July 7, 2012 · 12:51 pm

Hollie Stevens (1982-2012)

by Rich Moreland, July 2012

My research into adult film history suggests that the life expectancy for people who have spent a portion of their lives in the industry may be shorter than the general population, though I’ve no statistics to support that assertion. Legends Marilyn Chambers (age 57) and John Leslie (age 65) are typical. Both had strokes. Marilyn’s, in particular, was set up from years of smoking and drug use. Whether destructive lifestyle habits are more prevalent in the adult biz than in the general population, I cannot say, though I suspect if they are it’s not by much. And, I might add, obesity is not predominant in the industry.

But death visits the young also and I learned this morning that Hollie Stevens, a veteran of almost 90 movies for various studios and over 80 shoots for San Francisco’s Kink.com. passed away after a year long battle with an aggressive form of breast cancer. I remember reading of her diagnosis a year ago.  Unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing her, though I understand her sense of humor and kick-butt attitude was well respected in the business.

Incidentally, when Hollie first discovered a lump in her breast, she was reluctant to seek treatment because she had no health insurance.

Hollie died in hospice care in San Francisco with her husband of 23 days at her bedside. She was 30.

——————————-

For a greater understanding of Hollie’s fight, read Vanessa L. Pinto’s article at

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2012/06/hollie_stevens_continued.php

and Hollie’s obituary at

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2012/07/obituary_of_hollie_stevens.php

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June 28, 2012 · 8:42 am

An Air of the Extraordinary

Annie Sprinkle, Gloria Leonard, Veronica Vera, Veronica Hart, Candida Royalle. Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

by Rich Moreland, June 2012

In mid-June Amtrak took me north to New York City for day trip. I haven’t visited the Big Apple since its transition to the “gentrified” New York. My last remembrance of the city was walking to Times Square with a couple of my buddies, looking for smut shops while avoiding the winos, druggies, and other assorted street people. That was a few decades ago.

This excursion to Manhattan was not a whim; it was book related and by invitation. I was accompanied by a friend and colleague in academia who doubles as my photographer. If nothing else, I’m assured of good pics  if my writing fails to capture the scene.

In 2008, I discovered the apparent contradiction that feminism and adult film are bedfellows (or bed sisters) in an industry that is patriarchal to the core. Deciding to chronicle this odd combination, I first wanted to know what other historians, journalists, and commentators had to say on the subject. At every turn in my research, the name “Club 90” came up. Scholarly paths pointed back to this circle of five women, actresses in adult film when acting was valued and expected.

On a cool and rainy June evening in mid-town Manhattan, the Museum of Sex on 27th Street paid homage to this venerated “club.” The museum is a storefront with a basement bar and an upper floor gallery. On this night the upstairs contained a long table and folding chairs neatly arranged into a relatively cramped space. Everything was ready for a panel discussion featuring these “Golden Girls of Porn,” as the event was labeled.

Josh and I made an effort to arrive early. I had communicated with all of the ladies individually, but up to this moment I had met only two in person, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Hart. Gloria Leonard and Candida Royalle were telephone voices to me and Veronica Vera was an email correspondence and a postal address.

The women were “stars” in the “porno chic” days of the 1970’s when 35 mm film reigned and the big screen was where sex came alive. Adult movies demanded dialogue and plot to compliment the cinematography. Making a good picture required location and days of shooting. Nowadays porn films are cranked out quickly and, with some exceptions, very little style. Needless to say, there is rarely an aspiring actress in sight. But the seasoned Club 90 performers were blessed, if that can be said in pornography. They worked for some of adult film’s noted early directors like Radley Metzger, Gerard Damiano, and Joe Sarno, true artists who considered movie-making to be a craft. A sense of panache and acting ability was requisite.

As the “porno chic” days wound down, the five were transitioning away from being on camera. There were reasons: the HIV menace was one, while marriage and family became another. In short, they were getting on with their lives.  They organized a mutual support group to ease through the changes and named it after the address of Annie’s Manhattan apartment where their initial get together took place. Over the years, their collective friendship has endured.

By sheer happenstance I broke into their group. I attended one of Annie’s university speaking engagements and later sent an inquiry to Feminists for Free Expression which resulted in a surprise email from Candida. That began three years of correspondence with the group that formed the linchpin of my research.

Stealing Moments Before the Show

I got a big hug from Gloria Leonard before the gala began. She is classy (an overused word, I know) and a butt-kicker through her devotion to the political principles she holds dear. She also is the group’s grand dame. Gloria entered the adult business in her late thirties, much like the Club’s dear friend and another of porn’s venerable ladies, Georgina Spelvin. Working in adult paid better than nine to five, Gloria later told the audience, a bonus because she had a daughter to support.

A Hug From Gloria
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

Gloria has her views and the personality to back them. She and I have a mutual acquaintance in the adult biz, Bill Margold, who has his own set of notions about the history of adult film. Bill has told me much about Gloria. He adores her and I can see why. She has a political conscience in an industry that often lacks ethical behavior, and she cares about performer health and welfare. Her position on safer sex in the infamous 1998 HIV scare is a testimony to her concern for the industry. As President of the Free Speech Coalition, the political wing of the business, Gloria got funding for the start-up of Adult Industry Medical (AIM) so that talent could be more secure health wise on the job.

Reminding the audience that defending free speech is important to everyone, Gloria believes in the principle that “no one should tell you what to watch or hear.” Her words raised a bright round of applause.

I also stole a moment to impose on Candida Royalle to say “hello” face-to-face. Phone conversations and emails are not foreign to us and her support for my work is appreciated more than she will know. Like Gloria, Candida brought an air of the extraordinary to the room. Both women were elegantly and conservatively dressed as if they planned to attend a charity bizarre . . . at the country club, of course . . . sponsored by the ladies auxiliary. But the country club set could never imagine the elegance that comes from Candida. She is an industry luminary of the first order and has no parallel. She runs her own production company, FEMME, out of New York and specializes in woman-friendly erotica and couples porn. To suggest that Candida is a ground breaker in adult film erotica is a mammoth understatement. She not only turned the soil, she constructed the edifice that is feminist pornography, though I know she shudders with my use of that word; erotica is her preference. In the initial Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto years ago, Candida was the first honored. That’s what it means to be a living legend.

Chatting with Candida before showtime!
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

Candida told the audience that during her acting days she felt “ambivalence about being in adult movies” and was “conflicted” about what the impact might be in her life. Seeking therapy, she learned the value of self-analysis and decided that there was nothing wrong with performing in adult film. A woman’s voice was what the adult product lacked. Candida vowed to correct that perception and make pictures for women. It was fortuitous timing. The arrival of home video provided a safe place for women to view porn, she said, and a market was birthed.

Annie Sprinkle was her usual loving self when I renewed acquaintances with her. Annie’s career as a sex worker and lover of men, women, and transpersons is too vast and complex to even attempt to summarize here. I was honored to interview Annie in her home (we sat in the kitchen and enjoyed some iced tea) on a visit to San Francisco a couple of years ago.

No Tragic Endings Here

Annie was the lead-off hitter in the panel line-up. When everyone was finally seated, she mentioned that many people have the widely accepted belief that porn stars have “tragic endings.” “They don’t know us!” she said with her typical high spirits. During her brief remarks, people continued to trickle in; the shortage of chairs turned the event into SRO. I don’t know how many the museum planned for but attendance must have exceeded expectations. And, not every face in the crowd was an old friend or admirer. There were a number of young people who perhaps were looking to understand the past through a vision of the present.

Annie after the show.
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

In the opening moments of the discussion, Annie put the almost thirty years of Club 90 in perspective when she declared her time in porn has been an “amazing journey” and her goal is to keep it rolling. “I want to get to fifty years in sex!” she said with the innocence and playfulness of a flower child whose years have been spent pleasing and being pleased.

Annie carries the mien of San Francisco’s hippie past. Her leopard print floor length gown reminded me that Annie’s performance art, and that of her club sister Veronica Vera, is studied in academia.

Veronica Vera had expedited my research by sending valuable documents my way. She, like Gloria, was intensely political in her younger days. When we briefly spoke, I imagined what it must have been like for her to testify before the 1984 Senate Committee investigating adult film. The Reagan administration was going after porn as harm to women and the industry was under siege. Veronica recalled the now famous bondage photo she showed Senator Arlen Specter on that October day. The picture is a historical precursor of modern day BDSM performance art that has captured the imagination of a sexually marginalized community.

Veronica got into the adult business through famed photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. She told the audience she had worked on Wall Street then “decided to take an honest job” and went into adult entertainment.

Her wedding was the catalyst for this reunion, the group’s first in seventeen years.

As the event was breaking up, I finally got a chance to embrace Veronica Hart. Her 1983 baby shower brought the ladies together for the first time. I visited with Veronica in Las Vegas a few months ago and know her on a more personal level than the others. She is the youngster of the group and is considered one of the great beauties ever to grace adult film.

Veronica showing her big HeART!
Photo courtesy of 3hattergrindhouse

Except for a retired Gloria Leonard who now lives in Hawai`i, the women remain active in the adult world. Veronica Hart works in her hometown at Vegas’ Erotic Heritage Museum. She still directs in L.A. and keeps close tabs on the adult business. Candida Royalle continues with FEMME and has branched out into an adult product line, distributing through Adam and Eve, a Phil Harvey enterprise in North Carolina.

Annie Sprinkle and her partner, Beth Stephens, are expanding their venture into ecosex,  “a subject matter or identity,” Annie explains, that moves beyond a performance art. “We are . . . excosexual aritsts,” she says, exploring “a new area of research” that delves into “places where sexology and ecology intersect in art, theory, practice, and activism.”

If that sounds intellectual, it is. Beth, who moderated the event, is finishing her Ph.D. which will make two in the family as Annie already has hers.  Incidentally,  she is the first porn star gain such status. Sharon Mitchell, an old friend of Club 90 and long time director of AIM, is the second.

The fifth member, Veronica Vera, runs her own school for cross dressers, “Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls” located in New York. The studio where many of her events take place is on 54th Street. Veronica’s program is for males and transpeople who want to challenge gender barriers and get in touch with their feminine side. Working with transpersons is a value shared with Annie. (I recommend Shannon Bell’s Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body [1994] for an account of Club 90’s Franklin Furnace stage show in 1984 and Annie and Veronica’s performance art.)

With the evening winding down and attendees milling about, I allowed my imagination to have some fun. Among the audience were acquaintances of Club 90 who had been involved in adult film industry. Observing some of them reunite with the five in conversation, I mentally turned the clock back 30 years, erasing the nasty joke that time plays on all of us: age, something the young firmly believe will never happen to them. I fancied everyone in just such a room, setting up for a porn shoot: director, P.A.s, grips, and cameramen, hustling around with perhaps a make-up artist adding some final touches to faces destined to be hardened in a tough business.

In those early days of the modern adult film era, the business was east coast oriented. New York was home for Club 90. This Manhattan evening wrapped itself around them and their friendships with memories treasured. In the midst of skyscrapers and traffic punctuated with the ubiquitous New York cabbies, the affair had a small town feel and I was honored to have been invited.

When Josh and I headed back to the train station, the rain pelted ever hectic New Yorkers scurrying under umbrellas to get from here to there. The scene itself was a stage, a piece of living history, illuminated by lights embedded in mist and shrouded in the past.

———————

If you visit the Museum of Sex on the corner of 27th and 5th Avenue, consider in a quick snack across the street at Naturally Tasty. Ask for Magdalena. She’s service with a smile.

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June 21, 2012 · 12:56 pm

A Toronto Visit

by Rich Moreland,  June 2012

Note: This section is from my unpublished manuscript on Feminism and Adult Film. Citations are removed.

Over a decade ago opportunity greeted Carlyle Jansen. Her sister’s bridal shower sparked an entrepreneurial idea. Having discovered the deeply personal satisfaction of her own orgasm, Jansen wanted to communicate to other women that they, too, could enjoy their own intimate pleasures. Armed with some marketing experience, she looked at the bridal shower as a perfect environment to generate a passion for her message and the erotically based products she touted. Jansen conducted an “impromptu sex toys seminar” that day in 1995; her personal enthusiasm, ease of presentation, and engaging affability impressed attendees. She soon learned that the Canadian women attending her YMCA workshops wanted more, specifically a “comfortable place” to shop for toys designed especially for them. Good For Her, a retail business located at 175 Harbord Street a short distance west of the University of Toronto campus, became their “reality” and Canadian women have not been the same since.

On April 15, 2011, I visited Good For Her, a quaint, narrow building that could step into a Dickens novel disguised as a London merchant’s shop. The small establishment is tucked away among other storefronts, aligned like a bed full of Victorian children all dressed the same and awaiting good night kisses. Unless certain of its location, Good For Her is hardly noticed. In fact, my frustrated cab driver let me out to walk Harbord Street and inquire of residents where it might be. After passing it more than once, I was drawn to the shop’s sign that hangs over the sidewalk. I climbed the short stoop and entered, amazed at the inconspicuousness of the exterior and awed by what lay within.

Upon greeting me, Carlyle Jansen summarized her point of view on operating Good For Her. Despite the liberalization of sexual attitudes, she confessed that there are people who “are terrified coming in” because of the negativity associated with the sexual. Her answer in welcoming them is to “respect where they’re coming from” and create that needed level of comfort. Once inside, the visitor is immediately put at ease. A single salesperson, on this day a young woman in her twenties, politely greets the customer then quietly slips behind the counter. The interior is incredibly compact; the shelves are well stocked with videos, toys, books, and the like.

The atmosphere is hushed, conversation is whispered by necessity. Products are gently examined like books quietly removed from the shelves of a venerated library. During our discussion, a college-aged woman came in to browse the merchandise. In deference to the shopper’s comfort level, Jansen thought it best to continue upstairs in the offices. Shopping at Good for Her is the essence of the personal; the ambiance is all about acceptance and understanding. Individual choices are honored in a discreet setting. Jansen stressed that her purpose in opening the store was to accommodate a woman’s comfort in shopping for sexually based products, assisting those women who felt ill at ease going to other venues. She wanted to create “a place where people who want to see tons of edgy sex and the biggest dildo they can have is celebrated, supported, and respected.”

Successful businesses have mission statements. Good For Her takes a revolutionary step toward liberating a sexuality that for women has been culturally circumscribed and conforming far too long. “Women and marginalized communities need access to information and products that are not always easy to find or easy to talk about,” the statement begins before moving to its central message. There is “nothing shameful about an open, honest dialogue about sex and sexuality.” It proceeds to emphasize that the atmosphere is safe, comfortable, and deferential to everyone’s right to learn about and investigate sexuality in ways agreeable to them. Accept the term everyone literally because an emphasis on gender fluidity and an inherent respect for each person’s self-identity highlights the mission of Good For Her. To accommodate all sexualities, the shop maintains some limitations on scheduling appointments and business hours in order to give everyone discreet opportunities to shop and discuss the products.

If you go to Toronto, pay a visit to Good For Her. At the very least, it will give you a unique shopping experience. Check them out at http://goodforher.com/

 

 

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June 7, 2012 · 11:14 am

Only After They Get Power

by Rich Moreland, June 2012

The following excerpt is from my unpublished manuscript on feminism in adult film. Citations have been removed.

Taking control her body and determining how it will be displayed on screen is the premier feminist trait in adult film. Feminist empowerment shows up each time a performer negotiates her pay, calls her own shots for the camera, and exercises choice. For the handful of feminist directors, giving performers input concerning co-stars, yes and no lists, hard and soft limits, and safer sex precautions are upfront and part of the package. This is not to say that male directors ignore these offerings, some are as assiduous in satisfying them as are women cinematographers. Yet, this scenario is not universal in the industry and women who are persuasive of their own needs are not the norm. The patriarchal hand of porn is firmly in place; respect for the female performer and director remains a matter of opinion.

An overarching view comes from feminist writer Wendy McElroy who years ago observed that industry males insist they value the women who are penetrated for the camera’s delight, though it is “a form of acknowledgement,” she asserts, “not a form of respect.” McElroy concludes, “women in porn will probably get respect only after they get power.” The genesis of McElroy’s statement came from a dinner conversation she had with John Stagliano and the late John Leslie at the AVN convention in the early 1990’s. I brought up her comments in an interview with Stagliano during the AVN gala in 2012. He assured me McElroy was referring to remarks Leslie made concerning a particular performer and should not be misread as an indictment of the industry.

“John Leslie was talking ‘off the cuff’ about his interaction with some women and the fact that he was sexually aroused by some women under certain circumstances,” Stagliano said, clearing up any misconceptions about his late friend. “In the case of that dinner, John was talking about some girl with a big ass that he was really interested in.” Stagliano believes McElroy misinterpreted Leslie’s words. They were not intended to objectify the girl and McElroy’s conclusion that Leslie had no interest in the performer’s personality was a misinterpretation of the conversation. Staglino backs off a little, however, to clarify the scene. McElroy believed Leslie did not demonstrate “enough of a feminist outlook,” he explains, and her criticism of Leslie’s words in that instance had some validity. But Stagliano adds that McElroy generalized Leslie’s remarks to account for the portrayal of women in all his films. “John had a huge amount of respect for women,” Stagliano insists, “just look at his movies.”

Among industry people John Stagliano is highly regarded. He is feminist-oriented in his outlook and actions, though he may not understand it that way. Stagliano’s support for women he believes are creative in their work, such as directors Belladonna, Tristan Taormino, and Bobbi Starr, bear witness to his respect for women. Stagliano endeavors to produce a top notch product and people are the vital cogs in his machinery. He understands the importance of creativity and teamwork in an industry that is easy to malign. “I think that human beings sometimes don’t appreciate the people that they work with,” Stagliano says, and he personally wants to find value in people. “I try to see what’s good, what it is they have to offer and treat them with a certain respect as human beings. . . . that’s the way I prefer to do business.” Stagliano knows that his way of interacting with people is not the industry norm. Undeterred, he holds to the belief that “in the long run I prove that it works to do it my way because you build bridges” in an environment that is stoked with “competitive pressure.”

The moguls of porn believe they respect the women they hire and I have no reason to doubt them. But female performers do not universally share that view. There is a disconnect between the traditional industry patriarchy and the women who toil to create the profits. Yet this separation may be more a reflection of society in general and not so much porn in particular.

Nina Hartley has a feminist perspective that is not far from McElroy’s point of view. She believes women are “valued for their ‘hotness’” but this does not necessarily translate into respect. Nina talks of female directors who must cope with male egos in the boardroom, men “who don’t want to deal with women” and who have “issues with women.” Nina indicates that for some men in the business it is challenging to connect emotionally with women, but such a claim can be made about broader society as well.

Veronica Hart supports Nina’s interpretation of respect. With a few exceptions, Hart does not believe that women as a whole are influencing the business of pornography. “I don’t see many women affecting the business that much.” She notes a few, particularly mentioning director Nica Noelle and Club 90’s Candida Royalle. Noelle’s “new spin” on shooting sex more realistically and Royalle’s “couples porn” are notable achievements in Hart’s eye, but their real business success is measured in selling movies, not the artistic accomplishments within them. Hart generalizes porn to other aspects of the corporate world where profit dictates a product’s success. “Business is business,” Hart begins. “It doesn’t respect anyone. The only thing it has respect for is the ability to make money.” True, no argument on that fact. But Hart adds that respect has another connotation that is closely aligned with John Stagliano: it is very personal and built on relationships. Respect depends on “the people you are working with,” she says, suggesting that it is a viable commodity shared among those on both sides of the camera. Hart remembers that as a director, she held her performers in high esteem, though there were a few who challenged her efforts in that regard. “I realized, ‘Thank God they were fucking because they couldn’t do anything else!’” “This is coming from a feminist,” she amusingly adds, “but I realized that people have certain abilities and just because they are in the porn business doesn’t mean they get my respect. You earn respect.” Hart elaborates on her point. Respect comes from a “pattern of being responsible, of standing up for other people, kind of doing and saying the right thing. That’s what gets you respect in life.”

I revisited for a moment McElroy’s assessment and asked Hart for her thoughts. “I think that is more a reflection on society than it is the porn business,” she says.

The adult film industry is not a business that labors daily in Middle America’s towns and villages and people are quick to pass judgment on women who have sex for money. Yet, they don’t always think of males the same way. In the public’s eye, Hart says, it is still “commonplace” to demonize women in porn as “sluts,” though she believes the term “has lost a lot of the stigma” it once had. She contrasts the word derogatory term with opinions voiced about men. “A gentleman who does it [performs in porn] is a stud,” she adds, “a guy is a conqueror.” Hart sees these definitions as a “connotation of who we are” as sex workers, of how performers are evaluated and presently situated in the industry. On the other hand, she repeats the old standby that “it’s great if you can fuck her [a porn girl], but you wouldn’t want your mom or your daughter to be one” still holds true. But she wraps the porn business in broader cloth when she states that, like it or not, the smut industry is a “part of society” and cannot be separated from it.

I’ve heard some porn people, most notably veteran Bill Margold, talk about the adult business in familial terms, the “Family of X” as he calls it. I pressed Hart to expand on the role of women in adult film and how that may relate to the larger aspect of unity.

“We are a vital necessity,” she begins. “The love in the business comes from the people that make friendships in it.” That sticking together is what Margold means, I believe, and what Club 90 illustrates so well. But Hart’s honesty takes a sudden brutal turn. “This is a business. We always say ‘Oh, the porn family.’ Fuck that! It’s not a family, it’s a business and a business loves nobody, respects nobody except a person’s ability to make money. The bottom line is making money,” she repeats. “If you are a moneymaker, then the business loves you. Right?”

Hart concludes with a position unconsidered by antiporn feminists and unrealized by the general pubic, what pornography can professionally do for women. “Pornography is one of the few places where a woman, if she wants to, can excel,” Hart says, adding that adult film women are in the unique position of being “in control of their careers.” “They’ve made their own choices,” she says, and “have a lot more freedom when they work in pornography than in most other jobs.” Referencing her personal work in the industry, Hart singles out her own successes. “I’ve been given an opportunity in porn to be anything I want to be. I can hold a camera, I can write, I can direct, I can edit and all of these things are very difficult. I can make movies because of porn. I can make really good low budget movies, whether exploitative sex movies or horror movies or action movies, it’s all the same animal. I know how to do that because of this business. I’m very thankful for it.” 

———————————

Feminist scholar Carol Queen offers that today’s porn industry woman little realizes she is a feminist until she learns from “older women” that there are “multiple feminisms,” sex-positive the most formidable example. When porn women narrowly define feminism as sex-negative and anti-porn, its goal of moving women beyond a sexual second-class citizenship is lost. Feminism in adult film is about control and choice, and many well-known performers exercise both. Nina Hartley illuminates the feminist sex-positive philosophy with “my body, my rules” which enables her to “take responsibility” for her own sexual satisfaction. It is, and will always be, her choice as to where to place her body and who her partners will be, on or off film. Many performers, particularly those who have committed to the industry long term, would agree.

In the end, success may come down to money and its reward, power, but those are not its limits. Success is also about that inner courage and determination that builds a respect that all women are capable of achieving. Wendy McElroy is correct in her conclusion that respect comes with power. We know that in the pornography empire, as it does in corporate America, politics, and social influence, money translates into power. For a porn actor, however, power also means doing it her own way. The women of Club 90 and Pink Ladies forged a path for themselves that challenged the accepted way of operating in adult film. Today adult film women who insist on choice and control in the face of a patriarchal industry traditionally built on monetizing male auto-eroticism have achieved a measure of success on both sides of the camera. Feminists in adult film are lending other elements to the money-power continuum with a philosophy that expands what it means to be a woman and express a sexuality that in and of itself commands respect.

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March 22, 2012 · 4:39 pm

Recognition of the Cameraman

by Rich Moreland, March 2012
A few years ago an adult film called Pirates (2005) and its follow-up Pirates II (2008) hit the DVD market. Lots of hullabaloo expended over dropping big bucks to make pornography. There was plot, character development, adventure, everything that cloaked what it was, fun with sex in a historical setting.

In the language of the industry, Pirates is a feature. Making it required lots of props, crew, industry stars, and hype in order to turn a profit. It’s a throwback to porno chic era of the 1970’s when films like Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door, and The Devil in Miss Jones carried a plot of sorts and the female star had repeated sexual encounters to fit the storyline.

Long before the feature, the stag or loop was porn’s showpiece; a short film with no real narrative, just sex, cheap to make and easy to hustle among a gathering of males in social clubs and fraternities. That’s how the business of selling sex on film got started. The first stags go back to the early 20th century’s Great War days.

The explosion of porn created by the VCR hit America in the eighties; a time of “smut glut” as director and writer David Jennings calls it. San Fernando Valley became porn central and America had a new corporate entity in the boardroom. The challenge was money. Selling a feature is no easy task and profit margins can be especially troubling if a huge amount was expended in its making.

Circumstances brought opportunity and old traditions were challenged. A new kid on the block emerged by the 1990’s: gonzo. The word entered the porn lexicon and today industry people throw it around as if it’s been a part of the business since its inception. It hasn’t and I wanted to know exactly what it is and how it got started.

John Stagliano Talks Gonzo at the Hard Rock

John Stagliano Talks Gonzo at the Hard Rock

Not a Feature
This I did know. Gonzo is used to describe any adult film that is not a feature, which isn’t terribly informative. The word is so ubiquitous now that it has lost its identity. Current industry people bounce gonzo around like a napless tennis ball at a dog park. It rolls around the entire space and all dogs play with it.

I always assumed gonzo was John Stagliano’s creation, but my research-oriented mind had to check with him personally to clarify the genre’s history. John is an industry icon, “the Speilberg of porn” I once heard a director say, and legend has it that the old vids of his “Buttman” Series gave gonzo traction.

I remember one “Buttman” episode John did with old friend Bruce Seven. In one scene, John is sitting on the living room floor in a hillside house editing film, telling the camera about the girl in the video who is doing her thing for the viewer. The tape continues to roll and John shows the visitor/viewer around his makeshift editing set up and comments on shoots that appeared in previous “Buttmans.” This is a movie within a movie because John will become director and performer again within moments. All it takes is that knock on the door.

A cute blonde stands on the door stoop and says she just been tied up by Bruce for one of his bondage videos and she was sent to John next. Bit of a reversal of the traditional stag film formula, handyman comes to the house where the housewife is ready for sex. In this case, the girl just shows up without rhyme or reason and wants to make film. Perfect gonzo: no script, no set, no cast; just another impromptu opportunity for the camera to capture an eager and naked female for “Buttman.”

This is the Stagliano genre and the concept is widely admired in the industry.

Doing Back Flips
Granting me a few minutes at the recent adult expo in Las Vegas, John explains how the gonzo he was “alleged to have started” came about.

“In the eighties,” he said, “all we did was try to imitate a TV show or regular movie. We’d cast parts, write dialogue and do the best we could to find somebody to fit into that role.”

Script writing was the challenge. It was like “doing back flips,” he said, “to try to have a story with a beginning, middle, and end with characters!”

He often had one girl to showcase, but in today’s porn, unlike the old days of the golden age, she’s not going to do all the scenes in the finished product. As a result, John points out, it was “not necessary to have all the scenes build up into a feature.”

Variety drives the porn dollar. The viewer wants a collection of fresh faces to feed what internet entrepreneur Danni Ashe refers to as a male’s “harem fantasy.”

John recognized that to have  more girls is always desirable but to integrate them into a storyline was unneeded. In other words, gonzo reintroduces porn to its old stag roots, ten  minute loops of different girls strung together independent of script and casting with one caveat, the girl will often have sex with the director/cameraman. The camera is a participant because the sex is shot from the director’s POV (point of view), especially when he gets involved with the model.

Other performers may be in the scene, but Stagliano does not leave the stage to them. He is arranging people, talking with them while he is filming, and might choose to shoot through the mirror in a hotel room so that the viewer can see the performers and the director at work; the action becomes a scene within a scene.

Setting aside creativity as a driving force in adult film, porn is about money. Stagliano collapsed the always prohibitive financial hurdle by stringing together his POV version of the old loop into a few hours of sexual variety and sold it all for the same dollars the feature guys were making.

Despite John’s downplaying of plot, characters, and the like, the “Buttman” series always had a loose “man on the street” theme, such as “Buttman goes to Europe” or “Buttman v. Buttwoman,” which highlights an exclusively female version of gonzo. The shtick was always “let’s see what’s going on over here.” To follow “Buttman” around on his adventures was like chatting with your pal at a club while checking out the partygoers. It had the flavor of a hunt.

Some of the individual shoots within a “Buttman” film reflect a feature. Characteristically, the final episode in the overall package might be a sexcapade that focuses on one guy and two girls. It has a loose narrative and can last up to a half hour, surpassing the time limitations of stags.

No matter its nuances, gonzo became profitable.

“I proved that I could be successful and sell them (gonzo shoots) for the same price” as features, John pointed out. “So people started imitating me and that made the business much more creative and interesting.”

First Person Reaction

In our conversation, John remembered that gonzo came from a specific form of journalism.

“It did,” I said, mentioning Hunter Thompson of San Francisco literary fame.

“It was a first person reaction to events,” John said, explaining that from a film perspective, gonzo means “there isn’t a wall between the performers” and the director. John puts the director/cameraman in the scene; his personality is deliberately part of the shoot. He emphasizes that gonzo is “a recognition of the cameraman” in which his “ideas” as composer/arranger of the action are driving the scene. The viewer and performer acknowledge the camera, John notes, the girl is encouraged “to look directly into it and be sexy.”

Most important, he reiterates, the shoot is “not a regular story” that touts script and requires a filming crew.

How does this differ from other directors? Some feminist filmmakers like Tristan Taormino hand the cast the basic theme of the shoot and stand back, letting them do what comes naturally. She likens her product to reality TV and invests time in filming mundane activities and chatting with performers, leaving the sex to find its own way.

A more traditional feminist producer and director is Candida Royalle, whose films have a more erotica flavor, and are based on the feature model.

Well-known directors like Michael Ninn, Axel Braun, and Andrew Blake work with cast and script, producing a mainstream product noted for spectacular visuals.

But John has created a different type of film with notable success. He emphasizes that gonzo has replaced the feature in today’s business environment. There is a drawback. Success has encouraged popular usage of the term to broaden its definition to include anything that is not scripted. “But that’s not really accurate,” Stagliano concludes, offering that authentic gonzo revolves around the cameraman and the creative ideas he’s putting into the scene.

I returned with a final question.

“Can a woman do a gonzo film?” I said.

“Yeah,” John replied, “from her point of view it would be different ideas and different reactions and different feelings.”

He notes directors Bobbi Starr and Belladonna, both work for his Evil Angel Productions, as doing gonzo from a female POV and doing it well.

Before we wrapped up, John mentioned Paul Fishbein and Gene Ross of Adult Video News as part of the story. I made a mental note the give Fishbein a call.

I didn’t have to. He contacted me. John is one of the good guys in the business.

Indescribable New Style.

“While it’s true that AVN coined the term gonzo, I will not take personal credit for it,” Fishbein’s email began. He pointed out that Gene Ross, who worked at AVN for 17 years, was the originator of the word.

Here’s the story from Paul’s perspective. The eighties saw the development of what would be called “reality porn if it had it occurred today,” he said. Accommodating that reality concept, everyone participates in gonzo. Stagliano began this idea when he talked with performers on camera and interacted with them as characters “playing themselves,” Fishbein explained.
The technique broke a barrier, “the fourth wall, but these movies were clearly no documentaries,” he added.

It was an “indescribable new style”and AVN searched for a way “to distinguish this new form of erotica from traditional movies or just collections of sex scenes,” Paul said.

The AVN staff, all trained journalists, brainstormed ideas. Finally, Gene Ross, an editorial staff member, offered up the term “gonzo” as a tribute to Hunter Thompson, a legendary writer admired by everyone in the room. (For the record, Thompson’s “gonzo journalism” heralded first person narratives with an upfront “tell it like it is” manner that ignores the polished effect of editing.)

“It became the industry standard,” Fishbein said, “and AVN absolutely deserves credit for it.”

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What has this investigation revealed about the state of gonzo now?

“Gonzo has come to mean more than I really think it should,” John says. “It’s not useful if it describes everything that isn’t a feature.” Pausing for a moment to reemphasize his point, John adds, “It’s not so broad as to include anything that isn’t a feature” which has happened in his opinion because “words get their definition from how they’re used by people.”

He personalizes gonzo in his final remark. There isn’t a name “for how I describe it,” John declares. His gonzo is “a personal reaction” to his craft, a type of expression that he sees in Hunter Thompson’s literary style.

Gonzo may be a personal application in shooting porn, but it is now global in its use. It is a recognized success story because like John Stagliano’s politics, gonzo is a true libertarian artistic method that has an “everyman” feel.

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February 6, 2012 · 7:34 pm

A Porn Tale Wagging the Dog

The Deep Throat Sex Scandal Playbill courtesy David Bertolino

By Rich Moreland, January, 2012

A United States’ President watched porn while on the taxpayer’s dime and he was not a liberal.

Or, so the story goes.

Odd, considering he proclaimed in an October 2, 1970, speech that pornography had the power to “corrupt a society and a civilization.”

You guessed it, the words of Richard Nixon. The man, whose personal playfulness was only exceeded by the mating habits of two-toed sloths, apparently was willing to finesse his shadowy ways. In 1974 he ventured into the erotic, at least for an evening at the White House.

Nixon wanted his porno and an off Broadway play uses the President and his government to teach us a lesson about freedom, truth, justice, and porn.

But first . . .

It’s mid-January in Las Vegas and I’m chatting with Bill Margold over morning coffee at the Tuscany Suites. We were there for the annual Adult Video News convention, in reality  a carnival for fans and a weeklong grind for the industry. Bill and I have known each other for a time and I was anticipating more porn biz news to go with the cream in my java. Little did I realize that within a few minutes I would have the immeasurable delight to meet a clever entrepreneur named David Bertolino. Sandy haired with a cherub’s face and an amicable personality to match, David is the kind of guy who’d buy you lunch (or a beer) and top it off with a fascinating story as a kicker.

You’d leave with the feeling that you have a friend for the duration.

Within a short time, David interested me in his off-Broadway show, The Deep Throat Sex Scandal. He’s brought it cross-country from New York to L.A. for a six month run. Now, I know nothing about drama or film criticism and I haven’t seen his play yet, so I’ll pass judgment on it as entertainment at this point. But I do know history, so we had something instantly in common. When David mentioned the famous 1976 Deep Throat Memphis trial in which actor Harry Reems and organized crime’s Perainos (brothers, father and sons) were indicted on obscenity charges, the native Bostonian was playing ball in my park.

Incidentally, Deep Throat’s director Gerard Damiano and actress Linda Lovelace of oral gratification fame were granted immunity for their participation in the opening curtain of porn’s hardcore age. Harry and his manhood were not so lucky.

Over a second cup and an order of Danish, David treated me to a story I knew nothing of. My ears perked up like a hunting dog sensing its prey. Historians are always seeking their precious droplets from the Holy Grail known as “the past,” meted out in anecdotes, folklore, whispered secrets, and the like. That unknown incident, the new twist no one else has considered, is what transforms us into Indiana Joneses.

The tale came to David via Raymond Pistol, owner of Vegas’s Showgirls Video where Margold holds his annual “Legends of Erotica” inductions. Pistol bought the rights to the Deep Throat in the 1990’s from Anthony Peraino. Originally costing $25,000 to make, the film grossed over $600 million, David relates, a figure I’ve heard confirmed elsewhere. Organized crime’s Perainos were in the thick of the profits, or so the government was convinced.

Before we move on, a little background is necessary.

In 1970, a Presidential Commission appointed by former President Lyndon Johnson delivered its findings on pornography to the new chief executive, Richard Nixon. Because of its rumored liberal slant, Nixon had attempted to influence the panel after taking office. He added Charles Keating, an outspoken anti-porn crusader, to the group. (Yes, this is the same Keating who perpetrated California’s S&L scandals in the “go-go” eighties. Remember, he went to jail for conspiracy and fraud. Morality has no boundaries unless one gets caught, except of course, when it comes to sex.)

Nixon’s efforts were futile. To his outrage and Keating’s frustration, the commission’s findings did not substantiate the horrors in porn that conservatives were convinced existed.

Without personally reading the final document, Nixon panned it, declaring quite pompously in that famous October speech, “American morality will not be trifled with.” In short, Tricky Dick wanted nothing to do with the perceived corruption of adult film.

So it seems. . .

It’s no secret that good citizens and porn performers don’t always operate on different planets. After all, sex sells to everyone, including high-minded moralists who have the habit, as Bill prophetically says, of pushing smut away with the left hand while satisfying themselves with the right.

From what David could learn, Raymond Pistol claims that Nixon actually wanted to see Deep Throat and called for a print to be delivered to the White House. To seek legitimacy, the Perainos had opened a company in the San Fernando Valley, soon to be the mecca of adult film, as a way to dodge the organized crime tag. Their business, Bryanston Pictures, was instructed to hand over a copy of the movie to a limo momentarily arriving on their doorstep. The print ended up on a Presidential plane bound for Washington and a “Nixon-and-friends” screening that evening.

For verification, I contacted Pistol; he added that the story came from Lou “Butchie” Peraino, one of Tony Peraino’s sons.

Such generosity did not dissuade Nixon from lowering the legal hammer on porn. “As much as he enjoyed viewing it,” David said, “he still went after it.” Because of jokes and criticism emanating from Hollywood about the emerging Watergate scandal, Nixon, according to Bertolino, wanted to “go after the actor community.”

For those of you who aren’t up on Presidential history, Nixon was famous for his “enemy’s list.”

As we talked, David pointed out that the whole affair was a “true example of the tail wagging the dog.” Censuring the adult film community offered Nixon the opportunity to send a message of harassment to Tinsel Town.

Nixon wanted indictments to excoriate the evils of Deep Throat. He ordered Keating, now his attorney general, to find a conduit for the government’s pursuit of porn, in particular its distribution by the crime bosses.

The State of Tennessee was destined to become Nixon’s partner in purification. It had a smut chasing US attorney named Larry Parrish and a judge already on board to secure a conviction of any sexually explicit material that menaced the sanctity of the family. But political righteousness does not always come easy. Keating discovered that Parrish was unable to “find a single theater” that ran the film by the time the Perainos took over its distribution.

A Memphis grand jury had already handed down indictments based on a showing at the Tri-State Theater in November 1973. The Perainos came on board as distributors in December 1974, or so they claimed. (For those of you following the timeline here, Nixon left office in August 1974.) By that time, no theater would dare put reels of Deep Throat in its projectors.

What to do? David relates that the Attorney General was undaunted, instructing the prosecutor to “keep going, we have to have the trial there.”

An ingenious solution was proposed. A quick phone call from Keating to Parrish was required and that moment is reenacted in the play.

One of the Perainos’ distribution centers was in Florida; a small fact that influenced everything.

Here’s the tale as told to David via trial lawyer Alan Dershowitz of O.J. Simpson fame.

American Airlines and the Greyhound Bus Company provided transportation over and through the Volunteer State giving the feds the silver bullet for their porn target. You see, Tennessee is on the way to the Sunshine State. The prints carried on the planes as they made their way to the Atlantic coast and the film copies on the buses motoring over the roads that served the solid citizens of the Bible Belt tainted the state. The populace was endangered; morality teetered on the abyss of oblivion.

What little choice did Nixon have?  “Citizens were harmed,” David tells me with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. Prosecutions were the only answer. Please note that corporate America, the play pal of politicians, dodged the bullet. American and Greyhound would end up as un-indicted codefendants.

The story of the trial and its challenge to free speech and justice is the essence of The Deep Throat Sex Scandal. It’s in two acts and I’ll comment later on how Betolino blocked out the scene when Linda does Harry, an cinematic flashpoint that brought filmed pornography to Middle America’s doorstep and showed every woman that sex is more than a poke. It is ingenuity that even Nixon and Keating would love, done with obfuscation and a collision of sobriety and tomfoolery!

A note of interest on this production that tells us everyone involved has a great time. Alan Dershowitz was Harry Reems’ lawyer for his successful appeal of his Deep Throat conviction. It turns out Alan has quite a sense of humor. David says the attorney saw the show in its early previews, loved it and lingered afterward “for a generous photo session with all the cast and crew.”

Here’s the best part. After the performance, Alan complimented everyone on reenacting a significant moment in the history of free speech. Then, turning a little somber, he commented there was a small problem. I’ll let Alan speak for himself.

“The actor that played my role should have looked more like Brad Pitt!” he said with an impish twinkle in his eye.

There certainly is a lot of wagging of assorted tales in this production!

See The Deep Throat Sex Scandal if you have a chance. I suspect the tale wagging is worth the price of admission.

—————————–

For a link to the play check out http://www.deepthroattheplay.com/

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January 25, 2012 · 7:20 pm

“No One is Famous in Porn?”

Nina Hartley talks feminism and respect

by Rich Moreland, January 2012

I just returned from four days in Las Vegas. It’s January and that means the Adult Entertainment Expo, the industry’s annual festival and awards show, made its way onto my calendar again.

While there I had dinner with some interesting people at an upscale Italian restaurant near the Strip. Among them was Bill Margold, founder of Protecting Adult Welfare and a veteran of the business; David Bertolino, off Broadway producer of The Deep Throat Sex Scandal; and adult film performer, Tara Lynn Foxx, about whom I have written in the past.

Tara is not a newcomer to the business.  She entered three years ago at eighteen, an age too tender to fully understand her decision.

Conversation turned to being famous in porn and Margold asked Tara if that was one of her goals. Knowing Bill, he was probing Tara to measure her commitment to the industry. She replied with an enthusiastic “yes,” though she appeared to be slightly uncomfortable with the question.

My thoughts drifted momentarily away from the table talk to what “famous” means in an industry that defines acting as a set up for fornication. A bit of searching for a definitive idea as it applies to pornography danced through my mind’s neural networks.

Two names popped up, Nina Hartley and Bobbi Starr, superstar women of separate generations and feminists in a business that is not considered receptive to empowered women.

I had the pleasure on this trip of interviewing Nina in person, though we knew each other from emails. She is the definition of “famous” when it comes to adult film, I believe, if such a thing exists. To say that she bowled me over is putting a soft spin on our chat. Total force, total domination of an hour’s time.

On Friday, I interrupted Bobbi Starr while she was signing on the floor of the Hard Rock Hotel ballroom. I wanted to say hello and my impatience took over, so I politely drew her attention away from a fan. As is her habit, Bobbi gave me that charming smile. She has a talent for this. We exchanged a few words and I mentioned that I wasn’t seeking an interview, this was just a quick “how are you.” She has been generous with her time in the past, but my intrusion at the moment was blocking her fans and I know how important they are to her. We made arrangements to visit later.

Nina and Bobbi, what can they teach us about fame?

Making everyone else seemingly disappear when she turns her eyes to you is an ingredient in being famous.

Leaving you with the feeling that you are the focus of her entire moment is an ingredient in being famous.

Speaking intelligently and voicing an empowerment is an ingredient in being famous.

Nina does these things really well, as does Bobbi. But few do.

In fact, the real issue is respect. Genuine fame follows respect.

At the Saturday night awards show, Bobbi finally garnered “Female Performer of the Year,” a deserved honor that has eluded her. Bobbi is a director now, as well as a performer, and you can read an earlier entry on her on this blog. To suggest that she is a living legend is an understatement. She, like Nina, is a wily veteran who has forged her own path in a business that can be filled with misrepresentations, sleaze, and shady behaviors.

Most important, both women operate under Nina Hartley’s in-your-face feminist tenet, “my body, my rules.”

Nina and Bobbi have paid their dues and have earned the right to speak their minds. Trust me, both will when openings are offered. Earning respect, Nina suggests, in a business that is primarily an “ole boy network” is a mighty task. Women are valued for their “hotness,” but not necessarily for their input into the day-to-day operation of making and distributing film. This is not to say that women are non-existent at the production level, Nina points out, but being a performer is a different scenario. The money flows to the top. Profit is made off the performers, not for the performers.

Incidentally, Nina commented that many men in the business “have women issues.” They don’t necessarily “want women as companions,” as in building a long-term relationships. They are perpetually dating, rarely settling down. Nina believes this male state of mind inhibits respect. She did concede, however, that attitudes are slowly changing. Bobbi’s new career opportunity behind the camera supports her assertion.

Though Nina is not involved in the business end of adult film, I can guarantee you she is respected, as is Bobbi. Why? From my limited knowledge, I can cobble together an answer.

First and foremost, respect is earned as veteran performer and director, Veronica Hart, told me. Porn is a business; making money is its reason to be. Nina and Bobbi are moneymakers because they demonstrate a control of their personal sexual agency that exceeds that of most women who ever walked onto a set. When on camera, they orchestrate the scene in fashion that dictates the flow of the other performers.

Both of them do the things that everyone in a business setting is expected to demonstrate. Show up on time ready to work; take responsibility for on-the-job performance; transform the word “dependable” into a personal mantra; and make every performance the best it can be at the moment. Of course, the pornography industry is not an ordinary corporate environment nor is it a bureaucracy where a person is a cog in a machine. Not everything is believed; not everyone is honest. Promises are made and can vaporize instantly. And, as Nina said, she’s always unemployed until the next shoot. That’s the norm.

By now, the table conversation had moved on and I made my way back into it, but not before one final thought.

Where does this leave the definition of famous in porn?

Mention Nina Hartley and Bobbi Starr to others in adult film and compliments are immediate. Both women are dynamic and their presence in a room lights up your senses. Their energy is infectious. Their personal opinions are valued. The proof hangs around during an industry event; someone will always be nearby with mic in hand, seeking an interview. That’s respect.

Will Tara Lynn Foxx earn such accolades and consequently become famous? Too early to tell, but I think she is on her way, if ever so slowly. She is dynamic in an interview and she is exploring empowerment. That’s a start.

But it takes awhile. Nina entered the business in 1984, the year after Bobbi was born. Bobbi is nearing thirty, moving into her seventh year in the industry. She has indicated to me she will leave adult film one day, but that may far off.

Longevity in porn is rare. Can a woman gain fame without it? Sure, but who admires the likes of Traci Lords?

At her tender age, TLF is just beginning. She has the ability and the brains to make it happen, it remains to be seen if time is at her back.

——————————————

Three years ago I asked Bobbi the same question Margold posed to Tara. Bobbi’s response is one I have yet to hear repeated.

I remember it to this day.

“No one is famous in porn,” she said.

I disagree. There are an iconic few and I have the good fortune to know two of them.

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December 22, 2011 · 11:19 am

Any Identifier, or None at All

Jiz Lee, totally queer. Photo courtesy of Nikola Tamindzic and JizLee.com


by Rich Moreland, December 2011

In my search for a lead for this piece, I stumbled onto a December 14 Huffington Post web article on Rooney Mara of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

I pulled this from it;

“When she puts the hoodie on and the leather jacket, she looks like a 14-year-old boy, she looks sexless. Which is perfect. The other side of it is that when she doesn’t have that on, she’s really sexy.”

It’s the sexless part that captured my attention because it brings up an interesting question about the word. Does it mean having no awareness as to be child-like, with apologies to Freud? Or does it mean being indeterminate, not fixed, as to challenge to the traditional male-female binary? For this approach, androgyny may be the best fit.

I’m going to go with the latter interpretation because it describes Jiz Lee, a female-bodied queer porn performer from San Francisco. (A quick note. “Queer” in this usage is not a pejorative. It describes SF’s inclusive community of sexualities and gender preferences that takes pride in its own adult film genre. Within this environment, Jiz is part of a group of directors and performers known as the Queer Porn Mafia. More on them in another post.)

So who is Jiz? How about a Mills College grad who does not identify as male or female for a starters?

————————————————

The holiday season is approaching and that means preparations for Vegas in January. Once again, it’s AVN time! Network, attend seminars, look for interviews, and enjoy renewing some acquaintances are on the agenda.

The downside of this year’s excursion is no Jiz Lee. Jiz is off to Jiz’s native Hawai`i  to spend some time with family and friends. Since Jiz is one of my faves in adult film Jiz’s trip to the islands gives me a chance to revisit some of our conversations. Jiz has been instrumental in my understanding of sexuality and how its variations play out in adult film.

Before we go further, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve not used a female pronoun to describe Jiz. Jiz doesn’t like them and I respect Jiz’s wishes because I respect Jiz. Avoiding such pronouns when referring to Jiz is not universally honored I’ve discovered. At a feminist conference last spring, I ran into a well-known maker of sex toys for women. We talked briefly (actually ran into each other in the men’s room!!) before the last seminar of the day and found out that we each know Jiz. He praised Jiz for valuing his newest product, referring to Jiz as “her.” I gently reminded him that Jiz is averse to female pronouns. Laughing a bit sheepishly, he shrugged and said it’s too hard to remember that.

Perhaps, but doesn’t lessen its importance.

Not long ago Jiz courteously reminded me of my own inadvertent screw-up in an article I’d written for an industry publication. The pronoun slipped in out of habit. Spot-checking did not catch it. But that was a poor excuse because getting it right is essential to who Jiz is in Jiz’s own mind. A person’s identity is sacred.

Apologies were in order.

You’ll see no pronouns here. Hope it doesn’t make reading this post too syntactically awkward.

Having established those parameters, this is what’s on my mind today.

In his book America Unzipped, Brian Alexander paid a visit to Kink.com, an internet fetish porn company in San Francisco. I’ve been there also and the place captured my interest. I was looking for feminist attitudes in its operations because male and female-bodied queer performers shoot for Kink, including Jiz.

I get the impression that Alexander saw Kink as just another sojourn in his explorations into American sexuality. Nothing special. In fact, he seemed dismissive of the Kink stopover, using the word “bored” to describe his experience.

I understand tedium when it comes to adult film. I once got a free Hustler video (a compilation) a couple of years ago and swore I’d view the entire four hours, at least in segments. Not easy because I don’t really watch much adult film. I got through fifteen minutes over lunch one day and have never returned to it, repetitive beyond belief with a lack of authentic sex.

One of the problems Alexander had at Kink was language. He was linguistically at sea when chatting with queer performers who tried to explain their preferences and orientations. Nothing seemed certain, like shadows on the waves. Most particular his experience with the word “queer” was confusing and led him to conclude that a variety of sexual tastes, dispositions, and identifications  seemed like a “gender shell game.”

He is correct in one aspect of his metaphor. It’s hard to keep all the terminology straight because it extends way beyond the male-female binary that makes up our culturally circumscribed heteronormativity. Gay male? Not a problem for the most part, but what about lesbian, dyke, butch, lipstick fem, trans, and the like? How does all this wash out because labels can endear or offend?

Jiz helped me sort through things and led me to develop an idea I call “identity of difference.” It’s my way of trying to get a handle on some serious questions. Is sexual orientation and sexual identity biologically determined or socially constructed? Is queer a political statement? Is it about fetishes as in “what are yours and what are mine?” Are lovers of BDSM sex queer?

In trying to clarify these questions, I have decided on one point. All of us have a bit of a different slant when it comes to sexual expression, physically and linguistically. I do believe sexuality is shaped by cultural expectations and these “standards” do not fit everyone. That is the essence of queer. As queer icon Madison Young once said to me, we should not force people into boxes.

Everyone is entitled to a self-identified and selected sexuality and it should be respected because it has the right to be fluid. That is the “identity of difference.” Fetishes, sexual orientation, gender preferences, and the like are all part of a changeable and growing inner self that makes up the totality of personhood.

Jiz is not a “her” or a “him” but is a “they” because Jiz is comfortable with a sexual flow that is subject to redefinition when Jiz feels the necessity, however that is driven. This means that Jiz has every right to any identifier Jiz chooses, or none at all for that matter.

When I met Jiz at a San Francisco restaurant last fall, Jiz biked up to the front door dressed like a newspaper boy straight out of the old black and white cinema of decades ago, complete with cap rakishly tilted to one side.

Later in Toronto, I mentioned to Jiz of my interpretation of Jiz’s appearance that SF evening.

“I like that image!” Jiz said.

“It had a kid look, an androgyny,” I offered. “Sometimes with a kid you can’t tell who it is, boy or girl.”

“It’s comfortable with me,” Jiz declared in discussing the look, “and it took me awhile to find that.”

In our conversation Jiz admitted making mistakes, as I have done, in using identifiers to describe others. Jiz explained that Jiz has friends who prefer the pronouns “they” and “them.” When asked to sort through the meaning of terms like “descriptors” “identities,” and “roles,” as they apply to sexuality, Jiz remarked that the words are not “mutually exclusive.”

“We can’t tell how someone identifies by just looking at them,” Jiz concluded.

I agree. It’s best to ask and honor the response.

Now back to AVN  because you might anticipate what is on the horizon. Remember AVN is Porn Valley stuff, mainstream porn, very Southern Californiaesque Hollywood . . . and a long way from San Francisco queer.

Jiz is up for several noms at the awards show and some are in the all-girl categories. Before I congratulated Jiz, my thought was, “how is Jiz going to handle ‘girl?’”

We exchanged emails.

Just as I expected, Jiz was put off a bit with the “’girl’ aspect,’” as Jiz framed it, and thanked me for “not lumping” Jiz into the “Girl/Girl stuff” as AVN has the habit of doing.

Jiz was philosophical about it all, giving it an “oh hum.”

I’m excited that Jiz’s work is being professionally recognized. Queer adult film deserves to be feted beyond the confines of Toronto’s gala affair and Jiz Lee is one of the genre’s premier performers.

The future looks bright.

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By the way, the Huffington writer marvels at Rooney’s carnality when she “doesn’t have that on,” referring to her hood and jacket. Her sexlessness is vacated.

I contend that Jiz’s queerness moves a step beyond Rooney Mara. Abandonment is unnecessary.

Sexless is erotic.

—————————————–

Check out Jiz’s website at the top of this page. There will be more on Jiz and other queer performers in the coming months.

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December 5, 2011 · 10:29 am

Corseted in Vegas without a Ticket

TLF signing in Vegas, 2011

by Rich Moreland, December 2011

It’s an old cliché, but small acts of kindness do matter.

Last year I took my research assistant to the Adult Video News (AVN) convention in Las Vegas. It was Brandy’s first visit to the Nevada playground though the trip was a working assignment, not a vacation. She did “Girl Friday” things when she wasn’t pointing me in the right direction. Brandy is top notch in getting through the rush of airports. She knows exactly where to go and keeps track of everything, which includes reminding me to have my business cards and digital recorder handy.

She was the best assistant I’ve had. I use the past tense because she has relocated to the southwest to finish her degree.

Brandy harbored no reservations about my research and is unfazed by the adult industry, always a plus when doing this type of work. She was invaluable when we studied film, offering interpretations and observations. Needless to say, the word “exceptional” can’t begin to describe her.

And, I might add, she is irreplaceable.

I really do miss working with her and for that reason I want to tell you a story that otherwise would be lost in the glitz and glam of Vegas. If you believe adult film performers are all bimbos with overcooked oatmeal for brains, your preconceived thoughts will be challenged.

A note. Part of this account is, as they say on TV, Brandy in her own words.

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Settling into Vegas . . .

Brandy enjoys meeting adult industry people and we were fortunate to network with some of the ones I know from my research work.

Among them was Tara Lynn Foxx.

Tara is a rising star in film pornography. She’s had “rough patches,” as she puts it, in her short career and has grown up too quickly by her own admission. TLF, as she is affectionately known in the business, jumped into adult film a couple of years ago at age eighteen, younger than most, and paid an early emotional price.

She’s one of the sweetest girls in the business I have met and cares about her fans, a characteristic not every adult film performer possesses. I first met her in San Francisco and if you check out her blog (the link is at the top) you’ll find three parts of an ongoing series I doing on her. Writing about TLF remains a pleasure.

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Now for our story . . .

The AVN awards show, the Oscars of Adult Film, is held on the Saturday night that concludes a week of busy floor time and self-indulgent parties that mark the adult convention.

On Saturday morning Brandy and I faced a rushed schedule that included interviews, seminars, and floor cruising to do some last minute networking. Over a late breakfast conversation with industry personnel, Brandy unexpectedly secured the promise of a ticket to a post-awards show party where she could mingle with the questionably famous, not so well-known, and hangers-on.

She was excited!

As the day moved into the afternoon, Brandy finally meets Tara and a friendship was born.

We set up a quick interview with Tara during an unanticipated break from her signing. Finding a quiet spot to block out the cacophony of the floor was not on the table, so Brandy and I joined TLF outside the entrance to the hall. The move was by necessity. Tara had neglected to wear “foundation garments,” as slight as they are in the industry, and it was suggested that she had to find some quick. Her mini dress was fairly snug, as is typical on the floor, and I could understand her reluctance to have “lines.” But rules apparently are rules.

Frankly, I was amused by the whole episode. Thongs, with no other covering are everywhere, and jeans, for those who prefer them, are cut way below the mowed lawn if you get my drift, leaving a girl’s torso more than a little revealing.

And need I mention the pole dancers scattered all over the place?

Tara’s break was short. A guy from her support network showed up promptly with the goodies and she excused herself.  We agreed to continue with the interview after her signing hours.

A shopping trip was in order to get Brandy the hottest “look” possible within our conservative east coast backwater culture . . . and our budget. Her passion for dressing up focused on a corset she wanted from a floor vendor. Armed with the credit card she disappeared while I talked about obscenity issues with an attorney for the Free Speech Coalition, the industry’s political wing.

By nightfall we finished our time with TLF, moving the second interview to her make-up artist’s penthouse suite in the Palazzo Hotel—very chic and very Hollywood in its environs.

The evening scooted by and around midnight Brandy headed out to the party. She maintained text contact with her ticket source and arrangements to meet were made.

The saga of her adventure, its disappointments and pleasure, would became known to me around four in the morning.

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The adventure begins . . .

When Brandy left our hotel for the Pearl Theater the cab driver was a bit of a problem, or should I say a nuisance. He kept trying to get to “know” her in a non-professional sort of way. Brandy’s a tough babe and his efforts were for naught. As you might have suspected he failed to get her to the theater on time. Her contact had disappeared; this is the adult industry after all and nothing is certain. So Brandy was, to use a tired and worn phrase, all dressed up with nowhere to go, or in this case corseted without a ticket.

Here’s Brandy . . . .

“The cab driver was horrible! Not only was he attempting to flirt, pick me up, or however you want to phrase it, his driving was horrendous. I mean, most cab drivers in Vegas are bad, but this guy took the cake. When we got to the hotel where I was supposed to meet up with my contacts, the driveway was crowded with people and cars everywhere. I wanted out so bad that I let him drop me off in the middle of the street in front of the hotel. People were yelling and screaming at him. I couldn’t get away fast enough. It was awful! When I got inside, my contacts were nowhere to be found. I later found out they left way earlier.

With no options other than bag the evening, Brandy pondered her next move. She was not ready to come back. Our plane was to leave in the morning and she wanted to at least socialize with somebody!

Brandy decides to linger . . .

“I did not want to pay for another cab ride right back to our hotel without doing anything! So I sat at a table in the lobby to see if anyone I knew walked by. I happened to be right outside the Pearl Theater entrance where the talent enters and leaves. It was the lobby where I was supposed to get my ticket.

That’s when I saw Tara. I walked up to her, (she hadn’t seen me yet) and we said ‘hi.’”

You’ve guessed the rest of the story if you have figured out that Tara was not yet twenty-one.

Brandy lets us in on what happened next . . .

“I asked Tara what she was doing, and she said she was going back to her hotel to chill. I asked if I could go with her and told her how my contacts were not there and I was unable to go to the after party. She couldn’t go either because of her age. She said that she was just going to hang out, and not do anything special. And if I didn’t mind then I could feel free to come along.

I just want to say that while Tara was dressed elegantly, as were some other people at the awards (lots of suits and ties), others wore the most outlandish outfits, at least for me. One group looked like they belonged on the convention floor. High heels (stilettos, four inches or more), brightly colored tights, short puffy skirts and tight, low cut, brightly colored shirts (if there was enough there to call it a shirt!) I was amazed.

Tara had brought her car from home and her roommate, the guy who brought her panties that day when she was on the floor, met us out front. There was some drama, something about a girlfriend (and I use the term loosely) who had borrowed her car and then when she returned it, left the car keys with the car. Tara was not happy, as you can understand.”

Later Tara told me she questioned her girlfriend’s common sense. She had placed the keys on the front tire where they were a sitting invitation for theft.

At any rate, it’s off to the room. The girls just had to work around the boyfriend who was sleeping, a little on the “I’d rather be home in my own bed” side.

Brandy is impressed . . .

“When we got to the hotel, we went up to Tara’s room. The first thing I noticed was that the room looked like a teenager lived in it and I mean that in a good way. Shoes piled everywhere, clothes scattered around. When you walked in you didn’t feel like the room belonged to someone above you. Like sitting down and kicking off your shoes was the next logical thing to do.  It was very homey, a really relaxed feeling.

Her boyfriend was lying in bed, he said he had been sick and was not feeling well. Tara then changed clothes, from her extravagant dress to more comfortable clothes.”

A look inside the room of a porn chick who perfects her ability to land anywhere on the Southern California continuum of glamorous to slutty was a treat for Brandy who looked pretty good herself, corseted in black.

Brandy continues . . .

“I was awed by the piles of shoes, jewelry, and stuff Tara had for when she had to look her best. She had one suitcase just for all the shoes she carried, from high stilettos to comfortable neon green chucks. Really cool.

We sat in her hotel room and just hung out. Watched a little TV, talked with her boyfriend. Her roommate had left to go hang out with some girl and Tara was not happy about that.

What do you talk about with someone who is a rising porn star, has lots of so-called friends, and is super beautiful? Well, the answer is easy . . . and pretty boring. We chatted about regular stuff, like my daughter, her job, how long her boyfriend had been sick, and the weather.

Not very exciting, I know, but it was nice to have someone to hang out with who seemed so down to earth, especially after spending so much time on the convention floor where so many of the girls seem so much larger than life.

What made it more interesting for me was that I had seen some of her professional work from Kink.com and then I got to just sit and chat with her. It almost seemed like a conflict that she could be that ‘wild child’ that I saw on Kink and then also be that sweet home girl that I was sitting with in a room. And then every once in a while, she would say something random that would remind me that she was more than just that girl next door. She had experiences that I couldn’t even fathom.

Over all it was a great experience, even though I did not end up where I thought I would that night. I enjoyed the opportunity to just sit and get to know Tara a little more as just another person (which she is) instead of just being an actor or performer.

After a while she walked me to the front of the hotel so I could get cab.”

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Tara told me some months later that when she got to the room that night she was “not on anymore,” that she didn’t “keep her face on.” Brandy saw Tara’s human side, not the porn girl caricature that the public so often sees at trade shows and TV reality programs.

It reinforced something Brandy and I talked about often; porn performers are everyday people in a most remarkable business.

They’re not drugged out hookers trapped in a wasted life without interests, family, or relationships because they are addicted to sex. As a matter of fact, they know and value the difference between “work sex” and “private sex,” with the latter the most cherished.

Adult film performers are average people, quite like you and me, with the same feelings of elation, sadness, anger, and compassion we experience.

I know some people don’t like to hear that and won’t believe it anyway because putting others down comes easier. But it’s the truth.

There is a lesson in this tale. Goodness shows up when least expected. Tara Lynn Foxx never imagined how extending her friendship to someone she hardly knew meant so much to a single mom working to get an education and move forward with her life.

Take a moment to visit Tara’s blog for a closer look at one of the authentic “good guys” in a sometime suspect business.

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November 2, 2011 · 9:25 am

Pleasure is not about being the same as your Lover

A View of Susie Bright’s Erotic Screen Volume I: 1967 – 1989 The Golden Hardcore & Shimmering Dyke-Core.

by Rich Moreland, November 2011

Historians thrive on primary sources, the stuff that comes directly from the persons who lived the events. We reference them, quote them, and analyze them. Lincoln’s short speech at Gettysburg is a primary source as is Billie Holiday’s sultry voice in “Easy Living” and Linda Lovelace’s testimony before the Meese Commission on Pornography. You get the idea.

Approaching its fortieth year of legitimacy, adult film and its players are now a part of America’s cultural history that deserves to be chronicled. In resurrecting her magazine column from its tucked away past, a leading feminist thinker has produced one woman’s interpretation of modern porn’s early years. The result is a new collection of primary source material cataloged under the title Susie Bright’s Erotic Screen Volume I: 1967 – 1989 The Golden Hardcore & Shimmering Dyke-Core.

I read Susie’s book to spot connecting points for my research. I was not disappointed. However, beyond the academic fill-in-the blanks what rivets me to Susie’s writing is attitude. Butt kicking is her specialty. Susie’s knack is “outing” the bigotry of our culture’s sexual history, a past that spills from a prudish society and dampens our desires. We get wet, but it’s a dunking that chills the spirit.

Susie dries us off and tells we can get wet again, this time for pleasure. She tells us there are no “rules” in the sexual, no definitive boundaries to what we do or when and how we do it. Her words put heteronormativity on trial.

“Pleasure is not about being the same as your lover,” Susie insists, “or doing the same thing to them as they do to you.”

These remarks are found in a 1995 piece entitled “The Blatant Lesbian Image.” Though it skirts the original time frame of the book, the essay is a perfect concluding message. Though lesbian as a sexual identifier is dated for some in today’s queer community, it was alive almost twenty years ago in defining a marginalized group. Lesbians, once sexual outliers whose loving and hard fornication had no voice in the girl-on-girl pseudo-sex of Porn Valley, were joining gay males in erasing their erotic invisibility. Gay women had endured reactionary attitudes in an age in which authentic sex troubled a fractured feminist movement. But as sexuality legitimized its fluidity into the new century, the once mired sexual turf became solid ground. In producing its own porn, today’s genderqueer population should appreciate the history lessons Susie brings to the text.

Her message drew my thumbs up. Look at what she says next.

“If what people do in bed together encompasses the true spectrum of humankind, then sex is as much about hugging as it is about drinking piss or being spanked on a Naugahyde couch.”

Love those words, but here’s the zinger.

“Our society’s notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity, and gender bias to define.”

Amen.

This last portion of the book is its best from my perspective, but that opinion is not intended to discount Susie’s selected essays from her Forum days and her time as On Our Backs’ editor. She covers lots of chronological ground. Her film reviews, for instance, are historically valuable. She points out that some movies were edited to avoid government scrutiny and the originals may tragically be lost.

Personally, I share her admiration for Veronika Rocket’s 1983 Smoker and F.X. Pope’s and Rinse Dreams’ 1981 Nightdreams and recommend them to you. Both are filled with artistry and recall a bit of the industry’s feature film format celebrated in the 1970’s.

Putting the information she gives the reader into a political framework heightens the impact of her words, especially considering they originated in a time when the conservative backlash of the Reagan years swept through the social side of American culture. The government had pornographers on the run, take a look at her comments on BDSM film and the shunning of penetrative sex, and the women’s movement was filled with anti-porn feminists, not a playing field that any sex-positive feminist would consider to be level.

Susie remained undaunted. Her essay on racism in the adult film business, “The Killed Story: Jim Crow and Adult Video,” should be required reading even for those uninterested in the general history of filmed pornography. She explains that her original 1986 opinion piece was tabled by the editorial powers-that-be and she rewrote it for her journal. The winners of her forethought then are her readers today.

Susie exposes 1980’s racial attitudes that feel quaint and farcical in our current age. Introducing the reader to the beginning of black adult film, she focuses on the making of Lialeh (1973) by African-American musician Bernard Purdy, validating its place in film history. A note of interest is in order here. Because the book is Kindlized it is interactive. Instead of the reader having to seek out more information on a person or film, a click to a webpage brings it home. For Lialeh the movie’s opening musical number is instantly available through YouTube, a plus for the under-forty crowd who needs to frame it in the 1970’s.

Susie relates that there were early makers of interracial movies, most notably Drea, a female director, and Greg Dark (the Dark Brothers), both very white. Taken within this context, Purdy’s film was groundbreaking. Susie rightly believes that Lialeh’s “naturalistic black perspective” was unique at the time and she compares it with the Dark Brothers’ “cynicism and mania between black/white relations.” In fact, it’s Dark who claims there are no “sensitive” moments in his films.

Susie suggests that Dark’s movies reflect the new wave phenomenon that marked ‘80’s culture. During his college days in Oakland, California, Dark chummed with blacks on the neighborhood tennis courts, interactions that gave him some legitimacy as a filmmaker of black sexuality. Susie proclaims that in the porn business, “[i]f Greg Dark made his cross-cultural link with black tennis players, he’s one step ahead of most other white production teams who make black tapes.”

The essay further confronts another not so hushed issue of racism at the time. White females claimed they would not film with blacks.

“In porn starlet interviews from the early days of hardcore,” Susie writes, “the fan mags would pose questions like, ’What Won’t You Do on Camera?’ The most common reply from a white ingenue would be, ’I don’t do anal, and I don’t do blacks.’ Instead of greeting that statement with laughter or disbelief, everyone would just say, ’Oh yeah, of course.’”

Susie reminds the reader that “[b]efore the 90s,” not surprisingly, “there was no such thing as ‘multi-culturalism’ in porn.” But history never remains static; time and attitudes are in constant flux. Susie explains. “It’s become clear that inter-racial projects have moved up from underground stigmatized loops that could ‘ruin a girl’s career,’ to a everybody’s-doing-it theme that is destined to become as common as the pro forma lesbian scene.”

Today we have websites like blackonblondes.com that give the viewer lovely Caucasian girls being penetrated every which way by well-endowed men of color and apparently relishing every minute of it.

Popularity bred a new age of tolerance and real sexual fantasies. For those filming on the erotic margins, African-Americans, queers, BDSMers, and others, theirs were released from a closeted lockup in the “secret museum,” if I may reference Fordham scholar Walter Kendrick. Pornography became the big tent it was always intended to be. Susie’s text is a reminder of this journey.

From the feminist perspective, Susie honors Candida Royalle’s FEMME Productions as pioneering “couples” porn, endorsing sex from a female view, and Fatale Video, the earliest coming out of lesbian sexuality. Both studios framed and reinforced the cinematic “gaze” from an alternative female context. Most important, Susie pays tribute to the groundbreaking courage of gay male porn and its influence on the development of lesbian adult film.

I might add that the early efforts of each ultimately created an environment that abets the independent films of San Francisco’s current queer porn community. Moreover, Susie’s militant “dyke-core” attitude insists that not all women prefer a softer, gentler porn universe. Her view supports the artistry of directors like Shine Louise Houston, Courtney Trouble, and Carlos Batts. Queer performers Madison Young, Syd Blakovich, Jiz Lee, Dylan Ryan, April Flores, Billy Castro, and Buck Angel, to name a few, are the soul of this emerging hard edged adult film. They owe their genre’s success to those trailblazers who stood firm against the reactionary tide of the 1980’s.

Susie Bright gives us a valuable look into adult film during one of the most conservative atmospheres in twentieth century America. Her assessment of feminism and marginalized sexuality is why I searched the book’s locations (Kindle has no pagination) for those primary source nuggets that offer insights for my own work. I do have a suggestion. I wish Susie had added a few more updates to connect her history with today’s adult film world. There are some moments when she does, as at the end of her interview with Sharon Mitchell in mentioning the demise of AIM. But I would like to have encountered more. Perhaps in Volume II we’ll see those connections.

There is so much more in Susie’s text that explains how we got from here to there in adult film history. I can only toss a partial list your way in passing: a review of “super directors,” the meaning of lesbian erotica, Susie’s struggles to get out her message during her On Her Back days, a look at Christopher Rage, and a revisited glance at the hilarious Snuff controversy that continues to feed the paranoia of old anti-porn feminists. And one more, read her 1988 column on “What Do Women Want?” It’s delightful.

Susie Bright presents a kaleidoscope of stories and personal views that allow the reader to cherry pick what is of interest. Get a copy of Susie Bright’s Erotic Screen Volume I: 1967 – 1989 The Golden Hardcore & Shimmering Dyke-Core and see what you like.

If I may borrow her reference to the old Hustler peter-meter as a rating gizmo, from my cis-gendered view Susie Bright deserves a full literary joystick. Or to use her words for her devoted feminist readers, “clits up!” You’ll enjoy the ride.

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Susie’s book is available online and is published by Bright Stuff, 9-30-2011. To find copies go to:

or
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[References to the book used in this review are documented at Kindle locations 169, 742, 839-843, 858-864, 1074,2739, 2749-2752, 2802-2803, 2852-2854,2893-2895]

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