use of the Hustler name. In every video, we plug the magazine: it is used as an on-set prop. Does Hustler look at the product before they buy it? or do ... They don't buy it. Or contract to pass it through? whatever . . . No. They don't care what it looks like? No. Hustler is not a name that has to be protected, that they worry about endangering. Their view probably is that if the vehicle is sufficiently raunchy, it's fine with them. All they ask is that there be plenty of raunch. They know the guys who are making it, and they know they will not be disappointed. 2. Professional means she worked in a B&D establishment or as a private practitioner (or both). "Former submissive" relates to the rule that everyone into S-M, male or female, has the potential, given suitable circumstances, to be a dominant—to top others, or a submissive—to be topped by others. Some enjoy and need both roles during a particular time of their lives (which may be transient or permanent); some can take either role, though they prefer one; and some will choose only one role exclusively (though they may switch to the other for a time or permanently). 3. Videos of models, more or less undressed, perhaps decorated with flimsy underwear or highheeled shoes, in various poses of bondage (rope, leather), suspension, and so forth. 4. Sometimes by himself, sometimes with the director-to-be of a proposed film, Ira thinks through an idea for a script. In the case of the approaching Hustler project, the idea is that a woman, disillusioned with life and love, takes sex phone calls on the air from lonely people. The breakthrough concept is that, though the film will have the obligatory sex scenes, the story structure that holds the scenes together will have psychologic-moral-philosophic depth. (See Adult Video News, May 1990, pp. 56, 61, for a story on the making of this film.)

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Does Hustler put up the money? No. The money guys are not in on the hands-on part. . . They're up above . . . Yes. So we had [on the set] one of those guys who Rad got the money from, a guy named Keith, whose investors put up the money for this shoot. We don't know who those guys are; we don't want to know. Keith brings the money to the set, that's all we know. Rad refers to them as "Keith's people." Who are they? Not my business. So this, this thing, like all the Hustler series, is by today's standards an ambitious, deluxe porno shoot that takes three days: a preparation day to get the props and put up sets and two days of shooting. They use the major names in the business and mount elaborate scenes: A large two-camera unit crew, catering, a production office, a sound stage. They spend about $35,000. This is not S-M? No. These are straight. They'll show many surprising things, but bondage they're afraid of.5 Okay. You're hired because he's your friend and you know the porn business. Yes. And I know almost all the girls and guys. Rad hired me as assistant director, his first A.D., which really was a gift. A real first A.D. does a crucial, difficult job, that [owing to inexperience] I was hardly up to. A first A.D. is the top sergeant on a movie. His job is to kick butt, to go places and grab people and say, "Get the fuck over there and do your job." As Rad said, by the time the production is over, no one speaks to a good assistant director. Everyone hates the sight of him. That's a good assistant director. Why can't you be a director? I eventually can be, but I don't yet have the technical skills. Who does? When I talk to Margold or Holliday, I don't get any sense of high directorial brilliance. They deliberately understate what they do. I have watched both porn and straight films being made: it is the same job. Rad is brilliant. He does what every good director does. He reads the personalities; he keeps the entire vision of the picture in his head . . . Is it your script that he has? That's the vision? No, this script he wrote. This is his long-term agenda. He wants out of this, to make real movies. A director has a creative vision of his own, takes creative people and gets them to subordinate their creative imaginations to his and work together as a team to produce a product he has envisioned. He's an art manager. A peculiar combination of virtues. Rad and I share some of these skills, by virtue of my once having been a magazine editor. Some personalities need to be reassured and humored, others need to be reasoned with, others clobbered. You run the show with charm, pleading, and bullying until you get it done. This is what it takes, and that's what a director really does. The assistant director's job is to preserve cordial relations between everyone else and 5. In some countries—Germany and Japan, for example—filmmakers will not be arrested if they show live genital erotic penetrations or B&D-S-M practices. In the United States today, however, those who would dare to film such events will be arrested. The same goes for fisting, urination, and defecation. The laws may not be specific and the constitutional issues may be untested, but the district attorneys are in the ascendant at present. Even selling the fierce foreign material may break the bookseller.

Ira Hustles / S3

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the director, by doing the really dirty work. I have no fantasies about being the director of my own video series, but I do expect other opportunities in time. Do you plan to be in R ad's place? I plan to stay in this situation. Wouldn't you be financially better off? Of course. X-rated directors get about $5,000 a picture. Aren't you doing everything necessary for them to like you? Yes, I was the best I could be. While everyone may not have loved me, I did a decent job, and I would now hire myself as an A.D. Okay . . . I'm oriented. Go on. Rad hired me to do this because he knew that, as first A.D., I would be sitting on his shoulder like a parrot, would see and hear everything he did. I'm the first compatible personality he's found. He made a big deal of promoting me on the set: "This is my friend, this is Ira. He's a genius. We love him. He's the best writer I've ever met. He's the expert on this, that, and the other thing." He introduced me to the people who ran the sound stage. He had me there early, on the prep days, so I would get to know the permanent staff at the place where it's shot. I had thought it was so ... unplanned: people get together and fuck, using a terrible script with Margold's jokes in i t . . . Well, there's that, plenty of one-day wonders. But when you're talking about a $35,000 budget for two days' work, that's big money. The director can't carry that in his wallet and hand out money to whoever needs it. Someone has to sign checks, keep the books, make phone calls. If everyone gets arrested, someone has to call the lawyer, the people to the north who run this thing. So Rad was anxious to see that I had friendly relations with those people. The happiest he was with me was when he came down to the set on the second day and said, "I just talked with Maggie about you; she really likes you. She thinks that you really are on the job doing your best and that you have a charming personality." And he said, "That's a great relief to me." Well, I'll bet it is, because if Keith had said, "Get that maniac pervert out of here, I never want to see his weird face again," then so much for Rad's plans; I'd never hear from him again. It was all a bit scary. I recollect sticking my head into this dressing room full of rowdy porn types with three-inch fingernails and hair that weighs more than I do and saying, "Er, ah, excuse me but if, ah, . . . I don't mean to be interrupting anything, but if you're not too busy, if we could please have you on the set in five minutes, we'd really appreciate it. Thanks, see you later!" What you're supposed to do is stick your head in the door and say, "Anyone who isn't on that set in fifteen seconds is dead!" Anyway, that's the usual approach. Is it necessary? Sometimes. Your way didn't work? Sort of. It worked, but it required more trips between the set and dressing room than a real A.D. would make. A real A.D. is a top sergeant who commands through fear. They don't forget. He goes in there and whomps on them the first time, and from then on, when somebody calls a cue, they're there. He deconditions them from their own laziness and anarchism. Of course, sometimes these traits work for you. At the end, we shot a three-couple orgy scene. Rad launched them. He knows when to intervene and when to back off. With an orgy scene, he said, "Try and direct

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this, you'll be killed. Forget it! Get in the middle of that and tell people what to do? I'm not crazy. You just put them there, turn them loose, and tell them to fuck and suck their brains out. That's what they're there to do; let 'em do it!" So we just called "Action" and walked away. Many of them are egotistical, childish. But I couldn't do what they do. Yeah. How could anybody get it up under those circumstances? Not only do they get it up, but they keep it up by the hour, no matter what happens. How do they do it? I'm not sure. Many come from the same abused, molested, incest-ridden backgrounds as men and women in the sex business everywhere. But the psychology of the male performers is much more complex and fascinating. What must it be like to have a dick that functions on command in that way! I mean they're . . . I mean, they'll be doing this . . . They'll be coming right to the climax, and then there's a little beep on the [tape]deck, and someone says, "Oh, my God! We're at * Batteries Low' in camera one. Got to stop right there. Pull it out of her. Wait a minute. Got to change batteries! . . . Okay, go into the pop shot now," after the batteries change. They just go right back in and do it. "We want the pop . . . How much time is left on this cassette? Three minutes. Okay, give us the pop in two forty-five." And they do it, twice in a day. How do they sit there with these giant, throbbing erections, chatting amiably with the cast and crew about baseball? And they get very little encouragement. In the old days, you used to have fluff girls on the set who kept the guys worked up in between. The female porn stars these days have little patience for that. They're there only to do their job, and they expect the guy to do his part of the scene. And between takes when they're doing it, they generally keep rolling on even when we stop camera: they play through the scene just to make it easier for themselves. But if the guy isn't ready when he gets on the set, that's his problem. Most of these girls are very reluctant [to help a man who is struggling for excitement]. We had one on-set failure, pretty amazing considering we shot six wet scenes. One guy in the orgy scene couldn't perform, and the girl he failed with was no help to him. In fact, she was mad at him afterward. She's the typical vulgar ruffian they get nowadays. (I liked her, actually.) "Goddamn it," she said, "I don't have a boyfriend any more. The only action I get is on the set. When one of these guys washes out, it ruins my fucking week! I'm just going to go home and jerk off!" The new generation. This picture was transitional in that it had a few well-known performers and also the kids. Cast of twenty. Big cast. They don't make many pictures like this any more. This is big. What shocked you? My most prized memory is 11:30 Sunday morning. Rad's a man of delicate sensibilities in some respects. He's no prude, but there are things he doesn't like to do. He lets Keith, who's a Euro-perv—he's English—direct the scenes he considers too disgusting. So Keith comes onto the set, rubbing his hands with glee, and says, "Right, then! First we'll shoot the anal, and then we'll break for lunch!" I said, "Really, Keith, are you sure we couldn't break for lunch first and then shoot the anal?" He pats me on the shoulder. "My boy, if this sort of thing troubles you, you're in the wrong line of work!" So, the anal in question was shot with a young woman who specializes in anal scenes. This is her thing. She knows the business backwards and forwards (let me put it that way). So they clear the set for this scene, leaving no one but essential personnel—sound guy, two camera guys, a guy to run the board, Ira Hustles / 55

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and whoever's directing. Because she does not like having people on the set other than who's supposed to be there. So anyway, the scene was held up because she, the star, wanted an enema. There was no disposable enema on the set. So they sent a production assistant running out to get disposable enemas. She said it's because the scene calls for the guy to first fuck her vaginally and then in the ass and to come on her face. She said, putting it ever so delicately, "Personally I don't care if I get shit on my face, so long as it's my own shit, but I feel sorry for the rest of you. If you want my shit all over all your faces, that's your problem. But personally I don't care to do that." We all agreed with that logic. So Keith turned to Maggie, saying, "I want to know the minute that enema is on the set!" Finally this production assistant comes back with the bags from the drugstore. The star runs off to the bathroom. Rad comes onto the set, scratching his head: "What's going on?" I said, "Maizie's in the bathroom taking her enema, and we're awaiting the outcome!" Rad said, "Fine, I'm going back to the parking lot to play basketball. I'll see you when it's over!" Out he goes. And we're back in. And then she came in, and they [Maizie and the man] did the scene. Completely unprotected. It was a lot of ramming in and out. And then they had oral sex afterward. Then indeed he did pop all over her, and she went raging out of there with semen all over her hair and face, saying, "I want to take a shower, I want some shampoo. You guys, you always want to see someone come on my face, and then after they do, you don't want anything to do with me." There's a general indifference to hygiene and safety. It's just hard for me to overlook. People get AIDS. Oh, they might. So far in our business, it's something that's just talked about, but eventually it is going to happen to someone. For instance, everyone uses the same jar of lube for every scene. They have one extra-large jar they passed around first in the anal scene, then in the orgy scene. People dip their fingers in and use it on various parts of various people's anatomies. Boy! I'll bet just the bacterial count in that jar— forget the AIDS virus for the moment—would be pretty high. When we were getting ready for the orgy scene, I said to the art director, "We'll need towels after this scene." "They're over in that box. The dirty ones are with the clean ones. So you want to be careful which ones you get." It says to me that nobody's thinking about this. They ought to be. There's a recklessness about the way some people operate that's chilling to me. You get the feeling some of them aren't planning for a long future. Most are very young; they just don't understand how the consequences of life catch up with you. But they also have something else, an angry thing that comes out toward themselves and others. It makes you wonder where it all comes from. I've been thinking long and hard about incest, since we've been on that in here [talking about that here] lately. The last time here I described the subculture of sexual deviation as a replication of the dysfunctional family model with its survivors. What makes them tick? Why does it exist? Because people find a way to integrate these disastrous, traumatic experiences into their lives. Having an hysterical, destructive mom, with whom you slept until the age of ten, with whom you'd lie in bed for three hours every morning after your father had departed for work, with whom you were either arguing savagely or making up with great emotion or tenderness. These things put a mark on a person, to put it mildly, that time does not erase. I suppose these are the epiphanies that came with my mother's death.

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I mean, what really did go on between my mother and me? Probably not a lot of physical contact. She wasn't very physical. The phone sex thing: almost to the end of her life. We had a regular phone sex date, where we would talk about our sexual adventures. I would masturbate while we did this. Kind of significant, don't you think? Sometimes we wouldn't even be talking about sex, and I'd find myself playing with myself. I always got a hard-on doing this. This started at what age? It went on so long I can't even remember. But when I was young, a child living at home, I'd do it sometimes when we'd be sitting there talking at home, face to face. She never bothered me about it. Did she know you were doing it on the phone? I think so ... No, I never told her about that. But it's uncommon for me to get hard spontaneously while talking on the phone about nonsexual matters, or even about sexual matters. Phone sex isn't my thing. It was the sound of her voice when she was nice. When we were fighting, of course, that was never true. I don't feel sexual when I'm angry, but I have found that sex often follows a fight. Fighting-and-fucking is human nature. It's monkey nature: they throw shit at each other and then fuck. There was something in her voice that was soothing and made me feel weirdly comfortable. Was it aimed at you, or was she just in her own private mood? We shared our mood. We were interested in each other's stuff, and warmth came through. There's a tendency in the family to be precociously sexual. It wasn't just me. She was sexually active at an early age, and so was her crazy brother. I remember one time when my mother saw me playing with myself, I was home sick with her. There were two occasions when we discussed masturbation, I must have been ten, eleven, getting fairly late. No, the first may have been eight or nine, the first sexual feelings, when I realized my sadistic fantasies were sexual, when I had my first spontaneous accidental orgasm, during a lengthy reverie about elaborate torture. But by the time this conversation occurred, I'd figured I could induce that if I wanted to. She was not disapproving, only that you should ordinarily not do this in front of other people. (Actually, both my parents did manage to communicate the idea that sex is okay.) Maybe she knew by then that sex was to be a compulsive force in my life, as it had been for so many in her family. She knew we all had it. When she was sixty-seven, she said, "The worst thing in our marriage is that there is no passion. I cannot live without passion." Passion: big-time fucking; we're talking orgasmic passion here, not romantic passion. She was about as romantic as Joseph Stalin. She was predatory, a vampire: fuck love, she wanted adoration. But affection? I never knew a less affectionate person. Little warmth. Cold and cruel. But she was also profoundly understanding, sophisticated, about these processes. She was trying here to communicate to me at the earliest possible age a sophisticated understanding of our legacy. She wasn't saying, "You've got to stop doing that or you're going to get hair on your palms and go blind." She didn't believe in ignorance about sex. She had to be permissive because she could not impose moral restraints on her own conduct. Or mine. That is the bottom line of this anecdote: Be intelligent, expedient, sophisticated. Sophisticated was her favorite word. That was really a cover, her saying, "Civilized people have civilized attitudes." What that really meant was, "If you do it with style, you can get away with murder." Sophistry. "If you cover Ira Hustles / 57

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your butt in a slick way, you can keep doing it." I have learned that lesson well, haven't I? I am a renowned figure for that. In terms of sexual sophistication, I am in the front ranks. Is this [brutally selfish commitment to sex] a defense, or is this a natural—inherited in the family—state? A natural state. [At another time.]

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I was thinking about the film you sent over. Sorority Pink. Okay, the standard six shots: Three boy-girls, a boy-boy-girl, a girlgirl-boy, and a girl-girl. Except that in this one I'll bet there's more girl-girl and not so many boy-girls. This formula was devised ten, fifteen years ago as a way of making these pictures pedestrian. Grind out the same pictures over and over, trite situations, lame dialogue, to be delivered by people who can't act. The thing exists only as an excuse to show people fucking. Jim sits down with an old buddy, the guy with the money. They have a premise: "We'll make a picture about a bunch of sorority girls. The hicks'll love that." Jim and I had a tough week. He wrote the script for the picture Sharon's going to direct. I'm the A.D. I sat in with him and Sharon when we did the budget breakdown and decided who to hire. I agree with every choice. His numbers were right on the line. Then he brought in the script. Bad jokes. "They'll love that in Peoria." They will not. I am a high school dropout from Denver, Colorado, and I know as much about middle America and the redneck porno audience as Jim Holliday and Bill Margold do. I don't treat the material as junk or the audience as stupid. I really hated the tone of condescension in the script. Toward the material. Toward Sharon, because she had given him the original idea, and he turned it into a joke against the audience and the players. Their view of porno is utterly different from the insurgent generation of wannabe moviemakers. We want to make interesting, offbeat pictures like the guys who started out making these things, like the guys who made Night Dreams and Misty Beethoven and the original classics of this genre. They say, "We get mail from out there in the heartland." What? A handful of jerk-off artists who write to the stupid magazines? That's the audience? The audience consists of yuppie couples with VCRS who are throwing rocks at the television screen over this kind of shit. My view is that the audience overall does not care to have its intelligence insulted. Maybe I'm wrong and Jim's right. Or are there two different audiences? I doubt it. I go into the video stores and watch the Westwood housewives. They rent Cinderella for the kids, and Rain Man for everyone after dinner, and an X picture for after the kids go to bed. Then into the Volvo station wagon and home to Brentwood. Does that audience want cornball, frat-brat jokes from Ohio State University circa 1959? I don't think so. Hollywood has spoiled them. They're used to better. The disparity between the typical X-rated product and the typical mainstream product has never been greater. Not since the days of 16-mm loops has there been such a difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly. You may not need reminding as you drop deeper into these transcripts—one need not be a student of human nature—that, in any conversation, listeners must interpret

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each other. There is no reliable report of the facts. Yes can mean yes, or it can mean no, maybe, go on, why did you say that? you are boring me, I don't like you, let's change the subject, I'm hungry, let's have sex, God is merciful, or I should have listened to my mother. These possibilities arise not only when we are reading a quotation; they are as pertinent when we are talking with someone, even a person we know well. (Truth is like L.A.: there is no there there. That's the truth.) Nonetheless, consensus is possible and sometimes works all right. In the external world, a tomato is not a potato; two plus two is four; and though dreams may say otherwise, a penis is not a vagina. How can you be sure, with the printed word, that the speaker, as with sarcasm, does not mean the opposite of what he or she says? Life, say the sages, is complicated: a whip's lash is a stroke of luck to some, and cruelty may have its kindness. The art herein is to take Ira's conversation-rendered-as-printed-words, keep the words, and yet transform them in your mind back to the way he spoke his living language with me. That done, we are at least at the starting line: do you, as you silently converse with him, interpret what he says as he does, as I do, or do you "hear" something else? Rashomon, of course.

Ira Hustles / S»

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Part Three Tumescence

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6 The Shooting Script: Stairway to Paradise

Though most of the frantic molecular motion at the Consumer Electronics Show gathering described in the previous chapters was dissipated in entropie heat loss, a few of the participants did ultimately manage to cook up production deals. Among these few were Sharon Kane and Jim Holliday, who reached agreement with one of the major X-rated video companies to collaborate on a picture to be written and produced by Jim and directed by Sharon. The prehistory of the project that became Stairway to Paradise is described in Jim's interview in the next chapter. For me as a screenwriter, however, with all the parochialisms of my trade, any film or video project really begins with a script. Though video, especially X-rated video, is a quintessentially visual medium, it still tells a story. The script is the armature around which the story-told-in-pictures is constructed. Reading the script of a video is a bit like studying the blueprint for a house. The blueprint does not tell you exactly what the house will look like or what it would be like to live in, but it does give a sense of the architect's intentions. In the case of Stairway, there were really two architects, Sharon and Jim, and the script they finally brought to the sound stage, after much labor and not a little conflict, reflects their combined intentions. The experience of reading it has little in common with that of viewing the video we actually made. Nonetheless, it does summarize the story Sharon and Jim were trying to tell. Simply synopsized, Stairway to Paradise is the story of a young woman's regression thiough the sexual experiences of her previous lives. Set, literally, in limbo, it follows Susan Moore (played by Nina Hartley), who has recently departed her latest incarnation, as she recollects erotic encounters in Old Salem, the Wild West, and the Psychedelic Sixties under the direction of a "resurrection sessionist," played by Kay Parker. As Susan searches for her authentic self amid the chaos of her past, she finds that there is not only life after death but, evidently, sex as well. Think of it as what might have happened if Timothy Leary had bumped into Frank Capra at the Playboy mansion.—ISL e3

Sharon Kane's Stairway to Paradise Fade in. Interior stairway, daytime. Sound of door closing. Susan's feet walk into frame. Susan (Voice-over) I have an appointment. Windstorm's legs enter frame. Windstorm (Voice-over) We've been waiting for you. This will help you relax. Camera tilts up to waist level, and a small container of green liquid is passed. Only hands and lower body are seen. Susan (Voice-over) I'm supposed to be here, but I don't remember . . . Windstorm It will come back. At the top of the stairway. They'll take you to Rainwater. Windstorm takes the empty container and backs away. Susan steps out of her shoes and softly nudges them aside. Sounds of snaps are heard and her clothing is dropped onto the shoes. Camera plays on her legs, followed by bra and panties. Windstorm returns with flowing, see-through gown. Camera pans to staircase. Windstorm Here. Wear this. Let me help you. Susan begins slow ascent up the stairs. Roll credits over Susan walking up steps. Interior, Rainwater's domain, daytime. Wildfire warmly embraces a confused Susan.

Windstorm and Snowdrift. Susan looks puzzled. Windstorm winks at her. Wildfire Surely you remember Rainwater. Susan Ido? Wildfire takes her place as Rainwater rises and smiles. Rainwater Susan Moore. A pleasure. [Eye contact.] How do you feel? Susan I don't know. I'm not sure. Do I know you? Rainwater [Spreads his arms and sits.] My name is Rainwater. Our paths have crossed. This will help. He gives her a shot of green liquid. Rainwater My acolytes. You've met Wildfire and Windstorm. This is Snowdrift. She's new. As usual, you're a little late. Susan I've been here before? Windstorm Sure you have. Rainwater Things haven't been going well for you lately, have they Susan? Drink up. It helps you relax and remember.

Wildfire Susan, nice to see you again! I'm Wildfire. Remember? I think he's ready for you now.

Susan I've forgotten what this place is called. Am I dead? Is this a dream?

Wildfire leads Susan to Rainwater. He is seated in his thronelike chair, attended by

Rainwater I can see we're going to play twenty ques-

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tions again. Let me get your usual ones out of the way. You're not dead. You're not in limbo. This isn't heaven, hell, or purgatory. It's not part of your imagination. I'm not an angel. I'm not a devil. I'm not a priest. I'm not a ghost. Susan Well, just what are you? Rainwater Here to help. Wildfire, would you get the book please? Wildfire exits. Close-up of Susan's face with a confused, dazed look of amazement. Cut to Windstorm and Snowdrift naked, caressing Rainwater's body. During sex scene, cutaways of Susan's disbelieving, amazed face and Rainwater and his acolytes alternately dressed and naked. Susan Did I just see what I thought I saw? Snowdrift Perhaps you've been having a cosmic flash. Susan [Anxious and frustrated] What just happened? Is this some kind of sexual nirvana? Rainwater Nirvana is completion, but it is also ultimate emptiness. Absolutely nothing just happened. Windstorm You've been standing there looking vacant. The lights were on but nobody was home. Wildfire returns with the book and gives it to Rainwater. He opens it, pages through. Rainwater You have a long way to go, Susan. And some advice on your journey would be this:

The truth means nothing. It merely always is. Susan Why am I here? Rainwater It's your time. You're scheduled to begin your sessions with Morningstar. You've never met her, but I can assure you, she's excellent. Windstorm . . . He gestures them out. Windstorm Come with me, please. Interior, Morningstar's area, daytime. Morningstar and Susan sit comfortably close, Morningstar in a chair, Susan in the low-slung couch. Susan Are you a doctor? Some kinda shrink? Morningstar I prefer to be called a regression sessionist. Are you starting to remember the purpose of your visit here? Susan Vaguely. Like déjà vu. Norningstar Déjà vu is merely an illusion that something has happened before. This is no illusion. Susan All I know is that everyone gives me this green shit to drink. Norningstar [Handing her a shot of red liquid.] Perhaps you should try some of this. It tastes better and it will help spur your memory. Susan gulps the red liquid. She makes a face.

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Norningstar Relax and let the liquid work. Concentrate. We're going to look at your past lives over the last three hundred years. Let's go back to 1692. The year is 1692. Where are you? Susan Salem . . . Salem, Massachusetts. Norningstar And all is not well, is it, Susan? Interior, Salem dungeon, daytime. Susan wears a tattered but provocative garment. The cell is dark, with straw on the floor. Susan languishes on a pallet. Sound of footsteps coming down the hall.

Deacon Peabody (Off-screen) Susan Moore! Deacon Peabody's shadow looms over her. She jumps up and pulls her rags tightly around her. Susan Moore, you are hereby charged by the Church of Salem with the crime of witchcraft. Cavorting naked in the woods. Performing sex with your own sex. Susan You're insane! I was only picking berries in the woods. You're just afraid of your own desire for me. Deacon Peabody You've been fairly judged and found guilty. You know what happens tomorrow? Susan I'm not a witch. But you're gonna hang me or burn me or drown me on the punishing pole. Either way, you're gonna kill me, you pious, self-righteous hypocrite! Deacon Peabody Don't you know what this is all about? I can

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use my influence to save you. Do you really want to die? He takes her face in his hands. She pulls away. Susan What do you mean? Deacon Peabody I and I alone can intervene. I make the rules. It's up to you. You don't have to die. Susan stands defiantly, looks at him contemptuously, rips her clothes off and throws them in his face. Soundless sex scene, until Deacon pops into the air. Deacon Peabody Vile spunk! . . . Satan's semen! Morningstar's area, daytime. Susan looks exhausted. Susan I was a fool. Deacon Peabody lied. They killed me anyway. Morningstar That incident started a long run of bad luck, bad karma, if you will. And I'm here to talk you through it. Executed as a witch, massacred by Indians and a playtoy for rumrunning pirates. It's essential that the process continue without interruption. It's 1878. Think of that cold, autumn night. Morningstar hands her another glass of red liquid. Susan I was a man, a man who killed. I took the lives of others with no remorse. The Civil War caused all that. She takes a swig of red liquid. Dissolve to interior, saloon, night. Close-up of Jesse James knocking back a shot of redeye.

Susan (Voice-over) 1878.1 was drinking alone in a high prairie saloon. I was on the run. It was cold, windy, and raining. A blue norther had just come up. The sexy saloon owner was getting hit on by some drugstore cowboy. Slowly pan along bar to Miss Emmaline and Fargo Flash Miss E m m a l i n e Listen, honey, I'm just not interested. Fargo Flash Don't you know who I am? I'm the Fargo Rash, the fastest gun ever to blow out of Dakota Territory and I gotta have you, woman! Miss Emmaline You just don't show me much, cowboy. Fargo Flash What do you know, Miss Emmaline? You're just some gal who serves flat beer and watered down whisky. He tries to grab her and kiss her. She shoves him back. Miss Emmaline Get your hands off me, motherfucker! Fargo Flash laughs drunkenly, lurches at her again. Miss Emmaline Lois, get the shotgun! Jesse slips in between them. Jesse Don't think you'll need that shotgun ma'am. [To Fargo Flash] Don't it sink in, boy? She ain't interested. Fargo Flash Who the fuck are you? Some shitkicking

sodbuster? Well, looky there, the pissant sodbuster's got a gun. Jesse Ain't the gun, asshole, it's the fella using it. Fargo Flash Before I kill a man, I like to know his name. Jesse Name's James. Jesse Woodson James. Fargo Flash The hell you say! Jesse James got a long, jagged scar on his arm from when he rode with Quantrill's raiders. Jesse exposes his scar. Jesse Like this? Fargo Flash Holy shit! You are Jesse James. He starts backing toward the door. Please don't kill me! I didn't mean nothin'. I just want to join your gang. Jesse What's your name, boy? Fargo Flash Bob Ford. Jesse Bob Ford, get the hell out of here. Flash turns and runs out. Lois runs up, arms flailing. Lois Emmaline, I can't find the shotgun! Miss Emmaline Too late, Lois. Mr. Jesse James has taken care of everything. Stairway to Paradise / 67

Lois The Jesse James! She slinks over, sidles up next to him.

Lois What say we sashay on up to my room? Jesse

Watch it, chunky. I don't want to have to hurt your feelin's, Lois, but I got eyes for Miss Emmaline. He crosses to Emmaline. Jesse

Lady, how's a fella go about windin' up with you? She looks him up and down.

Miss Einmahne Lock up and leave, Lois. I'm retiring for the evening. Lois [Exiting] Jesse James, you are flawless. She winks, blows him a kiss. When Lois has departed, Jesse takes off his hat and kisses Emmaline. Interior, Rainwater's domain, daytime. Close-up of Susan's face. Camera pulls back to show Susan reclining amid cushions on the floor. Windstorm and Snowdrift keep her company, stroking and caressing her. Susan

I was Jesse James in a past life. Everybody thinks Jesse James was like Robin Hood, a folk hero who robbed banks and trains just for fun. He ... I mean I was just a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. And four years down the road, that bastard Bob Ford shot me in the back. How come I'm not Jesse James now? 68 / Stairway to Paradise

Wildfire

Susan Moore is your essence, your primary, central being. Susan Why did Morningstar send me here? Windstorm

Since your last life as a man, you have been caught in between your male and female selves. Susan, we want you to make love to us right now. Snowdrift We will help you restore the correct balance by putting you fully back in touch with your feminine nature. They move in on her. One starts at the feet, the other at the head. Interior, Morningstar's area, daytime. Susan is seated. Morningstar enters with more red liquid. Norningstar

Last dose, dear. We're almost there. You had nearly a century of short, painful lives—axe murderess, pyromaniac, drug addict and a long stay in an insane asylum before World War II. Susan downs the red liquid. Morningstar

Good. After the war, you were reborn a baby boomer. Susan I was very independent, headstrong. Norningstar

Think back to Malibu. The year is 1967. You're twenty-one. Summer of love. Rower power. Hippies. You've changed your name. Susan

Not very clever I'm afraid. I settled on Apache. Pretty cliché.

Horningstar Now concentrate. You went to a guru for inspiration and spiritual knowledge. Susan Ah yes, the blessed Bhagwan Bob. Guru set, daytime. Bob is seated above Apache and Stonepoker on a pillowed minithrone. He meditates amid pillows and flowers. Stonepoker nudges Apache with his elbow. Stonepoker So what's with this guy? Apache He's not just a guy. He's my guru. His holiness blessed Bhagwan Robert Sikkim Praadu. Affectionately known as Bhagwan Bob. Stonepoker What's he doing? Apache He's meditating now.

Bhagwan Bob The truth of what's so is also so what. If you own possessions, it's just a matter of time before they own you. Discover the full blessings of life. Go to the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. Look for Howie and eat a cheeseburger. Listen carefully to Roy Orbison on the jukebox. [Notices Stonepoker] Who is this that you have brought with you today, Apache? Apache This is my new friend from the beach. His name is Stonepoker. Stonepoker Awesome, Bob. Glad to make your acquaintence, dude. Bob swats Stonepoker on the head with some peacock feathers. Bhagwan Bob Welcome, Stonepoker. Let's try some breathing exercises. Apache, inhale and take off your top. She does it. Stonepoker is blown away.

Apache closes her eyes, tries to meditate also. Stonepoker jabs her again. Stonepoker The hodad looks pretty wasted to me. What the fuck are we doing here? Apache I'm here to continue my search for truth, asshole. Stonepoker I'm here to continue my search for you. Bob comes out of his trance. Apache Oh blessed Bhagwan Bob, holy one, would you impart some divine wisdom?

Stonepoker Far out man, I could never get a chick to do that on the first date. Bhagwan Bob Now, show Stonepoker how to get into the lotus position. She shows him how to do it. Stonepoker Do people ever get stuck like this? Bhagwan Bob Now, both of you close your eyes and continue to breathe deeply. As soon as their eyes are shut, he sneaks over and starts fondling Apache's tits. She Stairway to Paradise / 69

begins to moan. Stonepoker opens one eye. He watches as Bob slips his dick into Apache's mouth. Stonepoker gets up and comes over. Stonepoker 'Scuse me, daddy, but that's my date with your dick in her mouth. Bhagwan Bob We are all one. And there's plenty to go around. Apache looks up at Stonepoker with innocent seductiveness. Apache So why don't you just go with the flow, man? Stonepoker shrugs and dives in. Interior, Morningstar's area, daytime. Susan paces back and forth. Susan Will I ever learn? All the guru wanted was to get in my pants too. Seems like that's what they all want. Horningstar

And two months later you saw fit to ingest too much magic from the cactus, or was it too much acid? Susan I don't remember if it was mescaline, windowpane, orange sunshine or Owsley blue. I thought I could fly.

Norningstar

It'll all be clear after you meet Reparata. The purpose of your visit, in words you can best understand, is to attain a higher rung on the ladder of existence. To ascend that ladder, you must learn the truth about yourself. The three-hundred-year cycle of misfortune may be about to change. Susan [Mildly irritated] This place . . . You people . . . infinity . . . eternity . . . divinity . . . all these mystical happenings. The only thing I know is that it's all beyond my comprehension. Norningstar Lie down and rest, Susan. You need it. Rainwater's domain, daytime Wildfire and Snowdrift walk through. Wildfire

Say a prayer for Susan Moore. She'll be leaving soon. Did you peek at Morningstar's recommendations? Snowdrift Nooo . . .

Wildfire Are you sure? Snowdrift Nooo. I remember my vows. They drift out, giggling. Morningstar and Rainwater enter.

Morningstar

And you took the big header off the beach cliffs. Susan And now I'm back to Susan Moore? What does it all mean? 70 / Stairway to Paradise

Norningstar

Susan's sleeping. After that ordeal, she's drained. Rainwater But is she ready to meet Reparata?

Morningstar We'll have to wait and see.

drift through space with rainwater in my hair. It's my destiny. I've accepted it.

Rainwater [Reflecting] Susan Moore . . . Tomoshamariah.

Susan But how long . . .

Horningstar [Surprised] Why Rainwater, I never knew. That's wonderful.

Susan You're so mysterious. Is that supposed to mean something?

Rainwater It happens. He shrugs, waves, and exits frame right. Interior, Morningstar's area, daytime. Susan sleeps as Rainwater enters. He quietly moves to her, extends a tentative hand as if to touch her but pulls back. Susan mutters in her troubled sleep. He goes to a nearby tray and removes certain necessary objects for the coming ritual: bottles of oil, powders, incense, etc. He begins making his preparations. Susan Infinity . . . Eternity . . . Rainwater [Softly] Tomoshamariah. Tomoshamariah. Susan [Waking as he kneels] Oh ... What are you doing?

Rainwater There is no place but time, time without beginning and time without end.

Rainwater It means only that right here, right now, we're together, sharing a moment in time. After that, no one can say. Susan Am I ever going to die? Rainwater Some things have substance. Others are mere shadows of what has been. Susan You always talk in riddles. That word you spoke when you leaned over me ... Rainwater Tomoshamariah.

It's you . . .

Rainwater I'm preparing you for the final stage. Did you sleep well? Susan Yes and no. I didn't sleep long. And I think I was troubled. But I feel different now. Rainwater. What a strange name. Rainwater. Rainwater Yeah, Rainwater. I walk through time and

Susan What does it mean? Rainwater It's the way I feel about you. Susan Could you translate it? Rainwater I can't exactly tell you. There's no word in any of the billions of languages in the universe that actually translates verbatim. It's not sex or love or lust or friendship. The Stairway to Paradise / 71

closest English might come would be "unique cosmic affection," but even that wouldn't do it justice.

Rainwater Only with very special people. And only when the big waves come in.

Susan That's sweet. What language does it come from?

Susan Cosmic hitchhiker.

Rainwater Cosmic hitchhiking.

Interior stairway, daytime. Susan and Windstorm wait at the foot of the stairs.

Susan How do you really feel about me?

Windstorm Susan, I'd like for you to meet Reparata.

Rainwater You have the most incredible blue eyes.

Reparata enters down the steps from above.

Susan [A coy pause, waiting to hear more] You're not going to say you can't decide whether they match the sea or the sky? I've always felt a certain way about you.

Susan I've never seen anyone like you before. Reparata It was never your time before. Susan Moore, your eyes tell me that you have learned much from this visit.

He moves closer and touches her hair. Rainwater Long blond hair. Sky-blue eyes. Susan I've been touched countless hundreds of times, but never the way I wanted to be touched. Rainwater You don't remember, do you? Tell me if you remember this. He kisses her in close-up. Susan What do we do now? He kisses her again. Lovemaking begins. Afterward, they cuddle. Susan Do you do this often?

72 / Stairway to Paradise

Susan Is the end just emptiness, or is it really paradise? Reparata It is all things. Your new cycle begins here. The journey you take, you take alone. Jump-cut close-up to Susan's eyes blinking in disbelief. A John Candy-type Emcee, dressed nightclub straight. Emcee [Building] Ladies and gentlemen, Club Paradise proudly presents, number one on the charts and in your hearts, Reparata and the Acolyte Angels. Monster concert cheers on audio track. Reparata is flanked by Windstorm, Wildfire, and Snowdrift. They are arranged by height to form a stylish line. They are topless. Reparata sings lead and the girls back her rendition of "Lonesome Valley, " done halfway

between white countryfolk and black church soul. Reparata You got to walk that lonesome valley. You got to walk it by yourself. Ain't nobody here can walk it for you. You got to walk it on your own. After the tunet close-up of Susan still blinking as normalcy returns. Susan No. I didn't see that.

Reparata comes forward and kisses Susan.

Reparata Walk with love. Rainwater enters as Susan begins to climb the stairs. She looks longingly back at him. Susan Rainwater, you do know I love you, even if I never see you again.

Reparata points up the steps.

Rainwater Susan, you'll never have to look for love, because love is where you come from.

Reparata I'm pointing up the pathway. Travel light and keep moving. Don't believe in miracles, expect them.

Susan begins the ascent. Smoke effects. She climbs the steps, disappearing into a cloud of smoke and light. Fade out.

Cast of Characters SUSAN HOORE, in for a three-hundred-year cosmic check RAINWATER, in charge of "The Place" WILDFIRE WINDSTORM

Rainwaters acolyte attendants SNOWDRIFT THUNDERSTORM MORNINGSTAR,a regression-session therapist JESSE JAMES, Susan Moore, 1847-1882 APACHE, Susan Moore, 1946-1967 MISS EMMALINE, hard-bitten saloon owner DEACON PEABODY, puritanical Salem minister B HAG WAN BOB, hippie-era guru, pussy chaser FARGO FLASH, drugstore cowboy LOIS, saloon girl STONEPOKER, surfer named Harley Davidson EMCEE, a John Candy type REPARATA, Paradise goddess

Opening Credits Starring Nina Hartley

with Randy Spears as Rainwater Stairway to Paradise / 7)

Also starring

Lee Caroll ¿u Hiss Emmaline

Aja Tianna Victoria Paris

Chi-Chi LaRue as Lois

Introducing Heather Lere Featuring Peter North James Lewis Jeff James Sharon Kane Guest Star Chi-Chi LaRue Special Guest Star Lee Caroll and the Legendary Kay Parker am/Joey Silveraas Bhagwan Bob Produced by Abigail Beecher Director of Photography Jane Waters Edited by Bobby Zimmerman The End? or, A New Beginning?

Closing credits Nina Hartley ¿25 Susan Moore Randy Spears as Rainwater and Fargo Flash Aja as Windstorm Tianna 05 Snowdrift Victoria Paris ¿35 Wildfire Heather Lere 05- Apache 74 / Stairway to Paradise

Peter North a? Deacon Peabodyaw/ Stonepoker Jeff James as Jesse Woodson James and Joey Silveraa* Bhagwan Bob With the Special Participation of Kay Parker as Norningstar and Sharon Kane as Reparata Stairway to Paradise Theme written and performed by Sharon Kane The unusual and original music written by The Acolyte Angels: B. B. Jay—Drums Bobby Klimax—Guitars Trafle Nememis—Vibes Sharon Kane—Keyboards Theme Song Recorded at S.P.L. Studios, VanNuys, California Pat Lydan

Recording Engineer Assistant Director

ErnestGreene

Director of Photography

Jane Waters

Unit Manager and Video Technician Robert Levin Gaffer

James Hamlin

Key Grip Johnny Stardust Best Boy Boom

Stu Dent

Johnny Starstruck

Dolly Grip Johnny Starstruck

An and Set Direction, Costumes and Wardrobe Sugar Polanski Bobbi Copeland

Chef on the Set Make-Up Artists

Cassandra F. Gender

Postproduction Supervisors S. Falco Abigail Beecher Edited by Bobby Zimmerman Story and Screenplay

Stills Joel Stunt Man

Wally the Wrist

Graphics

Sharon Kane Jim Holliday

Randy Spears Abigail Beecher

Producer Production Assistants

Penny Steele Dub N u m m b y

Location Manager and Port in the Storm Dr. Don

Directed by Executive Producer

Sharon Kane Nomore Tomodashi

A Sharon Kane/Second Wind Production Source of Sanity Creative Control Creative Consultants

Holliday Xa n e Jack and Irv

MCMXC Tomoshamariah . . . A V.C.A. Pictures Release

Stairway to Paradise / 75

7 The Hain Event: Here, without Doubt, Is What Really Happened, Maybe: Holliday

Returning once more to the point of conception, the Consumer Electronics Show, I remember my brief initial meeting with Jim Holliday. He was the first to tell me about Sharon's directing deal and his and my anticipated roles in it. I was dimly aware that Holliday had been a participant in Stoller's research, but I had no idea at that time how early and how influential a source he had been. I suppose, like many others, I was lulled into underestimating him by his carefully cultivated, aw-shucks persona. I subsequently came to understand and respect Holliday's contributions to both this book and Sharon's picture, though he and I experienced moments of friction throughout the production. That's to be expected when two Hindenberg-size egos attempt to crowd into the same hangar. Holliday does indeed know more about the porn business than almost anyone else. The depth of his experience shows in the extraordinary concision and lucidity of his description of the production process.—ISL Holliday comes in to discuss the making of Stairway. Okay: Stairway to Paradise. I brought you a finished screening copy from V.C.A. What are people going to pay for it? Retail price, which varies. Anywhere from nineteen to forty-nine dollars, depending on the location. A little store in Iowa pays more to the manufacturer. So the price is higher, whereas the guy in Seattle with seven or ten stores will buy hundreds and get a substantial discount. RJS Now, in the distribution, VGA has a crew of salesmen? Holliday They've got a dynamite staff. A sales manager, a couple of regional sales directors, who call the people they've been calling for years. Okay. Let's say you get a title [ready for distribution], Stairway to Paradise. The president of the company—in the old days he did it—would have a weekly meeting with his sales folks. I used to

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write what they call the tip sheet, to come up with the pros and cons of the tapes, to let the sales people know what a particular title had: a star, a story line, unusual subject matter, anything that gives an edge to sell their product. How big is the sales force? It varies. As many as twelve to fifteen people on the phone, just selling the tapes. In addition to the executive types? Right. They do it mostly by phone or totally by phone? By phone and in person. They have "Dollar Days" where they go out to a large buyer and conduct a special sale. "We have these new titles, and we have these slightly older ones, and we have these classics. We'll give you the cream of the line in this sale opportunity." These are accounts the people have established over a number of years. Pretty standard accounts. They're on the phone with a tiny person in Florida one minute, the next minute they're talking to the largest buyer in Wisconsin, and constantly mining new video stores. Then there are people that specialize only in subdistributors (General Video of America [OVA], for example). "Subdistributors"? OVA is the largest subdistributor. There are so many mom-and-pop outlets it's impossible to canvass all of them. A staff of a hundred would not reach them. So, it's easier for V.C. A to sell huge quantities of tape to GVA and let General Video's people get them to the hamlets. . . . Then there's foreign and cable. We shot considerable footage of Stairway to be edited in a cable version—"R," simulated sex. You can show genitalia but you can't show erections, you can't show penetration, you can't show cunnilingus. But you can show a side angle of the guy's face deep in her muff. Part of their executive team handles cable sales and foreign rights. Is there much of a market in foreign sales? Absolutely. People ask me, how can you still make 35-mm film? The answer is: foreign distribution will go a long way toward recovering your costs. It varies from company to company. Some folks don't do diddlysquat with the foreign market or cable because they're stupid. Others make a bonanza. There are a couple of [distribution] companies that make their heavy profits strictly from porn. But "big money" is relative; it's small money compared to ten, fifteen years ago when film was king and there were close to eight hundred theaters across the country. What about crossing state lines, that legal thing? Who gets in trouble for that? It's unclear, because so few ever go to jail. Right now the people being tried are the manufacturers-distributors of the product. Not someone like Jim Holliday? . . . Okay, how does this project [Stairway] begin? I deliberately didn't preplan what to say before coming in. I did, for the sake of history, go over in my mind the exact genesis. In August 1989, Sharon Kane and Jim Holliday were narrating the text that was to go under Only the Best: II [a compilation of porn scenes JH rated highly]. Only the Best had done so well—all I'm at liberty to say is, well over thirty thousand copies—that they decided they wanted a second one. I thought, "Hey, Sharon's always been a sweetheart. Let's do good things for her if it comes your way." After Sorority Pink [a tape with which Holliday had significant involvement], Sharon and I became better friends than we had been over the years. . . . I asked Holliday / 77

her if she was interested in directing; that had become a trend for a lot of people in the Industry, mostly male. Female directors have been rare and generally used strictly for publicity. She said, "I am. In fact, some people have talked to me about directing some projects." I said, "What people, and what projects?" Low-rent, lowbudget things. I suggested, "Should you direct, you don't want to get involved with a piece of shit. You want to go first class, because you've always stood for quality. You've never prostituted yourself in crummy projects." Time passed. In October '89,1 brought the subject up again. "Do you want to direct?" "Yeah." For years, Jim Holliday has been doing "good things for good people" behind the scenes. From tiny things here and there to bigger and better things. (I'd rather let the credit stand with other people. But it's well known that Holliday is a bit of a magic man from time to time.) "Sharon, I think I can help you." Her comment was, "Whatever happens, happens," strictly cosmic-Sharon. But just the tone of voice, I took it to mean, "Oh, yeah. A million people have stroked me; here's just one more. Fat chance." So I made a phone call, got the guarantee. This sounds easy, but it's the result of years of cultivating business, friendship, trust. I am privileged to be able to do that, but it comes about because of who I am, what I've stood for, and the fact that quality has always been associated with anything I've personally been involved with, though most of the time it's under a phony name. So bingo! No problem. I merely said, "Hey, I've got a good track record, right? Consider this as a marketing angle. Female director, Hall of Famer, loved and adored by the Industry and by fans alike, Sharon Kane'11 make a movie for you." "Great!" Then, incorporated somewhere in the conversation was the clear-cut notion that Jim Holliday would protect their ass in the thing so that what was produced was quality. I called Sharon. "You thought I was bullshitting you. How does x amount of bucks sound?" "What? Oh, wonderful!" I said, "You've got full creative control. There's no rush when you want to shoot it. Let me come up with an idea and run some stuff by you." It had to be something cosmic, in keeping with Sharon as a person. A week later, I went over to her little bungalow. So I'm futzing with her new kitten . . . while she's making tea. "Here's what I have in mind. Strange voices are heard out of a void—We can fill in the dialogue later." I was wearing deerskin moccasins. "Focus only on the shoes. The moccasins walk into frame. The camera shows only the shoes. And there's this mysterious dialogue, and bingo! The camera never pans up, and we keep the audience in the dark." That whole concept was there from the gitgo. Now, what was shot is completely different from what was envisioned, not a spiral staircase but those shoes going up an endless flight of stairs, just going way, way, way, way up. Then at the top of the stairs you enter this strange land known only as Paradise. Now, from the gitgo, all religions were going to be encompassed. No deities, no specifics. A never-never land. Like nirvana is acceptable but Buddhism not. Crucifix might be acceptable but Christ and cross not. Omnidenominational; (a) I wanted to be cryptic, and (b) I didn't want to offend anybody. Then, as the top of the stairs is reached, you get the title sequence: Stairway to Paradise. The smile on Sharon's face! She just rocked back. "Yes!" She loved it. I had been terrified: "If this doesn't fly, this [Sharon] is going to be one hard-toplease person. This idea may not work." But she loved the concept. So we went to 71 / Holliday

see my buddy [the investor]. I was terrified. You got the okay, but at any time, for any number of reasons—particularly when you're dealing with powerful individuals—they can blow the whole thing out the door. Sharon was appropriately nervous, and unfortunately she had a cold. On the way out [to meet him, the big man], I said, "I'm only going to introduce you to him. Then you go from there. We've got a sound concept. We've worked out a preliminary budget." It was going to be an elaborate production. RJS Someone said either thirty or thirty-five [$30,000 or $35,000]; I may have once heard forty. Holliday Numbers are bullshit! The guarantee—the only thing I'll say about numbers—was twenty-five, a reasonable budget if you're a conniver who can cut corners. If you're not going to cut corners, twenty-five for a major project doesn't quite hack it. We were a bit over. . . . So, we went out there, and I introduced her to him and him to her. I feel solid about this guy. And I told him that Sharon was as creative, as innovative as any babe in the industry. She's come to think the world of the guy (at first she thought he was a hick farmer). On the drive home I said, [. . .] "You've got your creative freedom. Now let's just make a movie that's going to knock everybody's socks off." Time was no problem. This was November. We were thinking about shooting in late December or January, after the Consumer Show [early January]. And shooting was delayed because of our schedules. The script was finished before Las Vegas [the CES Show]. I told Sharon, "I will not write a word of dialogue until we both understand the characters." So we evolved a notion that we had this place Paradise and this mysterious figure Rainwater. The regression sessionist was to be Morningstar (one of Sharon's favorite names; Rainwater is mine). And we tell the audience only what we want to tell it about. I'm the guiding force, with the little notebook full of ideas so that we don't just sit there and stare at each other or at the ceiling. And it was, in every sense, a mutual collaboration. I don't give a damn how other people write adult scripts. When I write one, even infinitesimal details are preplanned. I want to maneuver, motivate, and challenge the audience. I'm well aware that only one person in a thousand even gives a shit. That's fine. I'm not making it for them. They can just enjoy the good, hot sex (because with any Jim Holliday thing, there's going to be the best possible sex). Anyway, at the show [CES], Sharon was bouncing off some walls, and she'd be the first to admit it. I thought, "Oh, brother, at any minute it can all go down the drain, because all these [important money] people need to see is someone acting like a porn bimbo, just another flake: 'Look at that dumb cunt acting like a total banana!'" [In the end,] she did well. I didn't get the final script typed until February. We shot in mid-March. Technically, I was a creative consultant; no real need for a line producer, but Abigail Beecher [one of Holliday's pseudonyms] was selected as the line producer. Abigail Beecher, as in the Freddy Cannon song "Abigail Beacher, Our History Teacher." Deliberately misspelled. RJS Were women's names chosen [by the men] for any particular reason? You've used that in the past? Holliday I always use a woman's name because I believe in . . . If you use a woman's name long enough, maybe people will get the idea that it's okay for women to make these [films]. And our cameraman uses a female name [Jane Waters]. It produced the great line, "Us girls gotta stick together." Holliday / 79

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Who's the producer? Second Wind Productions, which is Sharon. She's listed as the producer? Well, the way you line up credits, Abigail Beecher will be the producer, but at the end it's executive producer Namorai Tomodashi [for Sharon]: Japanese mishmash we came up with. The same kind of credits Holliday does. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We had decided which sex scenes to have [and] the dialogue buildup to accompany them. We were going to cover three hundred years in a person's life and leave much . . . We chose to [not to] hit them over the head with it but give them some idea where [we're] coming from. Then I sat down and did the final draft. [. . .] Okay. I admit it's a sandbag tactic, that when I do an adult script, I don't do conventional spacing. I tighten things so that when something comes out at thirtytwo pages, they'll say, "Good, it's only thirty-two pages," when had I spaced it, it would have been more like forty-eight pages. So it was a rather bulky script, with all the nuances that we had talked about for four months. Unfortunately, she felt, at the last minute, this is just too much for her to do. She finally just [said,] "This is too much," like she was cutting off one of my children's arms, or I was going to take it personally. I said—the exact quote was—"Your comfort zone is the most important thing on this damn project. So if you want to shorten it, let's make some shortening." So real quick we tightened it. We were originally going to make a comedy; that's the safest way to go with adult films. Not slapstick but light. And I will tell Ira, I will tell Sharon, I will tell you, I will tell anyone that wants to discuss porn comedy, that they don't know what the hell they're talking about if they disagree with me: porn comedy is stuff I would be ashamed to take to The Comedy Store and present to normal people as funny, but I know it works with adult porn audiences. When things got pared down, I felt like, "Brother! I don't mind my child being ripped up, but hey! let's fight to save some of this baby!" I said, "Sharon, there are lines that just can't go. They're too good." Though I'll be the first to contend: this ain't Hamlet. RJS The complaint I heard was, "There's no way we can get it done in two days." That had them panicked. Holliday That's valid. What Abigail Beecher put together, what was called the "Big Five" . . . RJS What's the "Big Five" mean? Holliday The "Big Five" was Sharon, director-producer; Jim Holliday is listed as Jim Holliday, the writer; Ernest Greene [pseudonym for Ira], assistant director; Falco (or whatever [name] he wants to go under) was the technician, a crucial role, the guy that sits with the equipment and watches the [sound] level; Jane Waters, the cameraman. Falco was the technician, but from the gitgo he was to be involved with being in charge of the crew and also with postproduction, the editing. Falco was a brilliant child. I didn't discover him, but I'd been aware of his talents. And Sugar Polanski was brought in for the costume designs. The costumes, the sets, they're not your standard piece-of-shit porno. There was style and creativity involved in every little area. For example, on porn shoots, they're [the actors] used to a certain couple of people doing the cooking [for cast and crew]. Competent. But why not get some80 / Holliday

one who can bring in a great big turkey dinner and lasagna and still stick to all this weird shit [macrobiotic] that Sharon eats? This wonderful, charming person [cook], who'd never been on an adult set in her life, came with all the bubbling energy of a novice. (An army marches on its stomach.) Holliday was there to cover Sharon Kane's ass. When Sharon talked to me privately, she said, "I knew you could get it done." That's me, forceful. But not overbearing.!. . .] And I'm sure Sharon'd be the first to tell you that Jim Holliday did not in any way, shape, or form interfere with the production other than to remind her, "We're running a little late here, a little late there, we'll have to do this." RJS Stop. I want to get one more thing about cutting the script: when you decide to cut the script, do you cut scenes or just bits and pieces? Holliday We cut a whole lesbian scene that she didn't want to do in the first place. But basically we just pared the dialogue down. I knew Sharon was dead serious about having to cut when a couple of her cuts included characters she wanted to use her friends for. So I figured if they're going on the cutting room floor, I can sure as hell sacrifice. This is not, never was, a Jim Holliday ego contest. I believe in writing with the cast already determined. If your lead character, Susan Moore [from Tim Hardin's song 'The Lady Came from Baltimore"], is to be played by Nina Hartley, you write for Nina Hartley. If it's going to be played by Rachel Ryan, you write for Rachel Ryan. One person in the cast I insisted on ... Even the sales people don't realize what an impact Kay Parker is going to have on this tape, a major coup. Certainly nonsex. This sounds funny in this jaded industry, but neither Sharon nor I could bring ourselves to say, "Hey, Kay, you want to show your tits?" Sharon's idea was to use Lee Carol 1, another aging female performer, who had just undergone a new body for the umpteenth time, as the Mae West kind of saloon owner. She [Sharon] had Chi-Chi LaRue in mind for the saloon girl in drag and [also] the bozo who gets goofed on [made fun of] by the guru. The leads were set. We weren't even going to make this thing if it wasn't Randy Spears. And Nina was . . . This was the first production Nina shot after her breast-augmentation surgery. Sharon loved the [Nina] character. A strange moment, a pregnant silence, and you hear Sharon wistfully saying, "I was born to play Susan Moore." Then you wonder, does she want to act in this thing or does she want to direct? And the notion of Sharon doing a cameo . . . And the cupcakes, the acolyte angels, the fluff bunnies. We always wanted Tianna. We wanted Victoria Paris, then couldn't get her, then wound up with her through sheer fate. One of the other girls had a vaginal infection. I wanted Aja in the worst way, and Sharon agreed. Aja is very box-offîceable. That's the one with the white boots and the gorgeous face. Joey, of course, was a given. He's going to be in almost anything I'm involved with. Peter North, another major coup, and playing a dual role. Joey's the funniest, most off-the-wall guy in the business. I've written a lot of good things for him over the years, and he's always pulled them off. When I told him this was the gig, "Here are the parameters, a couple of things you say, but make the rest up on your own," you know you're going to get the performance. And Peter North is the most trustworthy woodsman [see p. 82] in the business. The dual role of the hippie surfer and the deacon gave him something he's longed for. He's now producing and doesn't want to act any more. Let's see, the other sex-scene roles. The hippie, Heather Lere—the Apache— Holliday / SI

Sharon found. Typical new-breed video babe. An eighteen-year-old with great tits, sharp-as-hell mouth and tongue, a feisty little thing. You have to juggle your plans around someone like this because she's petulant enough and immature enough to walk at any minute. You hire her because she's a young . . . RJS Aren't there a million young . . . Holliday No, no, there aren't. And she can also act. Plus Sharon had good rapport with her. It's only after the fact that you come away with negative feelings. The guy who was going to play Jesse James, Sharon showed me his picture. He was perfect, said he knew all about the Old West and would come in with costumes and guns and be authentic. And he was. The prime example of covering a production's ass: we knew going in this guy had trouble getting it up. Acting was no problem. Sharon knew him, had faith in him, and decided to go with him. But we deliberately scheduled that scene last: if you get into trouble in the middle, it can set you back a few hours. By sheer chance, we had to get Randy up there both days. He was making good bucks and wasn't unhappy. He rode his motorcycle all the way up from Orange County to where we shot, at a sound stage in north San Fernando Valley, in an industrial park in a dumpy neighborhood, but security-gated and very nice. Mainstream people shoot there. We got him up there the second day, and he was able to do a scene—some dialogue—take a nap. Then he left for a couple of hours to work out; everything was fine. We were running behind the second day, as always happens, but we have overtime in the budget. But we were pushing golden time, where the rates triple, and that hadn't been budgeted. I finally told Sharon, "Hey, we've got overtime coming." If we go over, it comes out of her salary. I said, "Sharon, not to worry, we have x amount of overtime." I do it just to see that look of wonderment and relief and that silly smile that Sharon Kane gets. But even if we had to go to golden time, she was willing to lose it off her end. The dialogue is running fine. Everyone's gone home but the crew and the principals involved in the last scene. Joey, Randy, and I are eating pizza and shooting the shit about sports. And Randy is bundling himself up for the motorcycle ride back through the cold, calls his girlfriend [now his wife], gets directions from the set as to how to get to her place: "All right, honey, I'll see you in half an hour." Hangs up. I said, "Randy, if I was the director, I wouldn't let you go, and since I'm here covering ass, I'll give you $50 just to stick around another half hour. This guy has trouble with wood [erections] and if he does, I'd give you a hell of a lot to step in and do the scene." R]S Fifty, plus if he works you pay him? Holliday Yeah, you pay him to do the scene. That's what makes Randy Spears a special person. Randy is also one of the few people in this industry who is a fraternity man from a major college. I can talk to this guy without even saying words. So, he just said, "What the hell," and called his girl, says, "I may be a little late." I went in [to the set], told Ira, "Hey, just in case, I've guaranteed Randy Spears fifty bucks just to stick around." You know how Ira is, one of those rush, rush guys. He said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, if we need him." I figured, "What the hell; I've just wasted fifty bucks." Within five minutes, Ira was back: "Keep him ready!" I'm thinking, "Uh-oh." So we're shooting the shit about the basketball play-offs. Randy had not done a 12 / Holliday

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sex scene that day, only a hell of a lot of intensive dialogue. Bingo! Within ten minutes Sharon is out of the sound stage. (Have they [other informants] explained the setup? There's this huge studio—maybe eighty by fifty feet—you can set up three or four different sets there. A padded door, a red light that indicates shooting is going on. Directly outside is a clearing area where they keep supplies and where you can set up your table to feed your cast and crew. In back are the makeup rooms, bathrooms, showers, green rooms where people can sit and go over dialogue, and the production office. So we're way in back, and they're on the stage.) When they [Sharon, Ira] come from the stage to the back saying [announcing the emergency], "You're [Randy] up," bingo, Randy walks in there, puts the [cowboy] bandana around his neck so that things will match properly [with the failed actor's appearance], and within two minutes: has an erection, comes between Lee Caroll's tits, they finish the scene, we wrap the shoot, and we're out of there. It's that kind of call that I'll take on my own to safeguard VGA'S video release. What do you say to the guy who didn't make it? How do you handle him? At what point do you go in? Who does it? What do they say to him? When the men sign their release and their guarantee, sometimes they sign a contract saying, "If I fail to perform, I agree to work for x dollars," which is a kill fee. Meaning, if I hire you, I pay you a kill fee no matter what: if I decide not to use you, I still pay you a minimum amount. I can empathize with that guy. I may have been the only one that night that offered him any pity, because the crew had spent a long day and they didn't give a shit; they were just pissed. Then afterwards there's that, *This has never happened to me before. I had no trouble in warm-up." They were chasing each other around for four hours before we were even ready for their scene. But it happens. It's embarrassing. Okay, so it's midnight and everyone packs up and goes home. Now what happens? It's after midnight, crowding one o'clock. VGA decided they were interested in buying the project from the backers. So they did a buyout, at which time it was going to be a V.C.A. title. When they buy it out, they pay so-much more than the production price and that gets negotiated between the two parties? Right. And in the meantime, they decided . . . We'd gone a little over, and they decided to be generous. So there was nothing to worry about, other than about $10,000 in checks had to be postdated because Sharon forgot to put some of the money in [the bank] on time. It's like putting plugs in a dam: I cover as many as I can, but an occasional one leaks through. I was terrified that Randy Spears's check had bounced, because right after the shoot Sharon left town and I had to deal with the banker. Okay. So the next day someone picks up the equipment and . . . That's part of the assignment. You've made arrangements for your people to do cleanup and strike the set the next day. That night, all the raw footage went into my [car] trunk, immediately went to VGA, where half-inch cassettes were made [from the 3/4-inch raw footage] so that anyone interested could look at the raw footage to plan the editing. That done, the three-quarter-inch went to Falco for editing and beginning postproduction [sound, titles]. VGA gave us plenty of time to edit. In fact, it wasn't till three months later [that] the president said facetiously, when we were just finished, "Where's my goddamn movie?" "It's strange you should ask. You'll Holliday / 83

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have it next week." Only then did Sharon and I—we're the last people, the honchos—get paid. July. I probably made eight cents an hour on the project, but it was worth it. Okay, tell me the editing process. Falco sits there and selects. He previews all the material with the script in front of him and decides which cut, which angle, which take is the best for a piece of dialogue. When you get into the sex scene, which angle do you want to start with? If it starts with a blow job, you can start with a character licking another character's toe if you desire. That all comes together as the editor looks at it. Meanwhile, I'm looking through the dailies myself [at home]: how I would like scenes to flow. But the final choice is at his discretion. (We had a good give-and-take response.) Are you in the same room at the same time looking at the same stuff? It can be over the phone. I spent . . . Sharon spent more time than I thought at the editing facility. And I was there a few more times, but I was more concerned with the timing of the ultimate film. The total number of minutes? Yeah. It right now is eighty-three. A great sex film should be only seventy-five minutes long. And that's with four minutes of credits. I knew we were going to have elaborate credits. Falco did a fine job. Then there was the musical scoring. VGA said, "By the way, there are these music guys we'd like you to use." Sharon and I sat there like our hearts are ready to drop in our throats [waiting to learn who they were]. I had to say, "We had them in mind all along. They are great. That's why the budget's going a little over. They're worth an extra thousand over your average music guys." And Sharon got together with these people, and they did the music. This haunting score. They did the composing and the playing. It's all original music, and Sharon wrote a theme song of her own choice and parts of the score. Falco edited a rough cut we were happy with, and we gave that to the band and to Sharon. Falco had not cleaned the track totally. What does that mean? You can hear the camera person say, "Move to your left, please" [and] Sharon say, "Action" or "Cut." Unfortunately, someone at V.C.A. got hold of one. I said, "Jeeze, I don't want anyone seeing a rough cut. I don't care who they are. Even . . . " The same indignation I showed when you saw the rough cut from Ira. I'm one of maybe a thousand people on the planet—maybe five in this industry and the other nine hundred [ninety-five are] in Hollywood—that can understand a rough cut. So they took Falco's rough cut and scored it. Meanwhile, he and I are cleaning out the last little things, adding the echo to the door, things you will not see. If we [now in my office] play the first five minutes and the last five, you'll get the drift of where we're coming from. People can say what they want about the content. Nobody can say that there is the slightest technical flaw. The soundtrack, the music, the voices, nothing's out of kilter. Not a mistimed edit. Part of the Jim Holliday involvement in projects is, "Give 'em a perfect tape." A main point in the book is the contrast between a Hollywood picture, which takes millions of dollars, maybe years before it comes to production, months to shoot, edit, and score . . . contrasted with what you people have to do in two days. Minute for minute, hour for hour, day for day, dollar for dollar . . . We whip their ass, we smoke 'em. Stairway to Paradise took nine months before

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we turned over a finished master to the video company. And two days of concentration. A couple of 20th Century Fox executives were interested . . . RJS Just to look and see? Holliday Well, I found out that look-and-see and expectations-of-getting-laid were the package. I was told by one of the executive's secretaries, "Those guys came showered and ready. They thought they were going to get laid." He couldn't get enough of the naked women. The other one I wound up talking with and gleaned a lot of information about Hollywood and featherbedding. He said, 'I've got to be honest. When we came here, we expected a ragtag operation. We figured that the women would be unattractive, barely off the level of street prostitutes, sexy sluts who'd walk around naked, bending over farting, gross; that there wouldn't be any competency whatsoever. We're blown away by the artistry and craftsmanlike ethic of the director and the crew, the professionalism of the cast." I said, "You were [taken] aback [because] when they finished a sex scene, they put on a robe? Sorry, we're professional. This is not 'gawk-and-see.' The crew doesn't stand around here with hard-ons. This is work, man! And I will put that five-man crew against any ten-man crew you can muster in Hollywood. They'll get it done quicker and probably better. If you take six hours to light a set, you're in good shape." One other truism. We have levels of artistry: not anyone [in porn], given x amount of dollars, can make anything as good as anyone else given the same amount of money. RJS It's a little like jazz improvisation. You have something in your mind. It's blocked out. And then you've got to keep moving all the time. Holliday The way I work, you assemble this from mountainous piles of notes: "This line ain't going to work." Then when it comes crunch time, you just do it. And you leave a few things out. I've long given up any fear or worry or anguish over leaving some good things out; there's always another script. RJS All right. So we look for a few minutes? [At this point, Holliday shows RJS the final version of the tape that will be seen by the public. Holiday's comments are made throughout the screening and can be fully understood only if one is watching the tape at the same time. In some discussions of specific scenes, it may help to refer to the shooting script.—ISL] Holliday The music. This is the way it's going to be scored. You didn't hear that before. Was that looping in the version you saw? See, that's just another little . . . This sense of mystery. And the music is everything in it, the chimes and the ... That's very Sharon. All done with one stairway. But the continuous sense of motion is there, right? RJS This is before any titles? Holliday Yeah. This is the sex scene. Now I can fast-forward. Here's another little touch, the flowers in her hair. All I said was, "She's such a pretty girl that we should put some flowers in her hair." And that's what they came up with. That's Aja. A-j-a but pronounced "Asia." And meanwhile during this scene, Nina's line is in there over [the action] "They're trying to make a baby." Here's the theme song. You've never heard the "Cajún Angels" sing before? You've never seen the credits ever, have you? Notice how that's "starring Nina Hartley" on her face? Credits are my bag. I love to bathe people in credits. Oh, that's too gaudy, I'm sorry, but I had to do it. Holliday / 85

Bang! Timed. Fast-forward? This is essential to plotting: you don't want too much. You've already given the sex scene at the very beginning. Then you're putting through thé credits. The scoring with the chimes . . . RJS Who's . . . What's her name [confused about who is doing what and why]? Holliday Tianna. The names of Rainwater's acolytes were set, but the actresses for each part changed. At one point, Tianna was Wildfire, and when I told her, she grinned and started singing the Michael Martin Murphy song. That was exactly the reaction I want from everybody, because that's the origin of the name. To tie it in with remembering that particular song. It makes the viewers feel good and warm inside when they make the connection. RJS Tianna. And this one? Holliday Aja. And the big-titted one's Victoria Paris. We're still keeping it cryptic, like, "What the hell am I [Nina's character] doing here?" This is the summation, the gist of where they are. The bongos. See how the effects work the way we wanted? And we reverbed the sound over the visual effect. If you've got a couple of minutes, we'll show you what we've done with the effects. Technically, these things are right on the beat. [. . .] Tianna's hot as a firecracker. Victoria's got big tits and is worshiped by the public, but she's often not very sexual. So Falco cut around her very carefully. We've got some stuff where she just stands there looking like the biggest slug, but she's really a true sweatheart. And he [Randy] is rock hard. So we go monster shots, the graphic close-up. The acolytes were all shot the first day. He did this and the finishing scene [end of the film] with Nina. But the finishing scene with Nina was the first one shot. Okay, I love this. That shot. You want to see Kay? We'll get her in a dialogue thing later. Jane with the camera moves: that's that artsy shit he wanted to do all the time. I knew this scene was going to look like Sunday morning television, and it does. Subtle thing right there. That's preplanned. When they [audience] have to listen to dialogue, show 'em some tit. Did you see the whole movie that Ira gave you? RJS I've had it played, but we were so busy talking that I've only seen little bits of it. Holliday Okay. This is a key point. Though it was planned in advance to keep any mention of the deity out, porn performers left to their own devices are bound to utter an "Oh God!" or "Oh Jesus!" here and there; there are about three here. I've given up on that point. Besides, even the biggest atheist in the throes of passion yells, "Oh God! Oh God!" And here's a hazard of the trade, the wet shot. Watch this. You only get one shot at it. Here comes the framing of that wet shot. It's a little off. You can see it, but you'd like to have it centerframed. That's Falco's technique, that high school, doe-eyed look. And, for better or worse, that ominous, cathedral-like chime-chanting thing. Here's another trick we did with the audio. The audio is so good you can hear them moving in their chairs. Put the reverb on. The timing works out. It's not by accident. This guy [who plays Jesse James] is no good for porn: Randy just acts him right off the screen. He is so good. That's Hollywood. Ah, he's going to wind up with her now, just. . . During this scene, you'll never even notice that there was a substitution of hard dick. This is something I'm involved with in postproduction, the timing of these scenes. All the dialogue is S* / Holliday

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roughly the same length, just enough so that it's not going to put people to sleep, and not too much in between sex scenes. There she [Lee Caroll] is working on this guy [to get him up]. And that was about as hard as he got. Is any of that her responsibility or is t h a t . . . ? It depends; it's mutual chemistry. I'm always amused a t . . . Females will say, 'The guy couldn't get it up." And the guys'll say, "She didn't even turn me on." It doesn't matter: you're professionals: it should be done. Now that's Randy's dick. You can see the [abdominal] muscle's in much better shape. That's his dick. And she has such a demented look in her eye the whole time. But also, you're dealing with Lee. She's older, and only a certain segment wants to see her* amount of times. And the big-tit fans, we gave them enough. Now, I will concede this is a rather lame excuse for a lesbian scene. We let this run about ten minutes because it's the only girl-girl [segment]. Originally, we were going to do two, the theory being that seven sex scenes are always better in a movie, but if you have to cut to six, then pad [that is, the editor has to fill out the footage with whatever he can find] and take all the hot you can get, and fans of these babes are going to love it. Still, I'm amazed because Victoria Paris basically just lays there. And yet, it's the American Marilyn Monroe mentality. They just love her. It's a lot of position changes. And Falco very carefully . . . A lot of editors dick around with footage unnecessarily. These are fuck films. No one gives a damn how they [actresses] get in this position. Now, any time we can get something like that [finger in anus], you go for it. How do you get that? That's just her style? She's a hot little thing. She's wonderful. It's just her being herself? Which means the cameraman's got to get on her when she's doing it. How you set up a sex scene varies from director to director. I always like to sit down with the people for five minutes before we're ready to roll to say, "Here's what I've got in mind. What do you think?" And they're fine with i t . . . Well, we go from the close-up on her face, for the first time in the movie, we go to black. What does that mean, "go to black"? Fade to black, so there's nothing but black, which tells the audience time has passed. Hit the chime right away. That's what the musical guys had in mind. This, by the way, was cut a little different from the rough cut because we had to change some angles . . . She came across pretty well for just being a dumb bimbo [Bhagwan scene]. Joey's perfect. We had to cover that line. He is so good. Now there is some inside stuff. Peter does not like having his hair fucked with. And Joey knows that. They've been buddies forever, so he [Joey] is fucking with [teasing] him [Peter] every chance he gets. This is my kind of pure fluff-and-nonsense scene. See how quick the cuts are? They work. And we've established that Joey's pretty much a fraud as a guru: pure bullshit. Now, Falco can tell you, he had a bastard of a time cutting this scene. They shot the master [of the three-person sex]. Then [minutes later], they shot each person in close-up, and then he [Falco] had to go nine miles back [in the raw tape, when editHolliday / 87

ing] to get his [actor's] reaction saying [the phrase in the script], "Stonepecker." Right, so we're into the sex scene where, "Pad this one for what it's worth." And this is what I call "T and A" [tits and ass]. This is actually two sex scenes because he's going to play with her for the longest time. And this is all son [that is, the actors are simulating excitement]. The only time we show the dick is when it's hard. Rather than wasting a minute of screen time with getting them positioned so it looks natural, just dissolve her [fade out] or just flat [simply] cut. There's a lot of psychology between two guys in a scene. Everyone knows Peter North is legendary for his pop shots. Could you get a bimbo to say "misfortune"? No way. Now, unfortunately, what got cut was a lot of interplay like this, between the bimbo . . . This is the payoff shot: show them [audience] how much of a set [stage setting] you've got and what nice things you've done. That's our word: in Rainwater language, "tomoshamariah." Now, this [on screen] is what we call "the big tender," only the dialogue is a little different than you find in the "Dear, oh Jane, how much I love you!" [Hollywood movie kitsch]. I told Sharon, "We're not going to do a chump big tender scene. It's going to be real for Rainwater's Paradise-world dialogue." This, that we kept, is the fourth take of this scene. A lot of intricate camera moves. It sounds so natural, doesn't it? "Light the candles and get over there, Randy!": that's what's going through his mind now. The premise we set up is that every twelve hundred years they knock one off. I'm proud of that [this extended scene]: rarely can two people go on that long without blowing character and in one take with the camera doing all its fancy bullshit. She should be really proud of this. With the porn market the way it is now and even critics fast-forwarding through shit, this is almost too good for their mentality. So it will be judged on the strength of the sex scenes, and fortunately they're not lacking. All the dicks are hard; all the people are pretty. The music guys really enjoyed scoring this. Women will love it. See, with the sex scene, he [cameraman] is down off his sticks—the term for going with the hand-held camera. It [long, uncut scene] goes on. RJS Are there others [in porn] that are as long and as tender? Hoi I ¡day Yeah. One with Sharon and Paul Thomas lasts nine and a half minutes [classic scene from Hot Legs, a 1979 film]. We kept this to seven. Again, I'm very conscious of . . .I'd love to let it go fourteen but ... They were timed for different positions. That blow job [now on screen] is going to get kudos. The shooting on this [scene] was an hour and a half to two. She's in makeup, and you don't dare start the sex scene . . . It was the fourth take through . . . The third take was acceptable. First time, they screwed up. Second time, screwed up, third time they got it pretty much down, and they knocked it the fourth time through. Here we reverb the dialogue. RJS What does that mean, "reverb the dialogue"? Holliday Put reverberation onto it so that it sounds like it's coming from an echo chamber. Like he's coming from a tomb or something. Subtle touches. This is Falco's idea to get into the final scene, go straight [move the visual to stare] into the candle. Then to the mysterious cat, who so far [in the frame of the picture] looms larger than life. Right, this cat. We threw that [a visual explanation] in for the benefit of the people that need an explanation. Oh, you've got to watch this one. This is a delicate move, this is really good, 88 / Holliday

the editing. He picks the handswing [Randy's arm moving] up perfectly . . . A little Holliday homespun philosophy there. The more I hear that music, I really appreciate the job those guys did. I'm happy with it. RJS How long does it take them? Holliday Three or four days. And we've got Randy coming out of the mist. We spent considerable time with these payoff lines. Surprise! Oh, you missed it. I've got to show you this setup here: How big the cat really is [now seen as a small toy]. That's the shock. We fooled people. Now, the end credits, it'll tell you who's who here. I'm a firm believer in picture credits. It helps the audience immensely. Right, there's Ira and Jane and there's Falco. There were a lot of Falco's friends that were film students; so I went with Stu Dent. Johnny Stardust is legit; Sol Starstruck and Starstuck, that's just fucking with people. And that's Sugar Polanski [art director's pseudonym used for the credit]. We had two makeup people. I threw Stuntman Greg Bell in here just for the hell of it because he rang her bell. That was Randy. Now he's Sidney Falco and Bobby Zimmerman as well as Robert Levin. And then since it's a Second WindV.C.A. production, now there's the title card, the main one. We bring in the wind, which hopefully may become a trademark. The music and credits and all of that stuff make it a whole different movie, don't they? "Tomoshamariah," which is the Paradise word for unique, cosmic affection, or the closest thing that will translate. One of the more perceptive critics viewed it with his wife, who really can't stand porn, and he told me she laughed her ass off at 'Tomoshamariah." We needed a nonsense-syllable word that sounded real pretty. "Tomo" comes from the Japanese for "friend." "Sha" came from the late, great rock and roll idol Del Shannon. "Maria" came from the Lerner and Loewe song "They Call the Wind Maria." "Tomoshamariah." Nothing fancy b u t . . . It sounded good. People can speculate all they want about the origin of the title, but since I came up with it, I know and I'll level with you. It's a combination of hit records, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and an old Tony Orlando tune from the early '60s called "Halfway to Paradise." I found out after the fact that apparently there's a song "Stairway to Paradise" in the film An American in Paris. I've never seen the movie. RJS Will you ever work that hard again on a ... ? Holliday Oh, yeah. I'll never work as hard again on a script. If I ever work this hard on a script again, I'm going to have complete, utter creative control. That has nothing to do with Sharon. She is the best collaborator in the world. It's just that then all the components'11 get to fit. I tell myself every time: I'm going to learn my lesson and shorten these things down. But invariably you get carried away. I know I overwrite. But there's enough left over that. . . About half of this script can be rechanneled and used. RJS Is it too good for your audience? Holliday Yeah, unfortunately. The cable version should be dynamic. The guy editing the cable version is a friend. All he's going to do is soften the sex, which means it'll go from eighty-five to seventy-five [minutes]. He'll lop a minute or two off each scene: it'll just be soft-core [see p. 16n], of which there's plenty, and plenty of that tender, erotic, hand-rubbing bullshit that plays on cable channels. Holliday / 89

Yeah, I'm happy, but I've already told Sharon, "Be prepared for the worst." Bill [Margold] will say this is a piece of shit because he's lost all sense of porn reality. [Margold wound up calling it "Stairway to Nowhere."] One reviewer back East loved it. Another 1 don't think watched the whole thing because as he . . . It wasn't his cup of tea. So, I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. It probably is too good for the audience.

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8 The Main Event: Here, without Doubt... : Ira

Watch now how the continuing discussion between Ira and myself came to focus on the main event for this book, the making of Stairway to Paradise. I first heard of the project in a few words from Ira that do not stand out, over the months, from the blur of remarks on other films imagined, planned, in progress, or completed. The idea of writing a book on the filming occurred to me without fanfare, an obvious piece in the argument I have been building on the origins and dynamics of erotic excitement (Stoller 1975, 1979, 1985, 1991a, 1991b). (On the other hand, the title, which rose up—the right image for a study of sexual excitement—the next instant, felt sublime.) As noted in my Introduction, those who make pornography either know what turns their audience on—that is, intuitively get the dynamics right—or lose their money. So, if I can get into their heads, they may reveal what forces (desires, needs, changes, defenses) lie beneath their aesthetic choices when scriptwriting, casting, directing, camera working, editing, distributing, and so on. Given that information, anyone can test my theories. Ira was telling me, in his usual way—with humor—about his directorial debut, which he felt was disastrous. He survives depression by transforming self-hatred, unrequited rage at the world, and ordinary rotten misery into jokes and chrysostomic prose. So he let me enjoy his story of how everything went wrong as he shot that picture. I found it a grand tale to tell an audience about the realities of porn making: his wry intelligence allows me to pass on to others some of what goes into creating an enterprise as complex as a piece of pornography. Perhaps his style of revelation could loosen some necks as stiff as mine was before studying this strange and wondrous antiart form. Then there could be people who would see that an apparently seamless moment of excitement is actually an intricately constructed script—whether private daydream or published pornography. Then the reader could see through the manifest content, the polished production, to the raw 91

materials below. Then the lesson could be taught with the grim realities softened by his wit. The problem was that his was an S-M video. That awareness could let the reader escape insight with the excuse that S-M pornography is for and by freaks. So we should, instead, work from an unassailable text: a normal, ordinary, unkinky, FDA approved, romantic, heterosexual, tasty, lusty, busty porn piece in the classic mode. On becoming aware of Sharon's film, I shifted to the plan of using it for our book.

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Before I mention to Ira the idea of a report on how to make a porn film, he, on the same track, thinks up an even better (but financially unrealizable) concept: shoot a documentary of a porn film while it is being made. Enter that discussion now.—RJS Where would you get a good story? The stories, generally speaking, are awful. We have two stories here: the story for the actual X-rated and a documentary [of the filming of the X-rated video]. I'll write the documentary. And I'll A.D. on it. I'll also be A.D.ing for Sharon, who'll direct on the X unit. We'll get a good X-picture to start out with. And the documentary that surrounds this core, the X-rated film; does it have its own story? Yeah. The story of Sharon's struggle to make a picture. Of Sharon's struggle to get out of bed [i.e., away from being a sex performer] and take control of the camera. Will there be shots of people sitting around planning and talking? Yes. We'll start at the beginning [which is here, now, these moments, as in this interview]. We'll shoot it [the documentary] vérité, as we do it [the X-rated film], although Rad and I agree that we will manipulate the situation, making sure we have drama. We'll "cook" [artificially dramatize] the situation. All good documentaries are cooked. I'd know that if I had never seen a documentary. Nobody's going to spend that kind of time and money to be [honestly] objective. They have to be doing something political. Yes. They create elements, put things together to give drama. Rad's background is documentary. So he knows how to shoot it. He will run the documentary unit. And we'll make some weird casting choices so that we have on-set antagonists; we'll invite trouble. People I wouldn't otherwise hire. To make trouble. We don't have to tell them to make trouble. We unleash them. [Eight weeks later. Stairway has been filmed. (We shall get to that.) Ira is now talking of a recent S-M project.]

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There were a few characteristic, first-time-director problems, [like] not realizing that using a mechanical dolly slows a shot to some degree. What's characteristic of disastrous porn shoots? Saw one last week where the shoot ended in a near lynching. They were throwing the rope over the tree limb when I left. This was that all-anal picture I was working on that I had such negative feelings about. Lived down to my lowest expectations. First of all, the script had six scenes. He [the producer] shot nine. What's going to happen to those other three scenes? They won't go in the movie his backers paid him to do. They will go [secretly] into his own files to be used for a compilation tape no one paid for or got paid for [that is, a tape that compiles unused scenes from other tapes. No story line. No cost. All profit].

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Anyway, they shot the nine scenes. Then his henchman spirited away the threequarter-inch master tapes the minute the last scene was wrapped. (Which shows total premeditation for what followed.) He then announced that the check he had been given to pay everyone that day had been postdated one day. He paid the talent but said he couldn't pay the crew; they would have to come in the next day to get paid. You can imagine the fireworks that erupted. Jane Waters' people were hollering, "We didn't have to be here tonight. It's all your fault." The guy says, "What can I do? They gave me a rubber check." So the next day we trouped over to Perfect Video, which put up the money. They were upset: they thought they had given the producer enough money. I can't imagine that they sent him there to make a picture without the money to do it. They've been around a while, and this does not help them in any way, and they seemed very annoyed. On the other hand, it is possible that that was a scam between the producer and the company. They could have agreed in advance that the producer would say, "I don't have the money." Everyone got paid ultimately. Anyway, that's the number-one problem: the producer doesn't have enough bread to do the job. We've seen that a million times. Problem number two^ the cast. People don't show up; they show up not in a condition to work; conflict between cast members; a problem over the way a scene is structured; a problem with an agent or boyfriend or manager who says that the agreed amount is not adequate or that the number of scenes is too many. Technical problems: something doesn't work, we don't have the [tape]deck we need, we don't have the camera we need, we don't have the microphone, the thing we record tape on. We don't have this, we don't have that, something isn't working right: we're shooting on a weekend and so we can't get a new one; we have to fly with what we can get; we have to send someone to borrow something from somebody else. These are the typical problems. A script that's too long is a classical problem, trying to do too much in one day [is] probably the greatest source of misery in this business. Or, worst of all, the problem that plagues every X-rated picture except for bondage pictures and girl-girl pictures: the search for wood. It can make for long nights. These things are more likely to fuck up a shoot than trying to stick a needle [S-M piercing] through someone on camera who goes batshit [the woman on his film, the project RJS imagined using for this book]. But as I talk to everyone and look at the footage, it's clear that only in my mind was this a great disaster. Actually, it was no more than a rugged shoot by a first-time director making his job difficult. It was just a bold, failed attempt of a sort that I would not make again. So that, then, shifts from being the "Main Event" [for the proposed book] to another "Prelim" chapter. Then the Main Event becomes this next shoot [Stairway]. The problem is that my S-M picture is atypical. It does not give you the feel of what making porn movies is about, because—make no mistake about it—porn movies are about boys and girls fucking. So we're really looking at a standard boy-girl picture. Did I talk about Sharon's picture [Stairway], the last one we did? That one's pretty good. Directed by Sharon, A.D.'d by me, shot by Jane, edited by Falco, starring Nina Hartley, written by Jim Holliday. People with very different viewpoints to whom we have access. And it has high drama because it was her first directing attempt. Well, Sharon's movie will probably be our best bet [for a book]. So that's pretty good. Okay. [Claps hands.] Ira / 93

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So how's Ira Levine going to stand up? How much will you have to modify things if you are Ira? Not much. I'm going on my own name. But there are a few things that will have to flat come out. I'm only concerned about protecting innocent people: performers, fellow writers, and directors—people I care about. You sometimes say something in order to get a marvelous sentence out, and when it shows up in print, you feel that someone else had to pay the high price for your brilliant sentence. I hate to give up a good sentence, but there are several places in reading this [transcript of earlier interview] where I thought, "I was on a roll and went too far here." As far as the stuff that reveals me personally, 1*11 put my name on that. It's all just history now. Be sure that you want to do that, because it's forever. Everything I've done is forever. What difference does it make? I wish other people in this industry would talk about their experiences. What I'm getting is mythologies. That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. It'll be a healing thing if the rest of us can talk about it. I don't think it reflects badly on us that we've been victims [especially of sex abuse]. There is a line in a Raymond Chandler novel that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander. I don't agree with that. Somebody did something that made their lives more fucked up. It isn't all their doing. They don't have to take all the responsibility on themselves: they have to take responsibility for where they will go, not for where they've been. There's a limit to free will. Out there [the "California religion"] everyone is responsible for whatever happens to them. You get cancer, you wanted to get cancer. Bullshit! I take a deterministic view. One can live with that knowledge in dignity or can spend one's life pretending that is not true. As long as you have the choice to throw it away. You have the choice to throw it away. That's a joke. The people I talk with, I want to get into their minds, and they want to sell something to me. Some interviews are total surface. The astute reader will know. It's important to have an interview with someone who is hiding. Strictly PR. Private interests wildly at variance from what they profess. Almost all will give you a variation of the party line. You're almost always better off with a younger, not-so-bright performer. Out of the mouths of these babes come things closer to the truth. Some of the rawest, wantonest, craziest, least engaging personalities probably would come closest to giving you the straight stuff: they're not committed to this as a way of life. The older people have, over the years, accreted a calcification of lies and rationalizations around what they do. They've been interviewed often enough by so many reporters, so many television shows, that they're just reading their lines. Sharon says [for interviewers], "I answered an ad; 'Dancers Wanted, up to $100 a day.' That's how I started. I was broke and there it was." But however they started, by the time you're thirty-five and you've been in this business ten years, it's very central to your life. So any attack on this business is an attack on your whole fucking life. You defend it to the last breath. Nina gets up there with a baseball bat ready to take on anyone with anything bad to say about the X-rated business, but it gets in the

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way of the truth, which is both more interesting and more useful. Society at large knows. No matter how often an outwardly charming, intelligent, likable, well-adjusted person sits up there on the Donahue Show and says, "We're charming, likable, welladjusted human beings," no one is fooled. Everyone knows they're looking at a carefully trained, carefully chosen anomaly. The public's idea about this industry is probably not far removed from the kind of an industry it is: exploitative, with marginal personalities who can't integrate into society, self-destructive people living selfdestructive lives. But that doesn't invalidate all their choices or all their ideas either. I lose patience with apologists for the Industry, but just as quickly with those who are condescending. Right before coming here I went to an open call at Jim South's office. He runs World Modeling. A fascinating experience, where you meet the new, the old, and everything in between, because all the directors and producers are there. [With an open call] everyone who wants to work and everyone who wants to hire is invited from his list to come into his office. He acts as agent for many performers. He has a big book. He's been in the business a long while. He has good connections, knows all the producers and the directors. l Why does the producing of porn require an afternoon where everybody shows up for an open call? To see who is new. Because when people first get into the business they usually go to him [Jim]. He's one of the few people who advertises for new talent. Generally, no one wants to use new talent if they can avoid it. Well, that's not correct. New girls are, of course, always desirable if they're desirable. But you don't know what they're like to work with until you've worked with them. Most seasoned pros prefer to work with seasoned pros. So you balance the novelty appeal against the reliability of people you have worked with. Jim's agency is an entry point to the Industry for a lot of people. It's a sort of a beauty contest, a chance for people who are new to get seen and for people who have been around to get seen more. It's also a chance for the producers and directors to get together and schmooze for a minute or two about mutual concerns. And it's a social opportunity for the performers. They see each other, show off their new tit jobs, or tans, or tattoos, or whatever they've got. Where does it take place? In Jim's office. He has a suite of offices, small rooms where directors and producers can talk privately with talent, might get them to take off their clothes. There's a big area where everyone sits around and schmoozes and waits. No agenda? Everyone just shows up and mills around? Right. Jim plays host. The open call is a feature of regular pictures also, where they'll advertise "Open call for actors of this type for a feature film we're going to do." A particular one? Yeah. Well, that's different. This is just for the ... This is for everything. Whoever is doing anything is invited to come down and press 1. On reading this transcript a year after we taped it, I arranged to go to an open call with Jim Holliday. Astonishing: would make anyone want to be an anthropologist. Ira / tS

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the flesh, have a look and chat. I picked up a couple of phone numbers from people who do bondage pictures because everyone in that genre knows I make them. I walked in the door: "Oh, it's the S-M guy!" So girls who want to do this come up to me and say, "Are you using anybody?" I take their phone numbers, and sometimes I take a polaroid. Mainly, it's a way for performers and directors and producers to remember who is available. You see so many people you forget. "I had forgotten about that one; let's use her. She's good." Also, sadly, a way of measuring how desperate people are. You'll never see Sharon at one of those, or Nina. I was really surprised to see Rowena Regal there. "What is she doing here? She's got plenty of work." But in fact she doesn't work. She said, "I have car payments, and I've had to move a couple of times." So we hired her to do a bondage picture on Saturday. But the talent you see at those big shape-ups are mostly the young, the new, the old, and the not-so-new. Why would Sharon be there today? She's already shooting today. She might be there if she were a director, is that right? Yeah, she did that before her picture. She and Holliday went over there and looked at everyone in Jim's [Jim South] book to seek if there was anyone they wanted. They took this one girl. And regretted it. Very pretty, very inexperienced. We were glad to get her off the set. What does a performer do that makes you want to get her off the set? I'll tell you exactly.2 We had her in a scene with two guys, not the easiest thing to do but elementary. Two-guy/girl scene. All she had to do was get up on all fours and get fucked from the back by one guy and give a blow-job to the other. That is how every two-guy/girl scene in human history has been. It's on Grecian urns in the British Museum. Very simple. No girl who has been in this business a week should have any doubt what this scene requires. She wouldn't do that. "I don't like it doggy style. It's not intimate enough. I don't like it from the back." We looked at each other, and Sharon just went [demonstrates Sharon going bonkers]. It's awkward because you're up against the men's homophobia. She would only do the scene flat on her back with one guy up on top fucking her and the other guy getting sucked by her, the two guys face to face [thus homophobia]. And she was just awful about it, blowing her lines and cracking up in the wrong places. When that scene was over and she was wrapped out of there, Sharon said, "I will never hire a young, inexperienced girl like that again, neverr And stalked off to her room. [Laugh.] That is a bad porn performer. A good performer is one who, whatever his or her personal feelings, does what the script requires and as well as possible. Nina is the classic example. She makes lots of pictures she doesn't like. There are things she won't do and things she does that aren't her personal thing, but she says, "They're hiring me, and I read the script; I agree to do what is in it; I will not be a prima donna; I will not play the star; I will go in there and do what they hired me to do." That's a good performer. Sharon's the same. She may not like it, but she doesn't have to like it. She's not there to like it; she's there to do the job and be paid. But the younger ones, they're not like that necessarily. 2. And it will be told again by the other participants. I leave the repetitions in to portray my idea that ethnography—to try for accuracy—must attend to who are its informants. (Wouldn't it be exciting if historians could also do so more often?)

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Most people in this business refuse to face the responsibilities of adult life. This business lets people extend the dysfunctional pattern of their families late into adulthood. That's why, no matter how old they are, performers are always referred to as boys and girls. They will always be infantilized by the business, and they will always be in the role of incest and abuse and molestation victims until they face that reality and define themselves in some other way: "Okay, that is why I am the way I am now, but I'm never again going to allow anyone to exploit me because of this thing." To say another thing to annoy my friends: this is a public form of prostitution. Public prostitution isn't new. There have been sex performers for centuries, people paid to do public sex. Porn performers do in public for money what people have been paid to do in private long before the camera was invented. This is just another branch of the world's oldest profession. And not necessarily the shrewdest branch to choose. After all, a woman doing straight outcalls can make just as much money without leaving behind a permanent public record. And she can make the clients wear condoms. [The filming done, I set about interviewing the main participants in order to Rashomon the experience: Sharon (director), Jim (producer, writer), Ira (assistant director), Nina (star), Jane (director of photography), Falco (editor). Doing this, I also look at the outtakes (unedited footage) of three scenes, a semifinal cut (without music or minor corrections), and the final cut. Getting the participants' responses, especially how they react to viewing their own work and how they confirm or disconfirm their colleagues' opinions, is, I repeat, a useful ethnographic technique. I trust that your sharing in the search for this widened perspective keeps down your impatience with repetition. At any rate, these interviews reveal what people think and feel while practicing the X-rated trade. Because each participant is covering some of the same ground as the others, the reader may get bored. For most purposes, such repetition is poor writing. At the risk of wrath, I nonetheless subject you to that pain. Why? For the ethnographic aspect of this work: to make the obvious (but oftignored) point that reports on human endeavors are never objective but can become more so—richer, at least—when more versions are revealed.—RJS] ISL

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More and more, my life has been revolving around the X-rated film industry; [there,] a different set of social rules and mores have been enforced. People in the X-rated business are much more conservative about sexual matters than people of various voluntary nonconformist sexual subcultures. They're mostly there, so they tell themselves, for money. They cling to the notion that they and their desires are normal and define anyone different as abnormal. A schizophrenic industry in which many of the people, male and female, are bisexual but "closet," denying that this is an important aspect of their real personalities. I thought the women were openly bisexual; I don't know about the men. The women are encouraged to flaunt it because the audience likes women and women together and because lesbianism is culturally more acceptable than male homosexuality. Ironically, a lot of the ones who make the most noise about that are the ones for whom it's not true or who are doing it for social or political reasons, while those who passionately desire members of their own sex are pretty quiet about it. So there's two kinds of bisexuality in the same woman: for public consumption . . . Ira / 97

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[Continues.] and another they don't talk about. . . Personal. There is a small circle of women in the business who are genuinely lesbian. They have sex with men, but they are lesbian. But most of the girls are situationally bisexual. Like Nina Hartley. Nina stayed with us when we were working Sharon's picture. Nina is a woman whose emotional life is centered on her attractiveness to men but who still finds women genuinely attractive. I see in her a total pro. Everything about her, the way she does every scene: [she] does her best work, self-critical, self-aware, all the things that make for a good player; patient during the downtime and "right" [courteous] with all the other performers. Nina is always "on"; never a moment when Nina isn't playing Nina. I think that character really saved her. I can just picture her at fourteen: a fan of Sylvia Plath, dark hair pulled straight back, big round glasses, painfully shy. I was like that, too, a total nerd, totally unpopular. Your classmates say, "That poor guy, he's never going to get laid in his life." [Mimics a laugh.] And I'm sure the girls must have looked at Nina and thought, "Oh, poor darling, she's never going to have a man." No, she wasn't going to have a man; she was going to have hundreds. Listen. If you're bright, motivated, and apply your brain to a problem, the problem is likely to crack open. Nina and I applied our intellects to being sexual, getting validated and rewarded in this area. We figured out a way to do it. When she [Nina] was here [in my office several years ago] the day after the XRCO awards, I would not have recognized her. The big sex thing was not present. Right. She didn't have the lights turned on. And that's how I have seen her, too. Still appealing, because the pilot light is always on: this kind of sexuality comes more from the inside than the outside. It's not a matter of how you look but of how you are. Many of the most successful men and women in the X-rated Industry are not people you would see as traditionally attractive, but you can see right away that their sexuality is very focused and tuned up. And that's what makes them what they are. I totally relate to this; [it's] one reason she and I got on. We both agreed that we were self-invented characters. She is a sexual Utopian, a believer in partner sharing and nonmonogamy, like me. A relentless propagandist for her point of view—how society would be better off if everybody adopted these unconventional views: "Pornographic films should be propaganda." I hate propaganda. Sharon and I agree about this. We're interested in making art, not propaganda. Propaganda is a dishonest art form. Anti-an. Anti-art form. It depends on untruths in order to survive. Propaganda and truth cannot coexist. I'm not alone in this view. It is shared by everyone from V. I. Lenin to Hannah Arendt: propaganda and truth are mutually exclusive. You can't tell the truth about sex in the form of propaganda. Nina doesn't want to hear anything negative about sexuality. But you don't combat one bad idea with another bad idea. You combat a bad idea with a good idea. People over here say that sex is bad, evil, deadly, awful, sinful, and immoral; you should stay away from it. You don't counterbalance them by an equally false and unbelievable body of opinion that sex is always good and wonderful and that nothing bad ever comes of it. That's not true. Sex brings good news and bad. I'm interested in getting people to address their feelings of alienation about it, but I'm not interested in adding to them. I'm interested in looking at sex in a complex,

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sophisticated way, which our medium allows us to do. The only requirement is that we turn out a sex product. So why sacrifice that creative feeling? One of the few rewards in our work is the Utopian philosophical view of how things should be in an ideal world between men and women. Nina's thing is her antiracism, how important it is to have white and black people doing sex without the racial thing being an issue. It's great we're able to do it, but, by God, in a picture that I did, it would be addressed as an issue! We would not pretend that that is a nonissue. / have had interracial sex, and I can tell you that it is an issue. You come from different backgrounds. You have, as a white person, your residual racism to cope with; they have, as black people, their experience of racism to cope with. You bring these things into the bedroom. So Nina and I will never agree about art versus propaganda. Sharon and I see it in our way, and Bill and I see it in our way. Our view is [that] we're not making sex movies, we're making movies about sex ... Here you've got a director and an assistant director . . . And co-screenwriter. Who are all synergistic about this: Is that correct? Absolutely. Is she [Sharon] the director or were you the director? Yes, she is the director, by God! And this is her first shot at it? Yes, and she is a director! It was a wonderful experience. She showed me everything I'd hoped to see: the cool-under-fire, the courage, the determination, the concentration, the heart, the things that make a director. This was a very hard project for a first project. Its scale was intimidating, and there were plenty of differing opinions to go around. It's hard for Sharon to make a judgment call that could hurt someone's feelings. A director does that every three minutes. And she did it! She made every hard call, and she made every one of them right. Her coaching of the performers was wonderful. Her reading of the scenes was wonderful. When we'd get to a point where a scene was working, I'd see her going, "Yeah, yeah, the scene is working." When the scene was not working, I could see that she had that worried look of concentration. The last day of the shoot we were in our last scene, ten minutes from golden overtime. (If you go past midnight on a sound stage, you discover expense in a world undreamed of since ancient Babylon. Every second after midnight costs you unimaginable amounts of money: golden overtime.) So we're in our last scene. A sex scene. A complex setup. A flashback in an Old West saloon. And the guy who was supposed to do it was not functional. Ten minutes to twelve, and no wood on the set. Everybody is going crazy. "Got to do something about this man. It's not happening. It's going to be a disaster." Jim, to his credit, had kept Randy Spears, one of our really solid male performers—we had used him in an earlier scene—on board. He kept him out in the hall just in case. I said, "Got to do something, Sharon, got to have something here." "What?" "We have to get a quick pop one way or another. If he can't do it, we've got Randy out in the hall. But this is it. Right now." And she said, "Right, I know what I'm going to do." She called a "cut," went over to the guy who was having the problem, and said, "I'm sorry, this isn't working. If we had more time, we would work with you on this scene. But we're ten minutes till, and we've simply got to have a pop. So if you'll step out, thank you." Brought Randy in. I said, "Go over there and come on that girl's tits." He said, Ira / 99

"Right." He went right over there, did it like that, we were out at three minutes to twelve. This is the real test. That is what-are-we-all-about-here time. And Sharon had what it took to do that. She'd hired the guy who couldn't perform. She knew she was responsible. She didn't want to hurt his feelings; anyone can empathize with that situation. But if you can't make command decisions that negatively affect people, then you can't do it. She showed me that she could do it. And the film we made is a quality film. The theory I have: we are not shooting episodic TV, we are shooting live theater. "We are shooting," as Jane Waters says, "original documentary footage of theatrical performances never seen before and never to be seen again." So bare sets, bare stages, minimal production values, everything concentrated on the players. That's what people want to see. They're not going to come out, as they say, "humming the set," that's not what people are coming to see. Art direction is nice, but what we really need is clean staging that spotlights a fundamental performance. Like ballet: an actual, strenuous, athletic, physical performance. And the ritualistic language that leads up to it. Like music is a part of ballet, but ballet is really about dance, so the acting part of X-rated films is part of what they're about, but they're really about sex. Sex is the subject matter. The other stuff just platforms the sex. That's the way this picture was done. I can hardly wait until we've got raw footage for you to see. You'll see the work: original people doing original things. The chemistry among the cast and crew enabled us to get creative contributions out of everyone. I even did a little directing myself on one scene. In one of her characters Nina plays a witch in Salem about to be done away with the next day. She's in her wretched cell, and she's visited by this deacon who offers to save her in return for her sexual favors. Nina was very unhappy about playing this scene: you can't imagine anything more politically, intellectually opposite to her views. "I hate being a victim," and "This is a rape scene and we'll count it as a sex scene. But I'll lie there with gritted teeth and let him do it to me." I said, "Is that really how you're going to play this scene? Let's think about this. Is that really what we want here? Now, let's imagine you're really in this situation. You're going to die tomorrow, and some guy comes in and says that if you show him a good time, you might live. [Watch Measure for Measure for a comparable situation and see how an ice goddess deals with a related problem.] Come on, Nina, if you're willing to fuck somebody and fuck 'em well for a thousand bucks, to save your life, what would you do? What would you do if you were fucking to save your life? Speaking for myself, I would be willing to do plenty. I would put on the performance of my life. "What would I figure? I have nothing to lose here. If it works well, I've saved my life, and if it doesn't work well, I'm dead anyway. What's the difference? Am I just going to lie there and be a whimpering victim, or am I going to take control of this thing in one way or another?" She said, "I'm liking this, talk to me, tell me more." I said, "The way I have now written the scene (as opposed to the way it was in Holliday's version, where the poor girl just gave in to it), the two people are standing in the cell across from each other. He's made his obscene proposition. She gives him a withering look, rips her clothes apart and throws them in his face. That is the beat of your scene: you are defiant. You are going to take control of this situation, because this is your last chance." She understood it then from the inside out. She no longer saw her character as a 100 / Ira

victim but as a plucky individual fighting for her life with all the means at her disposal. It's a dark thing. We establish in the next scene that they killed her anyway. Nonetheless, she restored her character's vitality and dignity. And Sharon loved this. Sharon was not one of those possessive directors who says, "No, I don't want anyone outdirecting me." Her view was always, "Tell me what ideas you have." The mark of a good director: someone who listens to the A.D., to the D.P. [director of photography], to the guy on the tech board, then makes a decision that's truly final. Rad says it's all about control. Really, even in this business, it's all about character.

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9 The Main Event: Here, without Doubt... : Sharon

Sharon, the pretty, cute, lively pornë [from Greek for harlot], I first "met" by watching her be nipple-clamped on an S-M videotape (Stoller 1991a). As I sit talking with her, she seems (more than the transcript words reveal) as fun loving here as she did in her deconstructing performance of the S-M scene. There, her chirpiness illuminated—gave the lie to—all the S-M business that was supposed to distress her; and in not doing so, distressed her distressors. Her upbeat style in this next interview, however, yields less information on how her film was made than I wanted. I interpret her way of handling me as friendly-guarded.—RJS Sharon I tried to quit the business four times over my career of fourteen years, and I kept ending up back in the business. I'm going, "Why do I keep ending up back in this business?" and "Why am I trying to get out?" I said, "Because I'm not comfortable with it. Some part of me is not comfortable with myself, my own sexuality; I'm still icky about it somewhere inside." This is one and a half years ago. So I decided, instead of trying to quit, maybe I should go into it: every time I feel something negative about it, I'm going to embrace it totally, totally go through it and love it and throw myself into it and totally become at one with it. However long that takes, I'm going to be at peace with what I'm doing. So I did that. And it really happened! Four months ago, I completed it. And the year I did that was my best year. I won: best actress three times, best supporting actress, best sex scene, Hall of Fame, lifetime achievement award. Came full circle. I also lost my emotional dependency and my feeling of being victimized by another person (even though I knew logically that I was playing the part of the victim). I knew that I was responsible for everything I experienced in my life. I'm still learning. Tve learned so much about myself and about film making, about patience in dealing with people, and learning who I am, and learning my strengths and my weaknesses, and developing a center of myself to work from. I feel 102

really strong and clear and at peace with it. Now if I feel anger or jealousy or something, I can get through it really fast, in minutes. RjS Okay. Fourteen years ago . . . Sharon I was twenty then; I'm thirty-four now. I had come from Ohio; I'd been in San francisco for about six months, and I had been married when I was eighteen. Before that I lived with my mother and my half-brother, two brothers, two sisters, and my stepfather, and my life was pretty great. I lived [. . .] with my grandparents as a kid when my mother and father got divorced. She was seventeen when she had me. She worked all the time, and my grandparents raised me. They were pretty fabulous. So I did have a father figure in my early days. Even though he was my grandfather, we were great buddies. Then my mother married this guy, my stepfather. He was an alcoholic. I never met anyone angrier. He would scream at us, scream and yell. I was miserable. I couldn't escape; there was no place to go. My mother had all these other kids. I was fifteen years older than the youngest. I ended up being the mom for a long time: cleaning the house and all that. So I've sort of already had children. I really hated him. My family was very racist. We moved into an interracial neighborhood. I thought, "I'm not racist; I want to see if I'm racist or not." So to prove to myself that I wasn't, I married a black guy. He ended up paranoid schizophrenic, totally bonkers, ended up in a mental institution. I went back home with my parents. I was working for a company, and the president wanted to go out with me. He was in his fifties. I was nineteen. He got me a little car and came over to my apartment a couple nights a week, but I fell in love with his son. I was seeing both of them, and they were both married. He found out. I had always wanted to go to California. What I needed was in Hollywood. But he said, "No, go to San Francisco. Hollywood will eat you up if you go there at nineteen." Smart man. So he sent me there [S.F.]. RJS Were you thinking of being an actress? Sharon An actress or a singer. I would be an artist, also a musician. And I loved acting, I loved performing. I ended up in San Francisco working at the Salvation Army in the back office doing typing and shit like that and hated it. Then I started writing poetry on the typewriter, thinking, "Wow, this is great!" So I got fired. I got the pink slip on my desk one day. "Great! Good! I'm so happy to be out of here." I worked in different ethnic restaurants. I worked in an Indian restaurant and met a guy who said, "Do you want to move in with me and my girlfriend?" "Sure." She had a library of parapsychology and studies on religion, LSD experiments, everything. I got totally turned on to the whole meditation thing. I was sick of working in the restaurant. I opened up the paper to look for another job: "Dancers wanted, $100 a day." Well, I was still processing all this anger and resentment and great fear: walking on eggshells, depression, confusion, not clear about anything. So I started working at "The Screening Room" doing live simulated girlgirl shows and feeling very guilty and uptight and not okay with any of it. I wasn't bisexual [she told herself then]. I had bisexual feelings to women growing up, but I was always told that it was wrong: what will my mother think, what do these people think, what will God think? I can't explain it, but it [sex performing] feels like that was my destiny. Natural. I realized that I needed to deal with this stuff or get out, not do it. F m the type of person that will stay with something until it doesn't bother me any more and work through it completely. I studied with different spiritual masters over the years and continued in the sex Sharon / 103

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industry, started making movies. My first movie, I was totally scared and uptight. And just stuck with it. I did my spiritual studies and studied with gurus and studied Hinduism and Buddhism and apply them in my life and apply them in the sex industry. Now, [let's say] you've got an assignment: at 2 P.M. you're supposed to do a scene. How do you do that differently from the way you would have before? The only difference is in myself. Before, I was feeling, "What's the crew think of me?" and "I'm not okay with this, I feel awkward." The idea a lot of people have about the porn industry: it's dirty and the people are low life. Now I don't feel awkward, I just do it. Let me give you an example: I was with my friend Karen; he is a drag queen. (We do shows together sometimes.) Well, Karen is in drag. He's got this little Sarán Wrap bikini on, and there's four others of us that go out there, two girls and two boys, all wrapped in Sarán Wrap. He's lip-syncing a song called "Sex." Us two girls and two boys are in the background dancing (in front of a completely straight audience). And I went out there—this is when I realized I had transcended the whole thing: before, I would have been thinking about what they were thinking of me—no thoughts in my mind, totally in the moment, totally experiencing the joy of doing this dance. Just moving. It got written up in The Star. This big scandal: "Soand-so [actress] comes up on stage and dances with drag queen in the middle of a sex orgy, and some people left because it was so disgusting." They're describing the dance as a sex orgy? Yeah. But it wasn't. We were just being erotic. Nobody was fucking anybody. And when I got off the stage, I felt so good and was totally oblivious. I was stark naked in the midst of this crowd and didn't even think twice about it, just walked off. I thought, "Wow, that was a great performance." [Laugh.] So that's what I mean when I say, "Before I was uptight, and now I'm in the moment and can do this and be okay whether I'm feeling turned on or not." Sometimes I work in a movie, I'm not turned on, but I'm okay. I don't think, "Oh God, I've got to be turned on." I'm not turned on. I should be. I'm not turned on. I'll go with that, just stay centered with that but still be sensitive to what we need to do in the scene and do it—that I'm okay with where I'm at. Because I know. I've done it long enough that I know that it doesn't always work that way. It doesn't always work for me to get turned on, and I've been working with some of the guys for fourteen years. It's like [laugh] having five or six husbands. We just. . . "Oh, you again!" That's the difference. What was in you that, despite all of this burden ("uptight"], moved you toward the business you're in? (And it's not just business. You feel it's natural for you, that you got rid of the unnatural part.) What was the part that was there, despite everything you were carrying, that would have kept you away? When I was in high school—seventeen—my orchestra teacher (I played classical violin for fifteen [?] years) used to take nude pictures of me. (Well, not completely nude, just little topless things, pretty things.) I felt a bit uncomfortable, but I did it. One day, he said, "I see you on stage doing this erotic stuff." [Ira's theory is that many performers enter the Industry because, as children, they're encouraged to.] Eventually I did. How does he know, out of all the girls [at the school], to pick you? What are you emanating? Unless he was doing this to every girl who would allow him, which is not likely. No, no. He just recognized something in me. I don't know what he saw in me.

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Maybe he sensed an energy in me, even though, when he said that, I never had any intention of becoming a porno star. I only wanted to be a singer and an actress. Tve been working on music again, I'd completely let go of the music thing a year and a half ago, when I decided to completely go into the sex industry. I had beat my head against the wall for so long because I wanted to do music so bad and it wasn't happening. I went to an NA [Narcotics Anonymous] meeting with my friend Jane Waters, who you'll meet, the cameraman for the movie. A woman there was talking about being receptive and stop trying to control your life with your mind. So the next day I went out to Malibu, and I had my synthesizer and was working on some pieces, a relaxed day—surrendering to the moment. I felt so good that I thought I would go home a different way. Instead of going up 101, which I usually do, which is like "get back there as fast as you can and get on that freeway and get home," I just decided to relax and drive down PCH [Pacific Coast Highway] and take Sunset [Boulevard] up through the hills. So I get to the stop sign in Pacific Palisades, and there are these boys about sixteen or seventeen. Something said, "Just open the door and let them in, take them wherever they're going." I've never picked up a hitchhiker in my life. So they got in and said, "You're a musician. Great. So are we! Have you ever heard of MIT?" I go, "Yeah, the Musicians Institute." And they go, "We studied there. It's a great school. You should really go to the summer session." So I'm taking it. And I've been doing a lot of performances. [She is, Ira says, a fine musician.] I was receptive enough to recognize what the boys were to me. My high school orchestra teacher was that same thing for me back then, but I was too confused by the many issues going on inside me to understand what he really was. Did Ira say that you are doing the music for the film you directed?

Sharon I did it.

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That was the first movie you directed? Yeah. First. What was it like? There were so many different levels of things happening. I've been under many kinds of stress in my life. This was a totally new kind of stress. One thing: I knew I could do it, yet I didn't quite know the process. So I had to really trust that everything would be revealed as I went along. The other thing was that I was under a time limit with someone else's money. So I had a greater responsibility and was pretty much in charge of everything. And I wanted to control everything. As far as the camera was concerned, I let Jane do all that, and we would consult on the set. The other thing was with Jim Holliday: he reminded me of my stepfather, the same needing to manipulate every . . . what is the word I want to use—undercurrent. He has a really different perception. He bases his ideas of what a film should be like on past results. Not a bad thing except that I've worked with all the filmmakers. Being a performer, in front of the camera, I've done all these things. I have a different idea. I'm more of an artist than he is. He got me the money, but I had to take a stand for what I believed in. It's not that I didn't care what he thought America wanted [Jim's constant comment]. So it came down to saying basically, "I will not direct this movie unless it's done my way." To make a movie that was artistic but yet presented people in a way . . . There was a scene that really bothered me. A girl-girl scene. It was like [Jim's version], "Stick your middle finger in and push it in and out and let's do Sharon / IOS

cozy-yummy." "Okay" [mimics baby-doll voice], [Jim:] "You know what 'cozyyummy' is, don't you?" "Yeah." That kind of thing. Actually, Ira and I cut out about twelve pages. I mean, he [Jim] had written monologues for the actors. We had two days to shoot it. Believe me, I've been on four hundred movies, and I knew there was no way we could shoot it in two days. We would have been going crazy. Originally, we had nine sex scenes to shoot in two days plus thirty-three pages of dialogue. I just said, "This can't work." And some of the dialogue I just didn't like. It was just not how I want to present the movie. I thought it could be much cleaner and flow much more and get more to the point. So I said, "Look . . . " He sent out the script, and while I was calling people, they were saying, "This is awfully long," and "This one scene is way too much." They're in front of the camera. They know how much you can do. I said, "I know; we'll redo it." So I redid it and presented it to him. It was hard because he had written the script and was really attached, so involved. I had to stand up to an authority figure who got me the money, like standing up to my stepfather and saying, "No, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do this." And if I can't do this, I had to let go of the project; I was willing to go to the bitter end. That was hard. And also, Jim is a friend. I don't want him to be disappointed but yet having to let go of that too. RJS What made him give way? Sharon I talked to him, before the crew came, that it wasn't going to work, that he was the only one sticking to his original idea. The rest of the crew is going, "Jim, this is not going to work, it's long." . . . He wasn't hearing it. So finally I redid the script and presented it to him, and I said, "Jim, look, nothing against you; I hope that you're not upset about this. These are the changes I've made. I want it to be like this." Behind those words was the feeling, if it's not like this, I'm not going to do the movie. He heard that. What was he going to do? Go back to VGA and say, "Sharon doesn't want to do the movie the way that I wrote it"? Because Russ [at V.C.A.] was all hyped up about me directing the film. So that's what did it [got Jim to shift]: that I strongly believed that I wanted to do it this way and not that way. A couple of months before I got this offer, I dreamed I was working on it. In fact, I started working with Ira, six, seven months previous to getting the money. We started working on a piece that I dreamed I was writing: girls who worked in a garage. Ira said it's a great idea. I started thinking about doing something behind the camera or maybe like featuring myself in a series of movies. I knew I was coming to the point where I was going to have to not be in front of the camera any more. And we worked so well together that it was just amazing. I started—who knows why— thinking about directing and talked to different people and got offers and never took anybody else up on the offer. And then I talked to Holliday, and he goes, "I can help you. I'll get you as much money as you can get for one of these films." It was time. It was all right there. And I have a good track record. I'm dependable and creative and a good actress. And we have other people like John Leslie, who is an actor who is now one of the top directors. We have Paul Thomas, who is an actor who is now a top director. People who have been in front of the camera and then go behind the camera have a really good feel for the overview. Russ, from his past experience— RJS Russ is who? Sharon The guy who runs V.C.A. When I went into the office, I didn't know what to say to him. I felt a little awkward. Here's this guy who is giving me this money, and he's 10* / Sharon

totally trusting, and I'd never made a movie before. But I knew I could do it, and he went with it. And also because of Jim. I think Jim has a large part in it. But I never lost my touch. I always handle things diplomatically.

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[A brief description of Sharon. My version: cute, energetic, looks her age, no makeup, no fanciness, no phoniness, though her exhibitionism is in the slightly extravagant gestures she makes with her hands. A great deal of that. She is otherwise not flamboyant, not the crazed sex star. Her hair is bionde, straight in the sense of no perm and no wave, but nothing fancy. Slim. She does not exhibit her figure. There is nothing, not for one second, erotic in her behavior with me. She's wearing—I guess it's a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, black, not particularly form fitting, some green pattern (it looks like poppies growing out of grass) jeans rolled up just above her ankles, wearing gray socks— they look like woolen practice stockings for ballet—and lumberjack style, anklehigh boots. She seems comfortable all the time. She is perky; she sits in the chair, bounces around with energy, not with phoniness. One leg up, the other leg down, the other leg up, then both legs up sitting on her legs, then legs down, easy, very straightforward. She looks older than when I "met" her in the S-M film. I'm not sure that I would have recognized her as the same person, but that may be just the tricks of the lighting or whatever makeup she had on or whatever. Sharon requested a second visit after Jim got her to "correct" what she said about him in the first visit. She has now read the edited transcript of her first interview.] I liked most of it. The only part I had a difficult time with was the problems that I had with Jim. I didn't want to make him the bad guy, because he wasn't. I'm not saying that anybody was at fault here, I was just . . . What I wanted to do was make a ... express how I was feeling and n o t . . . One reason you're here now is to correct it. Nothing will be published without your total okay, as I told you. If you haven't got Jim the way you want, correct it. Other people'll say what they want. Yeah. The other people say, "He wrote a poor script" and that they helped to change it and you helped to change it. And it got to be better. That's their view. You have a right to your view, too. Yes. I just wanted to be clear that I wasn't making him the bad guy. Because he wasn't, and he did me a big favor. He got the money and gave you the job as director. Right. And also, I had to work through my own stuff about him and about getting what I wanted artistically and not feeling I had to please him or make peace, which I used to do. That's what I tend to do in life so things will work. But I'm not really willing to do that any more. Our movie brought up all that stuff in me to look at. Jim was the authority figure. He reminded me a lot of my stepfather. [Pause.] Ask anything you want. A few odds and ends. I have no agenda. Are you going to direct again? I'm working on something right now. I had a dream about this character: Her name was Barbara Mammoth! Barbara Mammoth, oh God! Like a cartoon character. I dreamt this scenario: She was in the [nineteen-]fifties, this cute little blonde, dipsy, naive, innocent character. The idea [embodiment] of women who are just the most Sharon / 107

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fuckable. There's a cartoon character in Playboy called Little Annie Fannie. Naive, stupid, innocent. So innocent that she finds herself in all kinds of [dangerous] situations and doesn't even realize that she's in the midst of the fire. Barbara Mammoth. She was the secretary. . . . A box [porn video] cover. She had on a little furry, fuzzy, mohair sweater. Low-cut and very busty. A little skirt with little garters sticking out. You know the style: high-heeled spike heels. She's sitting at a desk. Something about a secretary. I thought about a series, five movies, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom. With her as this character. So I put it out there: I talked to Jane. He was interested in working on it. And Ira. He thinks I'm kind of crazy sometimes, b u t . . . So I put it on the back burner. But then there's this series of events. I found myself at a club for this birthday party. I haven't been feeling like being a porn star lately. They wanted all these porn stars to come on stage to celebrate this guy's birthday: dance around, take some clothes off. I just wasn't in the mood, but I was supposed to be a main character up there. Well, I didn't go up. I watched from the crowd. "I'm happy to be here." I was watching this girl on stage, new in the business, really cute up there. Then my best friend called and said, "David's girlfriend wants to get into the business. She was at the party the other night and was on stage." "Is she blond?" "Yeah." He wanted me to go to Jim South, the agent, and introduce them. I said, "No. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me talk to her first." So we met, and I thought, "This could really work. She could be my replacement in the business." Now listen to this. I went to this psychic! I didn't tell him what I did [profession]. I asked, "How much time do I have left in this business?" He said, "Six to nine months. I would suggest that before you leave this business, find someone to replace you." This girl even looks a bit like me when I started in the business. So she's real excited about doing this Barbara Mammoth thing. She's got the exact body I want. The face not quite as I saw it, but it's okay. So that's what I'm working on now. It's all tieing in. I'm hoping to get the money. Where's your music [career]? I wrote part of a musical for this thing called "Genderella," a mostly drag show a couple of my friends put together. Musical comedy. We performed it right before I moved. It hit me the other day that I didn't really care about becoming a singer any more. All the years I spent thinking about becoming a singer. I used to be really attached to my performing my material. I don't need to anymore. Would you miss being a performer? If I'm happy, I wouldn't miss it [singing]. I'm not going to stop performing: I'm an artist. I like creating things. If part of that is performing, then that's fine. It seems like you should, as part of your creativity, continue directing, that you know what you're doing. Yeah. I feel really confident about it. Well, I want to do this series of videos. I am praying that money will come soon, because I don't want to lose her. I said, "If I can't get the money together in a couple of weeks, I'll take you to Jim South so you can start getting work." It would be really great for her to come in through me—it would be a big project—rather than through Jim South. Do you have the five stories in mind yet? I've got ideas for them; it would be no problem to get the stories going. I'll write them with someone. Not Ira. I like Ira's writing, but these are slapstick, and Ira's not a slapstick kind of a guy.

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Okay [i.e., next subject]. [. . .] It's getting to be a good-sized book. I get a big kick out of the idea of it. I think it'll work. Not that I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy putting the books together. But this one . . . I think, "Am I lucky to have a chance to write this thing, to talk to you people, to get this across, to give a public a sense of not only how the film gets done, interesting in itself, but of more important issues, the social issues!" You know my position on pornography. I don't think it kills people. I don't think it's something terrible. I don't think that the people working in it—the women performers or the men, the crews, or anyone else—are under any gun-attheir-head coercion in the way it's said in the outside world that you guys are victims without choice, forced to this. [. . .] You are not the victim of poverty. So there's that kind of issue. There are First Amendment issues. Moral issues. [Other] great social issues. The book's point of view is biased. I'm on the side of the people I'm interviewing. The people who are not on that side probably wouldn't read such a book, but if they did, they will not like it. At any rate, I am enjoying it. When you and your colleagues are talking, via this material, to a book that's to be published some day, you're talking about more than what you're talking about. Things you take for granted but are nonetheless inside you will become manifest in the world. If I were to write it without your genuine voices, it wouldn't be convincing. Just one more person throwing out cheap propaganda. Instead, I am a conduit, a way of bringing your voices out, such as that you're not coerced. That you seem like nice people. But there's a public out there that doesn't like you, that believes you're terrible: diseases of society. I think [without convincing evidence] that when people hear your voices, it will be harder to maintain that position. I know you can't take people who are unconvinceable and convince them. But I do think that. . . Well, if I say, "She's a very nice person whom I enjoy talking with" and present no evidence, no one has to believe it. But when they read you talking, you come through as human, not just a stick figure. I enjoy that. I also enjoy the idea of people being able to see just how the hell these things get put together. As with the straight Hollywood movies, what actually happens in making the movie and the movie's illusion are two différent things. [. . .] The big problem is the typing. The typing takes a long time. One of these transcripts takes days or weeks to do. Also, I sit farther from the machine. They won't hear all my words. They may not get all yours. It's a hard damned job. Let's forget that we've talked before. So if you say things over again, if I ask questions over again, it's all right because it will be different each time. When does it [Stairway] come out, by the way? Sharon Somebody said the first of the year. RJS Why not tomorrow? Sharon I don't know. I can't figure it out. I hear they [VGA] have a backlog of movies. Part of me worries if they'll promote it well. RJS You have no control over that? Sharon Well, like I said before, when I had the dream, that's when 1 first started thinking about directing. RJS Tell me the dream. Sharon I had a dream that I was writing this script called Garage Girls, and in the dream I was directing. I approached Ira: "I've had this dream . . . " So we wrote up different Sharon / 109

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treatments, but nothing came of it. I was in a bookstore three days later, and in the adult section is a movie called Garage Girls. So, "Okay, this will never work." And I let go of that. Then I thought of doing a thing called Sharon Kane's Private Fantasies. I talked to different people about maybe directing for them, and then Jim Hoiliday came and said, "I'll get you as much money as you [one] can get for a movie. Don't take any low-budget pictures. I'll get you some money." And that was that. He got it. He got it. He takes about two hours to tell you that he's got the money: "Well, Sharon, I want to call you up and tell you, I went out to VGA and used the billy hammer, and, well, Russ is in agreement with me, t h a t . . . " It's like a speech that he's planned for the last three hours, God love his heart. So I gave him some ideas I had about a script, and he took one of the ideas, and he wrote it. Slow down again. You always have ideas for scripts? God knows, you've been in enough movies. It's like second nature. Are these ideas like or the same as erotic fantasies you have for your own pleasure? Ah, no. The only erotic fantasies I have are: being with a person that I am totally connected to emotionally, physically, spiritually, intellectually, so that there is a complete relationship. Which is not the way these movies usually . . . Not at all. That's the only fantasy I have. Probably the reason I have that fantasy is because of these movies. Meaningless, pointless sex for years. The zipless fuck. No relationship. I want my sexual relationships to be meaningful, to be deep and caring and loving and intimate and connected. And, yeah, it is because of these movies that I've been able to come back to that healthy space. I've been addicted to sex in the past, I've based relationships on sexual encounters, like, "Oh, this is a really good fuck. He's a good fuck. Maybe not everything's quite in place, but we have good sex. Let's live together." With that goes the jealousy, all kinds of weird stuff that's tied in to putting sex first in a relationship. Fears, aggravations. Now they're my friends first. Then if a sexual thing develops, that's great. Sex is not something I have to have. If they don't want to have sex with me, if I want to have sex with them, that's okay. I'm not going to not see them or not be their friend because they won't have sex with me. I'd like to create situations . . . . . . create stories that are closer to your desires? Yeah. But that's not an X-rated movie! The X-rated stuff is meaningless sex. The only real pleasure I get out of making a movie like t h a t . . . I look at it as an overview, like a painting, that I'm creating something. "I'm making it. It'll turn out this way. I can plan it so this fits here and this fits here." So you would like to make—what's the right word—art-type movies? Yeah. I've got one in mind. A comedy with some underground L.A. celebrities. I've got a bunch of them lined up. And I talked to a writer. I talked to the characters: "If you could pick your favorite character to be in a movie, write what that character is like, what kind of job they would have." Each person that I want to put in the movie can have their own part. Then we can form a story around these situations. A lot of them are drag queens. It would be like John Waters [maker of "outrageous" comedies such as Pink Flamingoes and Polyester]. 1 love drag queens. I love their sense of humor. I love their blatant "I'm going to dress like this, I'm going to pretend I'm a woman for a night and impersonate a female." Some friends and I were talking about

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maybe doing a series of videos based on our lives. I want to involve people that I know and love. I want to work with them, be with them. Okay, back to how did Stairway to Paradise happen. How does the script develop? I had told Jim about an idea for a script I had called The Erotic Lives of Sharon Kane or something, where I would go into a past-life regressionist's office. I thought, "It'll be easy to shoot. We can take me into these different past lives and do a wraparound: always cut back to the past-life regressionist's office." He expanded on that idea. He called her a "regression sessionist," Kay Parker's character. He made Nina into Susan, who went back into some of her [Susan's] past lives. It was beautiful the way it was done. There were messages in there about Devaluating yourself, not necessarily in past lives, but even in this life. Getting an understanding and then moving on to another level, to transcend where you've been. A different way of looking at things, almost like it's a new place. I really liked what he did with it, once we cut out the other stuff and got down to the bare essentials of the story. Okay, so now you've got the money, you've got an idea. Umm-hmm, except he's put it into a heavenly place: she's died, gone to this afterdeath world, who knows for sure? She could even be dreaming the whole thing. The setting's a bit strange, like Alice falling into the rabbit hole. Maybe she's on an acid trip. Who meets, how do they meet, what do they say? What are the various steps? Jim calls. "I got the draft of the script." He brings it over. We go through it. I make tiny changes. We take the script to Russ Hampshire. He looks at it and says, "It's a go." When does he lose the power to say go or stop? He never . . . Once the money is in my bank account. . . But before that, he still has a final say? Yeah. So you guys meet with Russ. You hand him a pile of pages and he reads them? Uh-huh. Or he ... First [...]! meet Russ. We talk. He says, "Do you have an idea for a script?" I said, "Yeah, we're working on something." "Okay, get the script together." We get the script together. Jim took it to him, and then Jim and I started thinking who we wanted in the movie. Originally, I had thought about someone with dark hair in the movie, the girl who plays the lead. Just a feeling. And everyone I wanted to get with dark hair I couldn't get. They were going to be busy, or I wouldn't want to put that one in the part. Then Nina popped in. Jim thought of her. Then we started breaking down the script and looking at the characters: who would be good for this part or this part? We finally got the characters and started setting dates. You're putting together the crew, like Jane and Falco? Yeah. And you were living with Ira in the ... Yes. . . . celibate sense of the word. Yes! And Ira was going to A.D.? Uh-huh. Now Ira and I and Jim were having meetings. I was so happy that Ira got to work on it, because he was perfect. I love Ira, and for him to work on it was great. Sharon / I I I

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Jim got Jane and Falco. He said, "Jane's great. You'll really like him." I had worked with Jane a few years ago. And, funny thing, I started being very attracted to Jane. Did you hear about all that? I haven't heard the details, and the smile on your face . . . But, yeah, I heard a little and how you went off later [after the shoot, to exotic places] and had an affair. Yeah. Anyway, before shooting, you're already getting turned on to Jane? Yeah. He came to the meetings, and I thought, "What a fabulous guy!" He's fabulous, you know, so centered and so cool, calm, and collected. "Wow! He's very sexy." Well, there was Jane, me, Ira, Holliday, Falco, and the art director, Sugar. We'd sit around and talk about the film: what kind of lighting; if we wanted a dolly or not; get camera shots that moved; the kind of sets we wanted. And then Sugar and I set up the whole . . . We drew it out first. What do you mean, "drew it out"? Drew pictures of the set? After we'd finished it looked pretty much like that. How much time are you talking about in this anticipatory phase? I started talking to Jim Holliday in November, October. This is a year ago now? Uh-huh. [. . .] and we didn't shoot until March. A lot of time. I hope I wouldn't spend that much time again putting something together. Why that much time? I was inexperienced. Plus, there were so many people involved, so many different angles, so many different personalities. Now I wouldn't give so many people so much creative freedom. How come you were able to put it together? You're inexperienced, you took too much time, you were uncertain about yourself at times. Yet you made a movie. How come? Because it was time for me to do it. I was ready. And I believed I could do it. There were times when I was nervous and I ... but I had a big support system. I've worked with tons of directors, the best in the business. I'm a good actress. I'm intelligent. I have understanding. I know how to talk to people. And people trust me. You had no serious question that you were competent? No, I knew I could do it. How come? Who are you? I'm Sharon Kane! I have a fabulous track record. I've been around a long time. None of that need lead to someone who can say, "Yes, I am the director. You people are going to help me, but it's my responsibility to deal with that." Here we've got an adult woman who, when a child, had a lot of crappy things happen to her, a life history that could have destroyed you. Okay. I was talking to someone the other day. [I was saying] "I don't understand how my parents had me. None of the things I believe came from them." I don't know how I got into my mother's womb. I feel like I was not her child, like they must have adopted me. A totally different way of perceiving things from early on. Like being able to see another side of things. Like being able to be outside a situation and look at it. I don't know what to attribute it to. I'm just grateful I was able to get to that point. I had to get to that point, because I had grown, grown in that direction: like, "I'm still in this business, fourteen years later, still here and bored with what I'm doing. I

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still need to make a living, so I had better get my shit together and see if I can make a movie. Because I can't have sex in front of the camera forever. It's not that I have anything against it; it's just not going to work for me for the rest of my life." It was necessity. Not that my age scares me. Necessity. [I could say] "Oh, well, I don't need to go to the trouble of making a movie. I'm doing okay here. I've got a few more years." Okay, so now you're having meetings. What makes the decision that you're going to film on Monday, rather than three months from Monday? If we can get all our key characters, the crew, and everything there at the same time. How long in advance do you know that everyone'll be there? The day before we started shooting an actress dropped out. It can happen. She had a [vaginal] yeast infection. How do you find someone else? Jim did it. I was busy. I had wryneck. Stress. I went to the chiropractor. He said, "Are you under a lot of stress?" "Yes! Yes! Tons of stress." "Take it easy." Of course I couldn't take it easy. I'm running around with Sugar to prop houses trying to find the right furniture to rent. I try to do everything; that's my problem. The wryneck goes away; the day of the shoot it's back. So I spend the whole day sitting very straight in my chair. I was a wreck! By the end of the first day, I was better. We'd gotten through it, though a little behind. There's a stairway sequence where she [Nina] is walking up. We had to do that the next day. So we shot that first, got that out of the way, and then just went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. By the second day, my wryneck was gone. The thing I remember the most is Lee Caroll. . . . Sheesh! She was just running around and making everyone very nervous. It was the saloon scene. And we were running behind. Lee had been chasing him [Jeff James] all day saying, "I want to fuck ya, I'm going to fuck your brains out, honey." Was she tormenting him, or was she excited by him? She was just after him. Who knows what she was doing, I can't figure her out. I couldn't be bothered at that point. I was trying to get everything done. She's running around chasing him, and he's hiding. He comes to me, going, "She's crazy! You've got to keep her away from me, I can't keep her off of me!" So by the time their scene came up, it was late, she was cranky, he was tired, he couldn't get it up, and we had ten minutes till golden overtime, $200 an hour or something. And we didn't have the money. So we called in Randy. He did all the close-ups—the stand-ins—right, and we were done exactly on time. And we were out of there. Come back, clean up the next day. So, it was nerve-racking. We got right down to the wire, right down to the wire. What is she like? Lee? She vibrates at a different frequency. Maybe she hears you; maybe she doesn't. If she's speaking, it doesn't matter who's there. It's very weird. Who picked her? Jim thought she would be good because she's an old star and she hasn't done anything for a while. I thought, "Sure, why not? As the saloon girl, she'd be perfect." And in some ways, it was great. I'm glad she was there. I'm glad she was in the movie. She did fit the part once you got her on film? Absolutely. Everyone fit their parts, just about. Sharon / I I )

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Meaning what? Well, there was the little girl. I thought she was cute. Where did you get her from? I met her on another shoot. She's had some experience? Yes. Very difficult. I should have known. She was difficult on the other shoot. Who's going to hire her if she keeps doing that? I don't think she's around any more. Let's go back. One woman has dropped out. Who goes about finding someone? Jim started making phone calls. He called Victoria Paris, who . . . This is a performer? Yes. Which part is this that you're talking about? Is this the four . . . One of the four girls, yeah. And she said sure. She came in and did it. If someone's not working, they're happy to come in and make x hundred of dollars [. . .] for a day's work? Sharon Yeah, umm-hmm. RJS Okay, so ... It ... Everything [preparations] is in place? Sharon Umm-hmm. RJS You've found all the props with Sugar. Your scenes are looking like the drawings that you made. The script has been cut down to a size that'll fit two days of shooting. You've got all the actors you want. You've got a fine cameraman. You've got a fine editor. You've got a sound man. Someone has found the studio or wherever you shoot . . . Sharon Right.

RJS And you show up at what time in the morning? Sharon Everyone arrives at nine and starts putting it together. Makeup gets there; everyone's there. RJS Who does makeup? Is each person responsible for her own makeup or ... ? Sharon No, we have a makeup artist. RJS A person who's known and is competent? Sharon Yes. RJS What do you pay a makeup artist? Sharon About two-fifty a day. RJS Are there very few of them, and [do] they work all the time? or are there a lot of them? Sharon Maybe about five or six strong ones in the business. RJS Are they in the straight movie business or just in the ... Sharon They bounce around. They do straight . . . RJS They don't have problems getting hired on both sides? Sharon Not at all.

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Okay, nine o'clock. The lighting has to be set up? The props now have to be set up and put in place? Sharon We took a day before to set up everything that was going to be shot the next morning. RJS Has the lighting been worked out the day before? Sharon Pretty much.

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How about the movements of the camera and all that? Does Jane . . . ? That happens on the set. Has he got a script? He doesn't know until he gets there? He gets a general idea. He gets a script, and we went through it the day before. When the actors get on set, his camera moves. If there's something specific I want, I'll tell him. How many hours before you start actually shooting? About two. How do you decide what you want to shoot first? We decided to put all the heavenly-area stuff together in one day; shoot the love scene between Nina and Randy first. Then we just worked our way across. Everything that happened in that area we shot. Then the girl [lesbian] scene next, then the Rainwater scene. It was easy. Doing it that way, you don't have to break anything down. Just boom, boom, boom. Those decisions have already been made. Exactly. You're experts. You move right along. Yes. How do you know where to put yourself and what to focus on, and where you can turn to someone else, like Jane or Ira? Now, Ira ... Ira's job was to maintain control of the set, to keep people from getting too crazed, too loud, too . . . To keep them doing their job. The crew, the cast. He has to get the girls down to makeup, get them on set, make sure that things keep moving. And Jane: we walked through the camera moves together. He'd say, "I'm going to do this," and I pretty much let him do what he wanted [while] I worked with the actors. For instance, Nina. I said, "She [her character] is supposedly dead. Rather than being a vegetable through the movie, which is how it was in the script, let's say that in her last life she was a rebel, a fighter who questioned everything. So now she's just died from this lifetime, and she's here, confused, in this [strange] place. She doesn't like that people are trying to make her drink this stuff [potion]. There's tension, she keeps her distance, watches. Then toward the end, she softens, understands, accepts more. And by accepting, she transcends, she can leave; she goes/' Then she interpreted what I had given her. That made a more interesting character, not just a marshmallow sitting there going, "Why am I drinking this?" or "What is this stuff?" You give it a context. Yeall. Had she seen the script before? Oh, yes. She'd rehearsed it the night before. Then [on shooting day] I rehearsed people before they went on the set and once they got on the set. Certain people I would rehearse before they got on the set because I know the person and what they're capable of and I know the character that I want them to do. Peter North, for instance, who played the pastor. I worked with him a long time before he went on the set. "Let's hear how you're going to read it." Then, "Okay, let's use this voice and this accent. You're [as the pastor] very cocky, and you're the devil." If he didn't quite read it right, I would read it for him until he got something close enough. Throw back his coat. Stand there. He's very arrogant, pious. Originally the script had Nina Sharon / IIS

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[as] a victim. I said, "No, no. We cannot have Nina a victim in this scene where the guy has sex with her." We have to have her rip her dress open, throw it at him, and say, "Come on! I'll take you on." A conflict. In other words, it's not just a matter of someone opening up her legs or turning over or sucking on a cock. There's a lot more than that. Absolutely. Well, at least there used to be. Now, there's not that many good films being shot. I was fortunate to be in the business when they took time on character development. I used to have to sit down and write what I thought the character was like. You're the director: how do you handle the scene with the girl who wouldn't cooperate adequately? The guru scene. She breaks up laughing a lot. She's throwing out little wise comments. She doesn't want to do a doggy position. She's pissed off because she's got to work two guys, although she agreed to it. I have to take care of it. So I said, "Okay. You don't want to do a doggy position, what position would you like?" Do you say it angrily? Not at all. Tactfully. There are rules of the game in any business. She was breaking the rules? There are no rules. There are understandings. She was just being a little difficult. Have you seen comparable behavior before? Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. She's a little brat, basically. I don't think she want[ed] to do it. So she says, "I won't do doggy style." So we find something that she'll do and go with that. Of course, the guys are feeling a bit stretched out. Were they supposed to keep it up during all this, while she's giggling and laughing and paying no attention to them? Uh-huh, yeah. You have to tell her to focus. No wise comments. Do it. Peter didn't have trouble, but Joey did. Joey needs personalities [relationship] again. Peter doesn't need a lot of attention. He can ... He can get it up and keep it up. Yeah. Joey needs to focus in on the girl and have a romantic affair with her while they're doing their sex scene. It helps that she's a new girl and [that] he likes new girls. But it was a bit difficult for him to connect with her, especially with another guy in the scene too. Plus Joey's been doing it for a long time, longer than me. Does she eventually settle down and . . . ? She settles down during the sex. We didn't have many position changes, because we just wanted to get it shot and do what was easy for Joey and for her and for Peter. The easiest thing that was available, because it was a difficult scene. And that's your job now: you're improvising as you go along, "How am I going to save this thing from going down the tubes?" Yeah, I have to make a decision. How long does that take? For that scene? A couple of hours, three hours maybe. Then she goes home? Yeah. She's out, she's gone. Does everybody go when they are done, or do many people hang around because they like being with their friends?

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Yeah, sure, uh-huh. People hung around. Okay, the film is finished. Midnight. Yes. And then there's a certain amount of, whatever, put your clothes back on or something. What do you do then? Go home and collapse? Uh-huh. Go home and collapse. I had to be there the next day to get my props, to take everything out, to take it home. To clean up too. I did everything on this movie! Did a lot. Do you play a part in postproduction? I don't. I turn it over. You don't have final cut? I could if I wanted to, if I wanted to put that much time into it and go down to the editing bay with Falco and sit and edit with them. I could. But I had had enough. I trusted him. He's a good editor. He came highly recommended by Jim, and he worked with Rinse Dream. I didn't need to be there. Do you then have any right to say Change this or Do this or [say,] why'd you pick this scene rather than another version of it? I suppose I could if I really hated it, but it was fine. I was happy with it. Then you wrote the music, after? Yeah, the title song, after I'd seen what they were doing, how she walked up the staircase, how it all fit in. Then I ... I wrote the title song. But there's music all the way through. Now where does that come from? A guy named John and his partners worked on that music. They said, "What kind of music would you like?" I said, "Something very ambient. I don't want songs, vocals. I want something that gives the feeling of the scene, something that won't detract from the visuals." What Falco had put in there originally was horrid. I hated it. Did he just slap something in, or he was serious about it? Slap something in, but Jim was going, "I really like what Falco put in there. Let's keep this rhythm." And I'm going, "No-o-o." Then John called: "Jim told me he wants it this way, and you're telling me something different." I said, "Trust me. Do not do it that way. It will ruin the movie. It will ruin everything I have done so far to get it to look like this." What I wrote [theme song] was fabulous. I love the song. Everyone loves it. Since I directed it and I knew the character, I could write this song as if it were the character singing it. The song starts, "Is this all a dream? Will this stay this way as my feet ascend this dark stairway? Will there be morning light that shines on me, or will I face darkness in eternity? Will I find myself alone climbing this stairway to paradise?" Then i t . . . the second verse is ... You're singing? Yeah, I sing it. "Distant memories, the loves I've left behind, they pass before my eyes, they leave me cold and blind. What will the future hold in this spiral dance? Will I be given just one more chance? And the road I take, I take alone, climbing the stairway to paradise." It's a beautiful song. It has really nice harmonies. Do you own the song? That is, is there a copyright? I own it. I wrote it. No copyright. Actually, I don't own it. Yeah, you don't own it. I don't own it, no. I sure have something else to think [worry] about! Sorry. Sharon / 117

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Oh, no! It's probably good that you said that. Do you get a credit for the music? Yes. It seems to me you ought to protect yourself.

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10 The Main Event: Here, without D o u b t . . . : "Jane Waters"

Jane Waters, everyone agrees, is a great director of photography. As with all the informants you meet in this book—and beyond, everyone I have met in the porn trade—his energy comes less from fee-for-service than from rebellion. (Would I spend years with these people were I not, in this regard, the same?) The primeval joy in pornmakers is "fuck you," not "let's fuck." Ira introduces us, and we proceed.—RJS ISL RJS

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We brought the tape. Unfortunately, the copy that does not have the real music track. Before we pop it in, do you want to get acquainted? I presume Ira told you our plan: a book. Its focus is the making of this movie. Plus a chapter from Margold on his version of making a movie. Two introductory chapters by each of us, a concluding wrap-up chapter, and one with [veteran porn star] Porsche Lynn, the story of her life and of her experience in being in this business. But the major part is the key people who made this movie and how they made it (as different from what the public will see). I've already had great fun looking at two reels of outtakes Ira brought in. The famous reels twelve and thirteen. The barroom scene, the prison cell, and bits and pieces of the guru thing. I got such a kick out of it; not being a participant, I didn't have to worry. Here are people working like hell to create an effect like a ballet dancer as if she's not sweating and not out of breath. And here are these guys trying to act like they're not sweating and out of breath, trying to get it up properly. And then there's one girl who is ... Oh, the Bhagwan Bob scene: she wanted to suck Peter's dick and didn't want to deal with Joey's. I don't think that was . . .

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I did see that. But I didn't know she turned to one of the guys . . . Often when there are two guys and a girl, there's one guy the girl wants to fuck more than the other. In reality, in her heart. So she'll ice the other guy (and he's got to deal with that). I think to myself, personally, I've got to have a secure environment to fuck in these days. When I was younger and more out there, I didn't give a shit. But now that I'm getting older, I want to know that they really want to do it with me. So if I were Joey and had to get it up and was getting rejected, it would be very difficult. Although he managed. He's an old pro. He managed to get it done even though she would only do it on her back—creating the dreaded homophobic situation in which the guys are face to face over the girl, an awkward situation. Yeah. It gets worse when dicks get placed close together. Or in the dreaded double-anal we shot recently. As the cameraman, you work with somebody once and then look for the nuances in how they have sex and what they need [to perform successfully in such unnatural circumstances and positions]. So if you've got three people, you've got to know this guy likes this and that guy likes that. And there's always a thing when a girl's giving two guys head. With a double blow job, if you want to see her stick both dicks in her mouth at one time, you've got to figure out what's going to happen with these guys. If I want to have fun, I tell her to do it [without warning] and then see what they do. Jane loves to incite! Very quietly. Jane's genius is to incite people and have them doing things before they realize that they have been incited. You have to find people's limits. Tianna, for example. The first time I shot her, I wanted to know if she'd let this guy come on her face, because she's in a very submissive-dominant relationship with her husband. And she stopped right in the middle and said, "Roscoe. I have to phone Roscoe and see if it's okay." So I said, "Go ahead." He knew me; so she came back and said, "You can come on my face." Why is it you to whom they turn rather than the director? Because the director's off looking at the monitor. He's standing back somewhere, and I'm here, face to face. The cameraman [for the moment] becomes the director. That kind of description is what we need in this book. I, representing the innocent, outer world, don't know that [about the cameraman's functions]. In my case, I'm also a director, so my best camera work comes when I have a rapport with a director who concentrates on the actors' performance. Sharon was excellent at that, one of the few people who really worked with actors [before the camera rolls] and got them where she wanted them. And what's she doing then, before? Coaching dialogue . . . Getting them into character . . . Like with Peter, she really worked on this puritanical minister character. Yes, like I did with Nina [for the same scene]. Sharon did the same with Peter while I was working with Nina. Because he's not used to playing a stern, puritanical, disapproving character. He's used to being the romantic leading guy. He's not used to playing any character. So they're on the set now. The lights are on, the camera is on, and Sharon may be anywhere talking to the next. . .

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Maybe on the monitor . . . Whatever. She is comfortable because she knows things* 11 be taken care of. She's communicating with everyone: Peter, you, me, everybody else, the producer. F m physically the closest to the people on the set. Do you do something different with your camera because you know the people? Or is that pretty much fixed? You know to aim at this part or that part or ... ? From my point of view, there is a classic way to shoot a sex scene, which becomes boring. You shoot close-ups of the two faces, a master shot, and then a close-up of the sex, the fucking, or whatever they're doing. You've got two cameras? One camera. He moves around. I'd rather be fluid, move around and find things. You go on the premise that the actors know what they're doing sexually, unless you want certain setup positions or certain things from them. You let them do what they know how to do and then make adjustments as you go along. Be precise; you're talking to someone who knows nothing. Okay; [e.g.,] their head is down, their hair is in their face. So you say, "I'm on your face." The new girls don't know what you're talking about. They go, "On my face? What does that mean?" I'm shooting her face; I want her to put her head up into the light. I want her to turn it this way a bit so that my angle shows her nicely. If she's down like this, you can't see her reactions. A bunch of fuzz. Yeah, but if she's up, throwing her head back and moaning, it's more exciting than seeing her moaning with her face down. Those are the kind of adjustments. Sometimes you need to see the hard-core, and if a guy's lying on top of a girl, he has to adjust his legs, she adjusts her legs, so you can see the actual penetration. So with experience, they know more or less what to do; but you will then say something like, "Move your leg, it's blocking"? Yeah. The word is cheat: "Cheat your left leg out a little," or "Open to the camera." They can get rid of that sound of when you're talking? They [later with editing] put in a groan. The M and G track. "Moan and groan"? And "laugh" tracks; we don't use those. Editors try to cover up the voice of people giving direction. Editors holler at us about it [talking aloud]. But we don't care. We've got an important thing to do, and we don't have much time to do it. You have to be alert to shadows, like a microphone boom floating around. Yeah. Are you responsible that the lighting is correct? Yeah. But somebody else is right there doing the lighting? I work with a gaffer. With Sharon, it was my call. Different directors have different ideas. There's a gaffer I work with. We have a rapport, we just know. We just say, "Let's try something new here." The real objective is to always find a new way to do it with lighting. What I've heard, since I've been doing this for six years, is that no one in production cares about the story: "They [viewers] fast-forward the story." So my feeling is "Great," do as weird a story as you can. Do outrageous lighting. If all Jane Waters / 121

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they care about is the sex and those close-ups, that's three minutes of each scene you've got to shoot that brightly lit hard-core close-up. The rest of the time, make it as interesting as you can for yourself. I'm always looking for ways to do it. Who's in charge of the sets, the furniture, the colors of the bedspread . . . ? In a lot of pictures there is an art director. What does that mean? The art director, working with the director, decides what the set's going to look like, how people are to be dressed, and procures the props and costumes. On Sharon's movie, everything was done collectively. More or less. We all worked on that. In the old days you could become more elaborate and define all that. Now, with oneday movies, the girls show up and you hope they bring some lingerie with them. This film was a collaborative effort between about five of us. Because we were handed this sixty-seven-page script that was absurd. Like a seven- or eight-page dialogue about Jesse James reincarnated before a hand even touches another human. We all looked at each other at this meeting with Mr. Holliday there. Jim Holliday had written the script with Sharon. When I left that meeting, I said, "Sharon, I can't do it in two days; so I won't do it. It would take four to do it. I can't even say I'll try and do it in two days." The cameraman often sets the pace of the shooting in terms of directing the lighting and the technical end. If I can't shoot this in two days, I'd be crazy to say I could. It's been said by Mr. Holliday that Jane Waters equals O.T.! Overtime! No one wants to work overtime. We told Sharon that we would support anything she wanted to do: "Go ahead and make this script workable. Rewrite it so that we can do it in two days." So we supported each other while Mr. Holliday stayed in the hallway making sure the actresses' bras were on straight! He did raise the money, which is very important. And he did let us make the picture pretty much our own way. You always know that finally, when you get on the set, you have control. "You" meaning you, the working people? He's the guy who's telling them what to do: "You go there and you go there!" It creates its own rhythm. You can't rush it and do it well. You're working with one camera? Yes. One lens? One lens. You don't zoom? It's a zoom lens. You don't lose anything in the way of sharpness from the zoom? Yes. The prime lenses are crisper than a zoom lens, b u t . . . You're already on tape. So ... [Tape is less sharp than film.] Do you bring your own equipment? No. I rent. But you get the equipment? Yes. You rent it, you bring it in, you know what you want, and you know where to get it? Right.

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You make sure it's there, and you know that it's working? Right. That's not the director's job or anyone else's? Sometimes. And you said you've been doing this for six years? Porno, yes. Actually a little longer. A lot longer than anybody else in the business. '67 is when I did my first porno movie. I did one, then I continued with straight stuff. Why? It was a fluke that I did the porno. How old are you? Forty-six. So you were a kid. I was twenty-one, twenty-two. I was hired as an actor for a movie being filmed in Colonial Williamsburg. I was an actor in New York. As an actor, I was real bored for a month and a half shooting this film. You do two or three takes and the close-up. Then you kick back for an hour while they set everything up again. I was totally intrigued with the Eclair camera and the Nagra recording equipment. The director and the cameraman were absolutely focused all the time, and I got to know them. So I ended up becoming kind of an assistant. The director and I got along well, so I stayed in Virginia and helped him cut this movie. You had never edited before? Never. While we were filming, I saw a film by Max Ophuls, The Earrings of Madame De . . . [de Maupassant]. He was into moving cameras. There's a scene in the film where Danielle Darrieux walks into this big ballroom. She is in a gown, and the camera tracks her, follows her. She walks up to a banquet table and gives her lover the earrings. The camera follows her around the table and out the door, and she totally collapses by the end of it. From this incredible burst of energy she has [at the start of the scene], she gives him the earrings, walks out, and breaks down, all in one move. That move was incredible to me, and I began to look to see that quality in films. So the following summer, we were back in New York and the director was going to do one porno film and then a straight film. The idea in the '60s was that you got into straight film making by doing a porno film. Then they were called exploitation movies. They were done in black and white, and you didn't see hard-core sex, although on the set everyone had sex. You shot around it. From here up, no pubic hair. So I played the lead in this porno film. You were to fuck? Yeah. I fell in love with this beautiful Polish girl, went to Seattle, and spent several years there doing straight films. Back in New York, I worked for this company that needed someone to cut negative. Now negative cutting is a very specific task. In Virginia, the director had had me cut the negative of his film [the year before]. If you cut the negative and make a mistake, it's fatal. The mistake's there forever. He could never forgive himself if he fucked up the film, but he didn't care if he never forgave me. So he sat over me while I learned to cut negative on this whole movie. At the time, I had no idea how valuable that skill was. People get paid a lot of money. I got hired to cut the negative of thirty-seven commercials at Christmas time. From that, the director and producer spun off and started their own company and hired me as the editor. So for three years I shot and directed TV commercials. I came out to L.A. in Jane Waters / 12)

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'83, worked on a documentary, and then I fell into this little group of porno people. It's hard to come from New York and get into the Hollywood thing. So I began to work in this business. And you like shooting porno. Meaning: Do you miss not being also in the straight industry? Or are you at times in that? I am at times. I've always been a filmmaker, basically. I've never been drawn into the major Hollywood thing. I really like what I'm doing, but I've always been an outsider. You told me once, about shooting X-rated, that you felt you were taking original, documentary footage of spontaneous performances. I have a friend who watched what she called animal pornos: nature movies, where you see them fuck on camera. She said, "What I do is no different!" So I was thinking that, in a sociological way, you have all this [erotic] art from the Hindus and the Japanese. And porno today is a document of contemporary Western sexuality. It may be exaggerated, but I don't think so. I agree. I think most pornos portray sex conservatively, conventionally. Getting back to something you were saying before, it may be that there's a selection process going on in the people I talk to, but I get the feeling that creative people in the porn business are outsiders in the sense you were describing yourself. Not the performers . . . Some of the performers are wild, outlaw personalities b u t . . . And I'm more likely to meet them, because they come from you people who can get along with them, rather than the Valley girls. You're not just simply doing it to make a living, but it fits your personality to be a little outside. It's still an outlaw medium, to a degree. But there are square people on the creative side. But my theory is, if you're not having fun on the scene, why are you doing it? You're not that naive. A lot of the women aren't having fun. . . . But once in a while they do. Our view is that they don't have to explain that away, but their view is that if we have fun while we work, we do have to explain it away! It even happens with me [as a nonperformer]. I come home from work when I do stills, say there's a girl who's enthusiastic about bondage, or just fun to work with, or just pretty and we have a good time. I come home from work ravenous. If Sandra's there, we leave a trail of clothing through the house as we rip our way to the bedroom. We have great, wild sex. Afterward, she gets a suspicious look. "Who did you work with? What did you do?" The edge of suspicion that maybe you enjoyed your work a little too much. But one of the things I like about Sharon . . . Sharon and I got involved with each other as a result of this movie. I told her, going to this interview, "Call I tell them I fell in love with you?" She's such a flirt, Sharon. But there's an openness [in this business] where nobody judges anybody. But when you get into these [romantic] relationships, it's the same traditional, classical thing everybody [even the outlaws, not just the bourgeoisie] goes through in terms of insecurity. Yeah . . . I'd never say those things, but when I was with Gasee [former girlfriend], she made a bondage picture with Tom playing opposite her without telling me. I was indignant! How dare she come onto a set where I'm working, go to my employer, and make a deal with him to work on-camera with someone else! It ended the rela-

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tionship. Looking back, I admit I was an asshole. It's work, and it's her business. She has a right to hire on anywhere they'll hire her, with anyone she wants to work with. It was humbling. Because I'm one of those who's always said, "Yes, I understand that work is work and home is home. And we'll never bring this stuff home from the office." If she was doing straight hard-core, I wouldn't have cared. But that she was doing a bondage picture with someone other than me really annoyed me, because that's my territory. What are you not supposed to do? I've been involved with four women in six years in this business: women are very jealous about my involvement with anyone else on the set. Traditional [oldfashioned] jealousy. My theory is if you re [woman] fucking for a living and you can pretty much pick and choose who you fuck on a set, then / should be able to. The sexuality should be open. The concept of a monogamous relationship eludes me when your job is to fuck for a living while I must maintain my monogamy with you. The argument is, "Well, I'm just doing it as a job." I'm not opposed to monogamy, but if I'm involved with someone in the business, then I should be free to have sex in any way, with anyone that I choose: for I'm not inhibiting you to do that as your job. If they are free to play around on the set between scenes, which they need to do to keep their mood right, then how can they deny you the same freedom? I've been on porno sets where no one was interested in anyone or anything. But the better ones, there's plenty of sexual tension. Even if you're not a performer, it's hard not to get caught up in that: lots of naked, attractive people running around, and you're right there. The ultimate voyeur. That's me. See, you're really a participant. Let me finish something here, something I'm always working up to. Whatever your job is in this business, it's expressing your sexuality and comes from whatever the background psychology is that makes you want to do this. You do it because you get something from it. You get something back. It's real sexuality. I don't say that I separate myself from this and go home at night and it all just disappears. There is a voyeuristic part, this vaporous sense that I can touch these people, snatch them off the set, and go home and play with them. I mean part of my little psychological payoff is that I could probably fuck as many people as I wanted to. If you pursue it and wait for that little special one you want to go home with, it isn't just a job. The one with Sharon was wonderful. Sharon and I were in love. A really charged rapport that allowed us to get this film together. This flirtation was the energy we needed to make it a nice film. It was there already between you as you moved toward making the film?

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Right.

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And it consummated as a result of the film?

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Right.

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Then you went off and had a romance. Apropos of which, if we're going to see any of this film, it seems like the perfect moment. Let's lube it up and slither it in. [We run the tape.] See this one [a toy cat] he stuck in at the beginning. This is Holliday's thing. He wanted us to shoot that little fucker throughout the movie.

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Who's the guy with the smoke? Me [creating a heavy fog effect offscreen]. This girl's been told this is what she should do? Right, we've rehearsed it. This might be the second or third take. We had problems with the first or second take. Yeah. This is awfully slow. Is this the final cut? Yes. This is it. Terrible music [temporary, till final version]. Who's in charge of the final musical score? It's already done. The theme song is Sharon's. Now we're free to fast-forward over anything you don't think is interesting, because we've all seen it. [lurns off sound.] The stairs [scene of woman's legs ascending]. We had to search for that stairway. We rented it from Paramount. Did we? Someone's in charge of getting . . . ? Falco did that. He was tech, co-art director, and editor. Does a porn film frequently start immediately . . . With sex? With, say, a blow job? Or is there usually some story . . . ? Some of us believe there should always be something sexual at the start. Do you? Yeah. I'd say a porn movie opens with sex. Yeah, kissing, touching . . . Always some kind of ... Not necessarily right to a blow job, but ... We had two seconds of dialogue before the blow job. That's pretty good. You mean when they were standing there? Yeah, a little dialogue. And this [male performer] is the deaf-mute. This is the German deaf-mute. And this is Aja, a well-known star, this girl . . . This is one of Aja's most boring scenes. . . . Oh, I like it. It's gentle, sweet. I probably . . . Are you talking about this? Yeah, this scene. I don't think it would have been the one I'd choose to start with, because its pacing is stateliest. How are the titles? Are there titles [yet]? Yeah. I don't know what they look like. She [Aja and partner are vigorously in progress] was a little spaced out, but she liked working with him. I love working with this guy. I'll tell you a story about him. The first time I worked with him I thought he was a deaf-mute. And I got into this situation where I was almost behind him and I was thinking, "Hans, I need you to move your hand to the right." And I said, "Hans, would you move your ha . . . " Just as I was saying it, he moved it. I thought, "Well, maybe he's just moving." Well, this happened many times. By this time I knew either he's not totally deaf or there is some psychic communication: he's so aware of the camera. [One time] I'm shooting for Freddie Lincoln. Hans is screwing on Astroturf, and he's got a piece of Astroturf on his dick. He's laying on his back, like this, and he can't see me at all. I'm shooting right up the alley. I've got these headsets on with

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Freddie, and I'm going, "Hans, you've got some grass on your dick. Would you take it off?" Freddie says, "What are you doing? He can't fucking hear you." And Hans just reached his hand down and took it off. To this day, I don't know whether he heard me or not. But I hear that he's not totally deaf. Is this the way it started with Holliday? Or did he have some other entry in the original script? I think this was the original opening. I fought for this scene because I liked the idea that this was her conception [Nina's parents conceiving her]. That's what she [Nina on the stairs] saw. She was being conceived for her next life [reincarnation]. Part of this got lost and was thrown out. [Now the titles, beneath snippets of scenes displaying the main players.] Is this Aja? [. . .] Is that [next woman] the Valley girl? Yeah, who wouldn't help us [get the picture made by cooperating]. Do I have a credit on here? We'll see. That's the special guest, [. . .] "The Legendary Kay Parker" [says the title; see Stoller 1991b]. Doesn't take much to become legendary in this business. Holliday issued this description of her. Star-studded cast. Well, good. This worked, this little stairway that we just kept walking up again and again. I figured it would. We had a lot of discussion about how to get this to work. Things like this look easy, shooting someone going up some stairs. Takes hours. Oh, I got a ... [credit: "Jane Waters"]. That's you? That's me. That's him. Do you always call yourself Jane Waters? Always. It started with New Wave Hookers, and I kept it. [Production title.] Who was the producer actually? There was some name there. Abigail Beecher. That's Jim Holliday. Okay, so you're on the dolly, now, right? And sometimes you're handholding it [camera]? Umm-hmm. Here he's on the mechanical dolly. That's why you're getting these supersmooth slow moves. And you get it off the dolly just by lifting it? It comes off easily? Yeah. There's a little latch you pull . . . [ . . . ] This lighting is all Jane's. It's wonderful. Because of the way he lit it: if you looked at the actual props and actual set, it's total K-Mart [schlock]. He achieves a very luxurious look here. This is totally wrong. How so? She should be facing this way. They're both facing the wrong screen direction. What would you have done about that if you'd picked it up? Turned her around. No, I mean once you got the film? Jane Waters / 127

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Nothing. I see what you mean now, when we have the cutaway. It's totally wrong! [. . .] Here's where Jane has to get in extremely close, and where, to me, he always demonstrates true brilliance. He has a seductive, whispering, unobtrusive way of communicating with the performers. An X-cameraman's most important job is to get in there and not stop the action. Is he the best? The best I've ever worked with. The difference is that Jane likes doing this. The others don't? Not all. Mack Ottoman [another O.P.] would rather shoot industrials. Are you on a dolly now? Yeah. Who pushes that? A dolly grip. How would an inexperienced cameraman screw this up? I don't know if he'd screw it up. The point is [to] be as fluid . . . Because sex is fluid. It isn't static. You can't just cut away. . . . It's not like dialogue where somebody's here, somebody's there. You want to move around it and get into it without being obtrusive. Like that [on screen]. That's an obtrusive cut. As an editor, I wouldn't have done that unless that was my only way to do it. The standard way to shoot something is to get all the coverage: the close-up of the sex, the close-up of the finish, a wide shot. As long as you get those three angles, you can cut in and out anywhere. That's the safe way. But you miss the fluidity of following a body, exploring it, and discovering what's going on. Jane orbits the action. Mack sits with his camera on sticks [tripod] twenty feet away and has his raincoat on. A lot of people zoom in: master shot, zoom in on a close-up, another close-up, pull back, wide shot. That gets the coverage. The only people concerned with the aesthetics are you guys? I think so. The audience is not? No. I don't believe that. Why is his cock so white? There's a blue light coming down from above, and also his cock is wet. It's reflecting light differently from the rest of his skin, which is dry. Actually, Randy's cock is white. When you average the light, one body part is more reflective than another. Also, we get people with greatly different skin tones: one [actor] never goes outside and is bright white; another who spends a lot of time on the tanning bed is dark brown. You have to compromise in the lighting so that one won't burn out and the other won't black out. It's tricky. Now, there's two different theories [for what is on the screen at the moment]. One is that this shot is erotic: the anatomical [genitals] close-up. Whereas this, shot from behind . . . Is what we call "industrial footage"; the other theory: context, gives more of a scene. Just machinery [levers and fulcrums: arms, legs, heads on necks: Physics 101]? Hydraulics.

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The camera is going to come back and see a wider view. [. . .] See, that shot I would stay in a lot longer, [it's] a more interesting view. But that's not up to you because someone else edits it? Now here we go to one of the more important things an X-cameraman has to be alert to: the arrival of the pop shot. You mean you shouldn't be off somewhere concentrating on something else? This you might find interesting: this is where the communication starts passing between the cameraman and the performers. Randy'll say, "I'm getting close, ready?" Then there's a moment of ... The moment of truth! I get to know these guys: ten seconds, twenty seconds . . . But what are you doing? You're not doing anything except making sure that the electricity is turned on. Oh, no. He's got to be focused on the ... We need that squirt in midair. He's got to be right on the dick when the dick delivers. In case you were doing something else? Right, in case he was focusing on something else. I know a couple minutes before, so I'm ready for them. Do you want the sound back for this? You're not worrying about sound at all? Yeah, I am. [To pick up sounds on the set that need editing out.] He's hearing it. There is a guy there with a boom and headphones. I also listen to the dialogue: mistakes, fluffs, stuttering, whatever. . . . Does someone tell them to do it over?

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I will.

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You also shoot reverses. You shoot a master of the two people talking. Then you shoot one person delivering their lines and then the other delivering their lines. As a cameraman, I also have to be an editor, since there's no one else who keeps a running log of everything that's shot. [. . .] Right. Otherwise, the editors bark at you: 4The way you shot this, I couldn't put it together" is a classic complaint. "I had to do this" or "I had to loop this"; "I had to do that." Holliday got so mad about one word change [made later in editing]. The line was, "Performing sex with members of your own sex." We changed that to "gender." He seized upon it as a prime example of how my Hollywood background made me unsuited to write porn scripts. Why? Because the lunchbucket audience wants to hear the word sex as many times in one sentence as is humanly possible. People have these preconceived ideas of what people want. These old farts [the owners-distributors] sitting behind desks don't know what people want from sex. My theory is that from [age] ten or up, you perceive what you like sexually. It sounds like it is up to the gods whether a movie makes it or not, once it's out. Even with a porn picture. This picture will likely get a lot of attention. It'll be in the X-rated press. I believe the critical response will be friendly. The question is: Will they make their investment back? It was not inexpensive, about $40,000. Will they make forty thousand? Probably, but I don't know. What's taking it so long to come out? They had a lot of product [other films] in the pipeline. And they want to time this for

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the Consumer Electronics Show in January is my guess. They've shelved other things until then. By the way, the camera work on the last scene [we are scarcely watching] was very good: moving around the action, as opposed to being stuck in the middle of it. My ideal is to be suspended from a Barber Baby Boom. The overhead view is often the most beautiful. You can walk through a crowd, and the camera stays steady. When you see those wonderful shots of people walking through crowds, it's because of the big frame that holds the camera in place. Where is Kay Parker [on screen at the moment] now? Retired. Santa Monica. She is not doing any [movie] fucking. She just came back to do a cameo. She's much loved. Married, I think. Has a regular relationship with somebody. There's Randy again doing some wonderful acrobatics. And there we have Randy again. What was great about this shot was that Jane [while shooting] pushed through the [swinging saloon] doors, which, you know from the outtakes, took some doing. Now this is ten minutes to midnight? Yes. It's ten minutes to midnight, and it became a question of running in Randy as a stunt dick [for the man who lost his erection]. And you don't get much from this lady? Lee? Lee was off kilter in this. I've done films with her before, and she was wonderful. Poor guy. He was scared shitless of her. She makes a wonderful character. She was rather subdued. She gets hired because she plays the grossest person they know . . . To be that character. I see. Chi Chi [on screen]. Is that her/his name? Chi-Chi. A wonderful drag queen. Camp. That was the idea with this scene. Again you see tasty camera moves there. This is the seven-page Jesse James dialogue that we cut down to a page and a half: the whole history of Jesse James's life. The movie would have just gone round and round and round. Now this is cool, everyone dressed [cowboy-flick style], the petticoats, everything. Here again the nice dolly move. Dollies slow things down but sure make for nice moves. You have to practice that. Jane's not just sitting up there in the dolly: he says to the dolly grip, "Okay, let's go a couple of feet this way. No, no, no, no, let's go a couple of feet back that way." It's not an accident. You put down a piece of tape where you start; another where you end; go at a certain speed with the action matching that speed. Are you on it or off it now; are you handheld or still on the dolly? Look at the boom shadow [not yet removed in editing]! That's the stuff we notice, but I don't know if the audience does. It pisses us off. Why doesn't the editor catch that? Busy. He's talking on the phone with one eye on the monitor. And he can only spend

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so many days cutting this picture. What do you think he was paid? Fifteen hundred bucks to cut it? jane

Something like that.

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So it's worth three or four days of his time. But nobody cares except you guys. Well, we'd rather have a good product than a bad one. All of us, including Falco. Falco worked hard on this picture. [See chap. 13.]. This is Randy's dick here. We relit it so it wouldn't look so white and unreal: a little light called the C light. What is that? The cooze light. Huh? The cooze light. The pussy light, the cunt . . . the C light, a little light. . . On a stick! Some cameramen put them on their cameras. I hear I'm the last holdout who refuses to do that: you wash out the scene. You only want enough light in there to pick it up a bit. You don't want that whole piece blown out [overlighted, for a washed-out image]. So, you've got a guy who's on the C light, the gaffer or the grip; you call them in when you need the light. You've got the cameras here. You've got to get that light right in there. Plus you've got a sound guy. Then you've got a still guy [for photographs]. Usually you've got three guys hunched on the scene. All waiting for that dick to squirt. See that backlight there, a nice scene; nice backlight coming in a black background. That's one of the effects I created. One thing we have to agree: this part she [Lee] does well. She gives great head. She really gets down and does this. Nina was watching this and saying, "Wow! That's great!" She can give lessons in how to do this. It makes up for a lot. Yeah. You know what it does? It keeps her from talking. Yeah. She's much better with this. So you did have the C light in there when this was happening? I'm sure. So ... There you have it [end of scene]. Classic, industrial, X-rated footage, but composed and lit a lot better than usual. Were you instructing them at all? At this point? No. All I'm doing is, probably, asking Randy how much longer . . . And Randy is anxious to collect his bonus and go home, is saying, "Not much . . . " In fact, interesting exchange: she started at him in her usual, fuck-me-this-that-andthe-other thing, and he said, "Lee, I'm going to do this pop shot; so shut up!" Or words to that effect. He actually said, "Shut up until I come!" That's right! She was talking while he was trying to come and distracting him. This is where he told her to shut up, yes, right before this. Boy! That mighty sigh of relief. I was behind the monitor. Falco and I were slapping each other, we were so relieved. Because we did it by twelve. I like rehearsals. A lot of times you don't get rehearsals. Then the first take is a rehearsal. [Dialogue and camera moves can be rehearsed; sex cannot.—ISL] That's

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frustrating, because you don't know where everyone's going to be, how it's going to work. It's hard to get directors that can understand. Sharon is great for that. She'd let us rehearse it and rehearse it until we got it. They think you just shoot it and things'11 go faster, but it doesn't. Here you are dollying around again. Nice, slow . . . Rubber tires that are frictionless? Not on a rail, obviously. No. Sometimes. These days, there are the two kinds of porn films being made: bargain basement, loop things, one-day wonders, and on the other end are people shooting film. Four days. I love working with ex-heroin addicts, because they take their time. This actress will suck a cock for an hour or two if I tell her. They're slowed down. They've acquired the knack for doing things slowly. Here you're handheld. Yeah. What else could you do? You've got four people [lesbian scene]. There's no way you can do anything but move around them and follow what's happening. This was very hard to shoot. But you did great here because you picked up bits and pieces of good stuff everywhere you went. It's hard filming a so-called orgy. You try and keep a continuity of what's going on. Don't change in the middle. You have to edit it all in your head as you shoot. See how they all move? They're wonderful, all over the ... What is she thinking of, Aja, when she fades out [drifts] like that? You'd have to ask her. She doesn't have a sense of being on camera? I don't know; she's either shy of the camera or ... I think she likes sex. In fact, all these women really do. We tried to recruit players for this who like doing it. You don't want people who just do it as a job, even though everyone will say they do it as a job. People who do something just as a job don't do it as well as people who do it as a job but also like it. A cynical performance in any field is easy to detect. Their only enthusiasm all day is collecting the paycheck. Of these four women, Aja's the only one who claims she has no real interest in having sex with women. Of course, you never know what to believe about any of these claims. Sharon, to her credit, honestly says that she doesn't enjoy doing any of it with anybody [on screen]. "Who's my favorite person to work with? I don't have one." And she means it. Now that's nice. Nicely composed. This is where Tianna fucks herself. In the ass with that long, frightening fingernail that she hooks in there. I don't know how the hell she does that. Which one is Tianna? The little, short-haired blonde. She'll do anything you tell her to do. You told her to, or she j u s t . . . ?

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You get to know what they'll do. She doesn't have the patience to wait for someone to stick their finger in her ass. She does it to herself.

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That's right.

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She'll take two hands and fuck her pussy and her asshole at the same time, just because no one else is doing it. Yeah. So here you j u s t . . . To some degree, Jane, you shop for angles when you've got a situation like this [four nude women rolling, roiling, rollicking, resonating, revolving]. You look around . . . One of Rad's great camera instructions, when you guys were shooting an orgy scene, was, "A $50 gift certificate to whoever gives me the weirdest angle!" How long does this four-woman orgy take to shoot? About an hour. But it really takes three hours to shoot a sex scene, because you've got a lot of setting up. We allow three hours for each sex scene with a two-day picture. For a oneday picture, an hour and a half. There, she's doing it. There we go [galloping anal self-digitalizing]! From start to finish and interrupting . . . Three hours from setting up a scene to the end of the filming. Yeah. It's [the lesbian orgy] good industrial footage. I just don't see how she doesn't lacerate herself with those fingernails. Obviously, she knows how not to. Inspired munching from Nina. The fact that Jane works regularly with all these people is a huge advantage. He really knows who does what. During such scenes, the nominal director has been known, as we know, to go and shoot baskets in the parking l o t . . . . Jane really directs these. He's the one who says, 'Transition to doggy," the all-important instructions. What I love is, you say, "Okay, I'll give you thirty seconds more and go into a transition." "Well, what do you want us to do?" "What do you want to do?" "I don't care, what do you want us to do?" If you ask them what they want to do, they'll say, "I want to take a shower and go home!" No, they're not paid to think that stuff up. There's a rough scheme before you start: oral, missionary, reverse cowgirl, doggy, then a pop. "Reverse cowgirl"? Cowgirl is where the girl's facing the guy and sitting up, and reverse is where she faces away from him. Very unnatural position. The girls hate it. It kills their legs, you know. But it shoots beautifully, because everything's opened up to the camera. It's very convenient. How do you decide when the scene is over? When the fat lady sings! Yeah, the fat lady sings for the gentleman, but it doesn't. . . Oh, you mean in a girl-girl scene? Yeah. When everyone's done everyone, and everyone's had a fake orgasm . . . Right. And when you're really getting tired and know everyone else is getting tired. And you can't think of one other goddamned thing to do. So you just call it a day. You often have to push them to do another position. They want to just lay in one position.

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Each setup, you shoot everything you're to shoot on that setup at the same time. So we shot all these dialogue things at the same time, with all the reverses. This takes forever. Shooting conversation for me is the most difficult part. Shooting the sex is easy by comparison. For one thing, these women cannot memorize lines, and they flub the lines. I like shooting dialogue. Really? Why? More control. You don't have to anticipate; you know what's going to happen. Here's the terrible guru scene. It comes off preposterously, but not as bad here as it was to shoot. Because of this right here. Because of this wonderful little creature. She's so cute. The fact that she's so cute is part of the frustration. If she wanted to do this scene right, she could have given us a great hot scene, because she's very attractive. When they're really young and first get into it, they have no awareness of performance. Like Nina's a performer. All those four women are absolute, skilled performers. She [youngster now at work] is one who enjoys being a brat. It's a tolerant industry. You can get away with things that you can't get away with on most jobs. We didn't know what was about to happen. Although I had a clue, because I'd been working with this girl in the dressing room. Trying to get her ready, get her dressed, get her this and get her that, and she was yelling at me already about "I want this. I want that. You promised here. I want there. I want my scene now! I want to be paid off and out of here in fifteen minutes." She was ready to walk off when she got on. She was threatening to leave from the minute that she appeared on the set, so . . . I knew this was not going to be easy, but I had no clue what a nightmare it was to become. This was where Sharon was severely tested, because Sharon doesn't like to bust heads. But she liked this girl. She did a scene [once] with Sharon and wouldn't get off Sharon's pussy for an hour. Well, if you get this girl on the right day when she's in the mood to be sexy, she probably can be. But that wasn't this day. It was Peter she wanted, and Joey she did not want. She wouldn't even turn her butt to him, that was what was infuriating. She wouldn't give him anything. Younger performers have advantages: looks, youth, physical vigor, agility. But the older performers usually blow them off the screen. Joey, the bearded guy in this scene, is a veteran of hundreds of pictures. He's picked up some real acting skills. The physical business that he does in this scene he improvised. He can be very funny. Joey's approach is a [Lee] Strasberg technique. He tries to get into his character. He's great to work with. This is Peter? That's Peter. And you don't have any idea why she didn't want to do it with Joey? Peter's cuter looking. All the girls want Peter. Yeah. Got a nice dick. Joey's been around a long time. Joey makes requests. He sees a new girl and says to the director, "There's a new girl in Jim's [agent's] office. Would you hire her so I can

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work with her?** So he's always working with these new girls. And they like him. He works well. But if it's their choice, they'll pick Peter. What's his official name? Peter North. Because, you know he's a ... He's a more conventionally handsome, studly guy, but remote. And he's another who comes on the set and says, "Can you give me both of my scenes back to back, because I want to be out of here by eleven-thirty." By this point, she [on screen] has caused lots of trouble? She has announced that she's not going to do the suck-one-and-get-it-in-the-backfrom-the-other.

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She doesn't do those. "It's not intimate enough." So yes, she's causing trouble here, We're all very bored with this particular shot, as I recall. Her lack of ability to give him head. Yes, she's doing a lackadaisical job. Joey's half-happy here. That's a half-happy dick, A lot of the guys hate working with another guy. There's a lot of pressure to keep up with each other. Dueling dicks! And this is the worst way, because you're face to face with the other guy; too close for comfort. Notice they don't make eye contact. Some guys will look at each other. During this phase, Falco had hold of me by the front of the shin and in his manic fashion was saying, "You've got to get her out of there! She's a Queen Lox! She's killing the scene!" He's the guy who edited this thing. He's working as board tech at this point. "Board" in this case meaning b-o-r-e-d. There was general awareness on the set that things were not going well at this moment. Where is Sharon? Hiding from reality? No. She's standing to one side with smoke pouring out of her nostrils! I missed all this. This is as much as I ever see. All that shit that's going on back there. I have no idea what these guys are going through. And we try not to bother Jane with these things! I don't know what gives with Sharon at this point, or where you are, or anybody is. All I know is Falco's on the fucking deck yelling something to you. But basically we leave him [Jane] alone. Just as he [cameraman up close] tries to not interfere with the performers, we try not to interfere with the crew. A classic deal: guys at the front, guys in the rear. It's war . . . You've got to let those performers in the trenches do the fucking and not interfere with them too much. There are two wars going on, one up at the front and another in the rear, the one I'm usually in. We cross the line here. There's something called "crossing the line," which is 180 degrees. For example, she's lying like this. Now most of my shots were on this 180degree plane. Then I came around to this side. That's called crossing the line. There's [supposed to be] no crossing the line. Jane shoots in the round. He moves all the way round the action. The problem with old, traditional people, like Falco, they'll say, "You're crossing the line!" jane Waters / IBS

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They're afraid you'll disrupt the audience's frame of reference to the action ([sarcastically:] which sure matters a lot in these pictures). Who cares whether, before, we were seeing his dick from the other side? That doesn't worry us. We have enough to worry about, trying to get the best shot. Who cares? You're on this side, you move to that side. That would be important in a regular film? A regular picture, sure. But when you're doing anatomical close-ups, who cares? Okay, so here you have a classic pullout. What is a "pullout"? Jane's on the dolly; he's pulling back. Nice, the way he came around on this column [a prop]. Nice hook [camera technique to intrigue the viewer]. Then we're going over here. A very complex camera move. That looks easy, but that's not easy. You're on one part of the set, you've got to come back, you've got to come around, you've got to go in and make it look like it was easy and fluid. This is all fast-forward material. Is that their only blackout? It struck me as strange that we had one. Falco did it. There's always tension between the O.P. and the editor. You weren't crazy about a few things. I used to edit myself. Having come from a film background, I have to take a lot of time. How do you cut these in three days? People have this traditional, set idea of how they're supposed to do a sex scene. If there is a difference in philosophy between the person doing the shooting and the person doing the editing, you can get a conflicted-looking product. And it's easy for the editor to blame whoever was shooting for whatever is or isn't there. What's happening now? He [Randy] cryptically explains to her [Nina] what the real deal is. He's getting ready to fuck her. This is the big romantic scene. This I like. It's all in one shot. This is ideally what I like to work with: the whole scene within one shot. How many times did you have to shoot it before it worked? A few times. They're dependable people. Did it in one gulp. They're both excellent actors. Never understood what he's [Randy] doing here [in porn]. He's got everything. Good looking. Intelligent. He had a chance to cross over to straight films. And then it came out that he did some X-rated. Once you've done this, you're dead? Yeah, pretty much. That isn't true for you? Doesn't help. No. I can't show this to straight people. No. Which is a shame, because some of Jane's best work as a cameraman he can't show. This little clip here [just seen] is one shot. I'd love to show it. It's rare that something's done like this. There is this idea that the porno industry will blossom into its

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own right. As Hollywood's trying to get more pornographic, the porn industry can get more artistic. The line will be blurrier. Yeah. I don't believe this. Well, if you're on the back end of the camera, you have a chance, if you're good, of crossing over. But if you're a performer . . . For an actor to do straight films, you have to study, go to agents, go to auditions, and get no work. [In porn] she can walk on a set like this and get the gratification of doing a performance, be paid, and done. That satisfies the urge to be an actor. A lot of people in the X business don't want to deal with what it takes to be an actor. [Back to the show.] Don't you think that Nina's body language is about the best in the biz? Her face is wonderful. Yeah, the big eyes and everything. She's got a lot of great things. There are things that aren't so great [but] she manages to make it all work. I see from Randy that she does. See what? Randy's hard . . . Randy likes fucking her. They do it ... wonderfully. A problem is when you go from a shot like him giving her head to moving around to fuck her, you have to cut because the guy's not hard. So it's nice when you make this transition, go right on, and it all stays together. I like what Falco's doing with this scene. Did you compose this shot, Jane? Yeah. It's very nice. Well, to me, this is the only oral position . . . To look at. Visually. Yeah. Although I think on the receiving end of it [the man being fellated] or on the giving end of it [the woman at work] it's not much, but. . . It's pretty . . . . . . acrobatic for her. Yeah. As was the reverse cowgirl, it requires the dick to bend in an unnatural direction. In a direction nature never intended. If I were writing a manual on how to have sex on camera, I would say, "Everything you do is the opposite of what nature intended!" How far are you from the action right at this moment [penis drilling vagina], for instance, in feet, let's say? This close [measures]. He's as close as he looks. Three feet. This is what I'm saying: part of being a good X-rated cinematographer is the ability to get that close with this big, bulky thing on your shoulder without preventing these people from working. They never seem to feel I'm too close. Some people joke with me [as they perform sexually]. I hear about him from performers. They all say that they like having you there. It doesn't bother them. Jane Waters / 137

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I get to know them; they get to know my style. There's a reverse cowgirl . . . Yeah. I don't know if addicted is the word, but I do like doing this. Even if I eventually get into doing many straight movies, I think twice a year I'd call together all my buddies, and we'd go off for a week someplace and make a bizarre porno movie. I like this scene the best. And another pop shot. Again, you've always got to be there when that happens. That's the most important thing, because that's the thing we can't do again. There it is again [Holliday's toy cat]! That's a rebellion to Bill Margold who does the teddy bear [Mr. Stubbs]. So, here we are at the end. Sharon's brief appearance. What's Sharon doing in that? What's her ... She's playing God. I never realized how beautiful Sharon was until after I got to know her. I think the story at the end should have gone back to those kids [the parents at the start] fucking in the bedroom. I agree. Now elaborate cast picture credits, followed by crew, all that stuff. So. That's that for that. Let's rewind this item.

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Il The Hain Event: Here, without Doubt... : Nina

Nina, Ira, and RJS will now review, by watching the final cut, Nina's experience while making the film. I interviewed Nina four years ago (1991b), before she became a star. Now she is at the top, greatly appreciated by her audience and her colleagues—performance partners and crew. She always delivers her best.—RJS RJS ISL Nina ISL Nina

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Let's start by talking about the filming. Okay. We've got about an hour and fifteen minutes of tape. This copy is a screen copy. It does not have the real music track. But it's the final edit. Sorry it hasn't the original music track that Sharon did, which is very good. . . . When I talked to you [RJS] four years ago, I can't remember if my parents had found out about it or not. A whole bunch of shit has hit the fan since that time. One family member is still not speaking to me because I upset him so much. Ultimately, it has improved my familial relationships; they're more honest and enjoyable. The scene I'm most interested in seeing is the one with the preacher. I've seen that. Outtakes. I haven't. [Laugh.] You'll like it, it's good. I've seen the one in the saloon where he couldn't get it up. You'll see how we fixed that. You'll see the magic of video at work. You'd never know when you see the final copy that we had a problem. Falco did it; he's a wonderful editor. He did a fine, fine job. [We watch.] This is the pretitle sequence. Whose idea is this [sequence: woman walking up stairs]? Sharon. We had meetings. This isn't the real music track. I hope not. 139

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I will readily support turning down the sound. [Music turned down.] Who are we looking at? In this scene [where] you've [Nina] stopped on the steps to look. This is the scene we fought to take out, Jim wanted in. He had a hugely obtuse, verbose, convoluted, clumsy script, knowing when he wrote it we had two days to shoot this movie. A forty-five-page script. Ridiculous. And too much sex. Seven scenes. This is the only gratuitous sex scene. He wanted me, as I was coming up the stairs, to see people fucking. And Sharon is going, "This scene is not necessary, it breaks up the . . ." I don't understand; this has nothing to do with what. . . They're her character's parents. She's seeing herself being conceived. I see. That will be explained in time? Yes. At this point now, they don't seem connected in any way? Right. Right. Nina's character doesn't know that she's dead at the moment. Right . . . And these are the parents of ... Her character. Of Nina? Yeah. As she's going up the stairway she's viewing past events. This is totally cryptic? Yes. Totally cryptic. [Man screwing woman: parents busy conceiving.] This actor is a German deaf-mute who can lip-read English. How did you get him? I don't know where he came from. Jim got him. He's back in Germany now. He's a really nice guy. Sweet guy. I wanted a scene with him at some point, but from everything I hear, he's just bigger than I want to deal with. I saw that in this scene here. He's definitely bigger than I want to deal with. You mean literally physically? That would be painful for you? Physically. A larger penis than I would ever want to fuck in my entire life. This girl has no ... Aja. I like the energy of this scene. She enjoyed working with him; she has a pretty body. Well, there [on the screen] is something very sweet [post-coital tenderness]. The fact that they couldn't talk to one another gave the scene something. Right. One of the best sex [acts] I ever had in Germany was with a guy I was wildly attracted to who spoke no English. That wasn't planned that way [for this film]? No. And also she had to lead physically, which was interesting. She had to position him.

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We'd give her the direction, and then she would move him because he couldn't get our direction. How did he ever get into this business? Well, you're looking at his main attribute. Can't you see the thing between his legs? No, but even so ... [how did he get into porn?] His body is not half-bad; his cock gets hard; he can do it on screen. [Fast-forward tape.] Here we go. Here's your line. Echo chamber. Why? Why her line? Why echo chamber? [I am totally lost.] It wasn't, that was just how it was miked. Why not redo it? As you're editing, why couldn't somebody . . . She [Nina] wasn't here. We didn't have her to loop [dub]. What's the difference who says it? This person's voice is distinctive. Oh, that's your voice? Yeah. Oh, I see, it wasn't the mother's . . . That was Nina's voice. Even though this is hundreds of years ago? No, that was meant to be a short while ago because your character only lived to be how old? Twenty-five. But wasn't it hundreds of years ago that this is happening? No, that's later. It jumps back and forth in time. This was her last incarnation that we just saw. [Submissively.] Okay. I had a very short incarnation and killed myself in '57. [Titles are now rolling.] Has Nina's name showed up while we were talking? [While we talk, we don't watch closely—or at all.] Yes, the first one. Now, that's introducing [the name] "Heather Lere" right over your face. It wasn't her [Heather's] face. Someone might think that was . . . No, my name showed up next to my face: "Starring Nina Hartley," that's when you first saw my face. [More film.] Oh God! It [the film] is supposed to be [produced by] all women. An important gimmick. In our transcript, it will be all right to give people their real names? I don't know. We'll have to talk to them about it. You're okay as ... Nina Hartley. Nina / Ml

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And now we know I'm Ira Levine, no matter what I do. [Laugh.] You didn't show up there [at the start]. No, later I'm Ernest Greene in the closing credits. [More tape dialogue.] Doesn't this look great? Who is the man? [Another example of how, after several viewings, I am still out of it.] That's Randy. Now, that isn't the girl who was playing the mother? Yes it is. [. . .] Now, what are you drinking [steaming magic potion]? "Stuff": we don't know what it is [in the plot]. A drug of some kind. You [Nina] look good. Do you look "good" to yourself?

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Yeah.

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[Pause, watching.] Who's that? Tianna. I'm not [supposed to be] looking at anything. You're not looking at that? [Three people having sex on-screen.] No. I'm looking at an empty chair. How do we know that? You don't. That's movie magic. At the time we were doing it, we were just taking a bunch of reaction shots. Oh, I see. I thought that in the story you are looking at this [scene]. Imagining it. That's what I meant. Imagining it because of whatever you drank? Right. Good reaction there. Good eyes. You can tell we're doing the same shot over and over. This is an example of something that's not easy to do [gymnastic sex act]. I was going to ask how long does that actually take [to shoot] for that scene? Forty-five minutes. Longer. An hour or more. With the sex itself? Yeah. Sex scenes, you can figure three hours. An hour of crap and then, you know. Because this angle, that angle, talk-talk before they get to the sex. And the sex itself takes an hour. And he's got to be able to both keep it up and not pop too soon? Right. And Randy is a reliable professional performer. He's a good sex partner and a good actor. I really enjoy having sex with him. If you want to know why the girls spend so much time in the gym, there [action on screen] is a good reason. Hard on those thigh muscles. Who is the other girl? Tianna. She came from nowhere two years ago and went to the top. She's very popular. She takes a good box-cover shot and she's voluptuous, has a cute face, photographs very well. Now this [film activity] is hard work? Yes it is. To anticipate positions?

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What I want is a bar above my head because I have strong arms. I want to be able to transfer the weight from my legs to my arms. You'll be interested to know that this chair, which has made it from one studio to another, was Bette Davis's throne as Queen Elizabeth. All right! Two seconds after this [scene], we had to cut to Tianna, who looked at us and said, "I can't do this much longer." It must have been terribly hard on her thighs. You give it as much heat as you can while you're doing it, but when pain starts, let them know. Say something, and they'll get you out as quickly as possible. This is one of the most unflattering positions for any woman to be in: folded in half on a chair. Yeah. It is extremely unflattering. It cinches up all your upper parts. She's doing okay here keeping everything flat. So they change positions? Yeah. And that transition, which takes a blink on screen, takes five minutes to do. Plus they have my face to move [the camera] to so they don't have to show her climbing off his lap. This is Jane's excellent close camera work. Nobody shoots this better. He's just close enough so that it has some context. Right. You can see parts of their bodies, not just genitalia. Otherwise, if it's too tight [close] . . . It's distracting. It's abstract, there's nothing to see. His body photographs fabulously. Do all the women feel the way you do? He is a perennial favorite to work with: he's good-looking, he has a nice bod, he's sexy, he gives great head, and he can be charming. But he knows very well about fronts and presenting the appropriate front view for the person. But Tianna is a sexy girl. She gets right into it. She dives right in, feet first, and goes for it. She's an excellent porno princess. When she's on screen, she's hot. What is being portrayed there? Are you [Nina's character] still under the influence? I'm confused. I'm drugged. These [depictions in the film] are your fantasies? These are my fantasies. Now, why does he jack himself off? [The man has, in line with present-day film conventions, extracted his penis from the woman's vagina so that his ejaculation is visible.] Because unless you [male performer] are really good, you're not going to be coming the second you're supposed to; you're this close to coming and so you have to apply some stimulation. . . Why wouldn't one of the women do that? Sometimes they do. It's usually easiest to have the guy do it, because he can do it exactly right. If you're on a certain stroke and someone else changes the stroke, that can delay your orgasm for ... [Pause. Watching film.] Nina / M3

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Whose script are we hearing? Jim's? That's all Jim's style . . . See how we got a really luxurious look on this set with nothing? That's Kay Parker. [See Stoller 199Ib.] She should get a medal for delivering that line. That was too quick a cut. We didn't stay on that long enough to see what it was. One of the few things Falco did wrong. Kay is the [. . .] fairy godmother or something? Yeah. [Watch film.] That's a good performance for him. He just got into it; we're real proud of him. . . . I want to catch that dialogue. [Nina rewinds film to replay the dialogue she is interested in.] This will be big in the Bible Belt. [Cruel deacon being seduced by Nina playing woman falsely accused of being a witch.] They're going to love this! You can see that it's all ad lib. You did it great. I was walking around in rehearsal: "I don't know what to say." I don't see that at all. Every move looks good. Every move looks planned. They cut out the part where he's fighting me going down on him. Yeah. I won the battle on the fellatio question. Which was? I said her character would; Sharon said her character wouldn't. First I said I wouldn't, and then I realized, "Oh, no, this is the most perverse thing that she could think of to do." The most degraded and weird effect. 1692. The way the scene was written, I was a victim. And I was going [to fit her earlier understanding of her character], "How can I get out of this?" Because I don't want to [let the character] film a rape scene. Barf! Like Ira was saying, "How would one fuck if one was fucking to save one's life?" This is the only chance she has to maybe live; so she decided to go for it. It's, "Put on the performance of a lifetime, because it may be the last one." This is the part, right here, that I told Dr. Stoller last time: if I were going to show people a movie that would show them how to fuck, this might be it. The strength and focus and control I see in what you do here. This took maybe an hour of actual filming? Yes. At least an hour. Several takes. But I could only tear the dress once. So we had to get that right. Aren't these dissolves and cuts elegant? Very nice. He almost cut clear to my tan line. We tried hard. It looks great. It's fun to see my tits without that tan line. I'm not used to that. Are you happy with them [fuller breasts]? Yes, I'm very happy with them. Thrilled to death, actually. The way you hold your legs and everything there. It gives your body a very powerful look. And that's where the exercise makes a difference? Oh, yes. Without strong legs in this business, it's a very hard caper. Yes, it is. Squatting over him without high heels. It's difficult. High heels make it a lot easier. High heels make it very easy to squat. They add every advantage to that position. Especially visually. When I was getting my manicure before this movie, I realized, because of this scene,

H4 / Nina

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I had to go with the French manicure, which has no color. It looks like no nail polish at all. Because? Too wildly out of period. Too much: the body is a little too lean and mean and too tan, but I can't [beyond that] have pink toes. [Laugh.] [Continue to watch movie.] He tried to not die with that wig on. It was so hot. The sweat is just . . . Here we go: there's the great shot. Excellent! Oh, my God! Wasn't that nice? Jane right there. Right on it. And Peter North is famous for his ... Well-controlled pops. No, the volume. Volume and distance. Excellent, well done. Dreaded saloon scene. There's a good cut. We'll see. It's a miracle, actually. Remember how we struggled to get that line? They're [Randy and Chi-Chi] so funny. See how well all that cut together now that you [RJS] saw the outtakes? He's a good actor. [Dialogue continues.] Gee, she's great! He's a good-looking guy. Yeah, he is. But he's not a woodsman. It doesn't go on very long. And it's worth seeing; I want you to see how the cut went. [When the actor couldn't get hard, Randy, the ringer, supplied a fresh phallus.] Believe me, we don't [during the emergency] belabor this. We knew this wasn't working well; with Falco cutting it, we quick-march. [. . .] We eventually got it. There it is. We just liked the clothed . . . It looked great! The clothed thing looks good. I think it's cute. She's perfect for the part visually. Some people, the more you cover them up the better. Well, she has these large fake breasts that look great in cleavage. Yeah. They push up nicely. Do all artificial breasts push up nicely? The issue here is how they look when they're not pushed up. Which is: they look hugely artificial. On this you can't tell. She also had cheek implants, and because of that, she looks really good giving head. She looks really good sucking a cock. It's amazing. The lines of her face are graphic art. She looks great with a dick in her mouth. [Laugh.] She really does. I look at her giving head, and she looks so pretty. That's an interesting thought. It improves a lot of people, actually. And she felt really bad, because she wanted to give this guy [who failed] great head, and she ... He was scared of her. That's what I got from the outtakes. I thought, "Jesus, she's not a friendly lady." Most men are scared of her. I am scared of her. She has very strange energy. She's not cuddly and fuckable. She's not somebody I just want to grab a hold of and Nina / MS

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do what I want to. In fact, he spent most of the day on the set fleeing her. She was chasing him all over the set trying to get him, to fluff him up. Why? She was attracted to him. Sharon couldn't get him up in private either. Our big mistake: we should have put Randy in his part and him in Randy's pan. Is this Randy now? That looks like Randy. Yep, the hard dick. It's Randy. Well done. Didn't we do a nice job? Luckily, they look enough alike in terms of flat stomachs and body hair that he goes real well. It works okay. See, she looks pretty with a cock in her mouth. It helps a little. I wouldn't go so far as "pretty," but she does look better. She does look pretty there. It takes ten years off her face to do this, I agree. It does. It's hard being forty-eight years old and trying to make a living in porno. It's just not easy. And she certainly does this well. She does. She was giving good head. The way she was touching it, you can tell. She really likes cocks. I would show this to people on how to give good head. She really likes what she's doing. It's not just mechanical for her. She gets that hand and mouth rhythm down. Excellent. You know how many paragraphs it would take to describe that motion of pulling the hand up and twisting it over the ridge of the corona as you . . . This picture is worth a thousand words. See how Falco matched this? Very well. It's a great job. Does she care that this is Randy? Is she happy? Is she bored? She's sorry. I think she felt bad. She doesn't mean to scare guys' dicks away. She really doesn't. She likes them. Yes. You can tell she likes them. Good handling here all in all. That's very nice. And she has nail polish. On no, this is a different time [nineteenth-century Wild West]. That could have been okay. It's still pushing it, but it worked. There was the [wrist]watch that I thought [viewing the outtakes] was . . . The watch is a problem. Who has the watch? She does. Oh, my God! It [the watch] isn't showing now. Falco probably caught it. There it is. It sneaked in. Not much.

Me / Nina

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Falco is very attentive to detail. The back and forth cuts work just fine. I agree. She does look pretty cute doing this. She's looking at it, she's really . . . Oh yeah. Sad, really. It is. It's the way she talks. When Randy came on to do the shot, she started babbling at him, her usual way, talking dirty, her famous thing. He just looked down at her and said, "Lee, I'm coming on here to do this pop shot. So shut up." And she did. She shut right up. Is that painful for her to be treated that way? It must be. It must be. I'm sure she didn't like that. See, that's [scene being viewed] when he told her to stop talking. "Fuck my big tits, fuck my big tits with your hard cock. Fuck my big tits, come on my big tits." Yeah, I heard that [in the outtakes]. Now you don't hear that, is that right? This is why ball gags [S-M apparatus: rubber ball put in bottom partner's mouth] were invented. Even the way she rubs her tits isn't truly sensual. She's doing it because men like to see girls rub their tits. And she talks dirty because men like to hear girls say, "Fuck my ass," "Fuck my pussy," you know, "with your hard cock." But there's not any [genuine erotic] feeling behind it. She didn't do much of this since he told her to shut up, which I would have to do also. I sympathize with it. / don't like being talked dirty to. [Watching scene.] Now wasn't that a beautiful dissolve onto this? Excellent! Falco, you're so good! [Claps hands with delight.] He is very good. A beautiful scene. [Pause in talk to watch scene.] A beautiful tracking dolly shot here. A beautiful shot. It's the real you [Nina]. How much of this script is written, not just spontaneously stated . . . ? Only my dialogue during sex acts is all improvised. But the dialogue between the sex acts is all ... That's Jim's or Jim corrected? Jim corrected. Remember, some of the scenes were impossibly long and obscure and, in terms of cinematic technique, off the mark and unnecessary. And bad writing. Jim wouldn't say that. We fought to get some of it removed. In this scene [lesbian] there were six pages of complete shit; by the look of it, it would take four hours to shoot it. So Sharon won out over that. You and Sharon won out. Yeah. A huge battle. Jim gets his feelings hurt easily. Here's something I want to know: [muffled voices of Nina and ISL talking about actresses with long fingernails]. It depends on the sensitivity [awareness] of the person [actress]. Tianna always has them, she's used to them. She likes pussies, and so she knows how to probe her way around one. And they're acrylic, not glued on. They're attached to her hands. She's

Nina / 147

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good with them. Other girls who don't like girls as much as Tianna does wouldn't be good. I prefer short nails on a woman [in lesbian scenes]. Later in this scene, unless I'm mistaken, she also puts a finger up your ass. We'll know in a minute. I've seen her do it to herself with those nails. Yourself is easy; you know what's what. But even so. She's good with them, I have to admit.

ISL

It's tricky.

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Very tricky though. They're usually terrifying to see. Terrifying to see. If it is someone delightfully sensual . . . Once you get your mouth on a pussy, she just goes with the feeling. And Victoria does, too. I was eating her out between takes, and she was getting off on it. She has a delightful pussy. This is a pretty sensual group of girls, mostly bi.

Nina

All bi.

ISL

Well, Aja said no. We took a poll at the time, remember? We asked how many of these girls are. She was the only one who said, "I'm really not." She fakes it pretty damn well. Yeah. God, I've got a big butt. [Laugh.] It's a thing of great beauty. Oh God! Some of us live to see it. Sometimes I look at it and . . . It's a big butt. Like a cartoon sometimes. It's like an R. Crumb comic. Dave [her husband] loves R. Crumb. That's something else Dave and I like in common. When he saw me naked the first time, I was wearing bib overalls and Birkenstocks [plain, practical shoes] and Granny glasses. And bikini panties, which totally flipped him out. He expected up-to-the-belly-button, down-to-the-knee, antisexual bloomers. Here I was wearing silky bikini panties. It pleased him no end because it was, "Good, she's sexual." Okay, here we go [lesbian action]. Were you pretty warmed up during this scene? Reasonably? Reasonably, yeah. I'm always thinking: "back arched, stomach in, tits out, make a pretty picture and enjoy as much of it as you can" . . . I tell people, "It's easier to be turned on than to act turned on." So you get some stimulation that's pleasing to you. It's not difficult. Just ask for it. You can get what you ask for pretty much, especially from women. I always tell guys—and women, too—"Tell me what you like. It's as easy for me to do something you like as something you don't like." A lot of times the men have to ignore an irritating stimulus because they don't want to break the scene or hurt [the woman's] feelings or risk bullshit. And have to maintain the erection in spite of it, rather than saying, "Try this," and have something that is going to help his erection. That's why I tell them, "If you say something during the scene, I will take you at face value. If you say that feels good, I will believe that it does. And if you tell me to lick over here, I will. It's up to you to get what you want out of me."

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[Watching scene.] Great eyes in that shot. Is this a fairly typical rendition of a classical scene? Of a four-woman orgy? Yeah. This is a nice one. It's a nice one. Well, we switched partners a few times, that's nice. We all touch each other. Sensual and gentle, not a lot of thrashing. Screaming and moaning and groaning. Screaming and all that other shit I hate. Multiorgasmic things. Fake multiple orgasms. Victoria has such a nice pussy. It is a beauty, isn't it? It's chunky and meaty and very, very pretty. That's this girl here? Yes. Yeah, it's a nice one, all right. She has something for your lips to grab onto. Right. See, there she's doing exactly the thing I said with that nail up there. You said it's my ass; it's hers. Right. It's her ass. She knows what's going on. Is she doing that for the sake of the camera? Or for herself? I don't think we told her to do it. I think she ... She's doing it for the sake of the camera, to be hot and sexy, and it was probably feeling pretty good to her. She's not going to hurt herself. I've seen her do it in a number of pictures. I do it, too, because I know it looks good to people. It does look good. And I don't dislike a finger up my ass. If it's my finger, I know I'm not going to ... And the thing with the nails: I think she knows people are interested in seeing her do this. They wonder about it. I don't like long nails on a woman. I always want to cut them off, but she's always had them. She likes them very much. I don't like them that long. Impractical. Useless with bondage, S-M. A drag. Does it [fingers on genitals] really make a difference, licking the fingers? It dees. Getting spit on them . . . Anything's better when it isn't dry. She's not lubricated even after all this action? Well, she might be a little lubricated, but the lights cause more evaporation than you [get] at home. The air is pretty dry, and the lights make it very hot. You are also sweating. Is this scene as athletic and wearing physically as the others? If it goes on for a while. It is difficult because you are constantly changing positions and holding yourself up. This is not a particularly athletic scene. No, this is pretty relaxing. Girl-girl scenes generally are more relaxing. Yeah. We're laying down; we're not squatting over each other, standing up and lifting our legs up. We are, luckily, on a bed. We lucked out there. Nina / 149

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Yeah, for a change. [Pause in commentary to watch.] Everyone gets a little cum shot here. That's a great view of your [Nina's] body. Um-hmmm. Puppies in a box [four young women playing]. A sweet scene. Now, none of this is directed? You're all on your own? Pretty much. "Don't move quite yet; we haven't quite got the footage." The transitions were directed. Sharon and Jane told you [the actresses] who he was focused on and so who needed to get the most attention at that moment. And a nice fade. Into . . . We're getting there. Basically this [next: Bhagwan Bob et al.] scene is not successful compared to the others, but we did all right with it. Who's that? Chi-Chi LaRue again. That's Joey Silvera. Joey did great. I thought he did great. He did great with this scene. He is the saving grace of the scene. There's this girl who is eighteen years old, fucking gorgeous, and about as sexual as a dishrag. Why was she chosen? A cupcake: young, cute, and indifferent. And there's no way, once you get into it and see she's not good, to go find someone else? No, we didn't have time. This was late. But afterward Sharon came stomping off the set saying, "I'm never going to hire a dumb young girl again!" They pout, they whine, they make . . . Well, as you'll see, she did something here that almost made it impossible. She suddenly decided she wouldn't do a doggy style. She didn't feel it was intimate; it made her uncomfortable to do doggy style. It's sexual when you're doing two guys. What else are you going to do? You can't defend yourselves in advance by telling people this is what you're going to do so they can say yes or no? Well, we didn't bother to tell her that because we figured she knew. "Porno is not intimate and close." Well, we're sorry. She's in the wrong business. She's an eighteen-year-old Valley girl. I'm sorry they don't teach much in high schools any more. These girls come out really dumb. But she had some of the prettiest tits I've ever seen. Natural tits. They're just . . . She's lovely, but she's terrible. And a terrible personality. She's a spoiled Valley girl making her great tits . . . There they are. And they're natural. I remember eighteen, yeah. Now why are these people together in the story? And would Bhagwan Bob . . . This is the '60s. He's a fake, as you can see. She's the dope; she doesn't know what's what. She believes in him. He's [second actor: Peter North, earlier the deacon] the surfer boy. And Joey is acting like a crazy man. Yeah. He has real comic timing. Now, that's his own? Or Sharon tells him to do that?

ISO / Nina

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That's him. That's him. You turn Joey on and let him run. You don't direct him. He's not someone who needs directing. After this scene he was going, "I can't do these young girls any more." He felt she was too young. Normally, Joey is famous for liking young girls. What did he mean? She was just mentally not there. She's a very attractive young girl. She knows you can get things you want if you're an attractive young girl and shake your tits at people. So she comes in and was rude to me, not knowing who I am. I'm not used to young girls being rude to me, at least not intentionally. I'm used to, "I've always wanted to meet you; it's nice meeting you." There is also something unsexual about her. If you were doing this scene and he slid up behind you and put his hands around you, you'd start doing like this [demonstrates]. You'd give some moves back. She gives no moves. She doesn't want to be there, you can tell. And Joey's feeling that. He was saying "too young" meaning mentally she's not sexually ready. He now realizes he prefers a woman who is really into it. Who has some experience. She doesn't have to be good and skilled but just interested. Present. Helpful. What she did here was sabotage things by creating a situation that's extremely difficult for the guys. Both guys are sensitive. It's important for them that the woman be active and with it. They want a connection. But also the geography that she forced on everyone made it difficult: the two guys had to go over her, face-to-face with each other, a very awkward situation for guys. Very. Especially for guys who are mildly homophobic and nervous about anything. All the men in our business are mildly homophobic. Except for the gay ones. [We view.] Okay. So she made them do it with her in the missionary position. Very awkward. [Another pause for viewing.] This [the way the threesome proceeds down the road to completion] is how she forced us to do the scene. Why does it say, "For Screening Only"? [From start to end, this message is printed at the bottom of the screen.] Who . . . So that no one will dupe this copy. And sell it. Oh. See there, that's a very [anatomically] awkward situation. I didn't see anything. We'll come back with the wide shot. This one here. This is tricky. It's really hard to get the movement in your hips going when you are over someone's head. It's much easier in doggy position. You have more freedom of motion with the

guy.

Not to mention the fact that Peter is trying to keep his face out of Joey's face. It's really . . . Nina / ISI

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He's pretty much doing push-ups. That takes energy away from . . . Whereas if she would have simply rolled over, she could have sucked one and been fucked by the other. Well, her mouth is very . . . Dead. Dead. She's caressing the cock. She is allowing it to enter her mouth. Have you any theories why she didn't want to do it doggy style? She said it was not intimate enough. I'd say it was because she was being a brat. Whatever reason, she's finding that the realities of porno movies are not something that suit her. And she's having a mild freak-out: "I need to maintain control of the situation for my sanity." I don't blame her for that. Absolutely not. I do blame her for being in the movie in the first place. It's like, "You obviously don't want to do this: why are you here? What agenda do you have?" The girls don't talk about that. But these are the girls that later hate the business, leave the business, and complain about being used/abused by the business because they didn't do anything they liked. They feel used and abused, even though no one ever said, "You must suck his dick." She came to the set and worked and didn't like it. I don't know who is, quote, to blame for this. If you're going to think in terms of Piaget, in terms of emotional development, eighteen years old is when you should be focusing on intimate contact with a single person and trying to figure out who you are in your relationships. Publie sex isn't what you need to be doing at eighteen years old. I was twenty-three before I started having sex on camera, after two years of practicing having sex on the stage. I realized, "Okay, you've got permanent records [the films witness the decisions you've made] that will affect my life, ten to fifteen years from now. Okay, I can handle it. Okay." So I thought about it. These girls come to it for myriad reasons, not only the money and sex, but wanting to get back at Daddy for being a prick. Like, for sure, "Mom and Dad will really freak out if I'd come home with a black boyfriend." She came off the set saying, "God, I hate . . . I'll never do two guys again. I can't stand it." I just said, "That's just youth talking. You have two of the best guys in the business." She says this? Off-camera. She's coming off the set after it's all done, she comes bounding into the dressing room going, "Oh, God, I really hated that; I'll never do that again." "But you had two of the nicest men in the business. Anyone will tell you this." The most versatile, nice, the easiest guys to work with. She was really lucky: as difficult as she was, we might have ended up firing her if she hadn't had such good pros to work with. They made it work anyway. But if we had had trouble with the male performers because of her behavior, we would have had to boot her and get someone else, which is very awkward. Very. A hard way to get a blow job. [. . .] She's moving her head. [Sarcastic cheerleading:] Come on! Yeah, a bit. But she's dead from the waist down, and if there's one thing you don't ever want to be in this business, it's dead from the waist down. Dead from the neck

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up is another matter. [Laugh.] A lot of people manage to do this job with a flat EEC, but you really can't do it if your hips won't move. Great. Well, there was a couple of guys that didn't like me to fuck them back. L. J. did not like the women to move. He liked them to be still and let him fuck them. I was trying to fuck him back, and he said, "Be still, be still." I respond to that. I'm sort of the same way. Look at that, she's just like . . . "So what?" She wants to stay well out of range. Give me those tits. You don't have to hide them. Exactly. She could have shoved them up. All the things she could have done. [Not able to hear dialogue clearly.] "Wants to" what? "Jump my bones." [Pause. Watch.] We shot that the morning of the second day? I don't know when it was. What do they [women in the lesser parts] get paid? Their rates are pretty high. Yeah. Do they [each] get the same amount? Seven or eight, I think. A day? And what do you [Nina] get? I got my day rate. I don't often get my day rate, but I did that time. They get almost as much. Victoria is a star in her own right now. The girl on the left. Right. What about Kay? Don't know. What about Randy? Men get about the same as the stars. They get less. They work for longer. They work for longer, too. What does the A.D. [ISL] get? When I just A.D. I get three-fifty per day. "Action": I heard that. They [Falco] left that in; they let that go by. What is that, a blank space? No, the word "action." Sharon's "action" call sneaked in. They have to do [allow] that [because it can't be corrected in editing]? The music track may have covered that. That's a funny mistake. That is a funny mistake. Falco's usually so alert. What's happening now? I've lost track. She's dreaming, the character is dreaming. Here we go: the big romantic scene. I don't think he kissed right. Really? No kiss?

Nina

Uh-uh.

ISL Nina

He should have? We had romance, face-to-face. It needs more kissing.

Nina ISL Nina ISL Nina ISL RJS ISL

Him / IS)

RJS I SI RJS Nina ISL; RJS ISL RJS Nina RJS Nina ISL RJS Nina ISL RJS

Why didn't you [Nina and Randy]? We should have had a big on-screen smooch for this. This is a dream of romance, is that right? I'm now awake. [More dialogue.] I don't think I could have recited those lines no matter what they paid me. Is it Jim's lines? Yeah. It's [dialogue] plain cosmic bullshit. The two of you [to play this scene] are remembering a lot of lines. We're both very good at that. And you got it right? Oh, yeah. She's a pro. So's he. How long do you have to memorize it? We learn the script within a week with no problem. Doing porn is like doing soap operas or episodic TV or working in repertory: you work all the time; so you stay in practice. I didn't realize that you're moving into this before you arrive on the set. You have the script in hand? And you've been thinking about how you're going to play this?

Nina

Yes.

ISL RJS Nina

Not always. I thought it was never true. Half the time you come on the set and [only then] they give you your lines. If you're lucky, you get them the night before. Why did this happen differently? Because we put a lot of care into this picture. Who? Sharon. You and Sharon. And Nina and Jane. [Back to film.] Oh, there it is. I'm sorry, I forgot. See, there was a kiss. But the sex was your basic acrobatic stuff. I agree. I don't think the sex comes across as particularly tender or romantic. No, it's not. It's just sex. Standard porno sex, which is fun, but this didn't work for this scene. I wanted a little more . . . You wanted passion here. He has a sexy mouth, and he's a very good kisser. He gives great head. He likes being good at what he does. He derives great pleasure from being good. What's Randy's name? No one knows what anyone's real name is anyway. Except me. Yeah, who is Ira Levine? Well, after this book comes out, that'll settle that question. Oh, oh. Because I'm going on this with my real name.

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IS4 / Nina

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Why? Because I'm a co-author. After you've seen me on cable television whipping butt, what difference does it make? Did he [RJS] see that movie—the outtake [of Ira's appearance as an S -M instructor on cable TV]? I'm bringing it next time. God, it was really good. My cable television demonstration. Unbelievable what they let him get by on TV. Like whipping bare butt right there on cable TV. No, she had a T-back on. But her butt is, in fact, bare. She's not restrained, and she is having an incredibly good time. Squirming around. And I'm saying, "These are the sexiest spots to hit." This really turns people on. ... Nobody [public] seemed upset. They didn't burn the station. The words Ira was saying, they're great. He handled it so well. It's a good primer: Introduction to Erotic Flagellation. How to do it nice. [Back to film.] He does this nicely. You both look great. You look very pretty. Sweet. The energy of this scene is okay. Until you get to the sex. He works by instinct there. No easy positions. Plus we only had a chaise longue. See, your nip [nipple] is really hard here. It's not like we have a lovely bed to work on. I don't understand. How can your nipple get erect under these circumstances? Stimulation. It feels damn good. Even in this . . . ? Sure. No, my responses are real. I just turn the volume up. I magnify them because it is cinema. When I'm at home and someone is eating me out, I'm not going, "Oh, yeah, baby, come on!" I'm sitting still. And the sensations are still there. In movies, it's boring to watch me [if I was to] sit here for twenty minutes barely moving. Yeah, you're [usually] pretty quiet. I'm pretty quiet during most sex. [But] this is movies, pictures . . . Most performers I've had sexual experiences with, what they do on camera is, as you say, an exaggerated version of what they ordinarily do. If I'm fucking someone, I whisper, "Oh, that's good"; but the mike is not going to pick that [whisper] up. You've got to talk a bit louder. If I'm fucking missionary style at home, his face is down here, and so you can whisper. His ear is right there, and you're saying things, and all it is is the feeling. But here, he's way back up here. So the camera could get in there. Open to the camera. So t h a t . . . I do like that position [now on screen]. The foreplay part of this scene, the energy is where we wanted it. That's why when somebody starts fucking, it's like how . . . There we are [the sex action on screen], back to business. Which is fun but it didn't quite . . . Again, that's because we had two hours to shoot this, not a day. Now, if we had a day as in Hollywood, they have two or three days to Nina / ISS

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Nina

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shoot a love scene, and they get every angle, and it is very sensual, and they really build the mood up. I saw Ghost the other day with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze, a couple of very erotic love scenes. Very, very nicely done. You can tell they had a million takes to do it in. We try to keep it nice and quiet. Yes, they are trying to help us with [creating] a pleasant work space. That was the only kiss. We don't ever come back and kiss again. I know. That was your kiss, you got it, that was all. You get one of each thing per scene. That's it. You have the oral part; you have this [kiss], and you have the hand part. . . . This is so romantic. Randy is a professional: he keeps the "real" him to himself. Off screen, we've had some very erotic, romantic moments, [but] he just won't, can't let them out on screen. If we wanted to do a scene a particular way, they'd let us—like in the preacher scene. But he goes on automatic once the sex starts. But visually it looks damn good. It looks damn good. Yes, it does. It gives you a chance to stretch up like that. Exactly. It looks damn good. Yeah, your body arches so beautifully. Is that something that's typically done in porn movies? No, this is an unusual position. It is unusual. I liked the idea; it was really good. And your shoulders look so strong. The movie shows my body pretty good. I think your body was terrific. Most of the girls don't have muscular bodies. They have nice bodies, but muscular you would never call them. Do you ever use uncircumcised men? That's funny, the subject just came up ... If they're there, I like them. It's never a feature like "Let's go find one." The guy from Germany is uncircumcised. Then there are black actors, they're fifty-fifty. If you're going to find an uncircumcised man in the business, he probably will be black. In gay pictures that's not true. They have specialized pictures. Yes. The gay films are definitely uncut men. Yeah. Here you're [Nina] doing beautiful work. Really nice. He [Randy] likes that. He loves to tease. That's why I like working with him. Some guys can't stay hard unless they're pumping their cock in your mouth. And he, if he gets a-few seconds of good stroking per minute and then some playing, he will hang with you for a long time. He likes that edge. I've been with him in private a few times. If those could have been filmed, it would have been wild. All the stuff that we do in private would be nice if we could have it filmed. That's a good shot. I like doggy. I prefer it. You do? But that position [now in view], because you have to be open, is not a particularly sensual doggy. It's a good hard-driving doggy. But sensually, his hands are on your back, he has your shoulders in his hands.

15* / Nina

ISl RJS Nina RJS Nina ISL RJS Nina ISL Nina ISL Nina lSL Nina ISL Nina ISL

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Right. Don't forget your tits from the back. You can't really do that on camera very well. Because? Because it covers everything up. Oh. You cover "It"! You have to stay back so that we can get the money shot here. Why can't you edit and have both? I think it would be good. I think we could have a little more sensual stuff besides the hydraulics. That looks good. Isn't that pretty? Um-hmm. [Sarcastic.] Oh, this lovely romantic position! Reverse cowgirl ! I said, "I'll do it" because it makes the body look really good. You do look great, boy! And also he can handle the wiggle a little better. This is nice because we didn't dwell on any one thing. The move from one thing to another here is cool. But here we are [next move] back in the world of porno humping, no question about that. He's good at this. He's a good porno humper. And he's good at "Hold for me open" [i.e., giving directions]. He's helping you? He takes control of scenes. He makes sure . . . He's a good person. He learned the ropes early. And he knew v/hat was expected, what the rules were. This is nice. The arms. I wish there was more stuff like that. Oh yeah. [To RJS] See, that's the thing. You're supposed to put your arms around somebody, and the camera guy says, "Would you drop that arm so I can get in there, please." "Kiss me, you fool." Okay, here. Thank you. [Laugh.] Okay, here we go. There's your line. Not quite. Oh, okay, you were right. It was time. Smooch. Open-mouth smooch, actually. No less. Are these your lines or Jim's? Jim's. You're not to just go off on your own? Not if that's scripted. Shoot the cat! [The toy cat, near the finish, is shown on the stairway to Heaven.] Shoot the fucking cat! Goddamn it! [. . .] It's like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant. We couldn't get rid of it. Why not just edit it out? Because Jim must have been there. Now who is this [in film]? Nina / 1ST

ISL Nina

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Sharon [now performing]. She's great. See how she was then compared to the way she looks now? She's still too thin. [Quiet: watching.]

[. ..] There I am working the smoke machine in the background. That noise you're hearing. [ISL and Nina make horrible scream over scene.] He really wanted this [cat again] in there really badly. We fought; he painted the cat black and had it in the scene with the preacher, and I immediately lost it [made it disappear]. [Video ends.] So that's it. I'm not too nervous about it. Good! I'm not either. It went fine. Okay. Talk! I have the same response to this movie as I have with most others: what would I have done if I had more time? How would I have changed that scene? I never really had a performance that I'm totally comfortable with, that I'm really happy with. We have so little time. We go in with half-baked ideas. The scene with the deacon: we basically shot the rehearsal. So what you saw was completely ad lib. That was the only time I ever did [played] it. After I was done, it was like "Damn!" As I look at it, I see stiffness and uncertainty and blank spots. When Jim looks at it, he doesn't see that. I'm hoping the audience has his view of things. With pornography, you are preaching to a converted audience. If I was a film critic, I would tear it apart at many levels. I feel like I want to play with it some more. I'd talk about Lilith in that scene [with the parson]. He'd preach every week about the temptation of Lilith. I'm aware of the conflict between Christianity and sexuality, and the fight for female sexuality versus oppression. Psychological stuff to work on [while playing the part]. More stuff to taunt him with as I undo his pants. The pious goodbodies in the front row. But I didn't think about them until I had done the scene, unfortunately. Because when I came to the scene, I was thinking, "Okay, is she going to fuck for her life?" Never having done [played] a situation where I had to fuck or die, I'm trying to get in that mood and think of something to say. So I see a lot of blank spots in that scene: You're [Nina] covering up here for having nothing to say: "Let's keep the movement going." It doesn't show.

Nina

Good.

ISL

That shows, once again, how an actor's mental process is very different from what ultimately shows. Right. So we are stuck with "community theater on film," [which] was what we're shooting here. High school plays with sex. So for that, it's not a bad version. I kept cracking up with the script. How often is one in a [porn] film where one actress is the primary focus? These days it's unusual because most videos are not as epic as this. When I left the set I felt really good about my performance. I'd done my best, and I really tried to keep it from being dead. I worked hard on it. I see that. A lot is how they edit it.

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158 / Nina

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They can edit it to make you look like an idiot or they can edit you to look really good, depending on how much dead space they leave in. So a lot of that is out of your control. And then there are the lines you have to say without cracking up. We did well on that score. We did it all with a straight face. Some girls who are under contract, some of the companies, they get roles built around them. I am fortunate and grateful to have had this part, something I can be proud of in my résumé and tell people, "Hey, go check it out; it's a pretty good film." I'm glad for that. I just wish we'd had three days. How does it compare with everything you've done, and how does this movie compare with others? That depends on the standards. Is it a good stroker film? It's an okay stroker film. What's a "stroker film"? Does it turn you on? Does it make you want to play with your penis? Is it sexy? I think it has sexy moments. And certainly would be sexy for those people who like to see naked people doing it. A lot of pretty bodies, interesting positions. It's been shot very well, a very pretty film. In terms of my . . . I'm not a good judge of my own performance. For [despite] having the lead role, I don't do a lot of acting. Everything is a short snippet. A judge of acting is not how well you deliver two lines and cut to the next scene. It's how well you deliver two pages of conversation. And for that, that last scene where he is seducing me isn't half bad. We have a nice ebb and flow, my facial expression is changeable, we have a good connection with each other. The rest of it is not a lot of acting. Nina was going to play it passive, basically just as baggage through most of the picture. Things are done to her, but she does not do much herself. That's why that first scene with Randy is standard porno: it isn't bad, the people are attractive, the setting is attractive, but the level of passion and turn-on isn't there. I'm not as loud as usual; not as much moaning and groaning. Is that an aesthetic decision? Yes, because it didn't sound romantic. When I'm romantic, I'm quiet until the very end. When I come, then I might be loud for a whole thirty seconds, and so I'm trying to have sexy breathing noises. In a guttural throat, I'd be, "Oh yeah, oh God, it felt good!" Real romantic. I was trying to compensate for the fact that the positioning was not that romantic, and we did a lot more blow jobs. I was surprised they didn't keep more of them in there. I had a lot of really great teasing stuff, because he is an excellent blow-job candidate. He's fabulous to give head to because he just loves to sit there and get it. You have something to work with. I'm surprised they cut that short. Good head, hey, keep that stuff in there. I'm surprised. And that was where I got romantic. I was treating his dick really nice. They wanted you closer together for more face-to-face. But we were never face-to-face! I know. I'm just saying that's what they had in mind. Anyway, they cut out a lot of really good blow jobs. So the scene I'd like to get people's responses to—who don't know anything about the history of the film—is with me and the deacon. In all the reviews by the standard reviewers, no one mentioned the deacon scene in particular. I thought, "Was it that dead, or are they that bored with the video?" We'll never know. Nina / IS*

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How does this film compare with comparable videos? It's good video. I'd give it a strong B+. Me too. Visually, it is superior to most videos today. Sharon got the best people to make the look. Considering the budget we had, we got a tremendous visual look. Suppose someone is doing a straight movie and they've got two days. Could they do this well? Not a chance. No way. They couldn't shoot one scene in two days. Suppose they had to? They'd quit! They'd throw their hands up, and they'd walk off. "You can't do this." Have a tantrum and leave. Suppose they were not using film, which takes more time and effort, but they were doing video? We had only one camera. They couldn't do it with the equipment we had. Could not do what we did in the same amount of time. They couldn't do it with our equipment. They just don't have the skills for this. Soap operas they shoot every day. That's the closest thing. They have three cameras. They give the actors their lines for the day, everything is written from day to day—they don't have much more advance warning than we do—they only have to shoot half an hour, the blocking is supersimple, straightahead. . . . A lot of talking heads. Then, of course, these people have to produce an erotic act that actually happens. We need three hours for that. No, there's no way that you can get a regular Hollywood crew on a sound stage and have them make an hour-and-fifteen-minute product in two days. They wouldn't even try. If this were a film school—NYU, UCLA, use . . . They'd be impressed visually. Especially when they find out that the whole budget was $40,000. Minus editing. No, that's including editing. No. What's editing cost? About three thousand bucks total, including rental time in the editing booth. He [Falco] earned it; he was also the assistant art director without taking a credit or getting paid for that. I have a friend who was in the API [American Film Institute] Directors' Program. They gave him six months to script, produce, and direct a twentyminute picture. He found it hard to get that done in six months. "Gotta go, we've got to move forward!" [Snaps fingers: imitating urgency.] With porno it doesn't matter if it's good or bad; you must move forward, the next scene must be shot. "We need more dick": the bottom line. Someone yells, "We're not making Gone With the Wind, so live with it!" If you can come in more rehearsed, you can move right along. However, that means getting people together ahead of time to rehearse, which can be extremely difficult. You have to bribe them with at least fifty bucks a head just to show up. And hope

160 / Nina

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they'll bring their brains and commitment to make a good picture. That's where casting becomes very important. Let's face it, many people in our business don't care about acting. In our [Western] culture, it's not legitimate artistic expression to make adult films for sex. No glory, little money, no societal acceptance. So creative people go elsewhere, and you're stuck with people who don't fit anywhere else. Most could not hold down a straight job, nine-to-five with a boss. Most of the actors, half the crew. Half the crew could make a living doing straight stuff. They are educated enough and talented enough technically. They can switch. Growing in X is not different than crewing in anything else: do you know how to run your deck, know how to hold your boom? Not many people in the business care about quality, an attitude that filters down from above. It's heartbreaking when you try and make things that aro good; you run up against front-office resistance. They want it now. Yesterday. For less money. More of this, less that. A schlock medium run by people who don't give a shit about quality. One reason Sharon hired you is that she knows that you care about quality. We tried to do that with everyone on this picture. We tried to avoid hiring anybody who we knew would be cynically doing it for two hundred bucks. Jim brought in the cupcake [the recalcitrant actress]. Sharon bears some responsibility. They went to Jim South's, looked at the book, and made a decision on looks alone. They just wanted someone new and cute. They knew nothing about her. No, it wasn't Jim. Sharon did it to us, putting that girl in there. The audience is—whatever it means—the usual audience? It will be touted as a couples film. Women who watch adult films will like this because the men are all good-looking; the dialogue in between is not, "I fucked this broad last week, and I'll tell you about it" [mimics male bragging voice]; the dialogue is fun; the main character is a female, not a male. Also, it's gentle, a sweetly romantic picture. Even in our one rough scene [Nina and the deacon], the female character controlled the scene. I can't wait to see how people will respond to it. But it's too bad they cut the struggling. He [the actor who plays the deacon] thought we had decided not to have me give him head, while I had the go-ahead to give him head. So the struggle . . . I was trying to go down on him, he's pushing me away, terrified, actually pretty good action. They shouldn't have cut that out. They shouldn't have. It's too late now? Yeah, this is a final cut. I think it was a mistake that they cut so much of the blow job I gave Randy at the end. I was stroking, petting, being really nice to him. Very pretty and very romantic. Because [I was] treating his cock as something I liked very much, which I honestly do. So if I can't [due to the script] kiss him and treat his body like [the way] I like it, this way I can show I like it very much. My question is, how [are] the men [. . .] going to respond to it? It [the whole film] lacks nasty. There are about three scenes in it I find something of a turn-on, but that's about it. "Nasty" is her finger in her ass and in her pussy with long red nails. That's nasty. Yep. I liked the all-girl scene. Nina / Ul

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More lyrical than anything else. More lyrical, but it achieves moments of heat. And I think the deacon scene . . . I've always thought that was a turn-on because of the way you played it. Ira saved that scene. Thank you. He saved it from being a yucky rape scene. Yeah, I wasn't going to let that go by. And, of course, scenes set in dungeons are my specialty [S-M]. [All laugh.] A familiar atmosphere. When we had the set dressed, I felt at home. And the other thing is the two-girl scene in the chair, with Tianna on top of it. Pretty nasty and sexy. But overall, no. Nine for art and five for sex. Will it make its money back? I think so. Nina's a star, and Sharon's name as director doesn't hurt. I think it will be well merchandised. They've invested a lot of money in it; so they'll push it hard. How would feminists . . . The procensorship or the anticensorship feminists? Forget the anti . . . They [the procensorship group] won't like anything we do. How will they argue? The argument that turns out not to be true is that the scenes are all aimed at the man's satisfaction, depict nothing about women. How will they argue that this is nonetheless antiwomen? They are so conflicted about heterosexual intercourse that the mere presence of naked bodies and erections and vaginas will cloud over their ability to look at this objectively. So what will they then say? That beneath the surface of what looks like consensual heterosexuality . . . Are women brainwashed into getting men to beat them? The proponents of this argument, like [Catherine] MacKinnon and [Andrea] Dworkin, believe that all heterosexual intercourse is nothing but disguised rape, that there can be no true consent by a woman. Well, Dworkin has a slightly different position: if two people masturbate each other, then maybe it would be okay. But no penetration can be consensual. For me, if my vagina says, "Yes, I want stimulation internally," I can't worry whether it is politically correct or not because it gets in the way of my orgasm. So if you're truly Reichian or truly prosex, at certain levels, if the other person is saying, "I don't mind being here helping you," and you are saying, "I don't mind being here with you helping me," then nothing is wrong. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If two people are enjoying their sexual lives, don't come up and say, "I'm sorry, honey, you're brainwashed. You're actually having a terrible time." Very condescending, very arrogant. I happen to understand her [Dworkin's] anger and respect her intelligence, but she goes out into the ozone. Most people are not going to want to cut off all men. "If my vagina wants penetration, / want penetration. My nerve endings want that stimulation. Excuse me. I'm sorry you're troubled that I want something in there. It doesn't have to be a dick, but, actually, penises feel pretty good." The other thing is she's a really extreme ideological case. There is a more visceral response from women who do like heterosexual contact and view themselves as heterosexual, not just political, feminists, but dislike the relentless visual fixations of this type of porn.

162 / Nina

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That's real legitimate. Because it isn't artistic. But if you wish to see genitalia, you've a limited choice. I was at a movie the other night. Two lyrical scenes: very, very loving, tender and erotic, building up to passion. Really nice. And all I wanted to see was the glimpse of an erection. Just a glimpse of a hand between the legs. I can see that that's more than some people want, but I wouldn't mind a hint of it. In the few cases where they've been mixed—films made with real sex in them—they worked well: Don't Look Now, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, shot by Nicholas Roeg, who loves shooting sex and does it beautifully. Shot everything. In the released version is the foreplay. A landmark picture in its depiction of sexuality. The critics still say that was one of the best erotic sequences ever shot in straight film. That's what I want to do. Let us do it. We'll position ourselves so the camera doesn't see anything that can't be shown at the Cineplex. And you go ahead and do it. I read the interviews. 'The movie had a really great love scene in it. Ma'am, how do you feel about having been in it?" And the actresses go, "I hate the love scenes. I'm so nervous. I can't stand to do them, it's really uncomfortable." Talk about cinematic fakery. They look like they're having a great time, and they are exceedingly uncomfortable. "Give me that money; let me make it. I like being up here doing it. Give me the artistic [high-production] level that you [straight filmmakers] have." Another straight picture that does this successfully is In the Realm of the Senses, where first-rate Japanese actors do hard-core right there on 35-mm film. . . . They're not puritanical the way we are. Well, they're puritanical in their way, but they were willing, apparently, to accept this as a work of art. It's like in Terry Sothern's book [Blue Movie]. If we made a hard-core mainstream picture, it would end up in the Vatican library rather than in release. Hollywood won't make a high-budget, artistic, hard-core picture, especially in the current atmosphere. I was reading the preproduction for Wild Orchid. It supposedly had Mickey Rourke really fuck his then-girlfriend on screen. You just couldn't see it. I don't know if that's true or not. Even if it fades away, I think our genre has at least partially educated a generation of Americans to what pleasurable sex is all about. Of course, it has also miseducated them in certain ways. It will circulate forever, though, at least until it disintegrates in the machine. Of course, videos do disintegrate. They're not very durable. That might not be a bad thing because the films [which were not videotapes] in the seventies are pretty damn good film. The best will survive. Behind the Green Door will be around in twenty years when a lot of what we make now won't be. And Misty Beethoven. But video is disposable, like comic books. Stuff only for collectors. The major carriers [shops] of X-rated videos are cutting back. It is a phenomenon in decline. The Industry has no one to blame but itself. By flooding the market with crappy products—unsophisticated, crude. And they don't value the people in the business who want to make them good. Is this [film just shown] as good as it can be, considering the amount of money, time, and equipment? Nina / 163

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Oh, yes. That's as good as we can do with the money they give us. They definitely got their money's worth. Can you do better than this? Sure, if we could write our own script. The biggest problem with this film is the script limitation. Hokey. Clumsy. A man's romantic idea of making a woman's script. Jim Holliday thinking he's being sweet and modern and evolved, when he's not. He can't have a relationship of equality with women, and so he is ultraromantic and mystified by them. Nina's saying that if we had control of the product, we could do better. But not a lot; we'd still be working inside the limitations of a certain number of [obligatory] sex scenes and a certain amount of time and money. Redo the script now [here; in your imagination]. Keep the reincarnation scene; that was Sharon's idea. Keep the [overall] idea, but choose different episodes. Not that saloon thing. That's such a male thing, that Wild West deal. Sharon wouldn't have gone for that. But she might have made me a man [in a reincarnation scene]. Choose different times and places for her [Nina's character] to be reincarnated. But keep Salem to make a point about women being persecuted for being sexual. That was part of our political agenda. That's the one scene we would have kept almost exactly as written. A fuck-for-your-life scene. I would have punched that harder. We could have chosen different historical times. Sharon and I batted around some ancient things and some medieval things. Periods more representative of what was in Sharon's head: Buddhist-era India, a Kamasutra thing. It's easy to think of all these clever things now. I also think we'd have made slightly different casting choices. And given ourselves more rehearsal time. I'd do it for free. Sharon and I did a lot of work for free. Falco did a lot of work for free. You did a lot of work for free. And Jane did. All of us invested love in this thing beyond the requirements of our jobs. Still, you're looking at as sophisticated a product as we can do. Deals come with attachments. He brought the deal. Joke: John Huston goes to Heaven. St. Peter meets him. "John, we've been waiting for you; God has decided to be a producer. He wants to make a picture, and we want you to direct it." "Please, I made sixty-eight pictures. I don't feel like doing this. Call my agent in two hundred years." And St. Peter said, "No. Wait till you hear the other attachments to the deal: Michelangelo designs the sets; an original score by Mozart; a spec script from William Shakespeare." And Huston says, "I can't say no. All right, all right, we'll make the picture." And St. Peter puts his arm around him and says, "Fine, John. Great. There's just one thing: God's got this girlfriend . . . " You make movies, there's attachments: someone's girlfriend, someone's buddy. These problems can never be fully eliminated. The issue of control. Distribution is the real problem. Total vertical integration: the same companies that make these things distribute them. Budgets are going down. You have T making seven pictures for $50,000, a guy with the strongest reputation as a director. He's now doing pictures on budgets of $7,000, including his fee. He puts $2,000 in his pocket and shoots the picture for $5,000. So he doesn't call me. I'd laugh in his face at what he could pay me.

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You*re not going to come down here to shoot one scene for $150. How many do you do a month? It varies. In seven years I've done about two hundred and fifty. In the beginning I was working all the time, then it was two or three a month, and then it may be [every] two months. I'm not working at the pace I used to. However, I'm still No. 2 in terms of volume produced. Who is No. 1? Mitch. Sharon Mitchell's No. 1, I'm No. 2, and Sharon Kane is right up there under me. They've been in the business thirteen years. They have film [versus video] under their belt. I've had very little film and no leads in film. For permanence, you need film. Do you get used up? Apparently not. If you have the wrong mental attitude, yes, you do. I'm lucky. A lot of people, their lives are pretty empty. After a while the animal sex loses its appeal. They have no one to go home to, and they're desperate for love and intimacy and connection, which they weren't that good at to begin with. This business has really skewed their ability to bond with people in a mating situation. I couldn't have been in this business if I hadn't had a mate (I have two)1 and a firm home base. But it is even difficult for people with committed relationships. You have a partner who wants to be understanding but who has not had your experience: they don't understand that after a day of exhausting and sometimes painful sex, you may not feel like coming home and being erotic with your primary partner. It is difficult for that person to accept that they have lost their turn because that "turn" went to somebody at work. Right. It can be real draining. You want to come home, you want a bottle of beer and [to] watch TV and just [makes noise of relaxed collapse]. Especially after working with that young girl, they [the men] go home, they're fried. And then to have "kitchy kitchy koo" in your ear is "yuck." After a while you're pumping away for the sake of pumping: "It's my third day of work. Oh, shit." Even with the support at home, I'd think you'd get used up. For me it's fine because . . . Yes, you do get used up. I have a mission, I don't know what, but I have tremendous mental energy and staying power. I come on each set as a nurse [previous profession], as a nurturing-healing person. That's the message I want to get across every time I'm on camera. If it is just a really dumb day at work, I have a less-than-inspired performance. I've had scenes that were a bit mechanical: "I better take time off because if I have to deal with one other dumb director, I'm going to scream." I admire your ability to pursue an agenda in your work. I tried that with the bondage thing, but the Industry defeated my agenda. I could not put my way over theirs. I ended up doing the pictures they wanted. Half the time I end up doing that too. I was trying to get a little subversion in there. I presume that you have a better capacity to feel erotic sensations than some other woman might. If you didn't have that, could you survive? It would be more difficult. It goes back to seventies New Age stuff and massage and teaching myself that pleasurable sensations are okay, neither good nor bad, just whether it feels good or not. While I've never been whipped, I can see why flagella1.

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tion would feel pretty good on my skin. That started when I read some porno: "He twisted her nipples like the knob on a radio." I was going, "Oooh" and "Eeeeck, what a rude bastard." And then I twisted my nipples like a knob on a radio; it felt fucking good. There you go. You willing to try something or not? I tell guys if they don't know what to do with my nipples, pretend they're spitballs. Then they know exactly what to do. A fabulous sensation. Now, I am not that orgasmic, not that horny, like "I've got to get laid today." I'm attuned to sex at all times: to talk about it, listen to it, fantasize about it, reminisce, theorize, and otherwise have it the topic of conversation. However, I could go a week without an orgasm and not mind very much. My husband thinks I sublimate it all out. Maybe. If it's not actually happening, I don't often seek it out. However, if I'm in the right state, you can get me in the mood pretty quick because I basically like it. Some women in the business are more truly horny. They have a high physical sex drive. And some don't like it at all. A lot of these women, partly because of their age, cannot, do not, will not ... RJS "Age" meaning too young? 1SL and Nina [Together.] Too young. Nina I was a very bad fuck at eighteen, scared, inexperienced, clumsy, nervous. I had trepidation. You had to talk me into it. You had to do a lot of petting and a lot of foreplay before I'd relax enough so you could get your hands between my legs. I had no business being on screen. Fantasy wise, I was already making movies, but if you had put a camera in front of me, I would have run screaming from the room and never come back. So a lot of these women on the screen are not active participants. They are dissociated from their bodies. Pretty distressing. Very degrading for them. Those are the women who leave [the Industry] later and go, "Yeah, this business was terrible." They take no responsibility for their actions or where they are in life. I can see how they would believe that they were degraded and taken advantage of. But ten years from now, she'll look back and go, "We had fucked-up performances. But we fucked. . ." ISL It's always easier to see yourself as a victim than to see yourself as being responsible. No one is drafted into this business. In fact, there's lots of people always trying to get in. Nina I go back and forth. When Dworkin said all women are brainwashed, I know what she means. But I see men as much the victims of our patriarchal system as women. "You may run the country, but we have pussies." If we say no, that's rape. Women can use sex for power, to hurt men, and men can abuse women. So what's truly consensual? A part of me goes, "You dumb bimbo, what the fuck are you doing? Go home, get a life, get a job, don't come back." And I get angry at the business for blatantly taking advantage of someone young and stupid who wants to try something new. On the other hand, no one is drafting them. "You can say no; you didn't have to come to Jim South's office, you could have done something else." ISl On the contrary, it's "wait in line to get in." You have to fight for it [the opportunity] if you want to do it. Nina I'm conflicted about it. Their acculturation may be that their only worth is the way they look: the feminist concept that we're only judged by the way we look. That's wrong. I work hard on my body, and it's okay to feel sexy and attractive and to want people to look at you, as long as you're aware of the situation. Two sides to everything. 166 / Nina

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And the issue I raised in my Introduction [chap. 2]. What are they [the women] going to do instead that is more dignified and less degrading? We're not dealing here with the well-educated products of upper-middle-class homes but mostly with socially marginal people with little to look forward to. If they were in some other business, they could look forward to earning less under conditions not a lot better. It's easy for someone with a degree from Berkeley to say that a thirteen-year-old girl in East Oakland should not be hooking. Nina Ah, come on, America is a classless society! ISL That's right. You can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. ISL and Nina [Simultaneously.] If you've got boots. ISL The argument [expressed earlier on determinism and free will] whether or not we do what we do because we were abused as children. Maybe so. Maybe not. But we're adults now. Whatever early formative experiences lend themselves to what we do later, we ultimately still make choices as adults to do what we do. Nina You believe in free will? ISL Exactly. A little bit; I believe that much in it [an inch between thumb and forefinger]. Nina "If you've got lemons, make lemonade." I try to make everything a learning experience: if I have a lousy experience, okay, what have I learned? But for someone who dropped out of sixth grade, that concept of the world isn't there. She does become the total victim with no choice but to hook on the street. As I tell feminists, until you start a homeless shelter and daycare clinic, your words about us being exploited ring hollow. What are you doing to help us not do this? ISL Let's face it: the feminists who make these arguments don't give a fuck whether the women in this business are exploited; they don't care if they're drawn and quartered. They think that women who do this are foul, degraded creatures. Even as victims, they are not their taste in victims. They're corrupted, evil, dirty victims. Not "our kind of victim." That is the real issue here. They don't like the way we portray sex [each word emphasized]. Nina "So make your own [porn]!" Make something else. Candida [Royale: producerdirector of porn for women] is putting her money where her mouth is. Her vision doesn't turn me on, but "God, I'm glad you're doing it!" I talk mainly to white middle-class feminists, who don't understand exhibitionism. They do not understand that some women with options like doing this. I don't have to do this. I have a nursing degree; I can make a decent living working in a hospital. For a long time I felt sorry for women who had to wear makeup, with their teased hair, their high heels, and their floaty clothes, who always needed a man's approval for their self-worth. / didn't need that. On the other hand, I had exhibitionistic fantasies. I just did it in different places than they did. Taking care of my physical safety was a priority. That's why I started stripping. Feminists don't understand sexual exhibitionism, a self-respecting woman enjoying being naked and pretty. "Man is the enemy, and we're the victim." In terms of philosophy, we're both [men and women] fucking victimized. I grew up believing—hearing—that most men, if they could rape you, probably would. These women are coming from that background. So, personal vendettas. Dworkin is a prime example of a woman on a vendetta because no one asked her to the prom. ISL It's much grimmer than that, if you've read her history. In a self-fulfilling way, she found guys who lived down to her expectations. Her argument is that she was acculturated, conditioned to make herself a victim. Which is convenient because then she Nina / 147

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doesn't have to take responsibility for her decisions. The provocations were substantial. But again, I know people who have had bad experiences, and that's not how they reacted to it. I don't believe, "Well, she wore short skirts; she asked for it" [a judge's recent decision], but your appearance does create reactions in people. If I wear a miniskirt next to a construction crew, I better expect hooting and hollering, "Hey, Baby!" That's no problem. The problem is: I don't care how much my dress provokes you, my body is my body, and you can't dip into it. Geography and class are more likely precipitating factors than dressing sexily. One big factor about my being in the sex business is my early access to sexually explicit material, in sexually titillating material and pre-1950 sex education books for married people: penis, clitoris, urethra, labia. With pictures. I've been reading about sex since I was eleven; I've always been fascinated with it. I had the same experience. And looking and looking and looking at classical paintings and sculptures. Tve never lost my fascination for naked people. I prefer women who look like those old paintings to the modern look. And then my truly American upbringing with TV, movies, Playboy. The feminist in me goes, UI hate to see some of that stuff validated." After being in the business [seven] years, at a certain level it is hard to defend it. [Though] sex films are defensible, the feminists [rightly] want the motherfuckers out: I'm tired of these guys hiring women who have no business being there and not caring about the performers as people. That's why I give the feminists points. But I'll debate with certain women on whether it's okay or not to show a penis and a vagina in contact. They're living ten years ago. You and I agree that while the product is not immoral [and does not do] great social harm, the business is not nice and not good for the people in it. But should it be destroyed? No. It should be regulated better. But the battle is over. The social consensus is in favor of more license for heterosexual conduct of all types, a permanent development, I think. I think political haranguing will help: they bust someone, harass them, and strip them financially because of the obscenity laws, which are based on prejudice: antiwoman and antisexual. With all the medical knowledge that we have about sexuality, how can those laws still be considered reasonable and modern? When we were making that picture, I thought, "This is the first of a kind, the brave new world of porno." I even said this in an interview on TV. How quickly we can eat our words: now I fear we are looking at the last, not the first.

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12 The Main Event: Here, without Doubt... : Randy

Trying to describe Randy Spears, the words that come to mind are enigmatic and, quite literally, elusive. It took months of inconclusive phone calls and missed appointments before I finally caught up with him in the parking lot outside a small sound stage deep in the San Fernando Valley. He had just finished a long day of shooting and was anxious to head for his home in the South Bay where his wife, expecting their child any day, was waiting. Nonetheless, with typical affability, he found an hour or so to recollect with me his experiences working on Stairway and to offer a rare overview of the X-rated Industry from a male performer's point of view. His chiseled good looks softened a bit by the twinkle of merry mischief in his eye, Randy's evident modesty and sincerity are disarming. But, as Nina suggests, there is some part of him that remains private and remote. Unlike most X-rated players, Randy has genuine acting talents of considerable range. Whether playing a heartless, coldly sexual yuppie (as in his literally incendiary performance with Sharon Kane in Henri Pac hard's Pyromaniac) or chewing up the scenery in a comic turn as a boastful drugstore gunslinger in Stairway's saloon sequence, Randy has a casual way of tucking a scene under his arm and walking off with it. With all his gifts and graces, he, a bit like Sharon, seems to have wandered into the adult video industry from some more evolved planet. There was, however, one illuminating moment on Sharon's shoot that hinted at the satisfactions Randy may derive from his unquestioned stellar status in the X business. His character, Rainwater, was attempting to clarify his role in the spirit world to Nina's befogged Susan Moore. Listing all the things he wasn't (an angel, a devil, a god, etc.), he turned to the camera during a line rehearsal and, with a hint of a grin, said, "but I am a woodsman." We sat on a curb with a tiny tape recorder between us and talked. Reading the transcript of our interview, which took place in November 1991,1 cannot help missIt»

ing Dr. Stoller's incisive questioning. He would surely have gotten an answer to the question that, in retrospect, seems to me the most intriguing. What, if any, regrets does Randy have about the decisions he has made?—ISL ISL How did you come to be in the business in the first place? Randy I was a semisuccessful working actor in Hollywood and making a living, and the writers' strike hit so I started scrambling like everyone else. And I went on a modeling assignment, and I met a woman, a dark-haired woman, an older woman, a beautiful woman—Ona Zee ended up being her name—and she asked me if I would like to do some adult films. Knowing my libido, I said, "Sure, I'd like to try it." And I did one, and people liked me and began calling me. And it was a very interesting progression from there. ISL What was the first one like? What was it like doing this for the first time? Handy I was extremely excited and extremely nervous at the same time. I went through all the things a guy goes through and that's like, "Am I going to be able to get it up, or if I get it up too quick, they're going to shove me out of here," and there's an incredible excitement, something stirring inside of me that was "this is wrong to do, this is wrong to do." Of course, that had been drilled into my head, but it made it all the more exciting, it was wonderful. The first time was great! ISl Do you remember who you were with the first time? Randy It was Stephanie Rage. ISL That's a good start. Randy Yeah, it was. ISL What was the picture? Randy One of the Angela Barron pictures. There weren't many. It was one of those. I can't remember the title offhand. ISL That was like what year? Randy I've been doing this for four years. It must have been '87,1 guess. ISL How many pictures have you done? Randy I really don't know. Over a hundred. ISL How has this otherwise affected your career? Randy Well, my career—my straight career—came to a screeching halt once I realized that unfortunately those [potential straight employers] were the very people that are renting these tapes and keeping us in business here. But they don't like to know that their actors work in X. ISL You'd certainly get sterling references from Sharon's project. You more or less saved us from drowning in the saloon scene when things didn't go as planned. Randy Which does happen in this business. It does happen. ISL Uh-huh. So Jim approached you and asked you to stay, I believe. Randy Yes, he did. He said he wanted somebody with a reliable tool, so I hung on just to see if the scene was going to work or not. It didn't, so I lent some more of my ability. ISL Now this is your second scene of the day, right? Randy Yeah, that was No. 2. ISL I would assume that there would be some greater degree oC difficulty in doing the second than the first. Randy It's a little tougher as they go, for sure. When I first got in the business I was doing 170 / Randy

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three scenes in a day and thinking, "Oh, this is wonderful,'* and afterward I shifted myself down to one a day. And the person that you were doing the scene with in this particular case—Lee Caroll—did she make it easier? [Laugh.] Lee is so nutty and so wonderful. She's sexy in a lot of ways. I think she's got a great body. I like older women, and she's playing this brazen, loud-mouthed hussy and, you know, you kind of develop the attitude of, "Well, I'm going to stuff something in there for you." All in good fun. No, Lee was terrific and it was easy. I just walked right in and did it. You want to be able to deliver when somebody leans on you like that. It's like, okay, there's one minute left, you're on the twenty, the quarterback's down, get in there and throw the long one. When you throw a touchdown, everybody's happy. If you bungle it, then the game is suffering. Have you seen the picture since it's been cut? I've got to be honest and say I've not seen the entire picture. I had my hands on a copy and watched a little bit of it and somebody swiped it from me, one of the cameramen. That's typical. And I never got another copy. But I've read the reviews and talked to everybody, of course. What I saw was nice. Very nice. How do you feel when you watch yourself? Is it a strange feeling? Sometimes it is. I watch myself very critically. I'm aware that I'm watching my work. The sex: if it was a particularly hot scene, I'll tune into it just to check it out, but usually I watch for the acting. I study the camera moves, things like that. Sometimes I wish my choices had been different. A lot of the female performers, I notice, are very anxious about how they look onscreen. Are you conscious of your appearance when you watch these things? Sometimes, yes, but I guess I'm more aware of what the character is supposed to look like. If he's disheveled, then I'm happy being disheveled. But you're not worried about whether the camera is picking you up from your most flattering angle? No, I really don't care about that. Hopefully, they're not shooting up my nostrils or something. But no, that's movie making too. Everybody has bad angles. And I suppose if you make enough pictures you're going to see them all sooner or later. You'll see every angle. Yes. As a sometime-player myself, I can say there have been moments I have spent watching myself on video that I would rather have spent having gum surgery. Oh, yeah. The ever-popular root canal. I am sometimes very critical, thinking: "Do I really look like that? Oh, look how I'm sounding here." Everybody does that. It's interesting that we didn't have any problem at all getting the female performers to come in and talk, but most of the guys just don't seem to give interviews as often or as easily. I don't think we're as used to it. I mean, the only time that we get, I don't know, I guess, a real following that we're aware of is in the Vegas shows and things. When we're around Las Vegas and signing or something we find that we have our fans, too. We just don't get the press. Magazines don't usually call us trying to set up interviews. Unfortunately, the guys in this business haven't been able to enjoy popuRandy / 171

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larity and monetary rewards on a par with some of the women. I think we work equally hard, if not harder in some circumstances. It will be interesting for the readers of this book to know there is still a pay differential between the guys and the girls. On a fairly large scale at times, yeah. And the ever-popular pat answer to that is, well, you know, the people who rent videos only care about the girls, but it's not true. Tve had a lot of people come up to me and say some flattering things about my work and, "Yeah, we want to see beautiful people making love. Why do we want to see a beautiful girl and some scrawny kid from the playground?" It makes a difference. I have to believe it does. I don't think there's much question, especially since more and more of these tapes are rented by couples. Yes, of course. Nowadays, what the woman sees is nearly as important to the product as what the man sees. I would think so. The producers may eventually realize this, but perhaps not in our lifetime. Maybe some more women need to write [to] these companies and let them know what type of man they're looking for. That would really help. So people do sometimes recognize you? Yeah, once in a while I get recognized. And do they approach you directly and say, "I know you"? You know, it's interesting. I was in a club not too long ago having dinner [. . .] and a drink. One of the people I was with is also in the business, and we could hear these people at the next table saying, "I don't know, is it?" "It is him, I know it's him." "No." "Oh, that's her, I know that's her." You get that type ofthing. And then you get the people that will walk right up to you and say, "Randy Spears, as I live and breathe, I've got to shake your hand." And then you get the people who can't remember where they saw you. They just look at you and say, "I think I know you from somewhere. I can't picture it. Do you go to my health club?" You just kind of smirk and go, "Yeah, I know where you know me from." Have family and friends found out about your work? Yes. You know, everybody has family, and I'm no different. I grew up in the Midwest in a wonderful environment. And my mother and father were around. There were no tragedies to speak of that would send me into this arena. My parents found out first when I decided that I better call them about my boy-girl layout in Penthouse magazine. And it progressed from there. After that, they had a pretty good idea that I was doing X-rated work. Are they okay about it? Yeah. They just don't bring it up, and sometimes that can be the best way to handle it. You idly talk about it. They know what they need to know. I have the same understanding with my family. They know what I do in a general way, but it's not a favorite topic of discussion. Right, right. And I love them tremendously, and they all love me and the holidays are wonderful and there is no "black sheep" treatment or anything. I think they forget. When you go back home they get used to dealing with you as you.

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Randy Sure. The Prodigal Son. You're out there in the world and they're always welcoming and that's very nice. My family is terrine. ISL Returning to Sharon's project. Did you find there was some advantage in being directed by someone who had performing experience? Randy Oh, definitely. Definitely. I think some of the actors make the better directors. That can also backfire but, yes, with Sharon, indeed that was the case. Also Sharon and I were very good buddies before this was shot, so we were of like mind. Sharon and I discussed the script on many occasions. I was aware of what she was looking for. ISL You played your character, it seemed to me, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way. I think it's written that way. Randy Yes, it was. ISL I would think that would have contributed to the fun of doing this particular thing. Randy Absolutely, yeah. It was tongue-in-cheek. I kept a nonseriousness to it, I think. People can read into that whatever they want. If you give it to them one way and that's the only way, then they have no choice. The viewer has to have a choice. ISL Yeah, I thought that the comic tone of the acting helped the story over some of the rough spots. Randy Oh, yeah, it softened some of the hurdles. ISL This was a pretty big production compared to a lot of the things that we all work on. How would you compare the challenge of this kind of picture to that of the kind they do in one day? Randy Oh, I'll tell you, I could go off on that one. The one-day things—it's depressing to even put them in the same genre as film making of any kind. It is that bad. The product is bad, the people who are making [it] don't give a shit about anything but a couple of bucks. There is no comparison. Stairway was the kind of film that comes along once in a while. Everyone's excited about it. It's a big production. You're making good money. The sets are wonderful. The script is real heavy. It can't be compared to something done on a one-day basis. The only reason I would do a one-day thing would be because I had a hangover and I just needed to come in, do one scene, and go home. With Stairway, I felt like I was on a real film, and it's a neat feeling: comraderie. ISL This type of picture doesn't seem to be the trend in the Industry at the moment. Randy No, unfortunately it's not. The budgets are dropping, people are buying them [videos] for less and less money. They're just cutting each other's throat out there in the marketplace, and there's less and less money to be had. It's a shame. Stairway was exciting to shoot. Even though the days were long—and they were—the energy remained up, more so than any other film that I think I've worked on. ISL There was some real tension over the fate of the picture, which is unusual these days. Randy Exactly. But a little bit of tension is good on a set. That happens when you've got a lot of creative people in one spot. There was some friction on the set. I saw some downright anger going on. Like I said, you know, people have creative differences, and then the picture becomes utmost again and all that is set aside and people get back to work. That's how it happens. People say "I'm sorry" later. ISL I find there's a certain degree of tolerance you develop for everybody's little weird, idiosyncratic behaviors because it would be impossible to survive otherwise. It's like living in a small town. You have to work with these people again. Randy / 173

Randy It's interesting, too, because we are such a small family. Really, when you think about it, you see each other all the time. We're running into the same people, working with the same people, you know. If you get bad vibes going amongst enough of us, someone will suffer in the scene somewhere along the way. ISL Some people will wind up leaving the business if they can't get along with other people. Randy Exactly, which is what has happened. ISL Do you find that your social life comes to be also to some extent with people in the business? Randy I hang with the people in the business once in a while, sure. Mostly, I go right home to play Nintendo after I leave the set. [Laughter.] ISL As someone who's been involved in a fairly lengthy monogamous primary relationship, do you find that there's any crossover from work life into home life? Is it hard to square these things away sometimes? Randy Yes, sometimes it is. It's tough to shut all that out because there are so many emotions that we're dealing with on the set, whether it's digging deep to try and come up with something to spark you, to keep you active in a sex scene, or just lots of emotional duress. And going home and shutting that down is just like trying to shut down from any other high-stress job. There's a lot of pressure and anxiety to shake off. I go home and put my feet up and go "Whoa!" But the love of my life makes it so wonderful, my world is so wonderful now that I find it much easier than I used to. ISL So your partner's all right about your working? Randy Yeah, like I say, since we've started becoming serious, we work only together, and people are tolerant of that. You know, we'll do little things with others, but we basically try and stick with that. We like the monogamous-type life-style, believe it or not! We really do like it. ISL I think there's an incorrect perception on the part of the public that people in this business are just generally madly sexual people who go about doing off-screen what they do on-screen, and that has not been my experience. Randy Nor mine. I mean I've seen it, certainly, and also been a part of it, certainly. But that's not the norm by any means. ISL Maybe at first. Randy Yeah, you kind of get that out of your system, I think. That's kind of a little excitement thing that you go through in the beginning. ISL There's got to be a big rush at the beginning. Suddenly there's a whole new world of possibilities here. Randy Exactly, and it is, it is. But then you start to come back down to earth, and you get on with your life. Except for some people who stay like that, of course. ISL For most performers, there's the need for some kind of a regular life sooner or later. Randy There is for me. There definitely is for me. Like I said, I grew up in the Midwest, and I like the idea of being at home and mowing my grass, barbecueing, taking out the power tools to clean them, that kind of thing. My party days, I think, are basically over. I have other things to live for now. It is a dangerous time. ISL That must be a thought that enters your mind in terms of working, that there's a greater risk now than there ever was. Randy It has been weighing heavy on my mind since I got in the business. I've got to be honest. It stopped weighing heavy on my mind when I became monogamous; that's one of the reasons why we did it. Inevitably, God forbid, someone is going to pop up 174 / Randy

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with some sort of trouble. That's sad, but it's going to happen. I think it's only a matter of time, and I don't want to be a part of that. I feel very fortunate to have escaped it up to this point. With the influx of new people into the business, people whose private lives you don't know, the risks increase. They may be prim and proper on the set and handle it only as work, but then they may go out and do who-knowswhat? These are scary days we live in. I think some people in the business have that feeling of youthful immortality, you know: "It ain't going to happen to me." It's running rampant in the business. I think that there was far too much risk for far too long, and none of the producers gave a shit. I think the mandatory AIDS testing was long overdue. I was for it long ago. It's the only right thing to do, period. And it probably wouldn't bother you if they shot more safe sex scenes either. Not a bit, not a bit. For educational purposes alone, to be able to contribute to that for the rest of the world and the viewing public. To tell them that it's okay to put a condom on and go to bed with somebody. It's nice to be able to be a part of something constructive that way. The producers tell me that it's the performers who resist safer sex. Some do, to be honest, absolutely. I mean some guys will say, "I can't work with that thing." That's part of the reason why everyone has to have the AIDS test. It's very good that they [the producers] are keeping on it now. It's on file, and it's got to be updated. Like I say, it's only right. It's funny, when you sit down and you talk to one of the actors or actresses and you say, "Man, you've been doing this a long time. Don't you think about it?" If you look them right in the eye, every one of them will say, "You better believe I do." One shall remain nameless but known to us both, when I asked her if what she was hearing these days didn't make her more afraid, replied, "It's impossible for me to be more afraid." Yes. We push the envelope of fear, right. But why do you do it? Well, I'm not sure. I can't answer for everybody. You do get a little ego zip. In the big romantic scene you did with Nina, was there some momentary intimacy that was created while you did it, or were you just going through the motions well? In that particular scene Nina and I were totally connected, totally connected. I'm nuts about her; she's been nuts about me. We're the greatest of friends, and there were things on each other's bodies that we really liked. We just tapped into that and got romantic with it. It was wonderful. She just darn knows how to please a man. You know what I'm saying? And that's nice. It does make a difference. Not every performer in this business is oriented that way by any means. An amazing amount are not. They just do the minimum, or they're more concerned about their hair, how they're looking or their particular performance than they are about how the whole thing is working. Exactly. And they could give a shit whether the guy is feeling good or not, good enough to get a hard-on or whatever. That's your job. Yeah, yeah. That's my job. That's their view. Somebody like Nina would get right down there and say, "Let me help you, honey," and that makes it a pleasure. Randy / I7S

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It seems like there's some visible chemistry in the way the scene plays. But on the other hand, if there wasn't any, if you were just having a good performing day, unless viewers really tuned in, they probably wouldn't be able to tell. Randy Probably not. There were times when Nina and I both were feeling a bit down in the past working together, for a variety of reasons, you know, working at 3:00 A.M., the last scene—"Come on, we're counting on you, we all want to go home, now come on"—where Nina and I have just gone through the professional motions, boom, boom, boom. [Snaps his fingers.] ISL It's interesting how these things can vary with a given performer from one day to the next. It's just like in your home life. Randy Right. ISL It's not the same every time just because it's the same person. Randy I don't swing from my jungle gym every evening, you know.

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13 The Main Event: Here, without Doubt... : Falco

Falco the editor is a natural moviemaker. Since he loves the medium, is smart, and knows how to learn, everyone in porn foresees a brilliant career for him beyond the conventions of X-rated films. We begin this chapter with an excerpt from a conversation between Ira and me a week before Falco comes in with Jim Holliday. (I let stand subjects Ira and I discuss that, though on the subject of producing porn, are not about Falco.)—RJS 151

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Falco edits for Rinse Dream: Rinse Dream, the director we all regard as the true auteur director. There's no comparison between Rinse's work and anyone else's. Others try to do what Rinse does. They can't. His classic first film was Night Dreams, one of the all-time great classics of porno, shot on film, visually elegant, interestingly conceived story, very intelligently written. Then came Café Flesh, a crossover picture that has played at midnight art houses for fifteen years. Shot on film. Brilliant. A porn picture, but very dark, futuristic, science fiction, eerie, disturbingly prescient. It posits a future in which a terrible, sexually transmitted plague has caused sex to be prohibited among the population at large except for a tiny percentage of immune individuals. Most have found work as entertainers, and some work in this place called "Café Flesh," where they do live sex acts while the plague-ridden, infected, prohibited, quarantined audience watches in despair. Dark, witty, grotesque, and very intelligently made. In light of what was to come out seven or eight years later [AIDS], Rinse had been visited by a vision of the future. That was the beginning of his career. Is he still working? Absolutely. He has crossed over and makes regular, low-budget features. He has one playing: Dr. Caligari, which received favorable critical notice. But he still makes the occasional porn film if the terms are right. He just, after ten years, shot Night Dreams Two and Three, even better than the original, although rather abrasive. 177

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They're dark, intelligent, but not always pleasant or pretty. Anyway, Rinse is terribly demanding about everything: costumes, sets, camera work. . . . How can he be? Does he get enough money to ... ? Yes, they give him more money than anybody. Do they make it back? Oh, yes, because his stuff is bought and viewed by all kinds of people. He has a cult following outside of the porn business. They make money on Rinse's movies, both Café Flesh and Night Dreams. These pictures have paid for themselves many times over. Rinse can write his own ticket. He gets five days instead of the usual one or two [for shooting]. His budgets are more than generous for X. Falco edits for him. That is as high a reference as any editor in this business could get. Because if there's anything that he's utterly particular about, it's the editing. His pictures have slambang editing. So for Falco to be good enough for Rinse, he's got to be mighty good indeed. Who does he use for performers? Does he dip into the same pool, or does he have . . . ? Yes, he does. He's very picky about how he directs them, too. He has a style that lends itself to the modest acting talents of the people he works with. He's not interested in emotion. Porn actors are physical performers. They're more like athletes than actors. They usually perform and move very nicely. What they usually can't do is deliver dialogue. So Rinse has wisely arranged his priorities to turn that to his advantage. I don't know how much performance art you've seen; performance art is a strange genre. I've tried not to see any. Performance art has much in common with porn in that it is bad acting more than anything else. Performance an equals bad theater. I was watching some highfalutin' thing we'd gussied up for a porn picture and thinking, "What we've really got here is bad acting masquerading as art, carefully staged artlessness." I often think that performance art is writers with no acting talent trying to render their own material so as to get them off the hook [for] their lack of acting ability. So the performance-art style-of-delivery dialogue is flat and declamatory with little expression. That's how they do it. They read their lines in a flat, didactic fashion. Rinse has performers deliver their lines like performance artists. Stand and deliver like Western Union. That overcomes the problem of having actors who can't act. He just has them stand there, face to each other or face to the camera, deliver the lines, do the physical business. You'll never get them to act. So he takes them from the usual talent pool. He chooses people for looks: if somehow their looks suit what he's trying to do, then the rest is okay. And he coaches them through the delivery of every line, every line delivered in the same flat way by every character. Sharon worked on Night Dreams Two. She came home from her first day of shooting, her hair slicked entirely back, rigid, pulled away from her face, and made up bright white, like Kabuki, dark, stark eye makeup. Like Medea. I said, "My God! Does the whole picture look like you?" "Worse!" When I saw the picture, it was true. All the actors and actresses made up the same way, hair pulled back, makeup completely black and white, like for black-and-white film. His taste is impeccable in choosing performers. And many strange, offbeat ideas for production design. He supervises all of that. He delivers the full product as a director. Right through the editing process, he sits in the editing booth with Falco.

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This is all a digression about why Falco is so admired. Two reasons. One, he's superb at what he does; the other, he is a hard-working, dedicated, likable guy. A great guy to work with. A lot of savvy. Very bright. Not afraid to stand up for what he believes yet willing to work hard with other people to get their vision realized. And he was extremely helpful and supportive of Sharon. He was hired on [for Stairway] originally to run the tape deck and to edit later, but he ended up serving as co-art director and unofficial adviser to Sharon and me and as assistant director of photography to Jane, a swing man on the whole team. It would have been very hard to make the picture we made without Falco's help. A gnomish, ironic guy, with a slightly cadaverous look, like he hasn't slept for years, a guy who lives in darkened editing bays and never sees the light of day. He says more funny things in an hour than most people will in a lifetime. As each new image came through the monitor, he had a quip. That young girl we had the problem with, he was the first to spot that developing trouble. When she refused to move, he slaps himself on the forehead, and he says, "My God! She's a Queen Lox! You've got to get her out of there!" I said, "How? What do you suggest?" "I don't know, man, but you've got to do something." The only thing I regret in this book is that we'll have to muffle the [unkind] remarks made by everybody. . . . Have you now seen the final-final? Once, yeah. How do you compare it to everything else in the X-rated business that you have seen? Better than 99 percent. I thought you gave it a B 4- once when I asked you that. I'm upgrading it. It's surprising how much better they get in the final editing, even without big changes. As far as video products are concerned [vs. films], it's about as good as they get. If we'd had a stronger story, it would have been a triple winner, as good as a Rinse Dream picture. Visually, if you play this picture with the sound off, you've got a picture that's as good as any sex video in recent years. And it upgrades from B+ to A- because, just in the months since it's been shot, the quality of the product in the marketplace has declined. It is not an A picture because the dialogue is uneven and the story is muddled. But we got a very good picture, better than almost anything around. And different. The other good products in the market now are mostly naturalistic. Most good directors in porn today are products of the NYU-style school of realistic film making. Not outrageous, fantasy pictures like this. They make gritty, down-and-dirty pictures, where the sex is integrated with a real-life situation. A picture by Henri Pachard that Sharon did, Pyromaniac, is ofthat genre, very good at that. It's about a woman who lives out in the suburbs, yuppie type, married to an obnoxious guy played by Randy Spears. He involves her in sexual games that she doesn't like, at the margins of consensual behavior. She's frustrated and put down, and finally she sets fire to the house, where they're having a big orgy. It's a more naturalistic treatment of the material. You can't compare a picture like that to a picture like this, except that both are quality work by people who care and know what they're doing. What about the earlier ones in the golden age, made on film? They were made on fifteen- and twenty-day shooting schedules, with budgets of three, four hundred thousand dollars. Falco / 179

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What are the greatest. . . typical . . . ? Behind the Green Door is probably the greatest porn film ever made. It has an excellent premise, a simple, strong premise that's wired into the fantasy lives of the audience. It's told from the point of view of a guy who, by one means or another, got invited to a secret, exclusive club in New York where everyone paid a great amount of money to sit in an audience and watch a young woman be abducted off the streets and multiply raped by a number of men and women. We see this happen on the screen. The victim was Marilyn Chambers in her first role, right off the Ivory Snow box. And she was absolutely beautiful. Marilyn is a really sexual person, in the way that a lot of early porn stars were. There was no Industry then, so they were people drawn to what was then an outlaw way of life that was being invented. Performers in those days were, overall, more unusual, bohemian, and deviant than today. Today they resemble ordinary sex-industry workers: prostitutes or dancers. She acts scared at the beginning, but as the on-stage performance unfolds in the club, she becomes enraptured and then crazed by the experience. In the final reel, she takes on five guys at once, does them all with the full force of her whole personality. At the very end, the guy who's telling the story makes off with her from the club, and they live happily ever after: we see them having blissful sex in private. If this does not appeal to the fantasy lives of much of the male audience, I cannot imagine what on earth would. So Behind the Green Door is one of the great classics. Night Dreams. Café Flesh. Both classics. Radley Metzger's The Opening of Misty Beethoven would certainly be on any list of greats. Then there were Gerry Damiano's pictures and some by Harold Lime that are still pretty powerful viewing today. And you've got to include the works of Alex DiRenzy, Bruce Seven, and Anthony Spinelli in there too. Why wouldn't somebody make a million-dollar [sex] picture, which in this day is not much? They do. My girlfriend's working on one now. You said that was an R. It will be an R. But it's a sex movie. A soft-core sex movie. So was 9 'h Weeks, so was Wild Orchid. There are a bunch of pictures in that category, basically sex movies. They are usually weak in their original theatrical runs. The producer has to wait to get his money back. Typically, the investor who comes in wanting to make a million-, two-million-dollar picture, as opposed to one who wants to make a ten- or twenty-million dollar picture, wants to see his money soon. He's not a bank. He owns a bunch of muffler shops and thought it would be fun to make a sexy movie. So he's put up his own money or his golfing buddies' money. It's hard for them to wait four, five, ten years to go into the black. It's just a question of dollars. Before the advent of the NO-17 rating, X-rated pictures couldn't be advertised in the Los Angeles Times. So they can make sexy movies for a mainstream audience, but they have to stay within the conventions of the rating system, or they won't be able to advertise their product. Does that make a difference? Makes a huge difference. If people don't know where it's playing, there's no way they're going to get to it. If there's no ad, they're not going to go see this picture. Hie main problem with selling a quality X-rated picture is how the hell do you promote it? Also, a lot of theaters won't play them. Whole chains won't play them. If

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it's one of Rinse Dream's pictures, then you can get placement in independents and art houses, places like that. I'll bet that Dr. Caligari is playing on about twenty screens nationwide, thirty screens maybe, and uninterruptedly in some for a year. So by now, I'm sure they've made their money back and then some. But somebody had to sit there, patiently waiting, drumming his fingers on the desk, waiting for those checks to roll in, $100 here, $75 there. There's a huge market for quality soft-core in Europe that coexists with the hard-core market. The audience here just hasn't caught up yet. Until it does, high-ticket erotic movies will remain a rarity.

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A week later, Falco comes in with Jim Holliday. I'm just going to sit here and keep my mouth shut. That's not possible. You watch me! Before you begin, just let me say one thing. Because I am going to shut up. I'm here . . . I don't want you to shut up ... I'm here to keep him [Falco] awake. . . . Keep me in line. I don't need to be in Falco's chapter. Who's Falco? He's Falco. You're Falco? I am in this one [film]. He's Robert Zimmer, he's Sidney Falco, he's . . . he's going to be Rowdy Yates in a couple others. Why so many? It's certainly not a disguise. One disguise should be enough. No, when I work for different people, I change my name. Now that I've become a producer, I don't have a lot of separate names. That's Sidney Falco. That's the name of my company. Is Falco your real name? Jack Nash is my real name. [Joke: Jack Nash is Holliday.] I hear from my sources that you're a terrific editor. So I want you to describe your experience. How did you first hear [of the project], and how did you get connected toit? I can't remember the first time I heard that Stairway to Paradise was going to happen. I was [regularly] associated with Jane. And I knew Margold. Holliday knew who I was through Margold. I tried to introduce myself one time to Jim, in the middle of a speech at the [XRCO] awards ceremony. I didn't know I shouldn't go up and talk to him at this Hall of Fame induction. So I go, "Jim Holliday. Hi! I'm ... " He totally shined me, totally blew me off. I was dejected. So I called up Rinse, who [had] told me to introduce myself. "The guy's a total snob; he shined me!" Anyway, I was in with Jane. He introduced me. The day of the castings? Yeah. I'd been contacted about doing narration for some stuff that I knew wasn't going to fly. I wound up going to Adele Robbins's place. He's worked for a million years under the name Adele Robbins. He made movies like The Crawling Hand and The Slime People, horror B classics. I had known Falco. I don't remember shining him, but I remember Rinse saying 'That's not Jim. He wouldn't normally do it." But he must have caught me at the absolute wrong time. Falco /

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I had known Bill [Margold] through Adele Robbins. In fact, the first thing I ever did in porno was with Bill and Viper [Bill's lady]. I was working at a regular Hollywood sound house, never done a porno. I'd seen pornos but never . . . I was titillated by the idea. And Adele Robbins, who's a sixty-five-year-old crazy guy, comes in and asks me if I know how to edit video. "Sure, I know how to edit video." Actually, I lied. I had gone to video school, and I knew enough about video to bullshit my way in there. I talked fast and ... Anyway, the second day I go to Adele's. He'd just done a boy-boy movie, and the sound had been shit. I'd never seen homosexuals; I'd never seen butt-fucking in my life. That was the scariest thing I ever saw. He said, "I want you to lay down some moans and groans. I'm going to bring in some actors to do some ADR." I came from a sound background; so I knew what ADR was. RJS Which is? Falco Automated Dialogue Replacement: people look at a screen and they . . . RJS Dubbing? Falco Yeah. Looping. RJS Is that what looping means? Falco Yeah. RJS [Confused.] Maybe it was you [Jim] who told me about loops. Jim Oh, loops. . . . Loop is an eight-minute to fifteen-minute vignette. It may have story, some do, but basically it's just . . . It was the forerunner, the Model A [Ford] of fuck art. RJS I see. Looping is dubbing, which is ADR. Falco Yeah. So anyway, I'm very uncomfortable looking at this material. I've got to play this gay film for these cats [actors who will be dubbing]. I don't know who they are. So anyway, Margold and Viper walk in. And I'm sitting in a small room with three editor chairs. High. So I had a microphone already set up, you know, to do the "oohs" and "aahs" [sex sounds]. RJS They're to be the voices? They get a few bucks for doing this? Falco Yeah. So I go to put the microphone to their mouths. But I can't. . . . I'm very insecure looking at this movie. It's driving me crazy. I can't bear to watch. RJS Why do they have a man and a woman? Falco That's Adele Robbins. You figure that one out, that's an "Adele." So I put the microphone up to Bill and Viper's mouths so they can do their "oohs" and "aahs." I push "Start," and the guys on the video start sucking each other's dicks on the screen. And Viper goes, "Let's do it for real, Bill." I'm this innocent Jewish kid, never seen shit, and she reaches down and pulls out his dork. I mean, it's the size of a small sailboat. I don't know if you've ever seen . . . If you're aware of that, but he's got the largest penis I've ever seen and . . . So she starts to give him head . . . And I'm like, "Oh, my God!" I mean, I'm like an inch from this. And this microphone, I've got to place it right down there. And I can't look at the gay porn on the TV screen, and I can't look at Viper sucking Margold's dick. I'm just trapped between Margold, Viper, and a boy-boy film. It was a terrible first experience in porn for me, but. . . Anyway, so I survived that. Because of this trauma, I never went on location at that time. I was sheltered in my little editing room. Jim Then, through the association with Adele and through Rinse Dream, he'd been the assistant director on Rinse's film Dr. Caligari. Slaving away in the wilderness and sheltered, but through that and through being a tech for Anthony Spinelli: this is the Holliday method [to help someone learn the trade]. I talk to these people, and I find 182 / Falco

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out this boy's got talent and an aura or vibes [i.e., he's getting known and respected throughout the Industry]. Bill thinks he's a good kid, and yet this is different from Bill's standard good kid. This is a good kid with some real, pure talent! Some major, monumental talent. The genesis of the idea [foi* the film] came around August '89; November we went to see the people that backed it so we could make it for VGA. I said to Sharon, "I would like to use . . . I don't want to use . . . " Names aren't necessary. She'd had good rapport on the sets with Jane Waters. And I'd liked his work. What I liked about Falco is he had the enthusiasm. This is critical. Porn hacks just go through the motions. [I want] people that shoot this stuff to still care about sex and eroticism and capturing someone quivering on screen, rather than turning their head away and having a cigarette. "Yes, we'll get Jane Waters to shoot the thing, and we'll get Falco to tech it." By this time I knew him enough to shoot the shit with him. And I said to Sharon, "I'd like to use this guy Falco." [Sharon's response:] "I don't know him." The thing I liked about him, he kept the Holliday-lowprofile. But Rinse said all along: in the head was the mind of a minimogul. Let me back up. How old are you? Twenty-six. When I started to cut [edit], I didn't know anything. I'm sitting in a sound house where we're hanging 35-mm units. Go back to the very beginning. The first thing: how old are you, and what do you do? Did you go to film school or did you just . . . ? No, no. I went to a prep school. You want me to go that far back? Yeah. Virginia. That's where I grew up. I went to an Episcopalian school since I was four. Another rebel [attracted to making porn]. Is that correct, Jim? A fascinating thing the boy told me was he had a magnificent picture of twenty to thirty Confederate generals [rebels]: Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Nathan Bedford, all in it, that hung above his bed! I had that same picture until it was stolen. Why an Episcopalian prep school? Where I grew up, the public school system was not a place where they sent kids like me. There weren't many Jewish people where I grew up. We weren't religious. My mother, when I was a kid, took me to Unitarian churches. My father worked for the government and had no time for religion. My mother was a liberal Democrat involved in politics. It was close to Washington, D.C. A Kennedy neighborhood. It was melting-pot time. The public school was probably 85 percent black. She wanted to send me with the nice white kids, wear a suit and tie everyday, and pray to Jesus. So that's what I did, but I never bought into that. I mean, I learned a lot. I was accepted at Boston University. Within a month of my going there, my father got cancer and died. My first semester I was an A student, my second was F. I didn't care any more. I started into LSD and "The Grateful Dead." I immediately moved to California, lived in Los Angeles, and did nothing for three years. I had some money from my father: I burned that pretty quick! I took courses in film and writing but still not doing anything. Then a friend told me about this video technical school. So I signed up—student loans, a real rip-off joint. They nicked me for eight grand for a fourteen-month course. It taught me nothing about making video, but it taught me the language. So through knowing that littlest bit, I got a job at a sound house, 35-mm, which I had no knowledge of. So I learned where sound and images are combined on the tape, where probably 80 percent of Falco / 18)

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porn films are mixed. When I started working there—'85, '86—porn was dead as far as film, 35-mm, was concerned. I didn't do one porn film when I was there. I was there for about a year and a half. Then Adele walked in with a porn film. What did you do there? I was a "hanger." I took reels of sound mag, loaded them on big old machines, and did a mix. You take ten to twenty different sound tracks—voice, music, effects, footsteps, rumpling of clothes—and mix it together. It's a process of sync marks and loading. A monkey could do the job. Nothing creative. The mixer is the creator. And you're at the bottom of the pile, just a monkey. But I had learned tech stuff at this school: how to fix things, what a capacitor was, how to find a bad transistor. They were mixing these terrible, low-budget pictures and also some of the greats. These are all R's, not X's? Yeah. Nothing to do with Adult. By this time I had a basic knowledge of video, a basic knowledge of film, and here comes Adele Robbins and says to my employer, my friend I worked with, "Do you know anyone that edits video?" "Falco does." So Adele came to me. "Can you edit video?" "Sure." "Meet me in my office Monday. I've got seven poms to cut. I'll pay you fifteen hundred bucks for each of these things." Adele's an expert postproduction man. He knows everything about post and editing. His forte. Just great. So, through these seven pictures, he was able to teach me about editing. He loves to teach. His favorite thing. To this day, if I'm editing, he'll, you know, "Cut away there and make a double cut here." What's a "double cut"? Say I'm on your face, and I want a quick cut down to your crotch and then back to your face, that's double cutting back. Stretching it out if I need more time or want to pace it better. You know, you just . . . you use double cutting, so ... Anyway, you adjusted quickly following the Margold-Viper . . . Yeah, yeah. Demonstration. I was still titillated by the whole thing at this point. Adele had these movies with these incredible women in them. So I was having the time of my life cutting those seven movies. But I learned my stuff doing it. I wasn't there long before Anthony Spinelli walked in and Adele fixed me up with him to cut his pictures. Fifty or sixty features. In three, four years. Eighty-seven total. How long does it take you to cut a picture? Two days to two weeks. You have to understand that things have deteriorated greatly. These producers beat you down. You give them what they pay for. But what Jim told you about my enthusiasm . . . I still get enthusiastic over a quality project where I have creative input. I'll work all hours to do a good job. Even on the little ones. Anyway, at this time I still had never really been on a porn set. I just got better. Then Spinelli came down here [to L.A.] to shoot. They asked me to be their technical director on their sets. What's a technical director? With a two-camera shoot, you get two camera angles. It's very good to have someone coordinating your two cameras for you. Wouldn't Jane be doing that?

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Well, Jane's only on one camera. With a two-camera shoot you need someone in the middle. RJS Was this [Sharon's flick] a two-camera shoot? Falco No. It was a single-camera shoot, but Spinelli shoots two cameras. So I did those for a while. Then I did [for] Rinse Dream's Dr. Caligari; I was hired as assistant director. And Rinse kind of took me under his wing and started teaching me stuff. He loves to teach. He's really, really smart, really together on film making, really together in all aspects. He's a real joy to be with. He teaches more about editing, and [yet] he's never . . . He's edited his three pictures and that's it. That's how sharp he is. I've got much more time cutting than he ever did, but he's much better than I am. [. . .] Jim Another important thing: Falco is one of the few people in this business that shares a common musical ground with me. The influence of music on porn films can never be underestimated [sic]. So ... Falco Did he [RJS] see the rough cut of Stairway, with the music that me and Jim chose? Because that's our kind of shit! Sharon and Ira went tlirough the roof on that. They still haven't gotten over that Milli Vanilli thing [fraud]. Jim The music that wound up in there [final cut], all the chimes and all that. If Falco and I were in charge of the music, we'd take half of what we got, with the chimes and all that stuff, and we'd take certain songs that. . . Falco In the western sequence, for instance, they turned it into a joke; they should have gone straight with that. I don't know why they went with that vibe. A big mistake. RJS You're talking about the music? Jim The music. And he had put under there Marty Robbins's song Big Iron. . . . Jim That had an edge to it. Like, here's this older woman with Jesse James: the blow job. Put some tension there. I don't know why they did that. But most of the music was great. But anyway . . . Falco's like I am. A bit farther out. He's a let's-get-it-donethis-isn't-/fam/if, let's-not-dick-around, move-move-move guy. Only additional years on my part [mean] that I'm a little mellower and try and calm him down. Falco I get real intense. When we're shooting, I go into a whole other level. The pressure. The clock. "You guys are wasting time talking. Let's go. Let's do it. What are you on the set doing besides . . . " RJS This is now [you] as the tech? Falco Well, I took liberties . . . [that] protocolwise I shouldn't. I got way involved in this picture from the start. Between me and Jim, we encouraged production meetings, we made them happen. I had a lot to do with making little things happen before the thing ever got shot. So by the time we got to the shoot, I wasn't saying, "Do this shot" or ... But when it comes to creating, I let Sharon and Jane do all that. I was more keeping everything on track: "I don't need this. We don't need that. We're okay. I need that again." I didn't think Sharon had the experience to know she was covered on a lot of things. RJS What's the difference between what you're describing and what an A.D. does? Falco An A.D.'s job is to keep everything moving, buffer the director from the rest of the set, coordinate everything behind the director, between the power and the crew. RJS It sounds sort of like what you're doing. Falco Well, to a point I'm . . . I communicated very well with Jane. Me and Jane have a wild relationship. We're very intent on the set. We go to another level with each Falco / IIS

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other. "Come on. Let's go . . . " You should hear some of the outtakes. "Let's go! Okay! Okay! We're doing it, Falco! All right!" We're going at it; it's really good stuff. When we're on, we're just moving together. And when we're off, boy! It's bad. Yelling at each other, going crazy, throwing things. But Jane's usually together with me, and I'm together with him. We've the same focus. It was very much a team effort, Stairway to Paradise, all the way. It wasn't like there was a captain of that ship. It was good that way. The movie looks really good. I'd come off Night Dreams right before that. Rinse shot that. Now, Rinse is a total opposite. He's captain of the ship. He leads. He dictates everything that goes on around him. He knew what he wanted: I would just do it. And then this situation [Stairway]. A lot of vacillating. Occasionally I'd scream, "Let's get it going!" But I'd usually go through Ira first, because that's protocol. He [Falco] was good at that. He was the producer's [Jim] man on the inside because the producer purposely stayed outside so he wouldn't interfere with Sharon's creativity. "Outside," you mean literally outside? Outside the stage. I spent most of the time outside making sure everything was running smooth . . . Yeah, Jim wasn't making his presence really known until: "I'm going to do [direct] that Reparata scene." The whole point: not to get in anybody's way as far as Sharon or ... That was the scene she was in [the only one where Sharon is a performer]. We'd set up ahead of time that I was going to direct. My natural inclination, like Falco's, is: if you're in charge, be the captain of the ship—even bad direction is better than no direction, why bother with "Do this. No, do this"?—And do it right. You know, there was a strange vibe when Holliday was going to direct. But we got it done. No, I don't know. What was that? Reparata? The final stairway scene. Jim's influence . . . There was five against one a lot of times, wasn't there? Not really. Not really? I thought so. Well, I was wondering if there was. I think there was. When we first sat down, Jim. How many pages was the script? If I hadn't been sandbagged, it would have been between forty and fifty pages. It was a heavy script, twelve, thirteen sex scenes, wasn't there? No. Only seven, maybe eight. No, Jim, there was more than that. No. No, there weren't. [There weren't.] A lot of characters got cut out and a lot of dialogue. When Sharon cut some of those characters she had wanted in the first place, I realized she was serious about cutting the script in half. I immediately panicked when I saw that script. But let me ask you, wasn't it funny as hell? Wasn't it workable? Yeah, but on a two-day shoot it was an impossible workload. Well, again, that's my mindset. If I've got him teching and I'm directing, I can get all that dialogue done, I won't put up with people clowning around. I'll let 'em blow up a couple of times if they blow a line and let 'em giggle, but bing, bing, bing. And

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if that doesn't work, then we just go to the-camera-on-somebody 's-face-and-get-thatline-out: we're going to jam that sucker through. Falco I was given certain liberties to do and say what I wanted. I was teching the shoot, doing sound levels and video levels. That's my job. Now, as far as ... Jim You were also the unit manager. RJS What's "video levels"? Falco Exposure, like on a camera. When I'm on the set, my main responsibility was recording the videotape. But when I'd see nothing was going on—a lame angle, or we'd got enough of something—I would say it. RJS Was that Jane not paying attention at that point, or Ira, or Sharon? Falco No. In fact, that's what happens on porn shoots. Shooting porn is like shooting a sporting event. It's like, "Okay, they start to fuck now. Let's go shoot it." The camera's got to go find an angle. It's a delicate balance. To balance between letting people go at it [without interference] and "Lift your leg a bit," without breaking their mood. Shooting a sex scene's tough. Especially when you want it to be really good. Because the human body, they [humans] want [by nature] to fuck like this . . . But no one wants to see 'em fuck like that. I don't. Ramming it like this, I can see the prick going inside the pussy. That's what you've got to see, and I want to see it. All the time. Because if I can't see it good, then I don't want to see it at all. I don't want to put lame-ass, half-hearted shots in it. It's pointless. You want to see the hard-core and see it good. In Stairway» we've got some real good hard-core, some graphic close-ups, which has a lot to do with the set. [For instance,] when we were designing sets, we were conscious of not having a couch. One scene, we had them fucking in a chair and then had them get up. We had Victoria up over him: we always [made sure we] had graphic positions. It's very hard to shoot when you get an arm here and a leg there. Cameramen have to be skillful enough to see, as it's going on, what it's going to look like and tell people, "Lift your leg; sit up straight." That's the cameraman's job. That's not my job. RJS What's your job that was different from Janet's] in regard to these positionings? Falco I don't think I ever said, "Jane, get her to lift her leg." Maybe I said, "Jane, get the hard-core a little better," or "lift a leg," or something like that occasionally. But he's good at that. Jane was on his dolly [intricate, wheeled apparatus for moving a camera smoothly]. So he was more concerned with movement than when you go handheld. We made him go handheld a couple times, but he stayed a lot on the dolly, which turned out fine. . . . I was in communication with him a lot. RJS But you're not just looking at the sound and the video, you're watching the action. Falco I'm watching the action as an editor, yeah. RJS And if you're going to pick up something that everyone else is ignoring, you're going to tell the right person right away. Falco I tell Jane, "I need some more soft-core." RJS He's the one you communicate with throughout, not Sharon, not Ira? Falco Well, Sharon . . . I'd say, "Sharon, we might need certain . . . " Sharon deferred to Jane in the sex scenes, let him go with them. "I want an anal finger," was the only thing I remember Sharon saying as far as the sexual direction. Jim I wanted about nineteen! Falco She might have discussed everything privately before the scene, but all I remember is that one big sexual direction: "I want an anal finger." Falco / 187

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You see, when Falco is teching, he's really looking. Some techs just wander around once [they know] the [exposure and sound] levels are clean and clear. He's looking at machinery and at the monitor, seeing what the home viewer is going to see. It's not like . . . our job is to watch this [as technicians], not gape like yahoos at the couple performing. So he did his job there. Yeah. I was in communication with Jane. I'd say, "We've got enough of that, let's g e t . . . ," you know, when we needed to go back and pick up a soft-core or something. For my tastes and I'm sure for Falco's, the pacing and timing didn't move crisply. For their sensibilities it was fine. So we deferred. No. It was already kicked back [relaxed]. Holliday had come in with a giant script we couldn't do in two days. And though it was trimmed down, I said, "You're never going to be able to do it, this is so much." To the end, I wanted to lose that conception scene. "If you can lose a scene, let's lose that one." All the way till it was shot, I was saying, "We're running out of time. Let's get rid ofthat one." I wasn't saying it to Jim, I was saying it to the director. My whole vibe is for time. Nothing creative. I came in a couple of times on the set: "Roll the tape," because . . . We were doing rehearsals and dolly moves [using up precious time]. Holliday'd come in. "Looks fine! Just roll the fucker!" The theory being that the cheapest thing on this whole deal is the tape cost. If you get a hell of a [great] move during a rehearsal, you might be able to use something. But Jane . . . Jane, if he's not doing a take, tends to be sloppy with his camera head [focus, iris setting, etc.]. He'll destroy it because he knows it's not a take. So I'd say, "Jim, I'll roll them if you want, but it's not something you can use." Because that's the way Jane . . . It was pointless. If it's not live, there's no reason . . . In the future [of porn filming], the dolly is dead because it's a highly coordinated thing: it's got the cameraman and the guy pushing it. And the dolly goes up and down: the dolly man's got to push him around. It has to be coordinated perfectly. What if you don't use a dolly? Then you stay with sticks and go handheld. That's the way 95 percent of these things are done anyway. And that's okay? It's adequate. The beauty: Stairway to Paradise. Looks beautiful. Particularly the scene between Nina and Randy at the end. That was all done in one move. Now to shoot that. . . Was that handheld? No! Dolly. How many hours of practice before you get there? They rehearse certain movements and then just go free-form. And what they blew [made a mistake on], I would not put it in. To punctuate a line of dialogue, you might, for dramatic effect, dolly in. That has to be right on the mark. Cameras moving, people moving, actors' moves to be coordinated, speak at the right moment, the framing's got to be perfect. It's tough. The line when Chi-Chi LaRue, the saloon girl, comes back in: "Gaa, Miss Emmaline, I can't find the godddammmmed gun!" You see her face in close-up, and then, without cutting . . . All you see is this face. You think this person is isolated,

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Standing in a corner. Suddenly the pullback move of the dolly that brings Miss Emmaline on one side and Jesse James on the other and then that whole elaborate master shot . . . Yeah, beautiful stuff. The standard technique is to just station the camera and shoot all three of them going through it, then stopping and then stationing the camera and getting each one of their lines, and you see then the edited project would be bing, bing, bing, master close-up, close-up for the shot. . . Very conventional. But for that particular scene, you think, "Is this project too good for America [the raincoaters who have no taste]?" It's going to be lost on them. They won't know how tough this is and how . . . No, they shouldn't know how tough it is, but they should somehow appreciate something without having a sense that you had to work your tail off to do it. Well, there are two schools of thought. I don't think they will, and I don't know whether they can. An intelligent person would say, 'There's something about that that's different than the standard way." That particular move is better, more intricate, than 98 percent of the stuff on the adult market, or the mainstream market for that matter. Even TV shows, soap operas, you can see a shot that isn't well composed. The other thing he [Falco] does, he can call one-shot composition. "That looks pretty ugly, Jane. Try to do something . . . !" That's Jane's job? Sure: he's the director of photography. But I can call it. On another shoot, the cameraman would say, "Get our roles right. You're the technician. Shut up." Yeah, you know . . . Is that Sharon's gift, that everyone works as a team? Yes. Sharon, being very cosmic [New Age], kept voices from being raised and kept tempers from reaching the boiling point: "Let's help sweet Sharon with her first project." Everyone in their own way did something significant to cover Sharon's ass. She allowed it? She needed it. She expected it. She had no ego problem with it. She wasn't timid . . . She seemed . . . Gentle? I don't think "gentle." She ... [There was an attitude of] "We are all in this together." The first day was a little shaky, but by the end of the shoot she had her feet wet and everything was fine. And I think, as we speak right now, we're gearing for another one. It is a go. The magic man came through. The same gang doing the ... I want a lot of the same gang, yeah. Only this time, everyone's role will be clearly defined so that nobody gets pissed at any encroachment. And [for] this one, we don't need a dolly because it's going to be my kind of film. From the gitgo, she wants this to be lightweight, fluff, the "Candide" concept revised, retooled, and reworked. Let's get into [Falco's] meeting Sharon: a cute story. He'd been pushing me, in his nice little way: "When am I going to meet Sharon? Let me meet her." I wanted to talk to her, because I was pretty enthusiastic about it [the project]. Falco was verbally signed up with me even before we finalized the deal [finances]. It Falco / 119

was supposed to happen in December, but schedules got screwy. Falco met her for the first time in Las Vegas in January at the [Consumer Electronics] Show, perhaps the most inopportune time of all. Falco She was talking to the guard. I introduced myself. "Hi, Sharon, I'm Falco." She goes, "Hi, I've just had my purse stolen." Jim I was going to give him the big intro because here is the person Tve handpicked to be the tech. And she doesn't know him from Adam, and it's one of these, "Sharon, you've got to trust me on this guy." Falco and his girlfriend are outside where you've got to have all these little badges. At that moment, Sharon was talking to the guard. Five minutes earlier, Sharon had been doing a banana [looking pretty, signing autographs, being a star] at someone's booth [display of porn products], and her purse with all her money and all her identification had been stolen. So she meets Falco right when she's crushed. But [later] at the production meetings, as I knew would happen, Sharon fell in love with Falco. RJS Why were you excited about meeting Sharon? Falco I was excited about the project. Excited about contributing to a production, doing my thing. I was gaining confidence in what I do. You have to understand: trapped in a room with TV sets, and the only person that ever comments about my work is the director when I show it to him, ninety minutes of hard work. Then it's gone and it's on to the next one. But once I started to get out [onto the sets] with people, I saw I could do a good job. After Stairway, I started to work with a lot of other people. RJS Okay, it's twelve o'clock [midnight], and Randy has come through. What do you do now? Falco You mean at wrap time? RJS Yeah. Jim It was one o'clock; we were ready to go into golden time. RJS I thought twelve o'clock was golden time, but I ... It's wrap time. What do you do? Jim Oh, that's another thing Falco did for me. He established rapport with the stage manager where we shot. And Falco helped knock a few bucks off the price. Falco I was involved in a lot of that production: getting dollies with Jane, his camera package. We coordinated everything together. Renting equipment. Props. Places I knew about and told Sugar and Sharon to go to and pick stuff out. They used Adele Robbins's accounts. I was very much a part of the preproduction. Jim Which is why we paid him handsomely. Falco Yeah. RJS How long before you're a director? Falco I already directed something. I never want to do it again. I want to be a producer, to coordinate all facets of the production: payment, scheduling, renting, that kind of thing. RJS That's not a line producer? Falco That's exactly what a line producer is. RJS You want to be a line producer or producer? Falco In this stage of the [porn] game, there's only one producer, who does everything. Jim In Hollywood, a line producer's a flunky, their boy on location to make sure the catering truck shows up. The producer's the fat cat with the cigar in the Hollywood office saying, "You do this, you do that, you do this." 190 / Falco

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But in the porn business, it's not a fat cat with a cigar and a great big office. No, no. [Instead,] you have to go see Jim South, the agent. Maybe you [Falco] were meaning a producer in Hollywood? Sure. Not producer in porn? I already do that. That's what I thought. I thought you're heading for big things in your mind, and that's why I asked where you're going. They'll take you even though you've got this terrible, notorious past? Falco I don't know. I d o n ' t . . . If that is a problem, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm on the outside anyway. I'm going to produce Café Flesh Two. RJS What's your mother make of it? Her boy is a Jewish Episcopalian . . . Falco Her boy . . . He does rock videos and documentaries. I had to lie to my mother. RJS You're not going to show up, then, in this book with your real name? . . . Your mother knows only that you're making your way through the Hollywood jungle? Falco I would rather keep it that way. RJS Do you have siblings? Falco Yeah. RJS Do they know? Falco No. RJS Are they going to know? Falco They suspect. I have a cousin that's like my brother. He knows, and I think he told . . . He told. RJS Siblings'11 know. Siblings want to know, and the parents don't want to know. Falco I told my mother I do a lot of documentaries. "Oh," she goes, "What are you in, in documentaries? Is it video, is it porn?" RJS She said that?! Falco Yeah. RJS She knows! There's just no way that your family doesn't know. But it's nice to keep i t . . . Falco Low key. I don't think they . . . Jim I find that fascinating. Sharon's mother doesn't know either. RJS A certain number of parents don't want to know. Jim But suspect. It's the same thing. I'm blown away by that concept. I have to conclude [that] his mother and Sharon's mother both know. Why isn't there any communication? I don't have that problem. RJS You might if your parents had known. Jim Yeah, but then it would have been, "I'm making fuck films." Falco It's embarrassing. It's tough. If she had flat out asked me, I wouldn't lie to her. . . . Jim Now that he's this producer and budding, big minimogul, when [in the future] I'm involved in something, I want him teching the thing. I don't want some rummy pal of his, who's liable to go on a three-day bender the night before the shoot. So to get Falco to tech, yes, I'll throw in other stuff to pique his interest. But sooner or later he'll do what I did: "Why the hell am I going to work for the mail-order people? I'd rather be autographing my books and stop doing shit I don't like to do." Falco Yeah. I just don't want to be a tech any more. I turn those jobs down. It's not worth it. Falco / 191

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But the key thing is he's the tech editor, and he has all the leeway in the world. In postproduction, S. Falco and Abigail Beecher function as well as I've seen a project function. That's what I want to get to: it's wrap-up time. Is there anything in that [situation] I [the book] should know about? I was responsible for returning every piece of equipment. Jane is not? No. Show up, shoot, and split. That's protocol. The cameraman puts down his camera and goes home. He called the next day and made sure everything was returned. I went out and bought a couple of cases of beer for the crew. Everybody grabbed one, pounded it down, and split. There was no party, because there was no time. Plus everybody there was on the frigging program [A.A.] anyway, Holliday, it's like you know . . . Yeah, that's true! I hadn't had anything to drink in so long, I figured, what the hell? I had half a can of beer and poured the rest out. No time. I had to take Lee Carol! home. The last thing I did was carry Lee Caroll's bag to the car, her big old gnarly suitcase. And she was pissed. At what? Well . . . The guy couldn't get it up. She was chasing this kid, Jeff James, around, and then she was wicked pissed because time was short, and she's probably been giving legendary blow jobs since F.D.R. was president. What was she angry about? She didn't get fucked. No, no, she said in her Brooklynese: "My fans. I didn't get a chance to do my thing. I didn't get a chance to do my thing!" Meaning what: supposed to blow a guy . . . ? No. She has a routine where she says: "Fuck. Fuck me, you asshole! Come on, fuck my cunt! Come on!" That's Lee Caroll. In fact, there's a great story. I was on a shoot with Jane, with Lee Caroll; Mark Wallice is fucking her on the floor. I'm with Jane. It's the first time I've met Jane, and the camera cable breaks. All we had was this six-foot cable, which means I had to put the deck on my back, put the headphones on, and move around with the camera. Lee Caroll's on the ground: "Fuck me, you asshole, fuck me!" Suddenly she starts looking at me, going, "Come on, asshole, fuck me!" Wallice is pounding her, and the camera's not on her, and she keeps looking at me. Why you? Because Jane's down here getting the hard-core, and she's looking at me while she's getting fucked. She's into it: "Fuck me, you asshole! Come on my tits! Come all over my tits!" And Wallice gets up and turns around, and she's covered with jizz. And she gets up off the floor and grabs me by the scruff of the neck and says to me: "You're next, asshole!" Ahhh . . . I ran. I was scared! That's Lee Caroll. That's crazy Lee. Is she serious about it, or is she humorous when she's doing this?

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No. That's her schlick, right out of The Exorcist. Anyway, I was carrying her bag out, and she's going, "I'm going to disappoint all my fans, they want me to yell and scream. I didn't get a chance to do my thing." We were so pressed for time, we'd had... They'd been playing grabass all day. "They" is the guy who failed? The guy . . . The crew was alert to the fact [that] Lee was on this project because Sharon envisioned her in the Mae West role. Then she [Lee] was in San Francisco dancing, and ... This is the pain-in-the-ass thing a producer has to do. She and I must have talked long distance eight times, and she kept telling me where she's going to be, and I said, "Lee, I understand: you can't be on the shoot. Hey, next time, no big thing; we'll find somebody." Then she called and said, "I can make it. Make these arrangements." She went [in]to elaborate mind-games and schemes and flat out conning people (she was supposed to dance in the Midwest), and she got on our project. We picked her up [at the airport], bedded her down that night, and she was on the set the whole day—they were scheduled last—which g o t . . . Because she's so hyper to begin with. Now, this kid has got his reputation about not being able to get it up. They're in the back fooling around, and she's got him rock hard, and she's chasing him around, like, "Come here, sonny! I'm going to fuck the shit out of you!" And he's rock hard. He was behind my tech station a lot, being the real macho stud, telling me what a virile man he is. I don't know how many male porn stars you've talked to: the guys that get it up are very slick about it. It's a whole mindset. There's only five or six of them that can do it, but they don't talk about what studs they are. And they can be concentrating on the most varied subjects in the world. Yeah, like thinking about little boys tied up in closets! Probably something disgusting, but who knows? How many times can they have [screw] these little bimbos . . . day after day: they've got to have sheep fantasies. Anyway, those guys are never macho. So I always know, when a guy starts bragging, we're in trouble. As a producer, you go into South's [agency] and you meet new guys. You ask them if they can get it up. "Sure! No problem! Sure!" You know you're finished. You don't want those guys around. The guys who can get it up are real cool. They're just cool. By four or five [P.M.], Holliday's intuition told him that this guy was going to fucking bust. We even scheduled it as the last shot of the shoot, just to cover our ass. So the blow job was a real disappointment. We didn't get the coverage that we should have gotten. It was so late, and we only did one angle and not a very good one. Because she had the most enormous tits I've ever seen. We didn't feature her tits. What saved the scene was the demented look in her eye. Yeah. She gives legendary blow jobs. She's the legendary cocksucker—right? So Jeff couldn't get it up, and we were on the brink of disaster when Randy took over and saved the day. [Like the Stuntmen in straight movies who take over the dangerous assignment from the star.] Randy is beautiful to photograph. When does editing start? Well, it varies. The good thing about a company like VGA is that they have planned their releasing schedule for six months to a year in advance sometimes. They don't Falco / 193

care [no rush], because it's not scheduled to be released, it's . . . They're not concerned with it. So, now [December 1990], it's just been released. Jim And we handed in the finished product in mid-July. RJS How long does it take? and what do you do? Describe the editing process. falco The first thing: Holliday had logged all the tape, had written down where everything was. RJS What does that mean specifically? Falco Saying what scene number's on what reel. RJS You were doing that as the film was being filmed, or ... ? Falco No. After we wrapped, Holliday took all the dailies over to VGA, and they took the three-quarter-inch masters and transferred them to half-inch frames so you could watch them at home [in order to log them]. But I had not looked at anything until he'd done all this. Jim We had a rough idea; so it was never more than a few minutes off. . . . Maybe half a dozen in the entire editing process when we were in reel seven and should have been at the end of reel six. Falco Let me tell you something. Holliday did what no one ever does: he figured out how long he wanted the movie, each scene, to be. He set out my game plan for me. No one ever does that. RJS Why? Falco Because no one's concerned. Rinse is different. He's involved every step of the way. Anthony Spinelli or anyone else, they give it to me, and I just do it the way I want. They give me all the creative freedom to do anything I want with it. But Holliday was very much involved, I'll tell you. Jim To me it's important. I've just finished watching one of the best things of all of next year [Stairway]. I looked at it with a hypercritical eye because that's when Holliday quits being who I am and just becomes Joe-average-American thank-you-I'm-betterthan-anybody-in-the-world-at-this: I'm that woman in Florida, that guy in Iowa. "This scene right now is too long." Falco He's specific. He'll go, "This scene should not go over six minutes," and he's right. He was very precise. So if we wanted to come in at eighty-three minutes, or whatever it was . . . Jim We came in right on schedule: a couple minutes over, because I like to bathe the people [personnel] with the credits and give them a theme song at the beginning and the end. We only padded one scene; the girl-girl scene went to nine minutes from a regular seven. RJS How many hours would you say you spent on editing? Falco I really can't . . . It was over a three-week period, wasn't it, Jim? Jim Three weeks to a month. Falco I didn't do it in one sitting. I'd cut and say, "Come down and look at this," cut another scene and say, "Come down and look at this." RJS Always to him: "Come down and look at this"? Falco No. I would beg the director and the director of photography to come down and look at the stuff. RJS Would they? Falco Occasionally Sharon would come. Jim Sharon made it out there more than I thought she would. Falco But Jim would always come. Every couple days he'd stop in and see what I was doing. 194 / Falco

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What about Jane? Why was he not coming in? That's Jane. He didn't want to come down, but he's the first to criticize. I wanted him to look at it because I'm proud of it. I want everyone to see it. It's good stuff. How do you . . . You know. A lot of it's rhythm. A lot of it's just feel. It's just a natural . . . It's just the time to cut. You put up a shot. We would put a nice musical track down, and I figure, "At this beat, I'm going to cut." I feel I have a good sense of timing, a feel for when to cut. And I'll think, "We've carried it too long." As far as choosing footage, I probably used every good shot. There wasn't an abundance of footage shot where I have a lot of choices. The material gets reviewed: you go through the whole scene [for a first view, before cutting] to get the scope of where you can pull from. But in porn I've seen guys start [to edit] a scene without bothering to know what the wet shot looks like, other than [that] they're eventually going to get to it. Oh, I do that. It's pointless . . . because the [awful] projects that get turned in to me now . . . We had, how many sex scenes? Seven? Seven. I'm getting some movies [to edit] with four and five sex scenes. So [to make a longenough film] the sex scenes have got to run twelve or fifteen minutes or I'm sunk. I have to go fifteen minutes and might have [only] twenty minutes of "master time" [actual running time of tapes shot]. I've got to use everything and use stuff over and over [use the same footage twice]. With Stairway, I had seven scenes, one was six, a four-minute short one, and a shitload of dialogue. I get projects with eight-page scripts now [i.e., total junk]. So Stairway had a lot of leeway [for an editor]. I never had to use anything I didn't want to. Every shot was a good shot. How does the sound come out smooth? They talk here, and two hours later they talk the next part. You speak a sentence and speak again a half hour later: I'll put it together without a problem. The only flaw was with two close-ups where room tone was not consistent. Because I didn't put it on? Or was there more of a buzz? Maybe lack of the same number of people that were in the master made it starker. Jim and I work real close together. It's, "Do you like this? Do you want to do this?" Holliday would come see me. "Do you like this? Do you want me to change this?" I was always begging Sharon and Jane to come. I was talking to him [Jane] last night. He said he didn't like the editing, suddenly. He didn't like your editing? Yeah. On Stairway? And I said, "Jane, I beg you to come down. . . . Get involved with me." Does this hurt when someone says that? No, it doesn't. I don't have an ego about it. I want the input from everybody. I put it together. Jim never said change anything. Oh, a couple of minor things. Just, "Give me that cupcake shot first." What was that? A beautiful shot of a naked woman . . . Oh. Falco / 19$

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Everyone seemed to like everything I did. But Jane, nine months later, suddenly says the editing sucks. But that doesn't hurt me. It's, "Next time, come down there [and help]." Is it exhausting, or exciting, or both? Fun. When it's good. Why fun? It's really nice to ... Like, they didn't know what they had with their hippie scene, the guru scene. They just shot a bunch of close-ups. These guys didn't know they had a good scene there. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they needed that someone sit down and find the good . . . That was the one he [Falco] really had to go to work on. What did you do to make that scene . . . I just built it. First I just laid down an old "Grateful Dead" tape. . . . You know, it was just like a hippie scene, they're all meditating, being groovy. . . . We had to get a right line [dialogue] out of Joey: the only time he said it right was unusable, but we had to get that. In close-up and in every other shot, he said, "The Sunny side section of Pittsburgh." I just lifted the dialogue track and plugged it in. If I needed to know if we had something during the shoot, he [Falco] was the guy I went to. Because, through all these years of cutting, I've just got to see it once, and I remember it. I can watch something go by live, and I'll remember that I have that. Hairsplitting but ... Okay, we've got this dialogue. How do we do it? Do we want to trust Holliday and his sense of America and what will fly? Sharon had one line: "cavorting naked in the woods, having sex with members of your own sex." The line spit out. Sharon changed it to "having sex with members of your own gender." That's fine if you're making Lamp unto My Feei for Sunday morning religious TV. But if you're making a fuck film, "having sex with members of your own sex" is the clearcut choice. I was hatcheting your stuff all the time, Holliday. I was worried about how bulging it was. The [script] was huge. The Bhagwan Bob scene had more dialogue than 75 percent of the movies I edit every day: that one scene. So I said, "You guys are fucking crazy. You're not going to be able to do this in one or two days." You've got Sharon; you've got a guy on a dolly; you've got Ira; and you've got me. Forget it, man! Get lost! I'm not going to do it! So they cut the script down to a realistic length. . . . That was a big thing. Like, "Sharon, that's pretty sensitive to Holliday. You can't just c u t . . . " Holliday wrote the perfect script, with something for everyone. But just not possible to do in two days. But at least I go to these people. I went to Falco and said, "Are you ragging on it because you don't like the words?" "No, man, because of the time." But I'm confident that Joey could handle this scene, and all the people except the babe could have done it. Chi-Chi could have done it. Peter North could have done it. The extras that were written out of the script would have been people trained in a Seattle theater group, nonsex roles . . . But, Jim, the more people, the more complicated and time-consuming the blocking [would have been]. Just the dialogue ran four or five minutes. But it worked. It's funny . . . I know that, but if you had kept those other four or five pages, you're talking . . .

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Well, F m going to interrupt now. It sounds to me like you had the right people and that it wouldn't have gone [succeeded] otherwise, for all the fighting. Jim I object to the word fighting. Falco It wasn't fighting. It was underhanded, back-room politics. Jim But the bottom line is that these things are all fuck films. And the sex in this is pretty damned good. Not classic but better than 80 percent of what's out there. Falco I'd never been on a set with a cast like that, a superstar cast.

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Part Four Detumescence

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14 Porsche: Does Porn Exploit?

I present these lengthy transcripts, first, for you to see what was said, which lets you get closer to where our opinions should come from: real people as our witnesses; second, to demonstrate that I am letting you see what was said, while other opinion salesmen—politicians, clergy, philosophers, historians, anthropologists, psychoanalysts—do not. When, for instance, it is reponed that the women in porn are coerced, we not only need a careful rendering of coerced (with its millennia of argument regarding free will, competence, responsibility, guilt, crime, victimhood, sin, and evil). We also need to listen to such women so that we can better see how they were coerced by others, how by themselves, and how not at all—consciously, subliminally, unconsciously. Third, if I do this correctly I may win you to the idea that this is the way the case should be argued so that these issues can be investigated more richly and conclusions reached without the same smarmy rhetoric that now runs discussions on morality. Ira has mentioned several times that many in porn come from incestuous, dysfunctional families. Porsche Lynn, who now steps onto our stage, exemplifies this description (which of course does not prove that all the women have such a background). She is a significant star. Read the next material—two interviews with Porsche—knowing that they took place before the interviews you have read on making Stairway.— RJS

Porsche I'm twenty-six, which is pretty old for an adult actress. I grew up in the good old Midwest, good old heartland. An excommunicated Roman Catholic because my mother was pregnant at eighteen. I was never baptized. I grew up in a family that was excommunicated. My grandmother was divorced, and my mother became pregnant before she was married, and being divorced—my mother eventually got a

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divorce from my father—that put us as an excommunicated Roman Catholic family. My grandmother and my mother practiced their religion religiously. I was six when both of my parents died. So I was exposed to it, but what you remember before six is not a lot. My father shot my mother and he committed suicide. Then my grandmother took care of me for a while. She was divorced, a single mother, and an alcoholic. My grandfather petitioned the courts to have me taken away from my grandmother, and I got put in adoption agencies and foster homes. Eventually, I was adopted by my father's sister. Your father eventually married your mother? Eventually, right. My biological father. My mother became pregnant at eighteen, raised me until I was three. She went back to California and finished her education as a registered nurse before she went back to Michigan to marry my father at twenty-three. We lived with him until I was about six. On the day their divorce became legal, my mother went to sign the papers. And he met her at the door with a shotgun. My father shot my mother one time through the heart and himself one time through the head. You, I hope, didn't witness this? No, I didn't. I didn't actually know what happened. For a long time I thought that someone had killed them both. I can remember everything the night before. I was staying with my grandmother, and my father came to see me, to take me. My grandmother wouldn't let him. I remember how strange he was acting. The next day my grandmother and mother left to sign the papers. And I remember going back into the house after the detectives were in the house. That's the last [thing] I really remember: going into the house after and knowing they were gone. But I didn't know where. At six, all death meant to me was that those people were gone. My mother was always putting me with my grandmother or babysitters or with her sisters. So I was transported around a lot. All I knew was I was "going to Grandma's for a couple of weeks." The couple of weeks became a couple of months, and a couple of months became a couple of years. All of a sudden, "They're not coming back, are they?" I didn't realize what real death was until I was adopted out and lived on a farm for a while and saw farm animals die. That made me understand what death was: "Oh. Death is permanent." It helped to know that they just didn't leave me but that it was something beyond their control. Well, at least I know it was something that was completely out of my mother's control. I've had to deal with the fact that my father was in control of his death and my mother's. Which is actually harder than the actual loss of them. Interesting story. Had your father picked you up would you have also been killed? The detectives thought that. He had tried to shoot my grandmother. My mother had walked in the door first, while my grandmother was still in the car. My grandmother heard the shots, and as she ran to the house, he kept shooting. So my grandmother ran across the street to another house. They said he probably would have killed anything that was in the house. He even shot my dog and pet raccoon. Have you thought about that, that you might have been killed? Definitely. Plus, you want to be. You'd rather be dead. I'd be thinking about suicide at seven, eight, nine, ten: why couldn't I have died with them, or why did I get to live and they didn't? My mother was very young. She was only twenty-six, a young, vibrant registered nurse. She had just finished her nursing degree all on her

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own and with all these adverse factors going against her. That's made me survive and keep pushing on. For some reason I'm here. My mother could have had an abortion. My grandmother said she had thought about it. But because of her religious beliefs, she couldn't. She went through all this trouble, even her death, to bring me into this world. "I'm here, and now I've got to make something of it while I'm here." It's taken a long time, but I've learned to use it toward my benefit, though sometimes it also works against me. It's made me an incredibly strong person. I've been on my own since six. In my own apartment since seventeen, taking care of myself. I put myself through two years at Michigan State University; it's made me learn to pull the positive out of life. Other people have it worse than I. I'm healthy, I've got a great mind and good spirit, and I should be thankful for that. Have you been depressed over the years? Yeah, you know, what can a child do? I was helpless about where I was going to live, what rules to live with, what religion people were going to put me into. It wasn't like someone could adopt me and say, "I'm your new Mommy and Daddy." That wasn't going to work with me. And being older, I was hard to adopt. I remember being in adopting agencies. I was the last kid anybody would come to see. It is very hard to adopt someone at six. Everybody wants little babies. So it was not a happy childhood, but I always felt that someday I'm going to grow up and get out of this and make a life of my own. Any suicides? No, I never attempted suicide, I never did, never. Not one time. I thought about it millions of times, but isn't that normal? Suicide is the easiest thing. That was the easy thing for my father to do to solve his problems. Eventually I was adopted out at ten and lived with a family from about ten to seventeen. What was that like? It was okay. It was emotionally a very abusive family, not physically so much. It was my father's sister. So she had a lot of guilt because of what her brother had done. It was a very small community, not a big city where murders happened every day. The community couldn't deal with it, and she got a lot of bad vibes from the community because of this awful thing her brother had done. She always told me how she had lost so much more because she had lost her brother. She had lived with him for twenty years or whatever, but I had lost a father I had only known for three years: I shouldn't feel bad because I didn't lose anything but someone I had known for a couple of years. I lost my mother, my mother, the person who nurtured me and brought me into this world, the person I really loved. The emotional abuse was the worst. I've often thought the physical abuse was bad, but the emotional abuse was worse, that mind torture of every day seeing it in her eyes: this was her brother, and she just felt so much guilt and pain. What was your torment? The tone of her saying, "You shouldn't feel sorry for yourself" and "You have nothing to cry about because you didn't lose anything," and how her children had lost an uncle that they had known and grown to love, on and on and on. I'm so ugly, I'll never have a husband. No one will ever want to marry me because I'm so ugly. So even your right to grieve appropriately was taken from you? Porsche / 203

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Right, taken away, exactly, exactly. They had separate funerals, and I wasn't allowed to go to the funerals, which would have helped me a lot, because I would have seen concrete evidence of death. Just to see the box and to know that the body is going into the ground. Otherwise you have this feeling, "They've gone, they've left me, I don't know exactly where they've gone to. All I know is that they've left me." I don't think I really started to grieve until I was seventeen or eighteen. I grieved in bad ways; like I was very strong into drugs. I did a lot of drugs. I did a lot of drinking. It just made you numb. The drugs also were an outlet, because if you were high, you could cry and nobody would care: "She's just fucked up on drugs." Remember, I lived in an Irish household—Irish grandparents—where a bottle of whiskey always sat on the kitchen table along with the salt and pepper shakers and a shot glass. Totally alcoholic grandparents and father. RJS Was she [your aunt] married? Was there a man in the house, or was it all her doing it? Porsche She was married. And she had two children by him. There came a time when he became sexually incestuous toward me. I was never molested, but he would do things like watch me shower, he would fondle me, and hugging and kissing on my neck and my breasts and things at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen. I was very sexually, very sexually aware at a very young age—just my genes—and I knew that this was not right. He said, "Don't worry. I'm giving you love because you didn't get enough loving and touching and tender care when you were young. So I want to give you this." But I know that at that age this is not a loving touch, this is a sexual touch. I would tell her, and she would never believe me. She would never believe me. I ran away for weeks at a time so I wouldn't have to be alone with this person. That caused problems for them. That was why I was kicked out of their house on my eighteenth birthday, because I refused to let him touch me. I was more than glad to go. Good Midwest mentality. He walked up the stairs to my attic bedroom. It was my eighteenth birthday. So I was a little drunk. He picked me up by the hair of my head out of bed, threw me down two flights of stairs, and said, "You're eighteen, now you're out of here. Pack your stuff and get out by noon." This was eight o'clock in the morning. I had just gotten in a couple of hours ago. I did my share of bad things, too. I did do a lot of drinking at a very young age. Drinking and driving. I had a little money: I had worked on delinquent farms, the places where they put "hard to handle children" in the fields, every summer since thirteen, hoeing soybeans, hybrid corn. Made enough money to have an apartment, had a car. I was pretty much an adult basically. I just finished high school, graduated at the top of my class, had a full scholarship and grants to the university for the first year. One of the happiest times of my life was breaking away from that family and the abuse. I was on my own and had the basic things I really needed. I went to college for two years. Then Reagan got elected, and my scholarships got taken away. I hadn't worked for two years. So I started dancing at topless bars and mud wrestling and oil wrestling, wet T-shirt contests: picked up a hundred bucks cash here and there. A hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, three hundred bucks here and there. Cash dollars. It bought my books, paid for the dorm. I was making more money and more money, and I started to like that making money. [Laugh.] So I worked a lot and neglected my studies. So much that I finally quit in the third year; I might 204 / Porsche

as well not have been going to school. I stopped and started working continually, nude modeling for magazines, modeling runway in Detroit, in New York. R]S What does that mean: "runway"? Porsche Fashion designs; you see the girls walking up and down the runway in live clothes: the big department stores, car shows in Detroit are big for models. Any kind of modeling I could. A man involved in making adult movies also owned several "peek booths" they're called, adult theaters, and adult bookstores all over the United States. So I became more exposed to the adult market through him. I worked in the peek booths, which is a booth where a gentleman can come in and talk to a girl over a phone with glass in between. She's sitting there nude and he can masturbate. So I started doing that. I have friends who were making adult movies. So I became increasingly exposed to it, moved up to L.A. in 1985 and started making movies in 1986. RjS You met Bill [Margold] around that time? Porsche I met Bill in 1986, yes. A good friend, more than just a casual acquaintance. He's very helpful; he's very protalent. He calls them "his kids." An uncle figure. Poppa Bear. He's the one you go to when you have a problem, and he'll help you out. He's a good guy. At sixteen I knew everything. When I got older I kept learning less and less. And at twenty-six I realize I know nothing. But at sixteen, I knew everything. The drugs were available; alcohol was very available. I started drinking at seven. It grew heavily. I grew up in a very alcoholic family. My grandfather was a serious alcoholic, died of liver cirrhosis. My grandmother was the same way: died of lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, alcoholic. So I knew alcoholism. To me a powerful drug, alcohol. And easily available, much more than drugs. Drugs came later. Alcohol was definitely a way out. I locked myself in the room—I had a little attic room—as much time alone as I could. I read a lot. I was in my own little room, and I could create my own little world. Drugs. Definitely. A lot of pot. A lot of psychedelic drugs, like mescaline, acid, mushrooms. I would spent time at friends' houses a lot too. I did anything to stay out of that house. RJS How did you ever get through school? Porsche I don't know, that's what everybody says, but I was smart. I was so smart. And I read a lot. And I always had a job ever since I was thirteen. All summer in the fields; a volunteer in the hospitals. For four years of high school I worked in the library; then I could read all the books I wanted. Anything to get out of that house. I spent the least amount of time there as I could. And they were happy because I was gone, and I was happy because I was gone. Not on the streets. That didn't come until eighteen. It came down to that, just thinking of survival and making it somehow, some way. And I remember many a night thinking about suicide. Many, many, many times. Many times. Very easy with the booze or the pills. But every time there was something pulling me back. I'd think about my mother going through all she did just to pull my body into this world. That always pulled me out. "I just can't do that; I'm here for a reason. God knows what, but I'm here." I spent a lot of lonely nights as a kid, a lot of lonely days, that whole holiday thing, that whole family thing. I could never feel the family thing because it wasn't my family; it was their family. I didn't even know these people that they were calling my sisters. I always felt like an outsider, always. Porsche / 20$

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I always felt like I was going to be alone no matter what. Then I realized you can't rely on someone else to make you happy. You have to be happy with yourself when you're alone. That's been the hardest lesson in building relationships with men, learning to love again after all those years of hatred. So much anger in me: anger at people, anger at the situation, why me, what did I do to deserve this? What did I do? Tons of anger. When my anger was released it was a major explosion. Like beating up a man. My girlfriend and I were sitting in our car at the beach, getting high. Eight years ago. College. A bunch of guys were in a car perpendicular to us. They were playing chicken, to speed up and almost smash into us. They stopped this far from my car. I thought we were dead for sure. They were just playing a game, but it was a crushing thing to think that these people were going to hit us. At the last minute they stopped. I thought for sure we were going to die. I was so angry. I got out of the car, went over to his car, pulled him out, beat him up, broke his nose, there was blood everywhere, broke a couple of ribs (I was kicking him in the ribs). He was a big guy. They were kids; they were my age; they were our peer group. And to think they would do that to me just for no reason at all. Again, it was "What did I do to deserve this?" How did you get away without the rest of them piling on? They just stood there in shock. They couldn't believe it. They were kids I knew. I knew them. I knew them by name. They were kids we had gone to the beach millions of times together. There were three other guys in the car; they just stood there. They thought, "A girl; what is she going to do?" So much anger. Sixteen years of anger building up. "Now it's going to come out on you, buddy." That was the first time I'd hurt anybody else. I'd drive recklessly, almost costing my own life several times. But seeing anger come out of me that I didn't even know was there, anger that could break bones, that's serious anger. I realized, "You've been piling up all this anger since you've been six. You've a lot of anger in your body you've got to get rid of." But eventually I learned to express my anger in the right way, just a bit: "I'm upset with you because of this." Get a bit out every day and not let it explode once a year. It's a lot better now, but I still carry a lot of anger. Now when the anger comes out, it's verbal. I can rip a heart out with my tongue. Who have you done it to? Everybody. Mostly males. In this industry, the men have the authority, the men are the money people, the men are the directors, the men are the producers. Like somebody giving me a bounced check. I worked two days on a set, and they wrote me a check for $1400.1 get home, and I don't have any money because the check bounced. That pisses me off. "Listen, buddy, I just got done fucking and sucking for you for two days, I want my money. It's a business. That is what I do for you, and this is what you do for me. I've already fulfilled my half." What's the problem? They need you, you need them. They don't care, they've got twenty and more other girls standing right behind me. Twenty other girls with blonde hair and blue eyes that they can hire that will probably work for cheaper than what I work for. Did you ever get that money? [Laugh.] I got it eventually. Due to this person's drug problem I managed to work it out. The main thing is that he should never have wrote me a check. This person

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was supposed to pay me cash that day, and as a favor to him . . . He told me he didn't have enough cash because of his drug problem. It was the principle more than the money. Probably the next week I went out and made another $1400, no big deal, right? I live my life in a spiritually good way. I don't intentionally go out and fuck people over. I don't steal, I don't lie, I don't murder, and I expect everybody else to live their life that way. [Pained laugh.] Unfortunately, that's not what the real world is all about. There are many, many people who have not gotten paid for work, many a bounced check. I'll tell you another example [of] how they rip us off every day. They make tapes called compilation tapes. They have gone back in their tape file and take clips of girls from different movies, make a new movie, and put a new box cover on it, and sell this as a new tape. And you get zero. Once you sign a model release, all rights to that film, all [still] pictures, all anything you could ever get from that film is gone—once you sign that, they can make one movie or a hundred movies. I understand that: that movie I've been paid for. They got their deal, and I got my deal, okay. But they go back, take these clips, make a new movie, and sell it, and we get nothing. I've made about forty-five movies in the last three years, and there's at least another twenty-five in compilation tapes. Because my name sells so well on a box cover, it doesn't matter what they put in there. As long as my picture is on the box and my name is on the box, the tape is going to sell. So every Joe Blow [porn producer] out there that's got a snippet of a Porsche Lynn tape, he's going to try and do something with it, because he knows no matter what, it will at least sell a couple of pieces. It's all legal. But that's not fair. We [performers] can't create a union. RJ$ Because they'll get somebody else. Porsche Exactly. And if I don't like it, they can blackball me. It happens in Hollywood, and it can happen in porn. If you want to make a big stink, you probably won't be working. RJS Why wouldn't you escape from the men who are using you by producing your own movies? Kay Parker [ex-porn star] said she was trying to do this. Money? Porsche Money is not the problem. You can produce a tape easily, anybody [can]. I could walk out this door right now and someone will hand me $25,000 cash, no problem. I can go make a movie with it, but the problem comes with distribution. Who is going to distribute it? There's laws—pandering and racketeering—they're trying to apply to adult movies. Transporting obscene materials across state lines. Distributing comes from the middleman. The middleman makes all the money. I could take this tape to a company and they would buy it. Then I get a percentage of their sales. How do I know that they're going to be honest with me? It's very hard to collect from these companies. A lot say they don't have any money. There's so many problems with this distribution, it's unbelievable, unbelievable. Money is the easiest thing to come up with in the world. You've got the finished product. Now, how do I get it to the people? RJS Would you women make something different from the usual—if there is such a thing as the usual? Porsche We would be making the tapes for the same audience, only we'd come up with a different attitude. For instance, you can see ten minutes of hard-core genitalia, just Porsche / 207

cock and pussy for ten minutes. Or you can see a couple of minutes of that and pan out and see bodies, scenery in the background, a lace robe or a lace stocking. An attitude: location, script. RJS Stop. What do you mean by location? Porsche Mostly everything now is shot in one house in San Francisco, in one bedroom. So every movie you see for the next year you're going to see the same bed, the same four walls. Use something different: a bathroom,'the outside, a teepee, but it can't be that same bed. Or if you're going to shoot it on a bed, then change your attitude about what kind of camera you'll use. Everything now is formula tapes: four boy-girl scenes, one girl-girl scene, and maybe one three-way. The same basic sex, two people this and that, two positions, a cum shot, and that's it. The same thing over and over and over. Maybe a couple [of] different faces. For the same customer. I love R-rated movies, too, but when I want to see hard-core, I'm going to see hard-core. I don't think that bringing those two together is a good idea. We're making X movies, and that's what we should keep making. If you want to make an R-rated movie, then go make an R-rated movie. They're highly erotic to me, more erotic than half of the X stuff we've ever made. We show a lot more, but their movies are more erotic. I'm on the road almost thirty weeks a year, dancing, personal appearances, this and that. The customers constantly say, "Why can't we see better porno?" We're not shooting on film [which looks better than videotape], so it will never look like that. That's the main problem. The problem is that the people who have been running the sex industry for the last twenty years are people who've been fifty years old. They get older by the minute and have the mentality of being what it was like twenty years ago to make porn. They say the customers don't want anything but sixty minutes of hard-core genitalia shots. It's just not true. Like I say, they control the distribution end, and the hardest thing to get is the distribution. And they don't want to spend a lot of money. They're trying to produce videos for $8,000. A movie or a good video takes at least $25,000, and a good budget for a video is like $40,000. There are excellent 35-millimeter adult films, but the video boom is a different thing. I don't particularly like video. I don't like the way I look, but that's what we've got to work with. Everybody has a VCR in their room, and everybody has a TV these days. At first, only rich people had VCR'S and everybody else went to the movies. Now just about every family in America has a VCR. A hundred million tapes were rented last year, and they weren't all rented by one pervert. [Laugh.] So let's face it. The numbers are out there, and the people are out there. Make something new that people want. RJS Suppose you and your colleagues were doing it, how would the scripts be different? Porsche For me, the most important thing is knowing who these characters are and why they're together sexually. What's been going on in this person's mind that's going to bring this person together with another person sexually. Otherwise, you just see two people walk into a room and go, "Oh, hey, here's an empty couch. Let's fuck." No buildup. Where, in a movie like 9'h Weeks, you see their characters develop and you think, "God, I just want to see these two people fuck." By the end of the movie you're going, "Please, just let me see them fuck." [Laugh.] But in a porno movie, you know what's going to happen. You know these people are going to fuck. "Why are these people fucking?" That's my most important question. Tell me why and maybe I'll believe it. 20$ / Porsche

It doesn't necessarily have to be longer scripts; it has to be more about making it erotic for the customer, not for the producer or director. When I'm acting, I think about pleasing the viewer and then the director or the producer. I think about pleasing the person I'm with and pleasing the viewer and not giving too much away. However, as a paid actress, it's very hard not to do what the producer says. He is the one paying you. You shouldn't give it all away, telling too much sexually, giving away what you're going to be doing next. If they know exactly what you're going to do, like, okay: she's going to give him head, they're going to do two positions, he's going to come on her ass—when that person knows that's going to happen, then [there's] no tension, no buildup, no surprise. It takes away all the erotic feeling. 9'/2 Weeks was a great movie, a perfect example. He blindfolded her, gave her cherries and milk. And nobody was expecting he was going to throw a jalepeño in her mouth after she just had a cherry in there, right? So you're thinking, what is this guy going to do next? You've got to allow that viewer to be thinking, and that's hard for an actress to do. RJS Are you allowed to, or is the director controlling it? Porsche It depends on who you work with. Some directors will let you. One said, "Don't give too much away. Be thinking about that person watching this tape. There should be a 50-50 exchange." It shouldn't be, "Here! Boom! Here it is! This is it!" It depends on the director, on the money, the time, and the producer. The producer may just tell the director, "I don't care about anything. I just want to see some head; I want to see two positions, and I want to see a cum shot." It also depends on the girls. There's a big difference between a girl and a lady, or a girl and a woman. I personally don't believe anybody should be making adult movies until they are twenty-one or over. It's sad to see young girls, just over their eighteenth birthday, and they're walking into making a porno movie. It's very sad. It's disgusting. I don't particularly like working on the set with girls that young, but it does happen. We have an alcohol law: you can't drink until you're twenty-one, but you can make a porno movie and fight wars! RJS What's there between eighteen and twenty-one in a young woman's life that makes the difference? Porsche I don't know. It's just life, just maturing. At eighteen you don't understand everything sexually about yourself and the opposite sex. Most girls at eighteen have not had a lot of sexual experiences. You're just not that sexually aware, though you may think that you are. And not knowing what you're getting into [in porn] and not knowing for sure if this is what you want to do. The majority of them in at eighteen are out by twenty-one. You don't have control over your body. When you're young, you just go with your body, and your body says, 'This feels okay." But when you're more mature, you think about the consequences. Your mind has more control over libido, even between eighteen and twenty-one. Like children getting pregnant at fourteen. They're going along with it because it feels good to their body and why not do it. Younger girls get sucked in because of all the glamour around the Industry—the limousines, the clothes, fancy places, and money. It looks so glamorous. They get contracts with companies, and contracts mean getting picked up in limousines, being driven to the set; they take care of your air fare, they take care of your hotel, they take care of everything for you. You get to the set, they take care of your hair, they do your nails, they do your makeup, they Porsche / 209

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have someone there telling you what your lines are, they have someone to dress you. At eighteen that makes the sexual thing easier. Their body is saying, "Yeah, let's do it," and then how glamorous all this other stuff that's being done for them seems. You wear these fancy clothes, and you go to parties, and you're on movie sets with movie people. It seems so glamorous, but it's not. So it's easy for them, easy to get sucked in, easy for them to handle a situation they're not handling. People are handling it for them. That's the only exploitation: these young girls are eighteen, and the company does everything for them without making sure they understand that porn will affect the rest of their lives. It will never be the same as it was before porn. I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way. It will just never be the same. What's the exploitation? Exploitation means someone is going to be harmed. In what way are they harmed that you're not? They're not making their own business deals. They get on the set and don't know what kind of scene they're doing. For instance, they may be doing an anal scene that day, and they didn't know they were going to because they didn't make their business decisions. Someone else was hiring them, saying "Yeah, she'll work that movie," or "Yes, she'll do this." And the girl didn't want to have anything to do with that, but because she wasn't handling her own business affairs, she got sucked into something she wasn't ready to handle. Exploitation—you're right—it's taking advantage of someone; that person will be harmed. I've never believed that this [porn] was actual exploitation, because the financial thing is there. We're doing this for financial gain. I exploit the male and female sex drive to gain financial success. [Laugh.] Supply and demand, like a drug dealer. If those people out there didn't want cocaine, there would be no drug dealers. Stop the demand, not the supply. Why aren't you being exploited? You're at the mercy of a guy who gives you a bum check, you're at the mercy of the twenty women standing behind you, you're at the mercy of ten years from now. Well, you are at just about any job. I don't see that as being exploited. I see that as being just part of the job. Whatever your job, there's something or someone that can do it better or cheaper. The future is what you make it. I haven't heard this aspect of the business before [but certainly have now, after learning about it from the Stairway team]. I think I have a lot more to say, a lot more knowledge of the business; I've just got more to talk about. And I do have to be honest. There are a lot of people who have just fallen into it [porn] because it's easy for them; they have nothing better to do; they need to support a drug habit; or whatever. But with me it was something that I really looked at for a long time and made a good solid decision. This was something I wanted to pursue for five, ten years maybe, and see what I could make out of it. Will you tell me some time how you came to the decision? Yeah, yeah, that is a fair question, sure. [. . .] What's the appropriate name I should call you? Porsche, or my real name, [which] is Laurie. I have no preference. It's a clue to something important, but I have no idea what. I always thought so too. I guess because I feel Porsche is not a separate character. Porsche is a part of me, not all of me, but it's a large part of me. A lot of girls feel

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they're totally separate from their stage character, they're just that character for the day. But I don't think she's different. That's part of me, part of my personality.

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II Porsche returns. . . . What's next, what's left for me in the Industry? What do I have left really? Sure, I can stay with it for maybe another five or six years, just keep making movies, but they'll be minor roles. Because most major roles go to the young, pretty girls, whether they're good actresses or not. Is it "young, pretty" or "unknown"? You're right, a bit of unknown, a bit of young, pretty. As far as unknown, a better word would be new. The next new girl. New. Fresh meat. [Laugh.] A few roles go to good actresses, but they're few and far between. It's not started to happen to me yet, but it will. I'm not getting younger. I'm only getting older. I've expected that. That's the way it is in this industry. It's bound by the young woman. I don't think it has to be, but according to the producers it is. Because producers put money into films, they [think they have the right to] say that customers—mostly men—want to see young, pretty women getting fucked; that they don't want to see older women getting fucked or they'd be at home watching their wife getting fucked. You're twenty-seven? I'll be twenty-seven in a couple of months. What's the difference between twenty-seven and twenty-three? Is twenty-three already older? We're talking eighteen. Are there sufficient anatomical differences between eighteen and twenty-seven? When you're twenty-six you may have stretch marks, you may have had a baby. Few women in the Industry really are concerned about taking care of their bodies. You carry more weight as you get older. Lines on the face: I've got more than when I was eighteen. The camera picks up stuff like that. I can't believe that the pussy gets stretched so the guys would say, "That's a twenty-six-year-old pussy compared to an eighteen-year-old pussy." [Laugh.] I don't believe that everyone who wants to see a sex movie wants to see an eighteen-year-old girl getting fucked. I'm not saying that it's not a turn-on, but I'm saying that most people cannot be fixed on an eighteen-year-old girl. To me a woman can be thirty-six or forty-six and still be extremely sensual and very beautiful to watch. I can appreciate it and it can be a turn-on. A woman doesn't even reach her sexual peak until what? Thirty-two, thirty-four? She really hasn't a true knowledge of her body until about that age. Few women at eighteen really know their bodies and what it takes to get them off. A lot of them have never had an orgasm. I hear of women forty years old who never had an orgasm. That blows my mind. [Laugh.] How can that be? Looking at the little girls [eighteen] was the mentality for a long time. It's starting to change. A few older women have made the change, like Kay Parker. She is an older woman with a great fan following. Gloria Leonard was another one that made movies pushing forty. Still porn figures. Marilyn Chambers, Vanessa del Rio. Marilyn Chambers is more sensual than she's ever been. I'd like to see the laws changed to not make a porno movie until you're twenty-one.

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Is it true that the very young women are preferred? That's two questions: (1) Why are they preferred, and (2) Is it true that they are preferred, or is it just a myth? Are they preferred, or is it that that's all that's available? When you go into an adult video store, if there's a hundred videos, ninety-nine have a girl on the cover that's between eighteen and twenty-three at the oldest. Or made up to look that age. Maybe one with a nice-looking older woman. Not much choice. These one-day, bullshit tapes are renting so much because that's all the people have to choose from. Bill tells me it's the box that sells. That's my motto: "We sell boxes. With every box we give you a free tape." These beautiful, glossy pictures on boxes, with the girls made up to the teeth, the nails, the hair, this, that, costumes, everything totally perfect; you put the tape in, and the tape looks like your dog shot it with a video camera. You think [on watching the tape], "Gosh, the box looks so nice; what's wrong with the tape?" You see this girl that looks nothing like the girl on the cover, and you think, "How can that be the same girl?" That's the American people. Packaging. What's on the outside, not what's on the inside. There's hardly any packaging in Europe, just plain covers with the word written on it. Like with cosmetics. The packaging was plain, but the cosmetic was some of the best stuff I'd ever used. Americans are big on packaging. As long as the outside looks good, it doesn't matter what's inside. So you could imagine getting out before they run you out—or would they never run you out—before you go down and down and down. You could easily be blacklisted. In fact, I didn't film for almost nine months after forming The Pink Ladies [porn stars who produce a newsletter to inform and protect women in the Industry]. The producers were afraid we'd create a union and tell girls what not to do. Like anal sex without condoms. The producers want those girls to be uneducated. The producers want those girls to believe what they say to the girls. They knew that with this organization, there'd be a lot more welleducated women in the Industry. I think they were just afraid of that. You tell me this with a very nice smile. Doesn't it bug you? Yeah, it does, but you learn to take it with a grain of salt. One of my other things I say is, "In a hundred years, who's going to give a fuck what happened today?" What's that got to do with you? You're living today, not in a hundred years. I know, but you can't get upset and angry and stressed out about things when a hundred years from now, who's going to give a fuck. It's something I've learned to accept. Maybe revenge is not the best word, but if I don't get it right this day, maybe next week I'll take care of the situation. If I have to make it happen, it will happen. [Laugh.] Okay. Daydreams. Suppose, someday you may be out of the business. Why and to what might you go? Daydreams, okay. I could get married and live with a man and raise a family. I could finish my education and get a job and live like a normal person—"normal"— because normal people are not pornographers, that's not a normal job. On my IRS I could not say "porno actress; I suck and fuck for a living." [Laugh.] Finish my education, move to South Africa, and work with the Peace Corps. You never know. Could you settle down to a less dramatized life? That's what I wonder.

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RJS You've been living pretty high. Porsche Not only that. My life has been such a dramatic thing, a novel, a stage play. All my life. Could I ever live a normal life, get married, have kids, clean the house— RJS Go to a farm, be pregnant every year, milk cows? Porsche Yeah, I think about that— RJS You don't look the type. Porsche [Continues.] especially I think, "Do I create this turmoil because all I've known all my life is the drama and the turmoil? Is what keeps me going this drama and this turmoil? Do I create that, or does it just happen? Whenever things go smoothly and there's no problems, I look for problems, create problems. I think I do that just to keep the turmoil going in my life. Like I don't deserve a normal, happy life. I've realized this only in the last couple of months. People would say, "All the tragedy and drama, you're creating it." "No, I'm not, no I'm not." I've been with a guy for the last year. It was supposed to be a monogamous relationship except for what I did in front of the camera. And I believed, too, that it was monogamous. But whenever it was monogamous and everything was going fine, I was always looking for someone else to fool around with on the side (not in front of the camera). And it was always me, it wasn't him who was running around. Then I had to deal with, "Should I or shouldn't I tell him? No, I'll lie." Everyone says, "Why don't you just accept that you don't want a monogamous relationship, tell him, and let it go at that?" I said, "No, I can't do that." So I see that I do create turmoil. It's me creating it. But it took nie a long time to say that. You know things, but you mask it. All my life that's all I've ever known. I've never really known a peaceful day. It's like learning to live again, and learning to live without the turmoil, and learning that life can be good. RJS [Suspecting that some aspect of this primal misery will be part of her daydreams, I say:] "Tell me a daydream." Is that all right for me to ask? Porsche That is really personal. Take the classic porno daydream. AIDS; we all daydream about that. I had an HIV [test] last month, and I could not believe the daydreams: [in fantasy] I just looked at the test, it was positive, I'm driving my car off the cliff. RJS Anticipating something bad is different [from just daydreaming]. Porsche For instance, I had a cut on my eye from a man. It took ten stitches. I had a good plastic surgeon. [But in daydreams,] my face is still bad. Daydreams for me always have an edge of something going bad or something going positive. RJS The guy who hit you, it is unusual that you go with guys like that? Porsche Yeah. That's the only time I've ever been with a man that's hit me. I loved him very much and was involved with him for four years. He was a helicopter gun pilot in Vietnam for three tours. Very serious postwar trauma [posttraumatic stress disorder]. He would go into fugue states where he would be awake but yet asleep. He couldn't hear me when I would talk to him. Like, I would wake up and there would be a machete swinging over my head. The night I got hit, he was in a state like this. He swung a lamp around, and it hit me on the edge of the eye, the corner of my temple. At first I thought he hit me in the head, no big deal. Then I felt this wetness coming down my body: "Oh, my God, I'm bleeding!" and I was covered with blood. Had I understood the disease [PTSD], I would have been able to deal with it better. But I just cut off the relationship that day, moved out, and haven't spoken to him since. At that time it was, "You hit me and you die." [Laughs.] I'm gone. Porsche / IIî

That's all there is to it. I think of my mother: I'm not going to stay in a relationship until the man kills me. My father had his postwar trauma. He was a decorated Korean War vet—purple heart. A part of his skull had been cut open and replaced with a metal plate. So there was brain damage. Now I've begun to understand it, and the soldier disease. RJS You're in a very tough business. Porsche But education, getting an understanding, helps a lot. RJS You don't feel misused? Porsche I'm strong enough to protect myself. The Industry can misuse us. It depends on the woman to keep herself from being misused. The men are misused too. They are grossly underpaid. The conditions on the sets: you maybe get one hot meal a day; maybe you might not get to eat because you just did a scene or you're going to do a sex scene after lunch, and you don't want to eat right then. So maybe you didn't get any food all day. You might be where showering conditions are real nasty. Or psychological misuse. Like a director or producer will say, "I'm making this movie. I want you to be the star. It's going to be the greatest movie in the world, but you're going to have to do an anal scene or double penetration scene but it's going to make you a star. You're going to be the biggest star in the world. It'll be the hottest film in the movies, but you're going to have to do a couple of anal scenes, okay?" I've seen girls say, "Okay," knowing that this girl does not want to do an anal scene. Or maybe she'll say, "No, I don't want to do an anal scene." And he'll say, "Well, I'll pay you twice as much." "Oh, okay, I'll do it." It's up to that person to be strong enough to say, "No, I won't do an anal scene." That's how I voice it: "No, I don't do an anal scene. I don't care if you pay me five million, I'm not going to do it unless I really want to and I feel that it's safe. This is something that I don't do. If you want it in your movie, fine, but you're going to have to hire a different girl." Some girls are so weak and hungry for stardom. They see that as their path to stardom, since the girls who do anal get pushed [ahead] by the Industry. The Industry claims that the hottest selling product is the anal product. It goes back to being a kid and saying no to sex when you're young. I know girls who'd have sex with their boyfriends when they didn't want to, they weren't strong enough to say no. I don't understand that. It just blows my mind. RJS How do they punish you? Porsche By not using you, not giving you enough work. The girls that depend just on video movies to make their living—say a girl has to make at least five videos a month to make her rent—well, if she can't get those five videos a month, then she isn't going to have no money. For me, I have so many other venues of making money; I can dance, I can model. Just making adult videos is not my main area of money. So when I didn't make anything [videos] for nine months, it was no skin off my nose. I went on the road for nine months; I went to Europe for six months, and they're shocked. "She doesn't need us to make her money." So now I'm starting to get a lot more work. Most of it I turn down because it's from low-budget people who want to make movies in twelve hours, that type of thing. Now I can pick and choose who I want to work with and for. It's mostly the girls' problems for not seeing that they can't live off the adult video industry. And you get tired of it. You put up with all the bullshit for a while, and then you say, "Fuck this shit. I'm going on the road and dance for a while." A few months later 214 / Porsche

you can come back. When I'm on the set, I don't necessarily have to have Dom Perignon and lobster, but I want to feel good about where I'm at. I want to leave the set and say, "Hey, I did some good work today," and feel good when I leave. I don't want to leave the set and go back to the hotel and say, "Oh, my God, what did I do today? I can't believe I did that." It's enough to say, "Good work. Some people will enjoy seeing it." We're not great; no Academy Awards. [But] I want to feel good at the end of the day. That's probably the problem for a lot of the women: they have such a bad feeling to live with every day. All I've ever known is surviving. We have to learn to survive one way or the other. I thought for a long time, "God made this world for me; I'm never going to get anything good out of it. Look what I've come from. Am I ever going to have a chance?" But luckily I've had some good things. It makes you realize that "Yeah, there is good things, but there's also bad." That's the whole deal: good and bad. It's not one way all the time. Another big aspect of why females, especially young girls, start making adult movies is for the attention, the adoration of lots of people. A lot of these girls come from dysfunctional families, including myself. So the latter statement goes for me too. Coming from a dysfunctional family, I've spent most of my life just looking for someone to love me. Through the X-rated movie business, I've gotten adoration and love (translated through lust) from hundreds of people, men and women. The people out there that love you really love you. To them you're gods and goddesses. I love that. I get off on that. One reason for this is because I lacked so much as a child. I realize that I'm making up for that in some strange way. I know that a lot of others are doing the same thing. Women and girls who need a lot of attention, for whatever reason, find a sense of fulfillment in pornography. Using sex to get love, or using sex and translating it into love, is done by a lot of women, especially those in porn. I know I've personally done this, not only on film but also in real life. I've slept with guys who I know only wanted to fuck me and thought: "Well, at least I have so-and-so to love me for the night."

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15 Truth and Consequences

The material in this chapter draws on several conversations between Ira and me. These excerpts serve here, near the end, as a naturalistic summary that pins down Ira's uneasiness about his life and about his willingness to live it in the sex industry. We watch a videotape that shows a dangerous piece of behavior and then go on to talk of other troubling matters.—RJS 151

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A trend in the Industry toward carnival acts. This was a fine example of the kind of picture we're making now. Bondage tapes look civilized by comparison. Talk about Russian roulette. Can you imagine the [physical] microtrauma involved in doing that? I don't care what she [the performer] thinks about how good she is at doing this without hurting herself; I'm sure she is. And I don't trust these guys one bit. I wonder about guys who would be comfortable having their penises in the same anus at the same time even if that anus belonged to a woman. Rad [who directed this tape] seems able to compartmentalize these things. He doesn't much care for sex performers and doesn't care much what happens to them. I just hope everyone is going to be lucky here. How'd they keep it up? They're just advancing the date when the catastrophe [AIDS] hits and there will be no more Industry. I don't necessarily agree with that prediction. But I do see certain slash-and-burn tactics in the Industry now: "We're only going to be here a short time, so let's reap every dollar we can by any means available to us and then get the hell out. The human wreckage left behind will not be our problem." I think she [the performer] sees this as a good break. I don't know what she was doing before she got in [the Industry], but I'm sure it wasn't anything any pleasanter. By the way, having now seen the edited print of Sharon's picture, I think it's wonderful; among the most beautiful, artistic X-rated pictures I've seen. Because?

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It has Sharon's sensibilities behind it. So it's visually beautiful. Everyone worked their hearts out on it, a labor of love. The art direction is excellent, the camera work is first rate, the sex performances are wonderful because they were all performers putting out for a fellow performer they love. There's not a scene where people are just plodding through it, waiting to get paid. There was none of that. Everything is really done as well as it can be done. It shows you what promise is in this medium and what its limitations are. It's virtually finished. They're just laying down music tracks, things like that. It's very engaging; the opposite in every sense of what I just showed you. And the sex is the opposite. The sex in these videos [such as the one just shown] is obviously commercial sex, just people working to get a paycheck, whereas the sex in Sharon's video for the most part—it's still performance—is people who know and like each other investing their genuine sexual selves in what they're doing. A very sophisticated X-rated picture. So I am now hot for us to get these people together to talk about it [for the book]. The big catch will be Randy. In my notes to your Introduction here [in hand] is a digression on the "underreported, underexamined, complex sexuality of the male performers." You seemed to say that I limited to female performers my discussion on the psychology of sex performers and how it may be related to family trauma. I did not mean to do that. I think the male performers, if we could get them to talk, have similar backgrounds and similar personality traits. They're just more private about them. Like the women but more so, they congregate and seek comfort among themselves. I've seen that there are not many close friendships between male and female performers. It is extraordinary how strong the friendships among the male performers often are. They really hang out together; they don't hang out with the girls. Even on the sets. In general, the women hang out in dressing rooms between shots. If there is a cast lounge or other room for waiting between scenes, that becomes the boys' territory. The longer they're in [the business], the more they get that way. The women I've interviewed say they are bisexual. What do they mean? I don't mean what do they do anatomically, but [rather] how much is excitement [with women] and how much is it using sex to get to other things? Are they really bisexual, or do they prefer men? Good question. For some it is situational and for some clearly not. For instance, despite her fascination with gay men and her occasional attraction to women, X really is not sexually interested in women. Whereas Y absolutely is. If she were to leave this business, she would find ultimate happiness and fulfillment as a lesbian. I don't know if you ever met Z, one of the greats of the Industry, openly 75 percent gay. A boy's nickname, wears her hair short, and refuses to have her perfectly normal but not large breasts augmented (unlike a lot of female performers) because she likes her androgynous appearance, which she flaunts. Anyway, I think early homosexual experience is common among performers in this industry and as true for the male as female performers. The main difference is that -the men are entangled in the macho mythology of being a porno stud. Though this business seems more brutalizing and exploitative toward women, it is no less stressful and difficult for the men. In their struggle to maintain the outward appearance of fully masculine macho stud, they must keep to themselves feelings that the women feel free to share among themselves. I notice a big difference in the way the men act [behave] in groups compared to the women. The men performers, when together in public, try to be cool, Truth and Consequences / 217

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normal, regular guys, whereas the women are comfortable being physically affectionate, emotional, and effusive with each other. They can let off tension with each other, but the men have to keep a lot of stuff inside. And they have to perform physically in a way that the women do not. It's very tough on these guys. They're underexplored. They don't interest me as much, they don't interest anyone as much. The women are glamorous. We've been programmed to regard women as sexual objects. Women's sexuality has been merchandised; men's has not. It's terra incognita with men, a fertile area for future study. The few I have talked with [Margold excepted]—I don't remember the count—never came back. [Margold gave six male performers my name. Only one called, none came in. Then two others. One came in one time, and it was very good stuff; he never came back. The second came in because he was in trouble with everyone. He never came back.] Yet they really talked. They talked in such a way that I would have expected them to come back, as if they had something they wanted to say to someone like me, who was relatively safe. They probably got scared. They probably went home and thought about the things that they said and decided they really didn't want to know any more about that pan of themselves. The porno industry is an equal-opportunity exploiter. Anyone it gets its hands on it's going to beat the shit out of. I'm convinced that the problems many people bring to the Industry are aggravated by it. But if the porno business were outlawed and they were forced to find other livings, many would find equally selfdestructive, sex-related means to do so. Again, no simple answers. [If the men were to talk with me,] would they come clean? Well, that's the question. I think they're afraid of fucking up their own process by examining it. They're right. They're superstitious about their dicks, and it's understandable because their dicks are their fortunes. It must be a pretty complicated Rube Goldberg psychological structure that allows them to do it. Maybe that's unfair. Uh-uh [no]. I see external evidence. It seems like a meditation process: they go off by themselves for a while before they do their scene; they rest; I suspect they fantasize; they masturbate; they come onto the set masturbating, they're getting themselves worked up ... The girls "fluff" them [that is, try to get the men excited before H-hour—the time they must perform]? No, not at all. I thought that's . . . That's history, though "not at all" is not fair to say. The older female performers in general are nicer about that. The younger ones seem not at all interested. The older ones make an effort. Often performers who are about to do a scene will closet themselves for a few minutes before they come on. The male performers are the ones who invariably are concerned about the schedule. For instance, Jay, a wonderful performer everyone likes, uncomplaining, and a very good player, came up to me on the shoot before last and said, "I see that you have me in the schedule with the regular scene first and then I have an anal. I would prefer the other way around in the future, anal first." I said, "Why?" "Because they [anals] are difficult for me to do" (indicat-

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ing to me that he doesn't like them much). "I will play stronger in my first scene than in my second; I want to be at greatest strength when I have to do my most difficult scene." That's simply practical and mechanical, which as a man I can understand. But at another level it is something psychological he's saying: "I want the maximum physiological advantage for dealing with the thing with which I will have greatest psychological difficulty." Complex mental processes surrounding what they do that they're afraid to examine. They're afraid it [potency] will go away if they have to talk about [examine] what they're doing. An example of this is Miles Gloriosus, whose real name is Bud Black. Bud doesn't acknowledge to anyone in his private life that this [porn] is what he does. This is a man who has been in this business ten years and has probably made a thousand X-rated pictures. Wouldn't some people in his prívate life have looked at pornography? He claims that he has girlfriends he meets in straight life who he does not tell what he does, that he has relationships with them until they find out, and when they find out, it's the end of the relationship. He has a whole other life that we don't know about, and presumably the people in that other life don't know anything about this. That seems to be the pattern of the male performers. The male performers do not seem to identify with the culture of pornography. You don't see them doing the promotional stuff, for instance, that the female performers do. Can you get one of them to talk with you? If he talks honestly, he will be identifiable. There are fewer of them [than the women], and therefore the details that they drop make them more identifiable. There's a thousand new female faces that pass through this industry in a year, but year after year it's the same guys over and over. We'll take in one or two new guys a year. Others will try and [will] wash out by the dozens. The guys who can do this can work a great deal, can stay in a long time, and they do. So if they mention that they worked on a certain picture or did a certain scene with a certain female player, anyone from this business who reads this book will say, "I know who that is because I remember that scene." So they expose more when they expose. Anyway, let's try it. Let me work on this. It's very hard for men to talk about sex except in a socially acceptable, locker-room fashion. Also, the people in your world have put themselves in a position of being the handful of humans on the face of the earth who represent male heterosexuality, and they, literally, are the only ones it is possible to see, even in Mozambique. They are it, and they carry that heavy burden with them. Though the female performers elicit sympathy for their situation, the male performers' circumstances are probably more trying. They probably need the sympathy more and get it less. Someone always wants to help, save, support, and otherwise come to the aid of damsels in distress in this business. But the distress of the men is prívate and does not inspire much sympathy. In fact, I think it inspires resentment from other men. Other men look at these pictures and say, 'Those lucky sons of bitches. They get to fuck all these great-looking girls. I wish I could be one of them." But when I watch them work, the impression is not of men having a good time. It is the impression of men doing a grim piece of work. Pounding rocks on the chain gang. Truth and Consequences / 219

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Absolutely. And under tremendous pressure, with the knowledge that one or two failures and they're out. There's no mercy. The way the male performers are treated on the set if they fail to perform is chilling. It's as if they've suddenly come down with some terrible communicable disease [when they are impotent]. It's a lot of pressure, just knowing that if it happens on three consecutive pictures, you'll probably never work again. Anyone can have a one-day washout. Of course that will immediately get around. And they might be allowed a second at-bat. But if they strike out three times, they're out. They're gone. So that's tremendous pressure to be under. I have come to see that the adult industry functions, more than anything else, as an asylum for people who refuse to let go of adolescence, a hideout for arresteddevelopment cases. That's why people are trapped, despite what other talents they might have; despite formidable physical energies that, if put to something else, might make them reasonably successful at it. There is no place else they can still be called boys and girls until they're forty. It's a hideout from the terrible demands of adulthood. It lets them remain forever in a state of overheated adolescent sexua&y, the very place their personalities were formed, stuck where they discovered sex. They meet their audience at that point. Yeah. But the audience then turns off the tape and for the most part goes back to leading what might laughingly be called an adult life. I'm sure the porno addicts are mostly men who have a similar arrested development and who relate to sexuality in a two-dimensional, objectified, obsessed form [that porn has always catered to]. But the typical porno viewer just takes a vacation back to adolescence to look at this stuff. Then, 'That's not for me!" and goes back, with a sigh of regret and envy, to real life, a life not like that in X-rated pictures. Whereas when we finish our day's work, we go into lives no more adult than those depicted on the tape. You've probably heard of Frankie; he's been in the business ten or fifteen years. Frank, who everyone still calls "Frankie," lives the life of an eighteen-year-old with a bunch of ne'erdo-well friends. They sit around all day in front of a big-screen TV watching any junk that's on, smoking pot and eating frozen pizzas. Theirs is a male world in which no one does anything. He goes to work, does his job, comes home, does nothing. His style makes it almost impossible to judge his real age. I see this fear of growing up in so many of us. Peter Panic. (The word panic, you know, comes from [the horny god] Pan.) That's one reason why you can't get guys in here to talk about it. [See Stoller 1991b for more on the men.] Now back to the interrupted interview. The longer I go on with the work we [in the Industry] do, the more I wonder if there is a genetic propensity, enabled by environment, that produces the personality type I see in many [people] in the worlds of commercial sex and sexual deviation. Most people don't like to consider that what they do is not a result of their free will, of their conscious choices, though choice plays a limited role in the lives they have created out of the material given them. But it detracts from their human dignity to say that the choices available were circumscribed by the stuff they brought into the world. The stuff may be different, but the fundamental terms of existence are the same for everyone. Determinism and free will are in every life. I think part of the reason you see depression and suicide among us is genetic and biochemical and part

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is low self-esteem resulting from the way we live, the way society views the way we live, and our inability to see it as anything but moral weakness. I see this in myself. I see myself as a pretty well-adjusted madman. As a guy with the on-board capacity to live a successful, conventional life but unable to do so. Why? Because I am immoral, corrupt, or weak? Or because some wire in there makes me need to do the things that I feel I need to do: that makes me go around with a shaved head and a big earring for no good goddamn reason? My life is an example of the price paid even by a relatively civilized sexual nonconformist. Not that there aren't rewards in this life. That's how it works. You get validation, which makes it hard to let go of it or effectively control it. Overall, the rewards have been less than the price paid. Five years ago I would have said, "No, no. I love the way I am. It's liberating, it's wonderful, everyone should be like me, I wouldn't let go of this for anything." My feeling now is that I'd be better off without it. I bought at too high a cost the existential freedom I enjoy as one of society's outlaws. The older I get, the less appealing it is. Fate hasn't cooperated. You could have had a few better breaks. I've had a lot of breaks. Not financially. Sure I have. Honest money? Yeah, I've had some terrific breaks. D [movie producer he worked for for one year], that's the only one I know of. There were more. First publication, Esquire at fourteen! A syndicated newspaper column for three years between sixteen and nineteen! Editorship of a magazine at twenty-seven! I've had a number of breaks. I have had opportunities to showcase my talents, and when I have, the judgment has been, "Yes, the guy has talent; yes, the guy is a writer, but his point of view is weird and threatening." Should all this be a chapter? Oh, it does belong. But how representative am I? You represent (1) the fact that there is nothing representative—there's no other Ira in the porn business—and (2) nonetheless, there's something below the surface [that the public accepts, something that describes not only the porn product that is sold but also the motivations of the people involved]. But you're talking autobiography. Do you want to come out to the world [through the book] now? I'm warning you. I'm not afraid of that. I have zero to lose. I've heard that before. From others? What have I got to lose? I don't know. You've got less to lose than most people. You don't have children who are going to ... You don't have loved ones. Your mother isn't going to be humiliated. . . . There's no one to be upset. My dad. He doesn't have to read it. I'll tell him that. I'm sorrier about the other characters in your life who come, for a moment, under the spotlight. I'm still worried about the other books [not yet published at the time of this conversation, in which Ira has appeared as an informant]. We'll have to be careful there, but overall, I'm willing to take the hit directly. I've been involved in public scandals before. I've an exhibitionistic desire . . . Yeah, and that's great. [Laugh.] So, the stuff you were just saying . . . I think it's possible to build a case that the interaction of genetics and environment Truth and Consequences / 211

produces a personality bent this way. Similarities among a lot of our backgrounds. When you get performers to talking about incest, you will be amazed. It came up in the dressing room the day before yesterday with P [woman performer], a makeup person, and myself in reference to the mother-daughter thing we [had] shot the previous day [an actual mother and daughter performing]. And P told me she had fantasies about members of her family when she heard of that shoot and would have liked to have seen this scene, that we would have turned her on. I find myself thinking [starting with his own life] that there is a genetic predisposition toward early erotic development [in childhood], triggered by older family members with the same predisposition and the same early experience. A family legacy: that mother-anddaughter act; families that produce people in prostitution-related businesses generation after generation, like A's family, where her grandmother was a taxi dancer, her mother a stripper, and now she's an X-rated performer. What an odd coincidence! Performers want to deny that this is a factor. Y saying, "Yeah, I was molested a couple of times when I was a kid, but I don't tell people that on talk shows. I don't want them to conclude that that's the reason I ended up an X-rated performer and thereby dismiss my choices in this area." I don't think that it dismisses her choices. Even if it's true that that was a factor in her choice. It does not strip us of our humanity to know that part of what we are results from genetic information we brought into the world and the subsequent experiences we have [beyond our control]. At one level it matters profoundly why we do what we do, and at another it doesn't matter at all: we are now consenting adults. That someone molested us when we were young, which helped point us to validation through our sexuality, does not undercut the rest of our adult lives. It would be healing for people in the sex industry to drop their denial about this. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make a five-legged donkey. My friend Margo St. James, the prostitutes' rights advocate who founded C.O. Y.O.T.E. [Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics], put down the argument that women were drawn to prostitution for psychological reasons. No [she said]. Women become prostitutes because of economics and class oppression. It has nothing to do with whether or not they have something inside them that makes them want to do it. Well, that does not explain the millions and millions and millions of women who share the same wretched economic conditions and class oppressions, the same heritage of sexist mistreatment, and who do not enter the sex industry. If I have to choose between a Marxist or a Freudian explanation of this behavior, though I have tendencies intellectually toward both, I'd choose a more Freudian one. Too many poor women just don't become prostitutes. There are X-rated performers who pass through this business in a year. Like my friend Casee [former relationship]. They come in, try it, see it's not for them, get out. She did it for her sexual thing but mainly to emancipate herself. Something an eighteen-year-old girl with no education could do to make a good living to get away from home. Once she established her economic independence—by age twenty—she didn't need it any more. She'll never come back. But for others, why do they stay in so long, in spite of the dangers, when they can do other things? I suspect the answers lie deep. Let me see if I can put my guesswork in some kind of order here. We can agree that different people develop at different rates physically. Better early nutrition, for example, has lowered the age of menarche in our society by half a dozen years dur222 / Truth and Consequences

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ing this century. Even [without] external factors, sexual maturation is influenced by one's genetic programming. Given the detailed replication of genetic information from one generation to the next, it makes sense that early sexual maturation would run in families much as might a tendency to early musical or athletic aptitude. And, more than other forms of precocity, precocious sexual behavior can unbalance the delicate dynamic of family interaction. When the genetic mechanism starts ticking in a child, there's likely to be an older family member around in whom the alarm clock has already gone off a long time ago, a person who also experienced early sexual awakening and premature initiation by an irresponsible adult and is now prepared to hand down the tragic family legacy. Even an incestuous atmosphere in which physical incest has not occurred can psychically affect a child. It can bring about an unnatural democratization of the previously secure generational cosmos in which the child was given an understood, if often frustrating, role. When a child has a sexually charged relationship with an adult, the lines of dependency are reversed. Suddenly, the godlike adult shows a weakness for something the child possesses, something for which the adult is willing to lie, bribe, and batter. Sex in the life of such a child is both a fearful burden and a magical talisman—in short, a thing of great and mysterious value. Later, when the child's peers catch up physiologically, the talisman can be employed as an instrument of manipulation. Having been [sexually] educated by an adult, the sexually precocious child enjoys the dubious advantage of an unsought sophistication that he or she may not be able to manage wisely. This advantage becomes clear—electrifying—in late adolescence or early adulthood when a sexual partner utters the fateful words: "You're so good at this, you could do it for a living." A purpose appears out of chaos. Conditioned to accept material validation for sexual availability, he or she can now do the old tricks for an appreciative new audience and earn what at first seems an easy and comfortable living in the process. The X-rated life, then, may be hard to leave because it effectively recapitulates the familiar. These may not be things people in my line of work like to examine too closely, but denying their reality does not make their lasting effects magically go away. This book is important for me for the most personal of reasons. To take a shot at an honest autobiography. Yep. And also I think I can be helpful to people for whom I have a sense of mission. I might help alleviate one source of their suffering, the endless question in their minds of whether they're the only ones in the world with these emotions and experiences. I don't think you'll alleviate that: you're too optimistic about the pliability of human nature if you think you can write a book and make them feel better about themselves. [Or do better.] It's a big industry. There are books that make people feel better about themselves. They don't work. That's why it [self-improvement] is a big industry. How many diet books do you need? Only one. Well, al) right. I'm half kidding. What else will motivate you except the sense that maybe this is worth doing? Well, I don't feel much like cutting my throat these days. I don't have much of that any more. Because your mother died? Truth and Consequences / 223

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Probably. Her death put an end to whatever fatal thing was going on there. The nongenetic side. Yeah. The torture of my incestuous relationship with her inflamed everything and made it impossible for me to even see it [the relationship] clearly. She had to be literally dead before I could really look at her and at me. Reality sometimes makes a difference. Her death liberated me. To see for the first time her mortality, that she was not an overwhelming, uncontainable force of nature that ruled my life but rather a fleshand-blood human being like me. I don't think I could have written what I want to write now while she was alive. It's funny, because I wrote voluminously and angrily and rebelliously about my sexuality when she was alive, but only since she has been dead have I looked at it more calmly and said, "These things are related." What calmness, if that's the right word, was in your relationship with Gasee? It was not as fiery as with Tammy? No. 1\vo things were different: one me, the other Casee. Two different people than in the relationship between Ira and Tammy. We had a very emotional exchange one day. She wanted to tell me something she couldn't say. "Casee, I've pretty much heard everything that anyone is likely to say to me, and even if I hadn't, I'm pretty prepared for what I haven't heard. You're not under pressure to talk, but if you can say it, say it. It won't change anything with me." It was that she felt strongly the need to be physically hurt in the context of our S-M relationship and that I didn't do that enough. Which was very hard for her to say. "I feel so weird asking for this." "Would you feel better to know that most of my previous partners had asked for this, too?" "Yeah, it does. I didn't think anybody would ever want such a thing." Tammy wanted that too: "If you don't hurt me, I'll think you don't love me. I need these two things together." But in an important way Casee was not like that. I don't believe she was molested. No one in her family, in a dangerous, destructive, malevolent way, exploited these things [S-M propensities] in her. She was brought up with rather sound values. Her father has a tremendous desire for her with tremendous frustration and anger over it. But I think he is a conventional, decent guy who never allowed that to become real. His example of [a person with] self-control has helped her live a life of relative self-control, to turn her back on the porno industry, to get a straight job, stay with that job for three years, put herself through undergraduate school, and now be into her first year of law school. Her ability to restrain her self-destructive impulses sets her apart from my other partners, [though] a lot of it [self-destructiveness] is there: OCD [obsessivecompulsive disorder], eating problems, psychosomatic illnesses (in fact, she generally has illnesses, psychosomatic and others), physical complaints, difficulty forming attachments. I once had the temerity to suggest that some day she might consider living with someone. The top of her head blew off! "I could never live with anyone. I have to be alone the rest of my life. When I live with someone I hate them right away. I pick on them mercilessly. I'm sharp-tongued and cruel to people I live with. I criticize everything they do. They end up hating me, and I fill with grief and misery because I don't want them to hate me and I don't hate them. I don't want them to think I'm hating them, just because I'm saying wicked, cruel, terrible things to them." We've heard this song before? [Tammy (Stoller 1991a).] But an important dif-

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ference is that Casee, like me, refuses to give in to the junk a hundred percent. In fact, she refuses to live with anyone until she is sure she won't do that, unlike Tammy. She and I put limits around it. That's why we were able to get along for as long as we did. Then it threatened to become too intimate, and she bailed on it. Why am I so aberrant? Because I wasn't brought up the same as most people in my age group and younger. I was brought up, particularly by my mother, but generally by a couple of parents with politically liberal but socially conservative ideas. I am politically liberal but socially conservative. My mother felt you could do anything so long as you were dressed for the occasion. If you were going to rob a bank, you should be dressed for banking. That's basically the way I view things. I don't confuse manners with morals. Appearances were important where I was brought up, which is not true of many of my generation. No one ever told them. I have bronchitis today because both my girlfriend and my roommate have been coughing all over me for the last seven weeks, and neither of those dizzy girls can be bothered to cover her mouth. No one beat on their little heads about it when they were kids. No one said it's rude to give people your diseases. No one ever defined rudeness for them. That has contributed to the unpleasantness of modern life. I'm not a member of the cult of unvarnished honesty: "Listen, man, we're going to have to, like, process this and work it out." Manners were invented to prevent needless conflict. But when you're dealing with anyone, certainly under twenty-five, you've got to assume that this is a foreign language. Authenticity has supplanted consideration. I don't think that civilization can survive with authentic behavior at all times. A bit of social hypocrisy is the glue that holds the thing together. Dissolve that glue and people authentically bash each other every five seconds.

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Later. My crystal ball for porno shows storm clouds ahead, but some people have better umbrellas than others. In any case, if Sharon wanted to direct more pictures, Stairway would get her more work. Right now, some of the most successful directors in the business are former performers. The producers are aware that a strong performing background is a winning formula. They direct well because they know what's involved; they've been on the other end. Their name on the box is helpful because they have a following, especially someone like Sharon or John Leslie. Also they have good relations with the other performers, which for a director is crucial. What about all the experienced old directors? Why aren't they hired all the time? A lot of them are. So why do you need new directors? There's a lot of product always being made, and you can't divide up all the business there is among six guys, two of whom are former performers. Paul Thomas and John Leslie, two of the most successful directors, started on the other side of the camera. So, if the Industry has any interest in nurturing directing talent, people like Sharon are at a premium. So if she's motivated . . . And she might not [be] because it's hard work? It's hard work. It requires her to do something she's profoundly averse to doing. She doesn't like to negotiate with people, fight with people, pressure people. A director must do all these [things]: a director is a manager, a traffic cop. A good director knows who needs to be where and when; and who needs to be stroked and who needs Truth and Consequences / 225

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to be kicked in the butt; who needs to be argued with; who needs to be convinced. Because if the director tries to do everything him- or herself, nothing gets done. It's a matter of getting other people to do things. A director gives direction. Sharon is not a great one for giving direction. She's wonderful on the set, but only half the director's job is on the set. The other half is in the office. The half that's on the set, she does well and enjoys. The half in the office, she's loathe to do. But Sharon could have . . . I wouldn't call it a career: there is no career in porn for anyone. The word porn and the word career don't belong on the same page. Is it easier to be a performer than to direct? Enormously easier, especially if you're like Sharon, an experienced performer who [as a performer] does not have to do anything new or interesting: just go on automatic pilot and go through the motions; where the director is the pilot. She said this afterward: "The toughest part of directing on the set is maintaining concentration." A successful director has a ferocious concentration, the ability to shut out all distracting influences and focus on what is getting done. Being a director is to being a performer as designing and building a bus is to driving one. Sharon is not ambitious. If I were in her position, in the nine months since this picture was shot I'd have lined up other directing jobs. If I had come off my first big directing job with the favorable notices with which she came off hers, I would have turned it to my advantage. Instead, she's taking the minimum number of days as a performer necessary to survive and building a career as a singer-songwriter. A long shot but, if she can do it, infinitely preferable. Okay. Total change of subject. I found a genuine fan of Lee Caroll: Bill Margold. I knew that was who you were going to say. Bill has his own trash aesthetic: guys like Al Goldstein and Larry Flynt, others of that generation in this business, for whom trash is part of the appeal. The trashiness of the medium is part of what they like about it. John Waters is the principal proponent of the trash aesthetic in the aboveground world, the much-regarded director who made Pink Flamingos and a bunch of movies meant to be shocking in a campy, funny way. Is he the one that created . . . "Divine," the big transvestite star, yeah, yeah, absolutely, that's John Waters. Everyone speaks highly of him. I've read interviews with him and things he's written. Exceedingly bright, talented, capable guy, who believes this kind of thing is funny and subversive and entertaining. He's got a point. But when I see them, what I see is the labored expression of an adolescent desire to shock. And Margold and Goldstein and the other oldtimers still delight in that which they think shocks middle-class propriety. I can imagine few things on earth more shocking to anyone of propriety than Lee Carol!: vulgarity for its own sake. And Bill is a great believer in vulgarity for its own sake. A marriage made in heaven. I can see [imagine] a scene in a picture between Bill and Lee. A lot of people would want to see that. I might be one of them! I can imagine nothing less erotic, but if you put those two old bruisers in the ring together, the spit would fly. And it would be entertaining. So it doesn't surprise me that Margold finds Lee Caroll charming and attractive. She probably feels the same way about him. There are others. Sharon likes her. She was Sharon's choice. In a way, she's almost Sharon's alter ego: Sharon is the girl-next-door. So ladylike. So suave. Two sides of the same coin. They complement each other and like each other.

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Since we're jumping around, let's talk about the reports on the Channel Two news. The series is called Porno and the Mob and focuses on organized crime. It would seem to prefigure another wave of prosecutions. I still feel the issue is censorship. It's the material itself the feds are attempting to suppress. The organized crime thing, whether true or false, is a dodge to avoid the First Amendment questions. In the television series, they revealed the federal strategy: agents planted out there in the heartland, in towns where community standards are conservative, to get these products by mail order. And they intend to prosecute in these remote jurisdictions. "Venue shopping," the strategy they outlined in the Wall Street Journal piece that grew out of the Méese Commission. There's a strategy that's guaranteed: when you threaten people with the high expense of defending themselves, you don't have to worry about constitutional issues. You don't have to go into court. Win or lose, it makes no difference: you break somebody [financially] in two or three [trials] . . . Why do they have to build a federal case? All they've got to do is bankrupt these people. Then the whole business would collapse. A perfect strategy. It is. Then why don't they just do that? They are doing it. Well, then, what's all this bullshit about building a case? Because they have to have had some . . . They cannot admit it's a game. They cannot admit to venue shopping, because venue shopping has been ruled unconstitutional: Federal statutes are supposed to be applied uniformly throughout the country. They're federal statutes, not local statutes. Federal prosecutors cannot say, "We're not planning on getting convictions; we're just planning on putting these guys out of business with selective prosecution." So they'll probably get convictions in those places that will subsequently be reversed on appeal on the ground that this application of community standards is inappropriate: that the standards of the community where the material is produced [italics added] are the appropriate community standards to apply [for the producers, rather than where it is sold]. There is no national community standard—an oxymoron—but if you wanted to try, it should be close to that of the jurisdictions in which the material was produced. If I were defending these cases, I would build my defense on the size of the market. I would say, "Obviously these things cannot be a great offense, an affront to community standards because all over the country . . . Who the fuck is renting these tapes?" In the more sophisticated atmosphere of an appellate court, that defense would probably be effective. But you'd be broke [by then]. By that time, I'd have spent about two, three hundred thousand dollars getting there. What laws are being broken in the porn business? Interstate transportation of obscene materials, they claim. The problem, of course, is the definition of "obscene." Miller versus California, the court case that established the obscenity test in this society, is a two-edged sword. It does three nice things and one bad thing. The three nice things, a tripartite test for obscenity that's rigorous and hard to meet: it has to be devoid of redeeming social, educational, or scientific value. And that it is, on the face of it, meant to appeal mainly to prurient interests. And be patently in violation Truth and Consequences / 227

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of accepted community standards. A very tough test. Hardly anything meets all three. That's the good news from Miller versus California. The bad news is that it does establish that there 25 such a thing as obscenity and that what has been ruled obscene by federal courts and not struck down by higher courts is not constitutionally protected speech. Once speech has been ruled obscene, it loses its constitutional protection. So, if they can get a ruling from a court in Broken Arrow, Nebraska, that this material is obscene, until it's struck down by a higher court, the materials in question [will] have been made illegal. Illegal to transport those materials across state lines because that material has been ruled obscene. So that's what they're doing. Eventually, that material is ruled not obscene some place, and then those prosecutions will be thrown out. Those people will be let out of jail. And they will be broke. They will need to start over, and they will find some other way to do it. They won't go out of business because of this. The second reason is that there's an immense public in the millions and millions who support the business, so it's hard to ... It's not going away. It's ineradicable. It has always been ineradicable.

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16 Ira's Last Stanza

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So ... Well, let's see, what other things do we have to report on? I have done not a lick of work on our book in the last two weeks. I'm still trying to round up our guy [a male performer, preferably Randy]. We've got to get a guy in here to chat with us. I've put it off because I've been coping with my various crises. I hear Sharon might be making another picture soon that I might be working on. So, we'll see how it goes. Picking up on our discussion about the future, I doubt the X-rated picture will disappear, but I do think the X-rated culture will disappear, the vast, thriving world that grew up around the making of X-rated video products. The world we document in our book is vanishing. No more a booming business employing thousands of people, producing thousands of products. It will go back to a business that employs a couple of hundred people and produces a couple of hundred products a year. I think the outlets for these products will become fewer. The shelves of mainstream video rental places will always have X-rated sections, but they'll be small. I believe Tower Video cut their X-rated section from 275-some titles to around 150. More and more of the stuff will go back to being dealt out of adult bookstores and mail order and less a thing seen on every street corner. Not so much because of a change in the political mood of the country but simply because there's a loss of interest. I think the audience is bored with it. The X-rated picture as we know it was a genre picture, like a western or a science fiction picture or a whodunit. A genre with genre conventions. Westerns were terribly popular: then they faded with the fading of the myth of the frontier. So the X-rated picture was a product of the newly liberated social atmosphere of the sixties and seventies; with the fading of the ideal of Utopian sexual freedom, the appeal of these pictures is fading. There's nothing new in them, nothing exciting in them, the same old stuff over and over. It just doesn't fit with the tone of its era. X-rated pictures are very optimistic. Well, a hard-on is always optimistic. 229

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Since the technology was invented, people have made hard-core pictures. There will always be hard-core pictures. I just think they'll be targeted to a small market that wants just that, and that the genre of erotic pictures in general will expand thanks to the reclassification of the system. There will be more attempts to sex-up mainstream products. My girlfriend is working on one of those right now, a forerunner of many more pictures like it. They spend more money on production values and skip the hard-core, but it's essentially a sex movie. Eventually, we'll probably have what they have in Europe, where hard-core's been legal for years. But that market is dwarfed in Europe by the market for soft-core, theatrically released erotic pictures. The Emmanuelle series, 9y/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid, those soft-core, sexy pictures play like crazy in Europe. It's amazing the [number of noted] directors who make them. When Polanski first got there after his troubles here, he made a son-core picture for the European market to get back on his feet financially. The more talented and far-sighted people in the X business will get on board with that. Will all you guys, barring bad luck, be needed? Not necessarily. It depends on what skills the people doing hard-core bring to the soft-core market. If they're good actors who don't mind doing nudity, they might find work; if not, not. I'm not talking about the actors; I'm talking about the crew. Crews have always gone back and forth, but it's never easy. It's hard for even the most talented X-rated people to cross over. A lot of people in the non-X-rated business pride themselves on never having sunk so low as to make an X-rated picture. It's considered déclassé. Anyone who has done hard-core has a lot of resistance and snobbery to overcome that has nothing to do with sex. It has more to do with what kind of picture you made before. If you've done mainly episodic television, it's hard to cross over into feature film. Not as bad now but still pretty bad. If you learn to use a video camera before a film camera, even if you're qualified to shoot film, you're still up against an entrenched belief that guys who shoot video are lazy, that it's a forgiving medium not very good to begin with, and that therefore these guys have bad habits they developed from being able to erase tape. You're talking about people who consider themselves artists and who work in media that in time could be construed as artistic. It's one thing for the Fauvists and the Impressionists to be rejected on the ground that the painting they were doing was no good, or crazy, or lacking in skill. But nobody accused those guys of being guys who made dirty postcards first. There will never come a time when X-rated videos will be viewed as great, undiscovered gems. Nor the people who make them, the people who are trumpeted as the great hidden talents, the real picturemakers, the guys who should be given a fair shot by Hollywood. They're about as good as most episodic TV directors, but not many are hidden geniuses. If we had someone who tore up the screen, it wouldn't really matter. They'd get hired. The truth is that most people in the X-rated business have talents suited to the X-rated business, not to the other business. When I go to the sets where they make features and watch the crew working, I see that there's not much joking around or downtime. Everyone works under pressure. There's a lot at stake. They work long, long hours, days and days on end. A Prussian grimness. I don't see that in X-rated crews at all. But you're down today. On another day you're up, and you'll talk of how exciting it is to watch Falco doing wonderful editing, how he does it even on the set, the ter-

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rific work that Jane is doing, and considering that they only have two days, they can just knock the socks off of the regular business. Now you're saying the opposite. No F m not. I'm saying the same thing. I'm saying that given two days, they can do a hell of a job, but give them forty-eight days, I'm not sure they can do the job at all. They're temperamentally suited to editing through the camera, shooting on the fly, changing tapes while they're shooting, this kind of stuff. They're sprinters as opposed to marathoners. Another thing, the crew on a regular movie has little contact with the creative process. The labor is broken up among so many people that there isn't much intimacy. Whereas on an X-rated crew, everyone does everyone's job. Everyone's a director. Everyone looks through the camera. Anyone sees a microphone boom in the picture yells "Boom shadow!" and the boom comes up. Everyone covers everyone's ass. The camera guy puts down his camera to help move scenery. You're not going to see that on any union set. It would shut the set down immediately until there was a grievance meeting and the producers got on their knees and promised it would never happen again. If someone got behind the wheel of an official transportation vehicle who didn't happen to be a member of the Teamsters' Union, your picture would be shut down. The feeling in X-rated pictures is that the stakes are smaller, so people can afford to fool around, be temperamental, be funny, be sexy, be themselves. On a regular picture, people don't let much about themselves show. X-rated film making is a home for temperamental, offbeat personalities, for talented misfits. They have no time [or] patience for that in the regular industry. When you're talking about a payroll of nine hundred and forty-five thousand dollars a week, there isn't much tolerance for people fooling around, someone calling in an hour after they're due on the set, saying, "Oh, God, I stayed up too late last night. I've got a terrible hangover, and I'm running an hour and a half behind. Could you move my scene back further in the day?" And having the director say, "Sure. Come in at one o'clock; we'll shoot something else first." No informal flying-by-the-seat-of-thepants feeling on a regular picture. And the people who've been making X-rated pictures for ten or fifteen years would find that a difficult adjustment to make. Acts of rebellion are common on X-rated sets, no question. The whole thing is a rebellion. Absolutely. And everyone understands that, and that the personalities involved are rebels who require patient handling. They are there to act out socially unacceptable behavior. You assume they'll have other unacceptable traits. It comes with the territory. Flamboyance as a star virtue in regular film making is much overrated. Whereas in our field, it's a way of life. If someone has a drink before they do their scene and stumbles back onto the set slightly woozy, nobody gives a shit. They say, "If I had to fuck someone in front of a room full of people when the camera's running, I might need a drink too!" The futures for many X-rated people look pretty sad. Many of them are very talented, but their talent is limited to this thing. It is not a talent they can take somewhere else. The ability to work, with flair, in a slapdash manner is the opposite of the meticulous activity that makes a regular feature film. I don't know where these guys are headed, but I don't think they're headed for feature films. The feature film industry has huge limitations now. I read last week Ira's Last Stanza / 2)1

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that the average cost of a studio picture has now topped twenty-five million. Who's going to put up that kind of money? So you're going to see more pictures about kids finding alien rocketships in the backyard. What stands in the way of you being a director rather than A.D. behind Sharon? Personally, I'm restless, anxious to move on to bigger and better things. It was wonderful to discover the process of film making up close. Who knows if I ever could have done that with feature films? But to use that learning only to make more X-rated pictures doesn't seem worth it. I'm not sorry for the time I've put into this business so far, but I know I would get to be eventually. As my friend Patrick used to say, "Forgive yourself for everything. But not in advance." The time to regret your mistakes is before you make them, not after. It's useless then.

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17 Conclusions: I, Ira Wraps

Conclusions? I'm wary of them. Looking back over my own remarks as they appear in the earlier parts of this book, remarks based on what I thought I knew half a decade ago, I can see how my thinking on many crucial matters has since evolved. Chagrined as I am by the specious cocksureness of my sweeping generalizations of that time, I now find I have mainly questions where once I thought I had answers. Sticking to impressions seems safer. At the most superficial level, the striking feature of the testimony of those involved with the making of Stairway to Paradise is the degree to which their descriptions of the experience resemble those commonly heard in relation to the production of so-called legitimate feature films. From having worked on my share of "straight" pictures, I recognize the bell curve of creative excitement from the project's dim conception through the manic intensity of its actualization to the inevitable satisfactions and disappointments of its completion. There were all the usual jealousies, territorial disputes, displays of artistic temperament, and creative differences. There were all the usual moments of stunning inspiration, crazy humor, unexpected generosity, and collective enthusiasm. To all appearances, it would seem we were involved in the making of some kind of a work of art. It's tempting to assess Stairway as a cinematic work by the same standards that I would naturally apply to nonpornographic products in similar media. If Stairway were a conventional film, it would have to be judged a success in that it was critically well received (in the X-rated press), commercially profitable, and a strong contender in several categories for the various awards the Industry gives out. From a purely artistic standpoint, it was handicapped by a certain conceptual ambiguity resulting in a wavering tone somewhere between broad comedy and philosophical drama. Fortunately, its energetic performances and clean, theatrical-style staging make it visually effective and exciting to watch, at least in places. It may not have been fully realized in all its vaulting ambitions, but what artistic effort ever is? Whatever its shortcomings, it is a quality piece of work in a field where quality is already rare and in increasingly short supply. 2)3

And therein lies the problem with having chosen this particular picture as our test model. To the extent that Stairway resembles a "real" movie, with its comparatively large budget and generous shooting schedule, not to mention the labor lavished upon it by some of the brightest, most talented people in the X-rated video industry, it sets itself apart from the more typical output of that industry. Our experiences working on it, and your experience reading about it, are not necessarily representative of those common to the production of the typical five-sex-scenes-shot-in-one-day commercial video. Indeed, reading all the technical jargon in the interviews about angles, dolly shots, line readings, editing choices, and so on, it would be easy to forget the one thing that, when slogging through the grind of a fourteen-hour, low-budget shoot in an un-airconditioned bungalow in the San Fernando Valley on a sweltering summer day, can never be forgotten—the subject matter. The subject matter of X-rated videos is sex—not sexuality (an element common to so many works of art of all types), but sex itself. And that makes it different from any other art form. It isn't a representation of anything. It is, as cinematographer Jane Waters suggests, a literal documentation of the physical acts of sexual intercourse. Though its purpose may be to stimulate fantasies of unlimited erotic possibility, just as spectator sports are meant to stimulate fantasies of physical omnipotence, pornography in the making is nothing if not all-too-real. This fact may occasionally be obscured from the flying bridge where the directors, producers, and technical personnel make their creative decisions, but it is never lost on the performers who labor away down in the sweaty boiler room where society's sexual yearnings are converted to hard dollars by the friction of bodies. Something of the exhaustion, tedium, and anxiety that accompany this transformation comes through, even in the fairly sunny perceptions of the performers interviewed for this book; in their candid asides about their concerns with their appearances, their relationships, their health, their futures. In some part, the whole enterprise of X-rated video making is built on the investment of the performers' well-being, in much the same way that professional sports are built on the perishable skills and strengths of athletes. In an industry where producers will pay for breast-implant surgery for young female performers but not for the repeated corrective procedures that such surgeries often require, it is not surprising that many players come to see themselves as, to use one actress' description, "some kind of warped science project." For a Sadean such as myself, it's natural to postulate some enjoyment on the audience's part derived from the knowledge of the risks and rigors to which the performers are subjected. I've already cited the growing popularity of all-anal pictures as an example of what Bill calls "people enjoying watching performers working without a net." I see some of that same mechanism at work in Jane Waters' digression on the nasty thrill of facial ejaculation shots. Thinking back over the legendary scenes of porn—Marilyn Chambers' trapeze act in Behind the Green Door or the infamous double-fisting from Candy Stripers—their common denominator seems to be an element of the shocking, the extreme, and the grotesque. I deeply suspect that pornography is less effective when it lacks this element. It could be argued that Stairway is less effective as porn for being too "nice," that it lacks what Dr. Stoller used to refer to as the component of harm that energizes the sexual imagination. It is the evidence ofthat component that, I'm certain, is what disturbs many of porn's detractors. To the extent that the desire for shocking stimulation tends to objectify the roles of sex performers, it is not a healthy thing for the performers themselves. However, it is a part of the process by which porn works as an inspiration to fantasy. 234 / Ira Wraps

Fantasy, of which entertainment in all its forms is but a rendering (however faithful), exists because of a need to do or see in the mind that which is forbidden or impossible in daily life. It continues to strike me as a sign of our culture's immaturity that it recognizes the need for this kind of wish fulfillment as legitimate in all areas except sex. One of the reasons pornography merits serious study, in fact, is the way it reflects—with whatever degree of fun house-mirror distortion—our culture's attitudes, fears, and desires surrounding sexuality. It is society's need to distance itself psychologically from its own sexual impulses that is responsible for the pariah status of pornography and its practitioners. Someone must be sinning here, and it obviously can't be the viewer. What I said at the beginning, I still believe at the end. The social cost of X-rated entertainment is probably sustainable, but the personal toll it exacts from its creators can be steep. In my Utopian dream, society accepts the need for erotic entertainment, gives up on trying to eliminate it, and mandates workplace reforms for the protection of those who provide it. Unless and until that dream comes true, pornography itself, and the quality of the lives of those who make it, will remain much as they are because, for now, that's what's in the script.—ISL

Ira Wraps / 23$

18 Conclusions: II, Why Not?

Here are reasons for making this book. 1. Pornography being tasty for hundreds of millions of people, men and women, boys and girls (billions, if third world countries could be supplied), a consumer might have fun seeing how some of the illusions are created. The reader may be interested not only because erotic behavior is, necessarily, highly charged, but because the illusion in porn, as different from most theater, works by using nonillusional behavior: the performers' real anatomy at the alert, doing real sex. (As impressive as an actress exuding real tears before a camera.) My humblest purpose, then, is to give readers a sense of the reality behind the finished porn product. 2. I want the reader to sense, as part of that reality, how knowing the dynamics— intrapsychic and interpersonal—at work in the performers, writers, and directors enriches our understanding of the process of making porn. This awareness is analogous to sensing the structure of dreams, where the finished product is the dreamed dream—the manifest content—while the behind-the-scenes dynamics represent the dream work. In both cases, as with other art forms, do not judge the process by the product. 3. With observations like those in Ira's and Porsche's eyes-open descriptions, plus our comments, one could raise the quality of political discourse on such issues as who is doing what to whom during erotic behavior and how those issues are reflected in the way pornography is made. At present, however, the politics of pornography (e.g., the proclamation that pornography "really" depicts rape and, worse, leads to rape) and of erotic and gender behavior is poorly supported by data. Therefore, I have wanted to talk to laborers in the fields of porn to experience better what actually occurs in their work. (You can see, then, why I am deeply, frantically, concerned that the process of editing the transcripts not distort these details.) But there is a problem beyond honest reporting: how do we pick informants? (A

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question not properly faced yet by the disciplines of ethnography, history, political science, psychoanalysis, or the rest of that sushi served up as "the Sciences of Man.") Ira, you saw, beguiles me. That makes for lively and detailed interviews; but how reliable is he (no matter how convincing)? So I talk to others in the X-rated Industry (few of whom appear in this book, though some are central elsewhere [Stoller 19915 and in manuscripts in preparation]). One needs a lot of informants, with différent assignments in the Industry, different personalities and experience, and different relationships with me. That kind of complexity, covering thousands of hours of interviews for many years, changes a thread in the tapestry. Then—as long as you do not seek the Truth—you may become less, or at least differently, biased. This book therefore allows me to continue a discussion—one-sided thus far—with colleagues in psychoanalysis and ethnography. My sweet, gentle, modest position is that the "data" of these disciplines are more or less worthless because they are not data (Colby and Stoller 1988); that is, one cannot tell from the reports what was said, what was felt, what was edited out or put in. All we have is the version the author chooses to give us, which is simply not good and should stop: though one cannot give the accurate report, one can give an accurate report. This book demonstrates an approach to that task. 4. Close attention to how porn is made helps to test two hypotheses: first, that erotic excitement is energized by fantasies of harm-humiliation-cruelty-revengeteasing-frustration-anger—that is, hostility (which may be present only microscopically or grossly, unconsciously or consciously); second, that pornography, being a published daydream, can be used for testing the hostility hypothesis. Join the experiment. Pick up any piece of pornography, of any genre, and try to detect the hostility element. In the usual mistake, one looks for that element on the surface. But doing so may not work, for much pornography expresses no manifest hostility, but a picture of a nude, smiling woman bending over to pick flowers, for instance. The test, rather, must be applied to the mind of the person experiencing the pornography. It is there that we must search, for hostility—the desire to harm—is a product of the mind, not of a photolab or recording studio. The value for me in studying the production of pornography, then, is that on talking with its creators, I may find what is in their minds; not only what excites them but what they predict is in the customer's mind. If they are wrong, they go broke. 5. Studying the dynamics of erotic excitement, I came to see there the process of fetishization, perhaps more precisely described as dehumanization (Stoller 1979). In doing so, I went beyond R. C. Bak. Though finding the fetish central to perversion, he does not suggest, as I do, that the fetish may be a component of any erotic moment, not just the perverse moment (which, if true, means that erotic moments are perverse moments). Hoping it is not so, I nonetheless suggest, grimly, that for most people the more fetishizing, the more excitement. Here is an interesting way to put it: "Something invisible becomes visible in the fetish" (Koch 1989,25). The other half of the seesaw, I add, is that the visible becomes invisible in the fetish; that is, certain human qualities are submerged in the body of the fetish and dehumanized elements are allowed to surface. Dehumanization, however, is not only a matter of diminishment; its other form is exaggeration, idealization. Think, for instance, in the realm of erotics, of the hugemuscled males created for homosexual men in the gym; or the extravagantly nude women of heterosexual pornography; or the positive transference in the treatment; or the worship of Freud. Of course, diminishing and exaggerating are present in the same Why Not? / 237

representation—for instance, the odd complementarity of more-less equals less-more that, as Ellis (1980) points out (in Koch 1989, 24-25), equates female orgasm with female phallus. That idea took physical shape twenty or so years ago in the Utopian feminists' literature that proclaimed the natural woman's capacity for unlimited orgasms, a claim that in the sixteenth century would have caused blessed men to burn women as witches. The opposite tack—that women's pleasure does not count—can also be taken to preserve men's erotic excitement from underlying anxieties. So one finds scattered in the Library of Pornography examples of little or no focus on the woman's excitement. Even today, none of my pornographer-informants cares much if the women performers are orgasmic. Perhaps they correctly judge their audience in knowing how rarely their male viewers care if the women simulate or truly experience excitement and orgasm: so much of the focus is on the penis, its hazards and its triumphs. (To what extent does this heterosexual male audience attend to performers' penises because of the same processes of identification and idealization found in homosexual men? Or are these mechanisms in heterosexual men different from those in homosexuals? I think the answer to the latter question is more yes than no.) At any rate, I presume that pornographers have ways of dealing with this problem so that their male audience is not threatened (cf. the discussions of the homophobia that threatens the two men dealing with Queen Lox). I remind my readers here of my conviction that fetishizing is used to greater extremes and with more depicted elements in males than females. I suspect, however, that in addition to biologic forces energizing the heat Bill looks for in a porn star is the presence, in his women—not only in his men—of an intensified need or ability to fetishize. Hypothesis: in either sex, to fetishize is to conflagrate. To make visible the visible: the psychoanalytic vocabulary of defense mechanisms is all about fetishizing: splitting, narcissism, projection, projective identification, identification/ introjection/incorporation, identification with the aggressor, denial/disavowal, and so on. Each of these concepts stands for observations that reveal the desire to harm the objects of our desire, the anxieties that result therefrom, and the means we use in our fantasies to hide what we are doing from ourselves and others. It is the business of pornography, despite the fullness of its imagery, to do this work so well that we do not know what we know and what we do. This process of diminishing and idealizing is not restricted to erotics, of course. We use it all day. If we could not, we would go mad from the onslaughts of external reality and our inner truths. That is, the processes we use to create, endure, and enjoy neurosis depend on dehumanizing. When, eating breakfast, I read the reports on Bangladesh, on murders, on racism, on the destruction of the environment, and all the other physical and mental disorders, I still enjoy the orange juice. 6. Legal issues (which draw strength from the moral issues discussed next) may benefit from a greater understanding of the process of creating a pornographic item. It will help here—and in the courts—to define pornography. To be useful, our definition should not say that pornography is simply something that excites the imagination erotically; rather, it is something produced for the purpose