| --Tuesday, June 10, 2008--
Nikki Jayne makes Mancunian sound dirty
 Nikki Jayne is the newest Vivid girl, joining the ranks of all the other household name Vivid girls. She is tall and full-figured and hails from Manchester, England (beyond the Atlantic Sea).
Jayne was discovered by the crew from Porn Week and brought to America for a few days last September, during which she shot scenes with Bobbi Starr and was courted by several companies, including Digital Playground. But a Nikki Jayne and a Jesse Jane in the same roster would be too much for fans to handle, as evidenced by the confusion that erupted when both Sophia Santi and Carlos Santana were contract girls there.
It takes moxie, gumption, chutzpah, great boobs, and thighs that could crack a fire hydrant to be a successful contract performer, and Jayne has all of these (although in England fire hydrants are called hooded ficuses).
Jayne's first movie will be shot at the end of the month by the intense and sensitive director B. Skow. It is unclear at press time if Vivid plans to follow up its branding of Vivid Rims with the fielding of an English football team.
Previously: Postcard from Porn Week; Untitled Briana Banks project; I like to see a little more fat; Meggan Mallone: Head on her shoulders; Vivid's imprint-o-rama; Monique Alexander: "May God have mercy on my soul"
See also: Vivid, Porn WeekLabels: "contract girls", b skow, bobbi starr, gazzman, jesse jane, nikki jayne, sophia santi, vivid
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, January 16, 2008--
The Prime of Miss Jean Jacobs or: Would I lie to you, Honey? or: De Jean Vu
 The reason that there is no Oscar presented for Best New Starlet is because novelty is not as important in Hollywood as it is in Porn Valley. in fact, Hollywood prizes known quantities more than untested talent.
That doesn't mean people wouldn't rush to buy movies with Penny Flame in them (I would, if I had to pay for such things), but the idea of being the first to commit to film some new porn talent is one of the few things in the adult industry that is still looked on with wonder and awe.
Such was the feeling I had when I and a few other gentlemen thought we were witnessing the first scene ever by an 18-year-old named Jean.
Read more after the gap.
 Since I work in the media I am lied to all the time. This is a story of my trying to not pass on those lies to you.
Some people lie so much that I am safe in the knowledge that the opposite of everything they say is true. This applies to certain porn publicists like Jeff Mullen. When I run his press releases, they come with disclaimers. He is OK with that (and he has no choice but to be) because he believes that all publicity is good publicity. Also, he believes that readers of other porn news sites are stupid enough to believe him, and he doesn't worry about the five people who read this site.
 After the director Jennifer James lied to me - repeatedly - in a story I wrote for XBiz, I began interviews with porn people by saying, "I will not repeat off the record information, but don't lie to me. If there is something you don't want to talk about, let me know and I will not press it. You are fascinating enough, and my words are scintillating enough, that together we can work around that unpleasantness without drawing attention to it. Just don't lie to me or I will make sure people know it."
 Most of the lying in porn, and in mainstream entertainment, is of the self-deluding variety. "I'm going back to school," "I can maintain a relationship with someone not involved in pornography," "People respect and are not creeped out by you if you give them teddy bears," or "I use cocaine recreationally" are all examples of self-deluding falsehoods, and I cut them slack.
I, for one, say that I am America's Beloved Porn Journalist when I am actually the World's Beloved Porn Journalist.
Then there are business-related lies, such as sales charts of trade magazines, the existence of Abby Winters or Simon Wolf, or our deeply-buried lede of the day, the feigned inexperience of Jean Jacobs, aka Jean Laconia.
I met Jean Laconia last week on a small shoot run by Porn Week and Harmony Films. She told everyone assembled that she would be shooting a movie for Vivid this week but that the scene she was shooting in a small room at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino - our special scene - was to be her first porn film ever.
"If there's something you don't want to say, just let me know, rather than lying," I said to her at the bar. "Just say, 'Gram, I don't want to talk about that'. Is this your first porn scene?"
"Yes," she said.
I found Laconia charming and sexy and dirty beyond her years. She said things to Dave West's camera that seemed characteristic of someone who'd gone to the L.A. Direct Models' School of Intensive Pornology.
 Laconia (as camera zooms in on her parts): Do you like this?
West: Yes
Laconia: Do you love it?
West: Is this my audition now?
Laconia said she was in Vegas for the first time. A stripper from Connecticut, Laconia said she worked at a club in Oxford, MA. She got the name "Laconia" from her street. She can speak Romanian and she likes Jagermeister.
She lamented that she had not been told how expensive Las Vegas was, and Gazzman said that at least he would pay her in cash. He also had the following helpful tips we should all employ:
"It's good when you shake your tits," he said in a Scottish brogue, and, "It's good when you bring your legs back as well."
Laconia had been booked for the Harmony solo shoot by Fox Modeling, a local talent broker. Knowing that she was shooting for Vivid in a few days, I wondered if it was for their Brand New Faces line, which has its performers sign a quasi-legal affidavit confirming they'd never performed on camera before.
In an intervierw with Brand New Faces director B. Skow, he told me that once or twice he had been able to find out at the last minute that women saying they'd never performed before in fact had. "We're putting together a 'Caught' section on the DVDs and website," he said, "for people we catch in a lie."
When Laconia shot for Brand New Faces on Monday she used the name Jean Jacobs. Shortly after I wrote a story on Fleshbot (in which I noted my suspicion about Laconia/Jacobs never performing before), I received a letter from Woody West, the partner of a Connecticut company called Real Passion Productions. He said that Laconia had shot both solo and lesbian scenes for them before and had been paid to do so. He also provided a link to her promotional work for a production called Adult Toy Story.
"We shy away from calling what we do 'couples' movies'," West (no relation to Harmony's Dave) said. "But it's hardcore that we think women will be comfortable watching."
Indeed, Laconia talked a pretty hardcore game.
Working with a vibrator, she said all the right things for the audience assembled. "I've got a pretty small pussy so let's see how it goes. That's kinda big," she said, looking right at me.
 Laconia turned 18 in April of last year and, as everyone knows, no one thinks sexually until it is legal for them to do so. How did she get the lingo down in just eight months?
The one loophole in Brand New Faces' contract is if a woman has never done a scene with a man before. So in this case Laconia/Jacobs might actually be paid for the Vivid scene she did.
Still, as you can see by these pictures, Jean will have no trouble getting work. Why she had to lie - and I ask this of any person in porn, where the truth is almost always more compelling - is a mystery.
Jean Laconia in Gram's Gallery.
Previously: Postcard from Porn Week
See also: Real Passion, Vivid, Gazzman
Labels: avn08, dave west, gazzman, harmony films, jean jacobs, jean laconia, las vegas, real passion, WGL, woody west
posted by Gram the Man
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--Wednesday, November 28, 2007--
Slam It in a Slut - from Its perspective
 Because I am the last king of Scotland, I have an appreciation for the perspective of Gazzman, that country's only porn director. Here are some annotated snaps from his movie Slam It in a Slut.
If you've come this far past GramPonante.com's elaborate security system, I'm sure I don't have to tell you what "It" is. Above, Ana Nova and Smokie reenact a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with It as the Starchild.
 Gazzman's house music camera style prevented a clear shot of Max's nipples and face in the same frame. Call me an old-fashioned Gestaltist but the sum of them always works better for me than just the parts themselves. Max' nipples strain at the screen. With my new high-res monitor, I was actually able to hang some firewire cables from them.
Previously: Suzie Best in Best of British; Postcard from Porn Week; Sabrina the gang-banged witch; Ana Nova in Scenes from a Pussy Party
See also: Evil Angel, GazzmanLabels: directors, Europe, gazzman, geekery, new porn daily
posted by Gram the Man
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--Thursday, October 11, 2007--
Suzie Best in Best of British
 I had a Catholic girlfriend from Ireland who, whenever she would see a British woman, would spit: "British slags wear their mattresses on their backs." I told this to a woman I dated from London and she said, "The Irish are the whores of Europe."
Whichever is true (perhaps they are both true!!), I enjoyed watching Gazzman's collection of ten scenes, each in a language I'm only partially familiar with. "Fook mah pusseh," commands Best at one point. It sounded suggestive, but what did it mean?
Previously: Postcard from Porn Week; I still haven't found what I'm looking for; Sabrina Deep: Gang Bang across the water
See also: Harmony FilmsLabels: "vena virago" wgl, british, dvd, gazzman, new porn daily
posted by Gram the Man
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--Friday, September 14, 2007--
Postcard from Porn Week
 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."
See a gallery here.
Previously: Wayne doesn't know why he's being interviewed, either; Czechs for cash; 2007 AVN wrap-up
See also: Porn WeekLabels: "eli cross", "set visits", "vena virago" wgl, bobbi starr, directors, gazzman, kylie ireland, nikki jayne, porn week, vivid
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, September 10, 2007--
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.
Previously: Dreams really do come true at Porn Week; Wayne Hentai: Pornslinger
See also: Porn Week, Harmony FilmsLabels: "set visits", "vena virago" wgl, carmen luvana. england, gazzman, harmony, nikki jayne, porn week
posted by Gram the Man
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--Monday, August 20, 2007--
Dreams really do come true at Porn Week
 Nikki Jayne is a British lady (we call them "birds") who tentatively approached Harmony Films, the group that produces Porn Week, saying she would like to be in porn movies.
In the same way that we are presumed innocent until proven guilty, we answer Yes to any woman who expresses an interest in appearing naked on film, and question our judgment later. So the people of Harmony Films/Porn Week did the right thing by casting Jayne on the spot.
Read more after the gap.
Jayne performed her first filmed Boy/Girl scene in Brno for Porn Week, the event where, for a price, civilians get a chance to experience firsthand the sights and smells of a porn set. I asked Porn Week director Big Bad Dave if it was a fan or a professional with whom Jayne shared her first scene.
"It was an actor and not a civilian who had the pleasure," he said.
Jayne appears to be 12 feet tall and in this is distinctive, as most porn talent is fairly petite. Among other things, petite women make the dicks of male talent look bigger. An excellent pickup line for lonelyhearts little women, dwarfesses, or midgetrices would be, "I'll make your cock look huge."
 But tall women in porn are rare.
That said, Ms. Jayne is so spinner, and hopes are high at Harmony Films that she will be "the next Jenna or Tera". Not since Private's Priva has a European company had a contract star, and Harmony is planning a whirlwind Porn Valley tour with Jayne next month.
 But I think Jayne looks neither like Jenna Jameson nor Tera Patrick. Instead, she reminds me of a delightful combination of Sophie Dee and Puma Swede, with a little Adrianna Nicole thrown in. I would love to visit that lab.
Previously: Porn Week's Czechs for Cash; I am the world's greatest porn director
See also: Porn Week Labels: england, gazzman, harmony films, nikki jayne, porn week
posted by Gram the Man
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--Thursday, June 28, 2007--
Porn Week's Czechs for Cash
 The idea of paying to stay in close proximity to porn ladies, eat dinner with them, watch them cavort, and get very close to them while they engage in sex acts on film is the raison d'etre of Porn Week, the brainchild of Scots director Gary Gazzman.
The closest many people get to the performers they crave is often a convention like Erotica L.A. or the AVN show in Las Vegas and, when you think about it, fans have a much more visceral reaction to Sunny Lane and Ava Vincent than they do to Nicole Kidman and Tom Hanks, who would never give them long hugs or even be in a place where they could be on view for hours at a time. In high heels. And smelling like melon body spray.
So the money hardcore fans pay for a ticket to these shows is chickenfeed compared to how much they shell out for DVDs and VOD and magazines.
But what of the fan who wants to take it a little further?
 When I was in Las Vegas this year I attended a Porn Week party hosted by Gazzman and Ric Williams, of the late Black Widow Talent Agency. A number of well-heeled and polite gentlemen, mostly from the United Kingdom, were gathered in a house in a gated community just outside the city limits. Drink flowed and a bevy of naked 18-,19-, and 20-year-olds ran up and down the carpeted stairway, then fucked on a pool table.
Had this been a party at my old fraternity, Zeta Zeta Tau (the ZZ Top fraternity), these ladies would have been lucky to reach the pool table. But the assembled blokes (in Britain they're called blokes) were gentlemanly. Probably because they'd all paid to be there and they didn't want to blow it. (Or they did, but they didn't.)
Gazzman and Co. have announced plans for a Porn Week in the Czech Republic next month which will feature British bird (in Britain they're called birds) Poppy Morgan.
The festivities will take place in Jana Cova's own Brno.
This event will be slightly different in that certain attendees can participate in the action.
 “I want to come to the Czech Porn Week event and discover the next big thing in the jizz biz," Gazzman said. "Whether that's a hot new director, a super sexy babe, or an up and coming stud. I'm throwing down the gauntlet for them to step up to the plate."*
"We could get the next Rocco showing up," Morgan added. "A newbie porn stud and I could get to fuck him in his first scene."
Porn Week vacations cost $2150 for single blokes and do not include hotel or airfare. I'll just say that when I was at the Porn Week event in Las Vegas the club soda never ran out.
*Kiara Marie is very much alive in this picture. Very much.
Previously: 2007 AVN wrap-up: "A fine spray of legitimacy"
See also: Porn WeekLabels: events, gazzman, porn week
posted by Gram the Man
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