Maybe Los Angeles is cold spiritually, but even at its coldest it is better than where you live. Still, as the scisssorlift propelled cast and crew of Hillary Scott: Icon upward to the roof of downtown L.A.'s Fallout Shelter, I was happy someone had loaned me a jacket.
It was just past midnight and there were twenty or so people on the roof. Icon is a high-end vignette movie and either all the camera and industrial equipment were stolen or this movie will cost about $100k to make.
"You pull Tori out of the mirror," Cross told Scott, SexZ Pictures' one remaining contract star after Paulina James had the gall to become pregnant, "and Tori, you make it look like it's an effort."
Tori Black didn't have to act. All four performers on the roof, Scott, Black, Jennifer Dark, and Morgan Layne, were dresssed in strips of high exposure leather slutwear, and their breath hung in the air. It was an effort to do most things, and I couldn't imagine how they would have sex later on the four-poster bed that sat inexplicably at the edge of the roof like the camp director's cot at the end of Meatballs.
Scott was charged with pulling these women through a mirror, like in that A Ha video, and then having sex with them, like in that Go Gos video that never happened. This would be one stylized scene out of five starring Scott, including a music video.
While it was cold on the roof and it was late, I still sensed that no one wanted the bed scene to happen because it would mean all the clothes would come off. When that time came, Scott was the first to remove everything. She is an American Hero.
In fact, each of the women acquitted herself nicely, and maybe they were able to derive warmth from fisting each other the way our forefathers did in pioneer days. No one complained, and I have seen people walk off the set for lesser inconveniences.
Maybe it was because they would have needed a crane to get down.
By the time the scene was finished around 2:30 a.m., we'd been buzzed by several helicopters in stealth mode, flying with lights off. There were at least eight nipples that could have been seen from space at that point, too.
"They haven't invented the award you deserve for this yet," I said to Hillary Scott.
"Gram Ponante, you are truly America's Beloved Porn Journalist," she did not say.
Kayden Kross works on her fingering and footwork on the set of Rollerdollz.
I'm not sure why people give the finger to the camera, but I don't think Sacramento's Kayden Kross means it. I just don't think she was brought up that way. She was doing what she thought I wanted.
"I don't want that at all, Kayden Kross," I wanted to tell her. "I want you to just be."
But I didn't tell her this, and because of my complacency she's probably out giving the finger to Shriners.
"Grams, you don't spend enough time synthesizing the appeal of Jethro Tull and One Day at a Time on your award-winning web-site," is a complaint I hear almost as often as "How come you don't think I'm a genius the way my mom does?"
I have started to compile a comprehensive list of the photos I've taken in the event that I am taken down in a hail of bullets as is so often the fate of crusading porn journalists who know too much about how most of the cumshots in gay porn and interactive straight videos are fake.
Holy Fuck, this one worked so much better than my "Got Rainer Maria Rilke?" headline from all the porn weddings I perform.
At a recent abridged version of a "Pussy Party," Flower Tucci, Amber Peach, and Heather Silk got together at Flower's house to shoot promos for a Cousin Stevie pilot as well as content for each other's websites.
Silk, who happens to be lactating, added some vitamin D to the all-girl, protein-free proceedings while Tucci proved an able spokesmodel for products ranging from laptops to bongs to Boston Terriers and Peach just looked adorable.
When asked how she chose her porn name, Silk replied that an old boyfriend had referred to her vagina as "Silky Thumper."
Vivid Plus' has released its heavier women epic Curvaceous.
I went to the digital capture of this movie last August (I won't say "taping," I'd be embarrassed to say "lensing," and it would be inaccurate to say "filming") and there was so much flesh that producers allowed me to take home a to go bag of it.
I was reminded of a great line from "Honey White" by the late, lamented Morphine.
I complimented Amber Peach on her new haircut, but she said she didn't like the color, or liked the previous color - red - better.
She would have to try a lot harder to make someone not want to do terrible, wonderful things to her.
Here Peach is with Heather Silk, visiting from Florida for a Limited Edition of "Cousin Stevie's Pussy Party."
What I was trying to achieve with this photo was a sense of Silk corrupting the Alabama-born Peach with her big city Miami ways.
"OK, Heather," I said, "act like you're saying, 'You'll look more grown up if you drink this.'"
The ladies did an excellent job of telegraphing that emotion, I think.
It wasn't until I developed the pictures (and by "developed" I mean "downloaded") that I noticed that Peach was already holding a champagne glass, thus negating the complex motivation I had given them.
In retrospect I realize that I should have said, "Heather, tell Amber that people like girls who can drink a lot."
Because it's true.
Still, I want us to join along in saying that Peach needn't worry about her hair.
"I wanted to do porn since I gave my first blowjob at 15," said Ashley Orion, who today shot her very second porn scene ever for Hustler's Barely Legal 82.
The sylphlike and semipellucid Orion is the only porn performer I'm aware of who has taken her name from a constellation rather than a planet (Ange Venus) or single celestial body (Aiden and Bobbi Starr, Celeste Star, Sun Myung Moon). Nicki Hunter almost makes it because Sagittarius is the zodiac sign from which she took her name, even though Sagittarius is the archer and Orion is more closely associated with a hunter. It would be bad form to name oneself after Cancer, the crab.
Orion is from "all over L.A." but doesn't fit the stereotype; she's pale and charming. She makes me think of Stoya's lab partner in Chemistry by way of Hillary Scott.
I went to the set of Barely Legal 82 to see how the series had progressed, thematically and spiritually, since Barely Legal 75 last spring.
"My dog had puppies," said director Erica McLean.
I believe that a performer's first experiences with porn has a bearing on her longevity in the business.
Let's say you had Max Hardcore and Erica McLean running side by side film shoots, the way porn sometimes works, in adjoining rooms of the same house. And let's say identical twins decided to get into porn on the same day, a few days after their 18th birthdays. One twin chose to work for Max Hardcore and the other chose to shoot her first scene with McLean.
No offense to Mr. Hardcore, but the one who shot for McLean would probably be pleasanty surprised by the goings on in the porn industry and would continue working. The other, awash in urine, would begin plotting her exit strategy.
So fathers who think the more time their daughters spend in porn, the worse things are, owe a debt of gratitude to Hardcore. McLean's set, on the other hand, was stocked with healthy snacks, including fruit, pasta salad, sliced avocados, and a sandwich bar. Orion is probably thinking of making a career out of this now.
Orion was actually an alternate choice. As I drove through the gate and up the hill of a private residence off Sepulveda, I met another car barreling toward me down the one lane driveway. This was the woman McLean sent home.
"She didn't look like her pictures," McLean said.
"Somebody told her to get hair extensions that shouldn't have," the production assistant explained.
Orion, on the other hand, looked perfect. It made me think of my own 18th birthday just three years ago; innocent, pale, eager to please, and full of promise.
"Are you Irish?" I asked Ashley, thinking her last name was O'Ryan.
"No," she said for what I'm guessing was the fifth but nowhere near the last time. "It's Orion. Like the belt."
In Greek mythology, it was said that Orion raped Artemis. In Hollywood history, Orion released Caddyshack.
Orion's jacuzzi-bound and Budapest-born scene partner was veteran porn dude Anthony Hardwood, 40. I asked him if he gets particularly excited when he hears he is about to work with an 18-year-old.
"It is every man's fantasy to have sex with the 18-year-old," he said, eating a hard-boiled egg. I don't feel this way myself, but I respect Hardwood's perspective. My fantasies usually involve vampires, squid, and Lita Ford.
It was cold up on the hill as Orion posed, not enough of her in the jacuzzi to keep her warm, but she didn't complain. No one else did, either.
Jenny Hendrix, seen here mixing a beverage, is eight days away from getting new breasts.
"They're getting a little bigger," she confirmed.
We tried to organize a protest march through the streets of the Valley, but safety has become an issue. Still, the mood on the set recently was one of melancholy, as we all remembered fun things we've been through with Jenny's original breasts.
"You'll see the new ones at AVN," she said.
Don't pine for Hendrix' breasts, Reader. Like Frosty the Snowman, they will return again some day.
Joanna Angel: All the Best Cowboys Play Guitar Hero
I took a bunch of pictures of Joanna Angel at her place in the Valley the other day. It was actually cold out, so she looked more at home.
"I go back to Brooklyn every other month or so," she said, "but I've been out here for two years."
Two years. That is shocking.
Anytime someone from the east coast refers to California it is by "out here". I do the same thing even though I am Oaxacan.
Angel allowed our camera crew to follow her around unfettered for several days, eating her food, swimming in her pool, learning her ways and her language. It was the kind of access one rarely gets unless one provides her with a bagel and coffee.
I'll put up some more photos over the next few weeks, culminating with her birthday on Christmas.
The director B. Skow and Vivid producer Shailar were on hand in the hills above Studio City. I have been to two of their shoots before; each time I spend much of the day laughing.
Porn shoots should be like this all the time. Everything got done, there were no hysterics, no one was late, no one wandered off and had to be called back when shooting resumed because there'd been too much of a break. My rigid sense of order was maintained.
"The last time I saw you," I said, "you were blowing Derrick Pierce in a coffin."
"That hurt my back," she said, "but the job got done." She is a professional.
There were about ten cast and crew assembled in a music producer's house across the Valley from the Hollywood sign. I wanted to get a picture of Ryan and Alexander standing with the Hollywood sign on one side and Porn Valley on the other. It could be the cover of a Chamber of Commerce brochure.
I wasn't able to get exactly the shot I wanted, such is my commitment to professionalism. Alexander and Ryan were very accommodating, though.
Instead, I got this picture. It is so geometrically perfect it's like the photo was taken by ancient astronauts.
Together, Shailar and Skow have worked at Vivid for about a decade more than Monique Alexander has been alive. (I will send a porn movie to the first person who can notate that algebraically.) I find stories of long-term employment in any entertainment industry comforting; it also helps the mood of a set when you're with people who seem secure in their jobs.
Skow is my elder. He told me about the practice of upper-decking. I imagined planning whole vacations around this practice, like others do with golf.
After I arrived, the day went like this:
1. Alexander's scene with Deen 2. Lunch 3. Still pictures with Ryan 4. Alexander's scene with Ryan
After what I thought was 45 miutes, I looked at my watch and realized I'd been there for five hours, watching Monique Alexander have sex, eating, and talking about alternative defecation methods. As I drove down the hill I thought that just one of those things would have made a perfect day on its own.
(Then I wondered what I was doing with my life, but that was more about continuing to give Whole Foods my money than visiting porn sets.)
No one forgot Richelle, of course, but where else can you see a headline like that? Where? I am the finest crafter of headlines in this whole frigging -
Sometimes writing headlines makes this line of work seem so tawdry, and unequal to the great events taking place in it every day.
Like Nicki Hunter returning to active performing after being sidelined by leukemia treatments for nearly a year, and a dildo that is also a bong, and Flower Tucci letting me use her whipping cream for my coffee.
"Don't use all of it," she said as I took the carton from the refrigerator. "That's going all over my ass later."
Read more after the gap.
Cousin Stevie's umpteenth Pussy Party, this time subtitled (at press time) "Tushies", featured the return of Hunter as well as generous-assed pornstresses like Sunny Lane, Tucci, Olivia O'Lovely, Luscious Lopez, Richelle Ryan, and Alaana Evans.
"We've got the A-team here today," Lane said, A meaning ass, "All the volumptuous girls."
"Volumptuous" is a combination of the words "voluptuous" and "scrumptious" that Sunny made up. You must pay her a quarter every time you use it.
The Pussy Party experience, as you've read in these pages before, is unique. Women compete for prizes in different configurations, and there is a rotating group of judges. Yesterday's judges included Kevin Blatt of sex tape brokerage fame and a couple of wealthy older dudes who had bid on their judgeship at last May's Skylar Neil Memorial Golf Tournament. They showed up in a $180k Mercedes and parked it next to my Saturn.
Inside the house we were equals, though I was the one who got Flower's ass cream in my coffee.
Like some directors in the business, Cousin Stevie does not hold the camera himself and doesn't sit behind a monitor. Instead, he's more of a presence in the room. He is a genial, old school guy that the talent loves and that his longstanding crew appreciates, though they know that a "Pussy Party" is a long day of work.
Stills photographer Alberto Lopez (no relation to Luscious) is by day a commercial photographer, and for the "pretty girl" (non-hardcore) pictures he wet down the poolside as if he was shooting a Ford commercial. Flower Tucci knelt on the wet pavement, looking far more appealing than the 2008 Escalade and only slightly more likely to roll over.
Porn Valley rental locations in this area of Woodland Hills tend to be owned by the same people. Off the top of my head, I went to the Operation Desert Stormy shoot next door and, across the street, have beeen to at least one of Stevie's sets and the filming of a Roy Karch movie on a summer day that was so hot I think the girls stuck to the pool table (I wasn't complaining).
The houses are surrounded by high walls and gates. Visitors usually park on the grounds. With a few well-placed tunnels and maybe some watchtowers, I think the owners could open a successful armed porn compound. Or the Kennedys could move in.
The big story of the day was Nicki Hunter's return. She looked great, like a far more frank Annie Lennox. Who am I to disagree?
I don't know where these guys get their art. Maybe from the same offramp where I buy my oranges, but I had to take advantage of Alana Evans in the only way propriety would allow. She was an excellent Carol Not-the-Brady.
"My ass is so tight," she said at one point while I was talking with someone else. I don't know why she said it or who she said it to, but that's the type of thing that can draw people out of their own conversations from about 50 yards away.
"That's awesome," I said.
Phallix Glass, which started out as a glass bong concern that morphed into a dildo company, combined those exact disciplines into a dildo that is also a bong. I think they should call it The Chronic Masturbator, but no one ever listens to me. Here's Trina Michaels. She doesn't smoke, but she smokes, if you knows what I mean. I sure don't.
I left early, to my regret, and joined the steady progression of traffic eastward/southward on the 101. It took me 90 minutes to get home; traffic was like ass, but not in a good way.
I visited the set of David Aaron Clark's No Man's Land: Asian Edition 6 this weekend. The film stars Lana Croft, Ange Venus, Jandi, and Kitty. I brought a videographer friend of mine for whom this was her first time attending a porn shoot.
She threw up on the way. Twice.
"I drank a lot last night," she explained, but I remember feeling a little jittery the first time I watched Asians having sex (it happened in Science class).
The first porn set I ever attended was also an Asian picture (Whoriental Sex Academy 4, starring Mika Tan), so it was as if a circle closed in my august porn career by bringing my vomitous friend.
Afterward, she said, "Everybody was so nice; I guess I just didn't expect people to be walking around naked."
Read more after the gap.
The house in Encino looked like The Love Boat without the calming presence of Gavin MacLeod. It was a massive and ornate building, this rental, and, though I am no Howard Roark, my sense of design was offended. But it was perfect for the Porn of Manners film Clark was shooting inside, which required interpretive dance and multiple tableaux.
The setup was this: Lana Croft sits in the middle of the floor reading a Michael Manning manga that comes to life in front of her. Ange Venus is attended by Jandi and Kitty, the latter two wearing no shoes as they minister to Venus, who towers above them on her heels.
After Venus appears behind a column and totters seductively toward Croft, all the while doing a sultry dance, Jandi and Kitty appear to relieve her of her garments.
"You are removing the cloak from the queen, as it were," Clark tells them. Clark has directed numerous Asian titles and was recently named an honorary Asian by the Lakota Sioux. Like me, he is a so-called white man.
Clark makes fetish movies for fetishists; he is not punching the clock and delivering an Asian movie that might be a badonkadonk movie but for the presence of Asian talent rather than bubble-butt wielding sistahs. He has Venus redo her steps several times to perfect the effect.
The BDSM firecracker Aiden Starr is today the costume department. As Kitty walks by in a jangle of necklaces and beads, asking if she can adjust them, Starr replies that they'll just fall off when she starts fucking, anyway. It's good to have someone on set who knows her way around porn jewelry.
Sadly, Starr is not performing herself. It is not the first time I wished she were Asian.
Croft puts down her book and watches Kitty and Jandi go to work on Venus.
There are about 12 caucasians on the set watching this ritualized exchange between these four Pan-Asian women doing a dance of Clark's whimsy.
I asked Croft if she was more often stereotyped as a geisha or a schoolgirl.
"Definitely schoolgirl," she said, "though I'm more outgoing."
Later, Croft lies on the star in the middle of the floor. It looks freezing. Still, it makes me sad that the dentist who lives here will someday sully Croft's buttock prints with her slippers.
Would Captain Stubing be so heedless? No, he would not.
Porn Week Vacations was established in 2000 to offset the cost of filming porn movies, and has become an international brand with several revenue streams.
"We knew that fans wanted to see porn being shot, and that they'd probably pay for it, but we didn't want 30 guys hanging around," said founder Dave West, a Chicago native who began his career in direct marketing before capitalizing on Internet porn. "So we kept the guest list small and invited the right girls."
Read more after the gap.
Porn Week will attach itself to one or several movies being shot in a given area and open the doors to fans, each of whom has paid upwards of $2150 for the privilege. Since the company's first outing in the Dominican Republic in 2000 (with a stable of willing porn stars that included Belladonna), Porn Week has traveled to the U.K., Prague, the Czech Republic, and has regular stops in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
"We tell the guests what's expected of them so that everyone knows the rules," said director Gazzman, production manager of London's Harmony Films, who partnered with West in 2004. "But the environment is light enough so that lines don't get crossed."
That is not to say that guests only watch. If the right guest has been tested and if he (or she) is willing to step in front of the camera, he might be part of the action on film. But most guests are happy watching.
"People ask if we're being laid all the time, but it's not like that," said former Porn Week guest and current production assistant Big Bad Dave. Big Bad Dave (not to be confused with West) was learning how to white balance a camera he had trained on Nikki Jayne, a stunning Manchester native in the United States on her first porn jaunt. "But we definitely try to find the women who are not only comfortable in front of the camera but also with a party full of fans."
Guests must fend for themselves with hotels and transportation, but they attend parties with the performers, which are then filmed for XXX Porn Parties, a regular pay per view event. In addition, the guests are encouraged to bring cameras themselves.
As an executive at Harmony and a partner in Porn Week, Gazzman has a built-in party destination. Born in Scotland, Gazzman worked for several years directing television in the U.K. and then began what he calls his "porn apprenticeship" filming BBC documentaries about porn.
"I followed porn directors around for four years, thinking I knew what to do and what not to do in a porn film," he said. "But I ended up making some of the same mistakes."
Gazzman praises writing partner Victoria Stuart, herself a documentarian, who writes porn scripts keeping in mind "that you've got to write them like interchangeable dolly heads, because some of the dollies don't show up."
Still, Gazzman's first porn film was the big-budget ($100k) The Scottish Loveknot for Private, which won AVN's Best Foreign Feature award. He has since become known for what in the United States are called "high-end gonzos" but what he refers to as "professional low budget features." This translates to porn with good lighting design, attractive international locations, and leggy Euro models.
What is low budget for Gazzman is actually about twice as expensive as a standard U.S. gonzo, but Gazzman tends to shoot at rental castles by the banks of Loch Ness rather than Encino.
I always feel a little awkward when attending a porn shoot if the cast is unprepared for guests not involved with the production. I asked West if there was a learning curve since 2000 with regard to fostering a good dynamic between the cast and Porn Week guests.
"All of our performers tend to be very friendly," he said, pointing out that Porn Week regular Poppy Morgan has become a face of the show, "but we definitely have to get the right mix of people. In the early days we did get a lot of the performers saying 'What are these guys doing here?'"
At a recent party in downtown L.A. at Eli Cross' and Kylie Ireland's Fallout Shelter studios, it seemed the blend of vacation revelry and porn filming had reached a balance. Guests (who asked not to be filmed) milled around an open bar or just outside as a group of women including Poppy Morgan, newcomer Katie K., Nikki Jayne, Gwen Diamond, and others cavorted in hanging cages, on prop beds, or "Star 80"-style bondage chairs for a scene from Gazzman's "Slam It In" series.
The big event of the evening was the U.S. debut of Nikki Jayne who, after disrobing spectacularly, delivered a blowjob to performer Oliver Sanchez, who was posing as a photographer and pretended, at least for a few seconds, that the stunt wasn't staged.
Jayne walked into Harmony's booth at Birmingham's ETO adult trade show on July 22 saying she wanted to do porn. "We had her on a plane to (a Czech Republic Porn Week event in) Brno the next Wednesday," Gazzman said.
Jayne is tall and blonde and looks like a California girl save for her charming accent. Porn Week does not have contract girls (though Poppy Morgan has come to be associated with the company) but a special effort was made to introduce Jayne through Porn Week, and it has been successful; Jayne has already met with Digital Playground and Vivid, she said.
Digital Playground's Samantha Lewis reminded Jayne that the company already had a "Jane", so a possible contract would require her to change her name. Prior to her trip to the states, Jayne was intent on a Vivid contract, but Digital Playground has already wined and dined her and had the good luck of meeting her before her meeting at Vivid. We'll see what happens; this might be the last time you see "Nikki Jayne".
Across Porn Valley in Poltergeist Hills, an area so named because it resembles the rolling housing development built over a graveyard in the movie Poltergeist, the Porn Week guests have gone home but the Harmony crew is still there, filming scenes between Jayne and San Jose's Bobbi Starr. Just before her anal scene with Sanchez, I took a picture of Jayne on the carpeted stairs.
"I don't want a pattern on me bum," she said.
"That's the least of your worries," I said.
Gazzman and West explained Porn Week's marketing forks, starting with Bravo UK's midnight broadcast of the company's exploits.
"We are fortunate to have a deal with them in which we retain ownership of the material, they just broadcast it on the telly," Gazzman said. To that end, Gazzman and West may make DVDs, sign pay per view deals for XXXPornParties, and continue to add Porn Week publicity to productions by other companies. Ownership of the product is great.
It seems like this week witnessed the crossed paths of two exciting commodities, Porn Week and Nikki Jayne, who appears poised to be very big.
I asked Gazzman what advice he might give to Jayne in the American porn market, and he replied with a Scottish brogue, "Ach, she won't listen to an old man."
Wayne doesn't know why he's being interviewed, either
What I like about porn PR dude Wayne Hentai is that he doesn't quote himself in his press releases for other people. Here he is with the stunning Mancunian Nikki Jayne in her US debut for Harmony Films and Porn Week, and he looks as incredulous as anyone that the microphone isn't being placed somewhere more obvious.
See a few more photos after the gap, in advance of a longer story.
As you can see, my security detail took a few of these photos as Jayne capered around the gates of Gram Ponante Towers, Helipad, Apothecary, Centrifuge, Salmon Hatchery, Quarry, and Microbrewery.
"Darling Nikki," I laughed, "I would have let you in with more clothes on."
Jayne reminds me a little of Carmen Luvana. It is not lost on me that Luvana, too, speaks English with an accent. Might they be the same person??
Jayne is in town with Porn Week as it visits a stateside shoot of the London-based Harmony Films, directed by Gazzman.
I will be taking some time off as my family increases, and so will leave you in the capable hands of Loup Perch-Tounge, who is a character created out of every self-important porn writer I have met in my lucky association with this business.
Loup puts himself in the story, uses words like "aforementioned", and is generally a buffoon, faced with the unenviable task of treating seriously something that shouldn't be, and then convincing himself that he should be taken seriously, too.
Loup wrote a series of stories in 2003 about fictitious porn sets he'd visited, and the positive impact he'd had thereupon. I swear on Viper that Loup is not based on anyone currently alive.
Vivid is debuting a label featuring women with hips, and the shooting started last week.
"I want to emphasize that it's not BBWs," said director Shailar Cobi, "and it's not fat. It's women with a little extra. This movie is called Heavy Partying."
"So big breasts, big asses, that sort of thing?" I
Maybe Los Angeles is cold spiritually, but even at its coldest it is better than where you live. Still, as the scisssorlift propelled cast and crew of Hillary Scott: Icon upward to the roof of downtown L.A.'s Fallout Shelter, I was happy someone had loaned me a jacket.
Scott was charged with pulling these women through a mirror, like in that A Ha video, and then having sex with them, like in that Go Gos video that never happened. This would be one stylized scene out of five starring Scott, including a music video.
Maybe it was because they would have needed a crane to get down.
"They haven't invented the award you deserve for this yet," I said to Hillary Scott.
