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Monday, June 27, 2005
Sort of Inside Deep Throat, but not all the way in
 Inside Deep Throat isn't a fair and balanced documentary, but it's entertaining. Borrowing liberally from the faux-retro stylebook created by The Kid Stays in the Picture, IDT combines 70's-style graphics and stock footage with the only soundtrack ever to feature Supertramp (and a Gary Glitter song that isn't "Rock And Roll Part One" for once).Deep Throat opened in Times Square in June, 1972. A departure from the "educational" adult film and the traditional stag film in that it had a narrative (Linda Lovelace searches for an orgasm in Florida, hampered by her hard-to-reach clitoris), it became the first "event" porn film and eventually grossed $600 million, making it the most profitable film of all time. It featured in U.S. Obscenity Law, the feminist movement, and became a cash cow, the film suggests, for the Mafia. How the film suggests is less its narration (Dennis Hopper has become the Voice of the Early Seventies) than its avoidance in interview segments of shutting off the camera. While no one in the doc says Throat Director Gerard Damiano was mobbed up, for example, the tape runs to record his awkward silence when the subject is introduced. This is a trick Errol Morris employs in his own documentaries, but Inside Deep Throat uses this tactic irresponsibly. We are a culture that seeks to fill silences, and silences are always awkward because of this. That IDT exploits these silences to imply guilt (or make someone look foolish) mars an otherwise competent historical document. Producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have taken a crash course in Porn Valley. Their company, World of Wonder, put together Wired for Sex in 2003, sending teams to various establishments in the adult industry (including Ponante-era AVN) to illustrate the porn world's bleeding-edge role in recreational technology. Their product is always entertaining and well-researched, dealing mostly in three fields: porn, the mainstream entertainment industry, and Gay America. Even as the documentary draws a distinction between today's desensitized society and the sociopolitical turmoil that followed Deep Throat wherever it played, I was struck by certain themes common to the modern skin trade and its 70's counterpart. Throat's corny doctor, Harry Reems, had dreams of becoming a legitimate star. Instead, though his legal woes had the sympathy of liberal Hollywood, he couldn't get cast in a mainstream movie (he was up for Sid Caesar's part in Grease and I bet he would have been pretty good). Linda Lovelace renounced porn, blaming her participation on an abusive suitcase pimp, then returned for a spread in Legshow at age 50. Everybody complained of not making any money from the picture. No one seemed to judge Throat on its own merits, but instead called it either art or trash. The documentary lets a few people skewer themselves (prosecutor Larry Parrish, anti-porn crusader/embezzler Charles Keating) and some folks come off looking good (is it that Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt don't have offices north of Ventura Blvd. that they seem so much more urbane than anyone who does?) Harry Reems, now a Christian and a real estate broker in Park City seems, Ringo Starr-like, to be taking his accidental celebrity in stride with good will and humor. IDT also provides the quintessential Porn Doofus in Throat's production manager, Ron Wertheim. Wertheim doesn't need sneaky camera tricks to look like a bonehead. Porn Valley's drama queens are forever clucking about mainstream media's conniving and exploitive tactics re: the adult industry. They say that mainstream descends on the Valley during Sweeps to get titillating copy, which it then derides. So? Show us you're worth being taken seriously. Put out something that the ordinary American would watch more than five minutes (without being paid to review it) and maybe the indignance would be justified. Inside Deep Throat paints the picture of a fun little film (made for $25K) that achieved what today's industry pretends to: relevance. ¶ Monday, June 27, 2005 1 Comments Links to this post  
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Hiya Sophia Santi
 I spoke with Digital Playground founder Samantha Lewisand the company's newest contract persona, Sophia Santi. The way one usually talks with a DP functionary is with someone else listening in, like Mary Hatch's mother in It's A Wonderful Life, so I was not surprised when Sam quashed all my attempts to ask Sophia about soybeans and getting in on the ground floor of the new plastics industry from right here in Bedford Falls.GP: Samantha, I always liked the webcast DP Tonight. It was where I first met Kiki D'aire, Self-Hating Lew, Penthouse Pet Sam Phillips, Jesse Jane, and that couch. When will it return? SL: We're revamping it now. When Joone Samantha proceeded to tell me how great Sophia was, how Sophia Santi is 23 and, as an excellent article in XBiz GP: Sophia, where are you from, exactly, in Canadia? Santi joined the business from Vancouver in 2002 and then GP: Have you met all the other contract Digital Playground publicist Adella had said earlier GP: I am a man. Will you do scenes with Santi's phone goes out. GP: Adella told me that you're an all Digital Playground will be building a site for Sophia, GP: What about your old life as Natalia Adella had said earlier that Sophia owns the name Sophia
Sophia has been a fan of Janine for several years, and GP: It's a leap for Digital Playground While making a wad of your panty SS: I need to go. ¶ Wednesday, June 22, 2005 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, June 06, 2005
Kill Girl Kill 3: (Repo Man 2)
 This electronic ankle bracelet keeps your pal Gram from getting out of Porn Valley much, but a call from tortured, misunderstood wunderkind Eon McKai and diminutive, Lovecraft-loving Joanna Angel, like the blood of Christ, compelled me to the exotic cities of Vernon and Huntington Park this weekend, driving past 66-cent stores and Repo Man-reminiscent locales to watch the shooting of Kill Girl Kill 3. Those of you reading for the first or final time might wonder what attending a porn shoot is like. Well, it's a dream-come-true. It's magical. Were it not for the weapons-grade truss I wear for just these occasions, I would continually re-break my nose with my powerful erections. That, the copious supply of Power Bars, and the off-chance that I might see Heidi Pike-Johnson are the things that keep me coming back despite clinical priapism and my painful
That Joanna Angel, who started Burning Angel as a "punkrock Playboy" with Rutgers buddy Mitch Fontaine in 2002, is even shooting in Southern California is, well, partly a financial decision but otherwise pretty impressive for what it represents. McKai has racked up some good numbers for Art School Sluts and Kill Girl Kill (volume 2 comes out in July) and Burning Angel has been a harder-edged Suicide Girls (there will probably always be that easy,unfair comparison) based out of Brooklyn, but McKai's "I won't shoot in the Valley" platform and BA's NYC particularity made it unlikely that the two groups would get together,even if they had a mutual admiration society going on. "We would send e-mails to Burning Angel and they wouldn't respond," said Malachi Ecks, McKai's producer. Now with BA starting to release DVDs (their first, called Burning Angel.com: the DVD for some reason, came out in April, and their Cthulhu-porn Re-Penetrator will go on sale in two weeks), the shoe is on the other foot. In addition to filming a scene for someone other than herself, Angel and partner Fontaine are getting the lowdown on how to shoot a porn movie, studio style. Burning Angel, Fontaine said, started as a membership site with Joanna and five friends posing, blogging, and shooting Internet-only videos. "We were trading ads with our friends' record labels," he said, "and then it slowly started taking off." Fontaine said that constrictions of location and money required creative solutions to shooting porn in New York. "We had to find other ways to make shit look hot," he said. One recent solution was "Schoolbus Bitches", in which various Angels fuck their way through Williamsburg in the back of a short schoolbus that was purchased and refitted by yet more friends in bands. "Short schoolbuses aren't just for the retarded," Fontaine explained. "Our high school bowling team had a short schoolbus." Ecks and McKai were both DJs holding down day jobs when they met. Ecks was working at VCA in the art department, pulling chromes, and knew publicist Carney who was then at LFP. Carney also spins that goddamned house music. Art School Sluts started taking shape two years ago when VCA was still its own company. Now VCA is owned by LFP which, depending on who you believe, is either killing its child slowly or giving it enough room to hang itself. Carney agrees that VCA has taken advantageof its new status to do some risky things. "The Eon gamble has really paid off," he said. The KGK3 shoot took place in the Soto Street buildings that used to house Dreamhost. They are now being used for an Internet company, a music warehouse, parties here andthere, and porn shoots. The place looks like a 1950s state facility with carpets. Angel, who at 5'3" actually fits in my hand, was being made up by Molly, who also does the faces of Otto Bauer and Audrey Hollander. Angel was wearing a t-shirt, looking like a weary babysitter, and sitting next to Art School Sluts' James Deen when I came in, and 90 minutes later, she looked like a breath of dirty air. Still, she sounds a lot taller and more evil in instant messages. In person she has a very soft voice. "Don't make me look stupid," she wrote. "It's not in my m.o. to make you look stupid," I wrote back. When I met her, I asked her if the Burning Angel girls would ever fight the Vivid girls. "Don't be stupid," she said. Angel is being repped locally by Bad-Ass Frank, president of Bad-Ass Talent. Frank got into the habit, really, of being a talent manager when friends asked him to accompany them to shoots. "I didn't like it when they came back crying," he said, "so I started going to shoots and talking with directors beforehand." Despite being a former bodybuilder, Frank doesn't have the air of menace or despair-induced glassiness of suitcase pimps. "Being in the business has actually encouraged my monogamy," he said. He has a steady girlfriend, refuses more clients than he takes ("I've referred a bunch of people to Jim South without even a thank you note from the guy," he said), and takes a 10 percent commission. "Even on print jobs?" I asked. "Print agents scam 20 percent off of those." "I'll look into it," he said. Frank is soliciting bids to put together a video project of his own and will begin shooting a spec in two weeks. That all these people are cooperating in the same building would be hard to believe in other studios or offices. This group is like the Beats in the 50's, except they use electroclash and meth instead of jazz, benzedrine, and jugs of wine. They're like the expatriates of the 20s without the pressed linen fetish and cigarette habits. They're like the various elements of King Crimson if that band produced videos of anal sex with girls on crutches. Wardrobe designer Jon San Nicolas had commissioned his mother to craft a tutu for a Japanese Lolita that would be used later. "She would have disowned me by now if she didn't like it," he said. San Nicolas, I think, is the youngest person I've met who doesn't offer a traditional "porn excuse", some pat metadata about why he's doing porn rather than (or in addition to) something else. "I had a roommate who was a porn production assistant," he said. "Designing clothes is so much better." Yes. Since there are no fluffers anymore, porn P.A.s do far more horrifying things for their fistful of Red Vines and box of VHS tapes to pay off the pizza guy.
Because I needed to feed the monkey, I couldn't stay all "Better be careful of what the camera picks up," McKai My favorite McKai quote goes something like, "It's like For people who actually watch
Friday, June 03, 2005
I am Teagan Presley (I am not Teagan Presley)
I accepted awards on behalf of Digital Playground last night, which couldn't attend the XRCO Awards because it had to go to soccer practice. Other than someone from Table 1 screaming for me to get off the stage and Cousin Stevie looking at me like I was nuts when I came up to collect the award for Best New Starlet, I seriously enjoyed getting a placque job from Hollie Wellin.
 Later, the mild-mannered Jared Rutter asked me if "those awards are going to get to Teagan."  I replied that I may hold them for ransom until she lets me knock her up. (Of course you'll get your awards, Teagan.) I was disappointed that the brouhaha over Wankus came to naught, and he wasn't shot on stage like Barbara Jean in Nashville. He and Taylor Wane worked well together when she wasn't stepping on his punchlines. I was further shocked and horrified when he repeated a joke about Christy Canyon that he'd made Tuesday night about Angel. "I don't want to fuck her," he said two times in a week about two different people, "I just want to stick it in her and come." I felt like my hero had died.  Brian Surewood called from the bottom of a well to accept his award. The ClubJenna girls have seven days to live. Taylor Wane is saucy. I am not the submissive type, but I wish Clan Ponante could have afforded Taylor as a governess when I was a tot. jessica drake is classy. I feel like e.e. cummings when I see her.  Keiko and Rob Longshot were the best-dressed, with coordinated drinks, even.  I will never trust Bill Margold again when he says, "History will be made." What were you talking about? Missy Monroe should just stop by and see if anything needs fixing, or if she can bust up a chiffarobe.  Again, Cousin Stevie wanted me dead, I think, until I commented favorably on his baseball documentary. Here he is with Flower Tucci and the President of the Encino Coverdale/Page fan club.  This Hollie Wellin is a menace and needs to be stopped. Like a bottle. If you know what I mean. Who is this person with Randy West and Christy Canyon? She shows up everywhere with that brown hair and that hat. Is she famous? All I know is that's Self-Hating Lew's g-ddamn camera. 
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Friday, June 03, 2005
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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Cousin Stevie's Green Room
 I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect this. I definitely did not expect baseball bats and intra-lady squirting. Pictured is Kami Andrews, who has that railroad track-adjacent cigarette smoking thing going on. Gram Likes It™. The jury is way, way out on the baseball bats, though, especially before the All-Star break.
¶
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
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GP: Do you believe that shooting porn
