Today is Tommy Gunn's birthday. You might say, "Grams, I only visit your site for the trannies, MILFs, and Satan - why confuse things by writing about dudes?"
Well, Gunn is one of only a few dozen steadily-working guys in porn, and as such has probably serviced 40 to 50 of your favorite female stars since 2004, and at least 200 more women you're not attracted to. That he has carried on his career by being a genuinely nice and accessible guy is an admirable accomplishment.
Also, Gunn is able to articulate the work ethic involved in being a successful male performer.
"You should be hard before she's in the room," he said. "It's a job."
In the 600-plus scenes he has performed since getting into porn at age 36, Gunn has certain things figured out.
"I can tell you how the pop is going to go from the beginning," he said. "I know if I'm tired, or if the chemistry is a certain way, or the way she smells, how far the load will fly."
That is exactly like my job. I know that I will end this story with "I want people to look at porn performers and not think they're somebody who had nowhere else to go" and it will be just as satisfying as shooting a ropy volley across the machine-crafted nubs of Jesse Jane.
Writing about porn is difficult sometimes. For me, I had no interest in being a porn performer after the first scene I watched being filmed. Not that it didn't look like fun, but the work involved was considerable: standing in awkward positions under hot lights, the lack of spontaneity, delaying what wanted to come naturally (and then worrrying about aim); the fact that it was such a job became apparent the first day.
But even if I knew I didn't want it to be me on camera, my suspicion is that porn dudes in general think that the writers really want to be them.
"The media are jealous," says Jack Lawrence in his (otherwise) excellent training video Breaking Into Porn. Not true. At least not for me.
Blowjobs are like handshakes in this business, and I'll take mine without the C-light, thank you.
Which is why Gunn, who approaches the business with an older man's perspective, is such a good interview; he talks about his job like it's a job.
On Respect
"When I work with another guy's girlfriend," he said, "I want to deliver her back to her boyfriend unharmed."
On Role Models and Cutlery
"I admire Peter North, Randy West, Buck Adams, Lee Stone, and Ron Jeremy," he said. "Without those guys chopping their way through the forest, I wouldn't have this path. Now I want the machete."
On Competition
"I think Evan Stone and I are going to trade that AVN Best Male Performer award back and forth for the next few years." (Evan Stone says this too.)
On Scene Partners
"The girls have to have sex with someone, but what does it hurt you to be nice to them?"
On Career Choices
"If I'm lucky the director will ask me if I want to have sex on the couch or on the bed."
Gunn was born in New Jersey 41 years ago today, worked in Philadelphia in construction and interior design, and moved to Florida where he became a dancer.
Gunn was married to World Poker Tour hostess Shana Hiatt (with whom he appeared in a Playboy Girls of Hawaiian Tropics video prior to his porn career) and, later, to porn star Rita Faltoyano. Currently living with New Sensations contract performer Ashlynn Brooke, Gunn has turned the Woodland Hills home they share into a workshop for his other projects.
"When I was a Chippendale's dancer," he said, "I got very good at sewing. I made costumes. I replaced the velcro when the other guys needed to patch their outfits."
While working at a Miami bikini shop in 1997, he made swimwear for Janine Lindemulder and Julia Ann that they still remembered when he entered the porn business.
Gunn has a room in which weight equipment shares space with two sewing stations.
He has also built most of a deck that features a tiki bar and a trucked-in sand beach.
But the most impressive achievement for DIY enthusiasts is his shopping cart/battering ram for around-the-garage projects onto which he has built a platform for a circular saw.
"I like to keep busy," he said.
It was in 2004 that Gunn, visiting L.A. with then-girlfriend, met Wicked director Brad Armstrong at the Saddle Ranch.
"How do I get into this business?" Gunn asked Armstrong, who just cocked his thumb at.
"She's your ticket," Armstrong said.
"But it didn't work out," Gunn said. "I was back on the plane to Florida. But Brad and I stayed in touch."
Gunn's first scene was with Cherokee in Wicked's Fluff And Fold and he has been working ever since.
I asked him what he wanted to do next.
"I want to win an Oscar," he said. "I'm serious."
Gunn has a protective attitude about the porn business that its employees tend to generate after a year or so on the job, when they realize the rest of the world looks at them differently but not always kindly.
"I want people to look at porn performers and not think they're somebody who had nowhere else to go."
Prior to steady employment as America's Beloved Porn Journalist I parlayed my state-issued Commercial Driver License into a gig driving escorts to appointments.
When driving a pro it was as solid a job as working at General Electric; when the escort didn't take her job seriously it was like herding cats. Cats who lie to you and have gonorrhea.
"The Delivery Man," the debut novel of Joe McGinniss, Jr. (his father wrote "The Selling of the President 1968" and the Ted Kennedy biography "The Last Brother," among other books), tells the story of Chase, a half-hearted artist who takes a driving job for a Las Vegas escort agency.
Like any resort town, the desperate side of Las Vegas is never too far away. And that might be its appeal. "The Delivery Man" paints a picture of Chase, the artist, and Las Vegas, his home, in equally somber tones, but no less rich. Read it before your next trip to Vegas.
I talked with McGinniss recently.
GP: Most novels containing world-weariness usually feature older characters. What compelled you to write about younger natives?
JMcG: This is as much a story about the hypersexualization of young people and the rise of sex in popular culture - as it is a Vegas story. Young people had to be front and center of "The Delivery Man" because they reflect society and social mores so clearly. And the combination of young people and Las Vegas was irresistible given the fantastic glittery void and raison d'être of the city. What do the kids who grow up in the spillover from the Strip aspire to? How does living in ground zero of social and moral dysfunction - complete with adult industry annual awards shows and Latino immigrants handing out call-girl flyers offering 'girls in 20 minutes or less' t-shirts - impact kids as they come of age? So this is why I had to focus on the younger natives of Las Vegas.
GP: Like Los Angeles, the accepted wisdom about Las Vegas is its artlessness. Chase's pursuit of an art career is one of the many ominous elements of the novel, because a reader has a good idea it won't go well. Where did his half-hearted profession come from?
JMcG: There are some wonderful artists in Vegas. And some impressive efforts to develop an art community. But yes, there's a mountain of angst in that place and so few places to put it. So what better then to have Chase channel his personal pain into his art. His favorite painting 'Carly' possesses obvious emotional power for him. But like too many "victims" of a Las Vegas upbringing - Chase never quite gets his ambitions off the ground. He has a sense of what he wants, and even a track record of achieving something (gaining admission to NYU, nominated for Teacher of the Year), but like so many in his hometown, he's afflicted by a paralyzing lack of self-esteem that manifests itself in his half-hearted pursuit of an art career.
GP: Lack of self esteem leads to half-heartedness? Don't tell the porn industry.
I was happy to see via a trip through your site that there is a screenplay in progress, because Las Vegas needs the treatment Michael Mann gave to L.A. and Scorsese gave to New York and Boston. Who do you see playing the main characters?
JMcG: I'm officially an "associate producer" on this project therefore I'm under contractual obligation not to mention specific names of potential directors and talent. I take this job and that title very seriously so I'm afraid I can't offer anything. Kidding. I really haven't given it too much thought but have recently become fixated on a few excellent young actresses out there. I see Lauren London as Julia and Nikki Reed as Michele. Both of them are talented and stunning and have this intangible quality -- a certain sultriness -- that I think would really fit with a film version of this novel. There's no question that the film will give young actors an incredible opportunity to completely bust out with something so edgy and fast and tough. Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) or Paul Thomas Anderson could direct. Are they available?
GP: I'll see what I can do. Issues I have with the book (feel free to become enraged; it is your birthright as a writer):
The character Julia arrives for a conference in the middle of the year as an adult convention and awards show is going on, porn stars abound at the Hard Rock. Which convention would this be? The AVNs are in January and I can't think of another Vegas awards show.
JMcG: Two words: artistic license. And the National Black MBA isn't in the Spring -- it's held each fall as I am well aware because my wife went to that for many years during and just after she graduated "b'school" as they call it (with some of her stories making it into "TDM"). But that timing didn't work for the book. As well, in fairness, I didn't name the AVN's -- just an unidentified adult film convention.
GP: AVN's PR firm will be stoked to read this.Who is the actual model for the cover girl?
JMcG: Isn't she amazing looking? Her name is Anna Seeberg. An aspiring model who lives with her family in Wisconsin. The picture was snapped by her younger sister -- 16 at the time -- in the backseat of their mother's car. The art director for Grove/Atlantic found the photo on Anna's MySpace page and worked something out with her parents (she wasn't 18 at the time) and we got the rights to her photo. Stunning picture. Urban Outfitters must like her look too because they're selling the book hard in all of their stores. As far as characters in the book -- I don't think she's supposed to be anyone in particular. It's more about the expression on her face, the red glasses, the light finding her hair the way it does, the lolita thing, the back-seat of a car. But if she has to be someone -- I say Aubrey -- from El Cajon -- who weighs 87 pounds and whose favorite food is an Egg McMuffin without the egg.
It's one thing that adult-oriented Internet TV station RudeTV has taken a good deal of the staff of the former KSEXRadio, but it must seem a little on the nose that the new station has moved into KSEX' old studio.
KSEXRadio was a beloved old garage band of a business that was characteristic of the porn industry; often disorganized, brutal on its enemies, forgiving of its friends, and a wealth of information about the porn industry from people getting paid about 20 bucks an hour to run their shows.
Nestled for years on the top floor of a nondescript Burbank office building, KSEX was purchased in 2006 and revamped, somewhat, with big plans to move the company closer to the heart of Porn Valley. This eventually happened in May when the company moved its offices to Canoga Park.
Not everyone made the move, however. KSEX program director Wankus, who had been feuding with the ownership, was publicly fired earlier that month. This news was broken when one of the owners called in to a KSEX show and declared Wankus' termination over the air. Bad blood ensued.
But KSEX took six more months to die. Though some "Porn Jockeys" resigned in protest of the manner of Wankus' dismissal, others began to see the writing on the wall. The company was being managed from New Jersey and things were falling apart. KSEX struggled to keep talent and original programming, advertisers began dropping out, and eventually the remaining staff was asked to go without pay and do the job for the "exposure."
KSEX finally died in late January of this year.
Meanwhile, Rude.com, an Internet entertainment site launched by the founders of webcam pioneer Camz.com, heard that there was some studio space available, and called Wankus to be its program director and main host, as he had been at KSEX.
"They flew me to Bangkok for the job interview," Wankus said.
Rude.com wanted to expand its market to adult television, and threw tens of thousands of dollars into outfitting the space KSEX had occupied as a TV studio. RudeTV boasts two studios with greenscreens separated by a control booth (in which Powder and Socks, both late of KSEXRadio, dwell), a reception area, a ready room for talent, and a large room outfitted with a stripper pole.
But can an adult Internet broadcast site be self-sustaining? KSEX never was, and its short-lived competitor PrimeTime Uncensored also failed. But Rude has a little money behind it, and it is being run by people familiar with the adult industry.
Rude.com co-owner Brett LaMar told me he will be 32 in a week. He and his wife, Sammy (of Samm4u.com) live in Thailand, as does Rude.com's other co-founder, Robb. Active swingers, LaMar and his wife also started housecamz.com.
"We knew that the KSEX space was going to be available," LaMar said, "and Rude.com was getting ready to make its move to Internet TV."
Rude.com has often come under attack by adult industry webmasters for hosting stolen content and employing traffic hijacker/adware giant zango (see sample thread). The adult industry will forgive most things, but stealing content is never one of them.
But after the unpleasantness with KSEX, Wankus is hopeful about his new bosses.
"They're putting a lot of time and money into this place to do it the way it should be done," he said.
Last night's opening party was well-attended and, despite the fact that the station went live at 6 p.m. with a show called "Guitarded," in which two pornstars play strip-"Guitar Hero," the mood was laid back. There was also a Make Your Own Drinks open bar, which also helped.
Powder told me that there had been a couple of test runs of the new studios and shows, and that he was expecting the evening to be tough but successful. As it happened, the night went off without a hitch, though sometimes callers weren't loud enough and the various greenscreen motifs were a little busy.
Mika Tan who, after a family-related hiatus ("No, I wasn't in Afghanistan with the Army or in Iraq with the CIA," she said. I hadn't heard the story about the CIA), has returned to performing, last night hosted "Whispers," an occasional Mika hour in which she uses dildos for callers' enjoyment.
RudeTV schedules 20 hours of original programming, broadcasting from 6-10 weekday nights. Currently free, it will soon switch to a subscription model with various free incentives, and will begin archiving its shows for On-Demand access.
Among its shows are "Guitarded," "Smell My Finger" (also hosted by Wankus with a different co-host every night, such as Sunny Lane, Kylee King, and Cleopatra of the Nile), "Penis or Plastic?" hosted by Alanna Thomas remotely from Gilbert, AZ, BDSM-themed "Baadmaster's Dungeon," and "Road Whore," Lexi Lamour's stories of stripping and strippers.
Guests at last night's opening party included photographer Ken Marcus, Kylee King, Alanna Thomas (pictured), Trinity Saij (pictured), Cleopatra (pictured), Carrie Moon, Dakoda Brookes, Sammy LaMar, Mika Tan (pictured), and Sunny Lane.
"I think of it as a Resse's Peanut Butter Cup of Porn," said Matt Zane, the person to thank (or despise) if the recent wave of tattoos and piercings, a punk aesthetic, and the presence of musicians and "alt" in porn don't seem as revolutionary as publicists would have you believe.
Zane is a pornographer, musician, suspension artist, and "Trascendental Satanist." I checked this last job against the IRS'list of occupations and couldn't find it, yet another example of how our government discriminates against Satanists. Who has always been there when the phone rings at 3 a.m.? Satan has.
Zane, born Matt Zicari, is a second generation pornographer. His father, Chuck, is a producer and distributor and his cousin, Rob Zicari, runs the obscenity-skirting Extreme Associates under the alias Rob Black. His younger brother, Mark, is also a porn performer.
Zane's new project is the Tattooed And Tight series, involving women getting tattoos and fucked at the same time (most of the images on this page are from Tattooed And Tight 3, starring Scarlett Pain, Tera Wray, Nadia Styles, Jandi Lin, and Tricia Oaks). Though Zane has been in and out of the porn business for more than a decade, his current work is topical in that it reflects our need to multitask, even when having sex.
"I can only couple with women who are talented in that way," I told Zane while channeling the Prince of Darkness. "As I service them they often send and receive text messages, run away, and burst into flame."
Zane grew up in upstate New York and became a musician, forming and touring with bands around the United States. He now fronts Society 1, what Rapture theorists call the Anti-Stryper.
When Matt worked for his father, the two eventually disagreed about the type of porn they should produce, and how it should be released.
"I was the youngest director in porn at the time," Zane said. "It was 1996, I was 21, and there was rock and roll and tattoos in my movies (like the Backstage Sluts series) and I was pushing to release DVD and VHS at the same time, back before that was a burning issue."
Zane saw the rapper-turned actor Ice-T in a Melrose Ave. store, lending his visage to clothing for an MTV spot.
"I thought, 'Porn can go this way, too,'" he said.
And in the late 90's Zane was the alternative face of porn, even as companies like Vivid and Wicked were defining the contract system and developing high-end features, Zane was pioneering a porn style that incorporated fast-editing, music that he and his friends were making, handheld cameras, and a grunge/punk aesthetic similar to that filtered through MTV.
"I saw a hole where things could go," Zane said. "And applied that synthesis."
And now, Zane says, "nobody knows who I am.
"I quit for a while and went on tour," Zane said, "and ran out of money, and got money, and ran out of it again. And when I came back there were people showing up at the AVN show like Dave Navarro and Gene Simmons and people were talking about tattoos in movies like tattoos had just been invented."
Zane is the type of pornographer who fights porn's inherent disposability.
"And I don't want to be one of those old fucks who say, 'You don't perceive my level of importance? Don't you know who I am?' But I'm at the AVN show and they won't let me walk down the red carpet....I've just been gone a few years!"
Zane is also shooting Radium, a series that incorporates rock and porn. Like Tattooed and Tight, Radium stars Tera Wray. One of Wray's duties in Radium is to interview bands.
The porn ideal has always gone hand in hand with rock (unless you're Peter Cetera) and, like Joanna Angel does with Burning Angel, Kentucky Fried Wray only makes these bands look cooler.
"Tera is a hot rock chick who gets it. She likes the bands, she knows what to say to them," Zane said.
For publicity, "Anything we can do outside of porn we utilize," Zane said. "MySpace, Youtube, Bizarre Magazine, tattoo parlors..."
I asked if Zane was going for what would sell or what would interest him, and if he wondered if the two were exclusive.
"If Porn was the only thing I did," Zane said, "I'd slit my wrists. But if you look at any other industry, they all respect their history. The snot-nosed kids in punk respect Iggy Pop, all the metal kids know Slayer.
Why does everybody in porn think it started with them? They think they're these ground-breaking geniuses. Not knowing what came before you is native to the porn industry for some reason."
So many things work against Porn having a sense of its own history. Only fans can, and their memory is selective. If talent stays in the business, on average, for less than six months, if the workload required values quantity over quality - and the budget for both is the same - and since Porn is an industry where a much larger than average portion of its own employees seek a way to deny their involvement in it, of course there aren't many jobs for Porn Archivists.
This is why Zane relieves stress by hanging from hooks.
"I didn't set out to be a suspension artist," he said. "But it's fucking great."
In January, Zane beat by 18 minutes a record previously held by "Mind Freak"'s Cris Angel. Zane hung out in the middle of the AVN convention in Las Vegas for six hours, suspended by four hooks. I saw him during this time. He refused my request to pose as if he were inviting people to a barbecue.
"I was in a special space at the time," Zane said. "I hope you understand."
"Now I understand," I said.
"Four hooks," Zane said. "Angel had eight hooks."
I considered this for a few seconds, thinking that eight was better than four.
"...four hooks hurts more," Zane added. "because all your weight is on fewer points to distribute it.
"It took me a whole month to go back to the gym and do yoga again," Zane said. "But the suspension is more than a body feeling. It's more about psychological distress."
But even in hanging from hooks, Zane got other things done.
"There was a lot of pain over those six hours," he said. "I was going insane. But then I felt a mental split. I was fully aware of two people."
Since it's only April and the heat is already at record-breaking levels here in Porn Valley, what better way to celebrate the slow roasting of the oceans than to talk with Alaska's own Ava Rose, contract star for Adam & Eve and, if there could be a contract star of the pants, well, there too.
Rose and her sister, Mia, grew up in Sutton, AK, a town of (then) 400 people just up Rt. 1 from Anchorage.
"You spend most of the time preparing for the winter there," she said. "It's a good place to grow up, I realize now, but that's why so many adults commit suicide; they work their asses off to get snowed in."
Ava and Mia left Sutton for Reno in 1996. When Ava began dancing in Reno at the Wild Orchid, she didn't like it.
"I'd make a little money onstage but I couldn't stand to bullshit the guys with the lap dances and steal their money," she said. "It's much easier to spread your legs in porn.
"Porn's pretty easy," she said, "if you're clever about things and you know when to say no."
Rose worked for Naughty America, Metro, and Lethal Hardcore before she signed her Adam & Eve contract. Sometimes she would be cast with her sister, but Mia took more gonzo roles and Ava became Adam & Eve's lone brunette. She has appeared in that company's Carolina Jones, Dark City, and just wrapped Roller Dollz.
I asked what she thinks about the term "mainstream" as it applies to porn.
"Every time a porn star is in a movie she plays a stripper or a prostitute," she said. "I like staying where I am. People seem to always want a way into porn or a way out of it. When porn tries to look mainstream, it just ends up looking like Ultimate Porno."
Having a contract allows Rose a lot of time to read. She lives in Hollywood north of Sunset, and her bookcase is filled with true crime novels.
I asked if she read them for pointers.
"If someone offered me a million dollars to brutally murder someone else," she said. "I couldn't do it. But I like reading about it."
What is dating like?
"I don't date exclusively," she said. "It might not be the time in my life for it. It's also a little dangerous emotionally. I mean, open relationships are hard but finding out a lie is harder. Hardly ever do people not cheat."
What do you mean?
"I can't stand jealousy and obsession."
Do people get obsessed with you?
"Sometimes. That kind of insecurity is unattractive. But I'm still young and working things out. One thing's for sure: when you plan for a threesome it never fucking goes right."
Rose is 22. She gets a monthly check from Adam & Eve, a company that probably pays the highest of the major adult studios. Without makeup and wearing sweats, Rose is indistinguishable from any other young actress in her neighborhood, aside from the fact that she's working.
I asked if it was necessary to have an exit strategy from porn.
"I'd like to stay in L.A. and study Criminal Psychology," she said.
And what about relationships after Porn?
"I smoke a lot of cigarettes so I don't know how I'll age," she said. "But I think someone will like me and my loose asshole when I'm done."
I talked with Danny Vegas (formerly Daniel Lenko), title character of Playboy's The Boy Nexxt Door (the lack of three Xs should tip you off that its Playboy and he's Canadian), who told me about delivering pizza and making porn in his parents' basement in his native Edmonton, Alberta.
"I had no girls and no guys," he said. "I'd go to bars to recruit and the guys would be all for it until they heard they'd be seen by other people."
Vegas trudges through the snow to deliver pizza in his Flock of Seagulls haircut, then returns home to discover his mother has moved his Lord of Asses DVD while tidying up.
Vegas was 20 when Playboy began filming him two years ago. The Boy Nexxt Door looks staged even by reality show standards, but it still has elements you wouldn't find elsewhere, like unabashed Canadian accents, real snow, and Vegas himself, whose wholesome Tim Burton look identifies him as the rebel in his neighborhood.
We also meet his school film teacher, who encourages Vegas' nascent porn career. His teacher would probably be out of a job south of the border, but no one seems to blink when he talks about his use of porn to "short-stroke myself to ecstasy" or, after declining Vegas' offer to stunt-cock in one of his movies, says "the old grey mare ain't what he used to be." Silly Canadians have different genders for horses.
"I started watching porn when I was 12," Vegas said. "The way my family is, there was no taboo, though now they draw a distinction between directing and performing."
Vegas' parents seem less long-suffering and more bemused than the parents of Jackass' Bam Margera, but the show still plays up their confusion and, according to Vegas, "the neighbors still don't know." (Vegas and I talked on the phone, so he probably said "neighbours.")
The series plays on Friday nights on Playboy TV, and culminates with Vegas' trip to last year's AVN show. He says that he will soon get word if there is to be a season 2.
Vegas finally did get local performer Zaira to film a scene after several failed attempts to get local bar girls to perform.
"Maybe I went about it the wrong way," he said. "I'd say to girls, 'Well, you're going to go home and fuck somebody at the end of the night anyway; you might as well get paid for it.'"
Here is the original version of an article I wrote about Jenny for XBiz back when she was about to get new boobs and sign a contract with a local company intent on signing contract girls.
She decided against the boobs and the contract.
When the article was published, Hendrix said that "(You) made my life sound like a fairy tale."
I suppose, but there's no demons or Camaros in it.
She has since left her agency and began representing herself.
"When I make $4,000 for an anal scene," she said, "it's nice to keep it."
Jenny Hendrix Knows She's Hot...
...like most people know they’re alive; if they’re breathing, she’s hot. This confidence makes an interview with her different from those of many porn performers. Sometimes they’re not as confident; they overcompensate for low self esteem by boasting or, on the other hand, might be unwilling to talk about something they’re ashamed of.
But Hendrix, 22, knows she’s good at what she does and doesn’t spend a lot of time questioning it. She has been an adult performer long enough to pinpoint her assets and to know exactly what mileage she can get from them. She talks about her breasts and ass like they are luxury features on a high-end vehicle.
“You need the ass out further?” she asks director Van Styles at a recent Videoteam shoot. “I can really make it pop.”
The movie is Azzfest 6, so Hendrix and Styles are laser-focused on her backside.
“Just a little further,” Styles says, and Hendrix contorts so that her butt resembles a plateau in the middle of a near-vertical incline.
“Perfect,” Styles says.
“Yeah,” Hendrix says, too gracious to say “No kidding,” even though she would’ve got away with it.
Hendrix is from Florida, where she got her start stripping.
“There are a lot of strippers in Florida,” Hendrix said, describing a state whose adult performers form a kind of farm team for Porn Valley, but which also plays host to a number of big-time Internet companies and publishers like Score, Bang Bros., Reality Kings, and Penthouse. “But not all of them want to be in porn.”
While many porn performers will capitalize on their movie stardom by seeking bookings as a “feature” dancer, Hendrix began as a “house” dancer in Florida clubs, where stripping is taken seriously and dancers are fit, competitive, and mercenary.
Hendrix is matter-of-fact: “Why be in the business if you’re not making money?”
One of Hendrix’ first jobs in porn was with website PinkTV, where she worked for a year as the company’s de facto contract girl alongside Lezley Zen. Though based in the Sunshine State, PinkTV created inroads in the California porn world by hosting parties in Hollywood. Hendrix traveled to California to attend one in 2005 and liked what she saw.
“I could see why so many people from Florida were coming,” she said. “Same palm trees but the people are more focused.”
Hendrix stays close with friends and family in Florida, and visits frequently. One of her three phones has a 904 area code.
Three phones?
“Yeah, I’m a pretty connected person,” she said. She holds up a pink Razr (her Florida phone), a pink-sheathed iPhone, and another phone she uses for texting and scheduling. Since signing with a Valley-based porn talent agent this year, Hendrix says, she has rarely had a day off since the beginning of July.
“Do you sleep?” I asked.
“Oh, I make sure of that,” she said.
Hendrix looks at her busy schedule pragmatically. “If I get tired,” she said, “I’ll stop. But now I’m busy saving money.”
Hendrix is serious about her career, and doesn’t count as extracurricular adult industry parties and networking events. “For longevity in this business,” she said, “It’s important to keep your name out there. It’s not that I don’t have fun, but they are part of the job, too.”
For this reason Hendrix doesn’t have time for porn girls who aren’t giving it their best shot.
“If I’m on a set, girls (who are) always looking at their watches really piss me off.”
Indeed, Hendrix shuts off her phones during tasks on a porn shoot, but she is always on them in between, whether working her MySpace, where the current music is a fan’s song about her (sample lyric: “Mami got the body that you can hit 24/7/Make you feel like a saint like a reverend”), or playing music on her iPhone’s speaker to accompany still photography.
On the day of the Azz Fest shoot, her makeup time was 9:30. She arrived at director Styles’ house at 10 a.m. and sat in his kitchen while makeup artist Lillian layered on several coats of foundation.
(“I’ve got to get the foundation right before I start with the contours,” Lillian said over Hendrix’ head. “I don’t watch a lot of porn, but I can always tell you when someone’s done her own makeup or if she only has a couple of layers on.”)
Hendrix and Lillian chatted amiably while Lillian worked. Hendrix answered phone calls when she could, and soon Hendrix was transformed from a woman who looked like a Hollywood bartender to someone who was unmistakeably a porn star. The transition was not dramatic.
“How much were these extensions?” Lillian asked, holding up six hanks of hair Hendrix had brought.
“$120. They’re Raquel Welch extensions,” Hendrix said. “The Jessica Simpsons are more, I think.”
Lillian applied the extensions and her job was done. When Lillian left, Hendrix took the extensions out.
“Why didn’t you tell her you didn’t like them in there?” Styles asked. “She’s a professional; I pay her for this.”
“I didn’t want to hurt her feelings,” Hendrix said.
To this untrained eye, Hendrix with extensions looked no different from Hendrix without extensions. When Mr. Pete comes in Hendrix’ hair in Azz Fest 6, he’s coming in her real hair.
Many directors who are only shooting one scene will attempt to minimize the time they spend in an expensive location by taking care of makeup and paperwork somewhere else. Styles had the procedure down to a science, so as soon as Hendrix’ paperwork and makeup were completed, he packed her and his production assistant, Norbert, into his truck for the five-mile drive to an Encino house used for many porn shoots.
Once at the house (which smelled of baking bread as if the owner was preparing to sell it), Hendrix donned a pink plastic bra and panties ensemble and strapped on some black five-inch heels for a series of “pretty girl” shots. Her heels clacked and echoed on the wooden floors of the near-empty house.
Male talent Mr. Pete arrived, took one look at Hendrix, and declared today his lucky day.
“Why don’t we date?” he asked Hendrix.
“Don’t you already have a girlfriend?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t fuck anybody off camera,” she said.
“That’s why we don’t hang out!” he said.
“I like to keep my personal life personal,” she said later. She’d just ended a three-year relationship with a male performer.
“He was in his thirties,” she said, “and I’m in my twenties. Our lives are different.”
Interactions between male and female talent on porn sets can be delicate, awkward, tense, or amicable. Mr. Pete and Hendrix knew and liked each other, and because the job they were being paid for was one in which they had to, in Styles’ words, “make sweet love”, both performers prepared their own way.
“I’m looking forward to getting in there,” Mr. Pete declared.
“Oh yeah?” Hendrix replied. Then they tried to remember if they’d ever done an anal scene together before.
Hendrix and Mr. Pete performed a standard anal scene. He seemed delighted to be working with her. But she did most of the talking.
“Be very vocal, Jenny,” Styles said.
“You like fucking that ass?” she asked rhetorically. “Fuck my ass! Oh my God! Fuck! Fuck my ass! Fuck me! Fuck! I’m gonna come!”
Intimate sets like this one or large affairs like Barely Legal 75 are similar for Hendrix. “I show up with all my stuff, I bring some entertainment, I do my job and I try to have a good time,” she said.
She has also been known to mix drinks for the cast and crew. At a shoot this summer she put together several gallons of what she called Liquid Panty Remover. Since she served the cocktails naked, it couldn’t be determined if the concoction worked.
After her scene with Mr. Pete, Hendrix went home to pack for a trip to New York, where she’d be getting her breasts augmented. She had just returned from Pittsburgh, where she had attended a signing and a Christmas party for Adult DVD Empire.
I asked her if her fans included people from back home.
“I grew up with some very sheltered people,” she said. “So I’m not surprised that they’re surprised I’m in porn.”
Hendrix said that her porn career so shocked the residents of her gated community in Florida that she felt the need to leave. “It’s a lot more accepted out here,” she said, but noted that her friends from Florida were coming around to the concept of Jenny Hendrix: Porn Star.
“It helps when they see me on MySpace with famous people.”
“I like to be friendly with people and get along,” she said. “I’m not into the pornstar feuds. I don’t think there’s anyone out there who has a beef with me.”
But Hendrix wants to do more than get along. She wants to be appreciated for her work, she wants to direct, she wants her own video line, and she wants to put together an affiliation of “hot girls” like ClubJenna.
“Jenna Haze is hot like me,” she wondered aloud. “I wonder if she’d do it?”
I asked where she stood on getting awards.
“I’m up for Best Tease Performance at AVN this year,” she said, “and a couple of others. I don’t think I’ll win some of the others because I’m not a contract girl. But if I look at something I do that I’m proud of, and see that it’s better than what somebody else did who won an award for it, it bugs me.”
She has seen women her own age or younger blow their money and squander the early success that is the hallmark of newcomers to the business.
“Me, I save my money,” she said. “And I own my name.”
By the time this issue is released, Hendrix will have signed a contract with one of three studios and will have had her breasts redone, most likely as part of the contract.
I asked what she wanted from a contract.
“What I don’t want is to give up things I already own,” she said. “Like my name.”
But wouldn’t she be working less and not making as much money? Would she be giving up the brand she created as a non-aligned performer?
“It’s a career move,” she said, “and I wouldn’t be giving up control. I’ll make any contract good for me.” She mentioned the names of friends for whose contracts weren’t working for them.
More than anything, Hendrix wants her porn benefits to outlast her performing. That means she needs to work now.
“Why would I want to put myself out there for eight years, and then be 50 with people still buying my movies, and I’m not making a thing?” she said.
“I’m young and I’m hot,” she said, “but I won’t be forever.”
Lou & Amy & Joe & Evanka: Coming to terms with your celebrity sex tape
Two couples, both alike in dignity In Chatsworth and Long Island where we lay our scene From ancient scandal break to new celebrity Which one deems wholesome and the other obscene
Joey Buttafuoco said, "I didn't know the place was wired for cameras."
Lou Bellera, husband of Amy Fisher, said, "We wanted to make a video of a couple in love."
Both men and their wives were the stars of sex tapes released within three months of each other, distributed by the same company, Red Light District, that sold sex tapes of Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson, and "Saved By the Bell"'s Dustin "Screech" Diamond.
But only one couple admits they did it on purpose. Bellera and Fisher shot their movie in front of a stationary camera Bellera had set up in their home and rented ones on Long Island. The Buttafuocos claim they were literally caught on tape in May, 2007.
"Here's how it happened," Evanka Buttafuoco, 45, told me. "Joseph had been out of jail for a month and we went over (adult director) Rob Spallone's house for a barbecue. (Spallone) was shooting something down by the pool and he had release forms that everyone entering the house had to sign. So we signed them. It was a standard thing like when you go to a club and have to sign a 'You may appear on film' form."
Evanka told me this after I had already watched the movie and had determined that it had been staged.
"So - and this was my fault - I wanted to take Joseph upstairs for a quickie, and we just searched around upstairs," Evanka said.
"And that was the room (Spallone) had set up with webcams or whatever," Joey Buttafuoco said.
The couple have a 40-minute sex scene, Evanka in high heels and leading the action. Joey, 52, seems grateful. He says "I love you" several times. This is the part that's real.
Spallone, so the story went, later combed through the "webcam" footage and discovered the Buttafuocos' tryst, and sold it to Red Light District using the blanket permission of the releases the Buttafuocos had signed on entering.
I met the Buttafuocos on Hollywood Boulevard. We talked outside the Jimmy Kimmel Show theatre.
"So that wasn't staged?" I asked.
"No," Joey said. "We had no idea."
Joey met Evanka when the latter brought her friends' Land Rover into his Chatsworth car shop. He gave her his card, which didn't list his last name. Having worked for 17 years in car repossessions, Evanka exhausted most of the means at her disposal to turn up any information about him, but found nothing. Finally, when he took her to dinner, she first heard the story of Amy Fisher, "The Long Island Lolita."
"But that is so far behind us now," Evanka said. "Everybody is friends now. We just had dinner with Lou and Amy and we wish them the best."
Since losing his business for insurance fraud - resulting in the jail time that ended just before the filming of their tape - Joey has been a host on the Internet radio station Let's Talk Recovery.
"I've been sober since 1988," Buttafuoco said. "I didn't even use (drugs) all through 1992 and everything that happened then."
Because of the tools he learned to use in his recovery, Buttafuoco said, the release of the sex tape hasn't sent him over the edge.
"I'm the only one who's mad at Rob Spallone," Evanka said. "Joey's still friends with him."
Rob Spallone did not respond to e-mail requests for his side of the story.
After meeting the Buttafuocos, who were a charming couple, I watched the tape again and knew without a doubt that it had been staged. Webcam technology has not evolved to the point that it is capable of complex zooms.
"Yeah, they had a guy with a camera at the foot of the bed," a source with knowledge of the filming of "Joey Buttafuoco: Caught on Tape" said. "Maybe they just wanted some documentation of this time in their lives. Evanka's pretty hot."
Celebrity sex tapes are cheap to produce and, by virtue of their "caught on tape" marketing, are forgiven for any technical glitches. Paris Hilton's 1 Night in Paris sold millions but appeared to have been shot using the night vision goggles from "Silence of the Lambs." Vivid's Kim Kardashian: Superstar tape sold very well for the company despite having very little actual sex in it.
One element of celebrity sex tape culture is deniability. Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton both have disavowed knowledge that their tapes were being marketed by the rapper Ray J. and Rick Salomon, respectively.
Accepting money for appearing in a sex tape can be swept under the rug by denying you knew the tape was being made (Hilton) or that it would be sold (Kardashian and the Buttafuocos), because the bigger shame in a cool-obsessed culture is appearing to be attention-seeking.
But Fisher and Bellera embrace their sex tape, as evidence by quotes like the following:
"I look even better in person than I did on the video," Bellera, 55, said. "But Amy looks great no matter what."
Every commercial porn title must gather signed documentation that its stars are over 18 and that they have agreed to be filmed for the working title of the movie in question. They must also provide identification like driver's licenses. Every "reality" porn, from Couples Seduce Teens to Bang Boat to (to a lesser degree) Girls Gone Wild has a file cabinet full of performer releases stating that each actor knew what was happening.
That the Buttafuocos didn't knowingly provide this information would have been grounds for a fantastic lawsuit if the events of May, 2007 had happened as the couple said they had.
"We came to a settlement (with Rob Spallone and Red Light District)," Joey Buttafuoco told me that day. "That's why we're more or less actively promoting the movie."
From Long Island, Amy Fisher talks about her own sex tape (which, according to the managers of several local video stores and online outlets like Gamelink and Adult DVD Empire, is easily outselling the Buttafuoco tape) as a cathartic experience.
"People come up to me and tell me how good it was," she said. "People seek me out. A lot of my publicity because of 1992 (both couples use "1992" as shorthand) has been negative, but this has really been positive."
Bellera and Fisher have promoted the tape extensively and in only a few occasions, Bellera says, have interviewers failed to be polite.
"We tell people that we want to talk about today and to be positive," Bellera said. "And I establish ground rules before every interview." Fisher walked off the set of the Howard Stern show when the shock jock took a call from Joey Buttafuoco's still-sngry daughter.
"But we cleared that one up later," Bellera said.
Both couples know that their celebrity is not from Buttafuoco's Internet radio job or Fisher's post-prison stint as a Long Island newspaper columnist, but both try not to dwell on the source of the celebrity that made their sex tapes a marketable commodity.
"Anything having to do with my 'story', so to speak, I can never earn a dime on," Fisher said. "I have learned through the years to make lemonade out of those lemons. I keep a positive attitude and make the best out of what I have to work with."
But why the Buttafuocos denied knowing their romp was being recorded and the Lou Belleras freely admitted it seems odd. Maybe the Buttafuocos weren't happy with the finished result and wanted to disavow it? They shouldn't have - they seem like they're very happy together.
"I suppose it'll be good to look back when I'm 70 and say 'My 45-year-old ass looked good,'" said Evanka.
Report: Anti-909 sentiment rampant in stripper community
Precious, a stripper and stripper agency owner from California's Inland Empire, told me that strippers from Los Angeles and Orange Counties are prejudiced against people from the 909 area code.
"They look down on us," she said. "They think we're not on the ball."
Precious runs a company called Precious Entertainment, which sends peelers throughout the greater Riverside and Pomona areas.
"People in L.A. and Orange County have so much going on," she said, "that they think people from around Riverside can't get it together."
Anyone dialing a 909 number on a rotary phone would know how silly that is. It's easy to call someone else lazy when you're dialing 323.
Precious told me she's looking for additional strippers. Oh, I don't know; I think the current lineup has a lot going for it.
Alix Lakehurst is Greek, and lives in Chicago. We talked by computer, the way they do in Space.
One thing about Alix Lakehurst (who interviewed me for Mr. Skin), is that, like Mike Wallace, she conducts her interviews topless. I, on the other hand, wore a full iron diving bell.
I asked what she was doing for Easter, because topless girls in bonnets is a multi-million dollar niche for my Caymans-based affiliate program.
"Greeks don't celebrate Easter until the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox," she said. "So it won't be until late April."
"Oh," I said, thinking: What will I do with all this spanikopita?
On again/off again porn performer Sophia Lynn has once more been saved by the church.
Lynn, the former contract girl whose career imploded prior to the 2007 AVN convention and who was depicted in an ABC PrimeTime special having serious doubts about her fleshly job choices, has accepted both a South Dakota secretarial position and Jesus Christ as her savior.
I called Lynn at her new job at Sioux Falls' Celebrate Community Church, an evangelical parish with a congregation of 2500.
"It's hard to keep your faith in the adult business," she said. "When all your friends are saying 'Let's go to Les Deux tonight!' rather than 'Let's go to church!'"
After leaving the porn industry for the first time in 2007 - or, just prior to her duties signing for Adam & Eve at the AVN Expo - Lynn returned last summer as a prospective NinnWorx contract performer. She did not get that gig, sources say, because her attendance was "erratic" and there was talk of "drugs."
"I had developed a real tolerance for Oxycontin," she said, but also used cocaine and "Narcos."
When Lynn said "Narcos" I thought she'd said "Norco," the town where NinnWorx has its office.
"No, I was always clean when I was with NinnWorx," she said.
I met Lynn last summer and didn't think she was any more or less druggy than I was, but her ambiguous feelings about the adult industry were apparent. Each time we'd see each other, including at this year's AVN show, where she was hanging around the Sex Z Pictures booth, she would say, "we should really do an interview" and then not respond to followup questions.
"I know," she said. "I'm in, I'm out, I'm in, I'm out."
Missionary and ex-stripper Heather Veitch, founder of adult evangelical unit JC's Girls, brokered a deal by which Lynn would leave the adult industry and take a job at the evangelical church where she has been a secretary for the past week.
Celebrate Community Church sponsored Lynn's flight and housing.
"(Celebrate) had been trying to get in touch with me since the PrimeTime special," Lynn said. "As you know, I am hard to get in touch with. But they started praying for me. Then they called Heather (Veitch) and then I happened to call her. It was the answer to my prayers."
Lynn told me that she'd decided to leave the porn business again after this year's AVN show.
"I went back to (family in) New Jersey and got clean," she said.
Lynn is now living with a church family and plans to get her own apartment in Sioux Falls next month. "This is home now," she said. She also said she plans to go back to school.
Lynn has a three-year-old child living with her ex-husband.
I visited the church's website and asked Lynn, who is comfortable using her legal name, Crystal Bartolome, what she thought about Celebrate's views on Marriage and Family:
"God's plan for human sexuality is that it is to be expressed only in a monogamous lifelong relationship between one man and one woman within the framework of marriage. This is the only relationship which is divinely designed for the birth and rearing of children and is a covenant union made in the sight of God, taking priority over every other human relationship."
Lynn said that the adult industry fills holes for people. "Financial holes, self esteem holes," she said.
But does Celebrate's views on marriage and family square with Lynn's own?
"It's not our place to judge," she said. "God and Jesus love everyone."
Lynn said that everyone at the church knew who she was and how she had until recently earned her living. "And they're very accepting," she said. "It's nice to see Christians acting like Christians."
Lynn had been a Sunday school teacher in Florida prior to embarking on her adult career. I asked her if her previous strain of Christianity was like her current one.
"No," she said. "A lot of churches are very judgmental and unforgiving."
I noted Lynn's many comings and goings from the adult business and asked if her new gig was going to stick.
"South Dakota is home now," she said. "Though I had to look it up on freaking Google."
You know when Carmina Burana starts playing that scary things are about to happen.
"Fate is against me/In health and virtue/Driven on and weighted down/Always enslaved."
So when I heard the first strains of that piece of cheery music at last weekend's San Francisco Fetish Ball, I instinctively covered my soul.
Questions I asked of God at that time were:
Why is that man wearing a horse's head?
Why is that woman 20 feet tall?
Why are those ladies breathing through gas masks?
Why do I have an erection?
The companies Stormy Leather, Syren, and J.T.'s Stockroom put together a showcase of their fashions using Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and, just as appropriate for a fashion show featuring floggings, worship, and submission, The Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane."
The Scorpions are more important to Germany than Hitler or David Hasselhoff, and for the first time I realized how important German culture was to the fetish scene.
There were a lot of jackboots and Nazi-suggestive outfits at the Ball, held at the massive Grand Regency Ballroom, and the very theme of the event was "Metropolis," Fritz Lang's 1927 movie that inspired everything from "1984" to "Brazil" to a famous Apple ad to a Queen video that was way better than the song it promoted.
The SF Fetish Ball capped three nights of events; a gallery show, a smaller, more physical party called Club Enslaved, and the seventh annual Ball itself, organized by Paige White.
White is the Kansas-born dominatrix and director of Uber Ego, a company that makes sparse, brutal, and lifestyle-accurate BDSM movies. She used to work for Mr. S Leather with her partner, Tchukon Hunter, but left to take over the Ball (Mr. S had run the affair since its inception, and is still a major sponsor).
White awarded the Ball's Best Costume award to Santa Monica's Eban (pictured).
"We started in 2000 in a much smaller venue, the DNA Lounge," White said (the DNA Lounge is where the gallery show was held this year), and we expanded for the past several years."
The Fetish Ball was not held last year, and organizers attribute this year's exponentially larger attendance to the fact that people missed the event.
Over the three nights I saw a lot of the same people, but each party had its own distinctive feel, with the hardcore aspect dwindling each night as the audience increased. By the Ball on Saturday night, with more than 2,000 people attending, there was little that seemed outlandish (although there were notable exceptions).
The crowd was overwhelmingly white and the couples in attendance were mostly straight and appeared to be under 40. But that is not to say the Fetish Ball was not inclusive; huge rainbow flags fly over San Francisco neighborhoods, and the Grand Regency itself was lit with spotlights like a film premiere.
At no other place in the country would motorists pay no attention as they drove by a dominatrix, smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, who was simultaneously ordering her pastie-d slave to do pushups at her feet.
But as groovy and tolerant as San Francisco itself seems toward all stripes of sexuality, it is just as fun to hear lesbians talking smack about transvestites, gay men turning up their nose at butch women, submissives topping from the bottom, and wholesome straight girls, observing for the first time someone getting flogged at a post, saying, "that looks like it hurts."
Over the weekend I also toured the Armory, the new location of Kink.com. This place blew me away. Built in 1912 for the National Guard, the Armory was designed to withstand a siege during a time of labor unrest. For this reason the 200,000 sq.ft. building has a branch of Mission Creek running through its basement.
"...in case the troops needed fresh water," said Thomas Roche, Kink.com's publicist and former editor of Eros-Zine.
The Armory had been vacant for more than a decade before Kink.com purchased it in 2006 for $14.1 million. And that was a steal. Inside is a parade ground, a gymnasium, and dozens of rooms to film everything from standard bedroom scenes to water bondage, and everything in between. There is no studio or shooting location in Porn Valley that matches the potential of this building.
Since Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, I was pleased to see my friend Abby Ehmann at the Ball. How she gets the jobs she does I don't know, but now she is marketing one of the three brands of absinthe that are legal in America. Unfortunately she was not allowed to give out samples, but I used to drink absinthe when it was illegal and recommend its despair-inducing, hallucinogenic effects.
Made from wormwood, absinthe provides the drinker with a distinctively apocalyptic feeling.
"How are you supposed to drink it?" I asked.
"There's this thing you do by pouring cold water over a sugar cube in a fancy glass," she explained.
I bumped into Satine Phoenix and she invited me to her afterparty, which is described elsewhere.
The music on the dance floor was at times so loud that I could feel the bass in my teeth and stomach. Neither a sweaty bondage club nor a snooty and distant scene out of "Eyes Wide Shut," the Bondage Ball was instead like "The Vampire Lestat" meets the Third Reich by way of "The Shining" (especially this individual), something that was not only sexy and menacing but also comforting.
Today is Tommy Gunn's birthday. You might say, "Grams, I only visit your site for the trannies, MILFs, and Satan - why confuse things by writing about dudes?"
Writing about porn is difficult sometimes. For me, I had no interest in being a porn performer after the first scene I watched being filmed. Not that it didn't look like fun, but the work involved was considerable: standing in awkward positions under hot lights, the lack of spontaneity, delaying what wanted to come naturally (and then worrrying about aim); the fact that it was such a job became apparent the first day.
Gunn has a room in which weight equipment shares space with two sewing stations.
But the most impressive achievement for DIY enthusiasts is his shopping cart/battering ram for around-the-garage projects onto which he has built a platform for a circular saw.
It was in 2004 that Gunn, visiting L.A. with then-girlfriend, met Wicked director Brad Armstrong at the Saddle Ranch.
" and the Ted Kennedy biography "
," among other books), tells the story of Chase, a half-hearted artist who takes a driving job for a Las Vegas escort agency.
