Emma Watson addresses 'Fifty Shades of Grey' casting rumors
The Internet got all sorts of excited last week when rumors began to surface that Emma Watson was in talks for the role of Anastasia Steele in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. Not so fast, says Watson. “I haven’t read the book, I haven’t a read a script, nothing,” Watson tells EW. “There are so many movies you become attached to when I’ve literally never even received a phone call. It was the same way with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – I never even saw a script!”Watson is plenty busy: she has The Perks of Being a Wallflower in theaters this fall; she recently wrapped Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and is currently working on Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. She adds that even some friends and family asked her about Grey since so many different items linking her to the film have popped up online. “I told them just because there are 60 articles on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s any less true than if there are three or four.”
And a word to the wise for those who believe everything that they read about the actress: “The thing is I’m not going to go out there every time someone attaches me to a film to say no or release a statement.”
______________________________________________________
Lindsay Lohan Bizarre Sex Scene Demand
Lindsay Lohan was EXTREMELY hesitant to shoot a steamy sex scene for her new movie "The Canyons" last week -- but we're told, she quickly changed her mind ... after the crew fulfilled an extremely unusual request.
Sources connected with production tell TMZ, the scene required Lindsay to go topless -- but she was so uncomfortable with the idea of baring her bosom in front of the set's 10-man crew, she asked them to strip down with her ... to their boxers.
The crew was hesitant at first -- but according to sources, they eventually obliged, stripping down and shooting the entire scene in their skivvies ... and it all went off without a hitch.
You'd think Lindsay would be used to the idea of baring her lady bits -- she posed nude in one of the most widely-viewed Playboy issues of all time -- but who are we to judge?
As for her porn star cast mate James Deen -- nine inches.
______________________________________________________
29-years old Kate Mara plays reporter Zoey Barnes in Netflix's House of Cards (2013).
If they stick closely to the book we should be privileged to Miss Mara first topless scene......Kristen Connolly is also possible candidate for some boobs gazing.
The new Netflix political drama "House of Cards" is now in production in the Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. areas. The casting directors are auditioning actors in New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore/D.C. for guest starring, recurring, and day player roles. In addition to the acting roles, many extras are being hired throughout the season. "House of Cards" will be based on the BBC miniseries of the same name. That original BBC version was based on a novel from British author Michael Dobbs. Netflix has ordered two seasons of episodes.
Starring in "House of Cards" is two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey as Rep. Frank Underwood, a House of Representatives Majority Whip who, after not being appointed Secretary of State, derives a plan to bring down the new president and take over the Oval Office. Golden Globe Award nominee Robin Wright plays Frank's wife Claire Underwood; Kate Mara is playing Zoe Barnes, a reporter for a Washington paper who conspires with Underwood to land a killer scoop; Michael Gill plays U.S. President Garrett Walker; two-time Tony nominee Jayne Atkinson is Sen. Catherine Durant; Corey Stoll landed the role of womanizing Rep. Patrick Russo, and Kristen Connolly plays Russo's Executive Assistant Christina Malone with whom he has a torrid affair.
Starring in "House of Cards" is two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey as Rep. Frank Underwood, a House of Representatives Majority Whip who, after not being appointed Secretary of State, derives a plan to bring down the new president and take over the Oval Office. Golden Globe Award nominee Robin Wright plays Frank's wife Claire Underwood; Kate Mara is playing Zoe Barnes, a reporter for a Washington paper who conspires with Underwood to land a killer scoop; Michael Gill plays U.S. President Garrett Walker; two-time Tony nominee Jayne Atkinson is Sen. Catherine Durant; Corey Stoll landed the role of womanizing Rep. Patrick Russo, and Kristen Connolly plays Russo's Executive Assistant Christina Malone with whom he has a torrid affair.
______________________________________________________
 | |
| In Compliance, Dreama Walker plays a fast-food worker subjected to a strip search. |
Accepting that Soderbergh is right (though his most recent film, Magic Mike, certainly indicates some evolution on the issue) means asking some tricky questions about what it means to viewers, to filmmakers, and to actors when the flesh comes out. One can either come off like a Mr. Skin-subscribing pervert or a repressed, prudish killjoy. But since the content standards of studio filmmaking shifted in the late 1960s and nude bodies became increasingly present in motion pictures, we've never really figured out how to deal with the complexities of on-screen nudity.
Actors and filmmakers will spin nakedness as part of the quest for a greater cinematic truth, while never acknowledging the fact that, for a certain segment of the audience, nudity is a draw, a marketable commodity. When Anne Hathaway appeared in various states of undress in Edward Zwick's 2010 romantic comedy Love and Other Drugs, the extent and logistics of her sex scenes was as much a topic of pre-release publicity as the story or themes—if not more. "Why do people become fixated on this issue?" Hathaway asked Terry Gross, while promoting the film on Fresh Air. "I mean, I don't know about you, but I was naked in the shower this morning."
Gross didn't skip a beat in responding. "I don't know about you," she replied, "but I was alone when I was in the shower."
Whether Hathaway and others care to admit it, when it comes to celebrity nudity, the old adage holds particularly true: Sex sells. Back in 2001, Halle Berry got a half-million dollar bonus for appearing topless in Swordfish—and word of that bonus was promptly leaked to horny, would-be moviegoers. (Berry denied receiving the extra cash.) In case anyone had missed the message, Berry appeared with co-stars John Travolta and Hugh Jackman at that summer's MTV movie awards, pointed to her breasts, and announced proudly, "If you pay $8.50 and see Swordfish, you get to see these." (Remember when you could see a movie for $8.50?) By the time Berry was doing her little teaser for the MTV audience, the Internet had already changed the consequences and implications of onscreen skin. After appearing partially nude in the Wes Anderson short film Hotel Chevalier, Natalie Portman swore off any further appearances in her birthday suit: "I just don't want to do something that will end up as a screen grab on a porn site."
The issue of movie nudity and exploitation get even trickier when the issue of voyeurism itself comes into play, as it does in two very good and somewhat troublesome independent films out this summer. William Friedkin's Killer Joe went into limited release last week; Craig Zobel's Compliance follows suit next month. Both films' handling of their naked actresses raises questions about intention and sympathy.
The Friedkin film features Matthew McConaughey (in a surprisingly chilling and skillful turn) in the title role of a Dallas police detective with a lucrative sideline in contract killing. He's hired by Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) and his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) to knock off Chris's mom/Ansel's ex-wife, which will pay out a handsome insurance settlement to sister/daughter Dottie (Juno Temple). Of course, the Smiths don't have Joe's considerable fee—they want to pay that out of the insurance check. Joe's not having it. But then he gets a look at Dottie, and decides maybe they could work something out.
The deal they settle on is that Dottie will be Joe's "retainer," to do with as he pleases until the insurance money comes through. Dottie is of indeterminate age, but certainly young (much younger than Joe), and quite childlike, although that is at least partially due to her being, as they say in Texas, not quite right in the head. So all of this is pretty disturbing—as it should be, since Killer Joe is a disturbing and provocative film, and disturbing is pretty much writer Tracy Letts's stock-in-trade.
Where it gets troublesome is on their first "date," which Dottie has been told will be a family dinner with Joe as their guest, only to watch the entire family disappear, leaving the two of them alone. She has ditched the fancy dress her folks bought her for the occasion, returning to her tank top and jean shorts, but Joe insists that she put it the dress back on, right there in front of him. He gives specific, pointed instructions about what she is to take off, and when. As she does so, Friedkin's camera holds, and holds, and holds on Temple's naked form—even when Joe himself has turned away from her.
Here's the question worth asking: If the most vile character in the film (and that's saying something in this one) is intimidating this young and none-too-bright young woman into stripping for him, and we watch, how complicit does that make us in his actions?
Thematically, the question gets even more pointed in Compliance. Zobel tells the true story—only the names are changed—of a horrifying event back in 2004 (minor spoilers ahead). The cashier at a fast-food restaurant (played here by Dreama Walker) is accused of theft on a phone call from a man who says he is a police officer. Over the phone, "Officer Daniels" instructs the cashier's manager to strip search her and take her clothing until officers arrive. When the manager must return to the floor, she hands the task of keeping watch over the employee to her fiancée, whom the caller instructs to not only strip search the cashier again, but to perform a series of degrading acts.
Zobel's film unfolds in something akin to real time, dramatizing the excruciating back-room ordeal on an almost minute-by-minute basis, bringing the cashier's humiliating assault to harrowing life. It also, on the other hand, offers many opportunities to ogle the naked body of Walker, the astonishingly attractive actress from Gossip Girl and Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. Had he chosen to, the filmmaker (who has a distinctive and impressive eye for composition) could have framed these scenes in a way that artfully concealed the nudity. He did not.
So what's happening here? Are these filmmakers—one a distinguished master, one an up-and-comer—exposing the actors as a way of exposing the characters, using their humiliation to make their ordeals all the more visceral and affecting? Or are they having their cheesecake and eating it too, making their points about the degradation of these young women while simultaneously exploiting their sexiness to sell tickets? The question becomes particularly pointed in the case of Compliance, which concerns (again, minor spoiler) a character engaging in a kind of virtual voyeurism. If we allow ourselves to watch the paces that he (and his surrogates onscreen) puts this young woman through, are we any better than he is? Or is this the exact implication that the savvy filmmaker is intending?
These questions are easy to dismiss, should one choose—of course we're "better" than Killer Joe or Officer Daniels, since we're human beings and they're fictional characters who exist only in a scripted (and thus manipulated) paradigm. But that deconstructionist argument also tears down any semblance of artistic merit within the work itself: If everything is fictional and false, then there's no nobler rationale for the bare flesh, and thus the nudity in Killer Joe and Compliance is, pure and simple, sheer exploitation—of no greater value than the top-doffing teens of Project X, the bathing beauties of Piranha 3DD, or the softcore action of a vintage Shannon Tweed vehicle on Cinemax. That's not a conclusion I'm crazy about; these are fine, thoughtful, bracing pictures. But the unpeeling of their ingénues made this viewer uncomfortable in a way that is, I believe, quite different from how their directors intended.
______________________________________________________
Sunday's "True Blood" had plenty of the show's usual steamy sex scenes, but when it came time to film Joe Manganiello's latest - some high-flying Hollywood magic was needed.The hunky actor stopped by Access Hollywood Live on Monday, where he talked shooting his sex scene with series newcomer Kelly Overton, who plays fellow werewolf Rikki.
"To my understanding, it's the first sex scene to ever involve Hong Kong action wires, like 'The Matrix,'" Joe told Kit Hoover and guest co-host Derek Hough, about the scene that shows Rikki being thrown across the room in the midst of their intimate moment.
And when it came to filming, the actors wore almost nothing.
"I was wearing what is referred to as 'the sock.' It has a drawstring and women wear 'the patch.'" He explained.
The actor, who is no stranger to dropping his pants on previous episodes of the HBO series, said he was also well-groomed in the art of dropping trou in front of his co-stars and crew due to his recent big screen hit.
"I was used to [being half naked on set] coming from 'Magic Mike,'" he added.
As far as the storyline for HBO's favorite werewolf, in addition to meeting Alcide's father (played by Robert Patrick) in future episodes, Joe said fans will get a glimpse of the werewolf as a teen.
"You're also going to see some flashbacks with Alcide at age 14, which will be interesting," he told Kit and Derek.
______________________________________________________
Génesis Rodríguez : Man On a Ledge Premiere in Los Angeles [Jan 23 2012] (HR)
Attends 'Al Borde del Abismo' Photocall
______________________________________________________'Boys' : a 'Girls' parody starring Daniel Craig's son, Craig, and Wolf Blitzer's son, Bear
Girls, HBO’s Emmy-nominated series starring Lena Dunham, has had its share of controversy. Which inevitably leads to parodies, such as this Judd-Apatow-approved fake trailer for a new show called Boys, a nepotism-heavy exploration of twenty-something life in L.A. The show is complete with “Daniel Craig’s son” Craig Craig, rambling talks about joblessness, and, of course, a gratuitous amount of nudity.
The trailer gets bonus points for expertly satirizing specifics such as Shoshanna’s constant talk about her virginity and Marnie and Charlie’s co-dependent relationship.
Favorite exchange:
“Put some f—in pants on!”
“I’m in my twenties!”
Check out the probably NSFW video below:
______________________________________________________
Shailene Woodley is the Girl Next Door for Hobo Magazine #14 by Derek Kettela
Slice of Life – Hobo Magazine issue 14 features this sweet black and white story featuring up and coming actress Shailene Woodley. The “Secret Life of the American Teenager” star looks casual and down to earth in these lighthearted portraits lensed by Derek Kettela.
Showstopper : never been a word more appropriate to describe Alexis Dziena full-frontalanza. Alexis was barely 18 when she did that scene in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers (2005). Almost gratuitous nudity but who gives a fuck......Alexis was game for it. She is a almost curveless but God have been kind to her in other bodily department. Pert B-sized puppies. Ass guaranteed to look mighty nice during reverse cowgirl. It was Miss Dziena first and so far only nudothon. Dziena's scene was in fact filmed at the very end of the making of the film because she had been seventeen for most of the shooting (started in early 2002) which is underage for that kind of content. Alexis also have some personal issues with her parents.
Interestingly Jarmusch upcoming flick Only Lovers Left Alive is with talented Mia Wasikowska. The Aussie playing a similar character to Lolita but even more charmingly brazen. Very likely 2013 will have couple of nude scenes from Mia. One in The Stoker (breasts) and possibly even more in Jarmusch movie.
______________________________________________________
Jism 2: Sunny Leone wanted to have 'real' sex with Randeep and Arunoday
Source: Dailybhaskar.com
Bollywood might have come off age, when it comes to portraying sex on-screen, but porn star Sunny Leone took it otherwise. The porn star, who was signed on for a bold film in Bollywood, assumed that the film would require her to shoot ‘real’ sex scenes and therefore she apparently demanded medical certificates of her co-actors.Latest has it that Sunny wanted to have safe sex with her co-stars in the film and henceforth the medical certificates were required.
Talking to a daily, a source said, “Before Sunny was to join the cast and crew to shoot her portions, she sent an e-mail to Pooja demanding a medical certificate of Randeep and Arunoday with whom she was scheduled to shoot lovemaking sequences. In all fairness she also sent her own medical certificate. Basically, she wanted to make sure that she was not going to shoot with anyone who had any life threatening disease (Read HIV).”
However, later director Pooja Bhatt had to clarify that Sunny would not have to indulge in ‘real’ sex for the film. “Pooja Bhatt then told her that this was not the norm in Bollywood unlike for the adult films that Sunny does. The director also explained to her that she would not require to film sequences that she normally shoots for her adult films,” added the source.
However, no medical certificates were shown to Sunny in the end.
______________________________________________________
WHEN STARS COLLIDE (short film, 2012) // Ambition 2012-2 from Say Ten Productions on Vimeo.
"The Nerds Strike Back" Emily and Michael settle in for a happy married life, but there is a disturbance in the force.
CAST Lindsay Gerro Ryan Nolan
Director/Editor/Producer: Derek Price
Producer/Casting Director: Emily Ramsay
Writer: Mike Horrigan
Director of Photography: Jith Paul
Music: Justin R. Durban
Hair/Make-Up: Sondra Rogers
______________________________________________________
Brisbane stripper reveals naked truth about job as a table top dancer
A BRISBANE (Australia) stripper shares her story with City News readers following recent reports debating whether women are degrading themselves at local strip clubs.
My name is Indiana (stage name, not her real name).I first started in the strip club industry when I was 18, I worked behind the bar for roughly six months.
I then became a controller (the person who sits in the lap dance room and makes sure that no rules are broken and that the dancer is safe).
Admittedly I was shocked when I met the girls that worked there. I like most of the general public thought it was going to be a dark place with trashy girls but it was just the opposite.
The girls were lovely, most of them studying a degree (medicine, law, psychology, teaching to name a few) and others were saving to buy their first home or funding their travels around the world.
It definitely was not the drug addicted junkies that the US television shows had led me to believe.
After moving on from there I started to study nursing and worked in aged care during my studies, it wasn't for me.
I then returned to the strip club industry but this time as a dancer.
I remember my first night, I was so nervous, so many thoughts ran through my head.
But after working behind the bar and controlling, I knew how much money was there to be made and without a second thought I had so much confidence in myself and my appearance.
All the hang ups I had carried with me about my body through my teenage years had gone.
I was suddenly desired, wanted and in complete control.
The comment that people make saying dancers must have a low self esteem makes me laugh as it is very much the opposite.
I don't know too many females with low self esteem that would be strong enough to stand on a stage naked with a room full of onlookers.
Over the next five years I worked in and out of the industry, I had my first child at 24 years of age I then returned to the medical industry working in administration.
After 1.5 years I moved on to the construction industry where I worked my way up to a management position.
Throughout this time I would dance on the occasional weekend for extra income.
Being involved in the corporate world meant I was working Monday to Friday 8-5pm not mentioning the extra hours on top.
It would mean that I dropped my child at day care at 7am and picked my child up at 6pm.
I made the choice when my child was four years old that it was not good enough, so I returned to dancing.
I went from not seeing my child for the most part of the week to spending seven days a week together, apart from the two to three nights that I would work, which my child was asleep for.
And before I have someone with the nerve to even ask the question of who looked after my child at night while I was at work? (which I am sure would not be asked if this article was about a night shift nurse or female police officer working at night), the answer is my family.
Through the past 13 years including the last 12 months that I have spent working, I have been overwhelmed with the amazing, strong, intelligent and confident women I have met thanks to the "strip club" industry. Dancing in a strip club is a lifestyle choice that thousands of woman make for themselves out of their own free will.
I will continue to work in this industry for as long as it is beneficial to the life that I choose.
Dancing or "stripping" is a job, not the person.
______________________________________________________
Flava Works Sues Oron, FileSonic for Copyright Infringement
FileSonic and Oron, two prominent file-hosting services, have been dragged to court by adult entertainment company Flava Works.
In a complaint filed at a federal court in Illinois, the cyberlockers are joined by 26 John Doe defendants who stand accused of sharing copyrighted material. These files were also allegedly shared on several other cyberlockers including FileServe, Hotfile and RapidShare.
After targeting hundreds of thousands of BitTorrent users, adult entertainment companies have recently expanded their legal efforts to file-hosting sites and their users.
Flava Works, known for winning its landmark lawsuit against MyVidster, a case which involved Google, Facebook and even the MPAA, is now targeting two prominent file-hosting services and 26 of their users.
In papers filed at the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois last week, the company accuses FileSonic and Oron of several copyright related offenses.
Among other things, the complaint alleges that FileSonic and Oron are “websites that copy, store, distribute, display, profit from unauthorized copyrighted materials, and/or induce and assist others to infringe copyrighted materials.”
The two cyberlockers are joined by 26 John Doe defendants who allegedly shared links to copyrighted material with each other via several Yahoo groups. It is claimed that through these mailing lists the defendants actively traded links, some of which were uploaded by the defendants themselves.
According to Flava Works the file-hosting sites directly profited from these infringements through their affiliate programs.
The complaint characterizes FileSonic as an “illegitimate” outfit, a description repeated for Oron.
“On information and belief, at all relevant times, Filesonic.com is not a legitimate file storage company. Filesonic.com’s affiliates reward program offered members the opportunity to make money by uploading copyrighted videos.”
“Affiliates members are paid based upon the number of downloads of their posted materials and based upon how many other premium memberships were bought by users accessing Filesonic.com through the member’s links.”
Flava Works goes on to accuse FileSonic, Oron and the Doe defendants on several counts including direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement and inducement of copyright infringement.
The adult company asks for a permanent injunction and temporary restraining order against the defendants. Flava Works further requests statutory, compensatory and punitive damages for the alleged infringements.
It is unclear why Flava Works has singled out these two file-hosting services as the complaint also mentions that Hotfile, Fileserve and Rapidshare were used to share files. Filesonic in particular seems to be an odd choice since the cyberlocker disabled public file-sharing months ago, which led to an exodus of users.
For Oron, this is the second lawsuit brought against the site this summer. Last month adult studio Corbin Fisher sued the company for no less than $34.8 million for alleged copyright infringements. As part of a settlement, Oron then offered to assist the studio prosecute its own users.
Both Oron and FileSonic have yet to respond to the complaint.
______________________________________________________
The Porn Convention
Susannah Breslin, Contributor 
“You can’t write that,” Seymore Butts says the moment my hand moves to write down the two words he’s said, two words that summarize this story, that say everything there is to say, really, about the state of the adult movie industry, and one of the words is an expletive.
I’m sitting with Butts, born Adam Glasser in the Bronx, New York, 48 years ago, on two black plastic chairs inside of a square. Around the perimeter, porn stars sit on tall chairs at high tables signing glossy photos of themselves for patient men waiting in embarrassing lines.
The last time I saw Butts was for another story, and it was 11 years ago. I interviewed him in the living room of his ranch-style home with a kidney-shaped pool in the yard in the San Fernando Valley. His young son wandered into the room; his porn star girlfriend occupied herself in another part of the house. Back then the gonzo porno pioneer was in trouble with the Los Angeles Police Department, which had decided a movie Butts made, “Tampa Tushy-Fest Part 1,” was obscene.
Now things are different.
In the decade since, the adult movie industry has changed completely, and although Butts has gone off the record as I listen, he is telling me the story of everything that happened in between, and it’s a doozy.
***
I remember what it was like because I was there. The rise of the Internet was spreading porn across the planet like a virus. There were big budget feature movies, stunt sex videos in which lone women competed with one another to have sex with as many men as possible, and gonzo production studios cropping up like weeds across the Valley. With lightning speed, porn crossed over into the mainstream, and consumers couldn’t get enough. Or so it seemed.A funny thing happened, though. Over the years that followed, porn became ubiquitous, the market was flooded with product, piracy ate up the porn industry’s profits, the Feds served a series of pornographers with a succession of obscenity indictments, and a recession swept across the globe.
By the time I sit down across from Butts at this porn convention on the second floor of the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill., over which a steady stream of jetliners descends into Chicago O’Hare International Airport less than a mile away, the adult movie business has transformed totally.
The porn industry as I knew it is dead. And it appears a new industry has arisen.
***
Xaq Fixx is a former Air Force cryptologist and precision-guided munitions specialist. He wears glasses, has a significant scar on his forehead of undetermined origin, and sports a Lenin-esque beard and mustache, the ends of which he twirls into curls.Fixx is the market research manager for the Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network, an online adult company that bills itself on its website as “THE #1 ADULT VIDEO ON DEMAND THEATER IN THE WORLD!” Among other properties, AEBN owns PornoTube, an X-rated YouTube, and xPeeps, an adult webcam site that encourages users to “xpose yourself.” It also produces the product Fixx is hawking.
I stick my finger into the rubbery, flesh-colored slit on the side of a plastic grey peanut the size of a very large loaf of bread. This is RealTouch, an “award-winning male masturbator” designed by a former NASA engineer that syncs with adult movies to simulate sex for the male with which it is interacting through your computer’s USB port. The device retails for $325, and the package includes 120 RealTouch VOD minutes, anti-bacterial cleaner, and a 90-day limited warranty.
More recently, the company has begun marketing the RealTouch JoyStick, the lingam to the RealTouch’s yoni, which is to say it looks like a dildo. Available only to adult webcam models at this time, the joystick serves as a remote control for the RealTouch device, enabling users in remote locations to have “True Internet Sex™!”
Per Fixx’s instruction, Savannah Steele, a busty blonde porn star in a lab coat, moves the joystick, and the mechanism tightens around my finger and increases speed.
“It feels like having sex with a robot,” I announce. I extract my finger and wipe it off with a wet wipe from the box on the table.
I ask Fixx if he’s used the device. He hasn’t. “I’m a Linux guy, and it’s a Windows-only device,” he explains.
Fixx calls over Steve Papp, AEBN’s logistics manager. Papp uses the device regularly.
“I was a bit skeptical,” Papp says, but now he thinks, “It’s the coolest thing ever.” Sometimes, when his wife isn’t in the mood, she’ll tell him, “’Oh, honey, why don’t you…’’’ And off Papp goes to find intimacy with his peanut-shaped lover.
“As a step on the path, this is a major leap forward,” Fixx tells me. The way he foresees it, one day we will live in a world William Gibson may as well have created wherein “you can create virtual realities that are indistinguishable from the real world.”
If this is future sex, I decide, we are not there yet.
***
The name of the panel is “Everything You Want to Know About Porn.”Nine porn stars are on the stage. Perhaps 50 onlookers are ogling the spectacle, occasionally raising their phones or cameras to take photos.
An audience member asks what their favorite sex positions are.
“It depends on my mood,” Tori Black, who I last saw having sex with James Deen on a porn set in 2009, offers.
“I’ve always wanted to hang upside down from an elevator,” another girl chirps.
“I’m exactly where I want to be,” yet another starlet answers to a question I miss.
Shortly thereafter, the panel ends, and the girls file off the stage, disappearing behind the curtain.
***
Mr. Pete is not a nobody. He is a somebody.You might think Mr. Pete is a nobody because no one is waiting in line and asking him to autograph a glossy photo of himself like the porn starlets on either side of him, but that’s because Mr. Pete is a male porn star, and when it comes to porn, the female porn star is queen.
Mr. Pete has been an adult performer for over a decade. I ask him how many movies he’s made, and he estimates somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000.
Originally, he’s from Vegas. “Kind of a womanizing guy” is how he describes himself. After he started working in an adult video store, becoming a professional woodsman was practically his professional destiny.
I ask Mr. Pete how business is.
“Business is great,” Mr. Pete says. “The Internet’s the future and the present.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Pete says, it’s harder for new guys who want to get up, get in, and get off for a living to break into the business in this down economy.
“The doors are closing,” Mr. Pete warns.
I ask Mr. Pete what it takes to do what he does.
He shrugs, surveying the crowd. “As long as you have a functioning organ, things will always work out.”
***
“We don’t believe God created pornography, but we believe He loves the people in it,” opines Rachel Collins, a pastor with XXXchurch.com who’s standing in front of a banner that reads “Jesus Loves Porn Stars” when I ask her if the Devil created porn.Collins has a halo of golden curls, a cherubic face, and a habit of standing very close to the person with whom she is speaking. I assume Rachel loves God and porn stars because her mission with the church is to stop porn addiction and save porn stars from porn.
“Porn is the oldest business,” Collins says, and I want to correct her, to point out, no, prostitution is the oldest business, but perhaps I am splitting hairs.
More troublingly for Collins, porn is “morphing into something else.”
What is it? Whatever it is, it isn’t good.
“It’s becoming more dangerous,” she tells me, looking worried for humanity. “It sells us something that doesn’t even exist.”
I press on through the thickening crowd. There are gangs of men leering at porn stars showing off surgically-enhanced cleavage threatening to escape the confines of low-neck prisons, couples holding hands and inspecting rows of paddles, ball gags, and chocolate lollipops in the shapes of male and female genitalia, and I count four men in wheelchairs whizzing along the floor on missions to meet the sex stars of their dreams. Two scantily clad girls ride a seesaw, and it takes me a minute to realize the handles are dildos. A dancer in over-sized hot pink nerd glasses, a black bob wig, and a pink star on her exposed butt cheek grinds away on a platform. At the concession stand, nachos are $4. The air shakes with the dull thud of heavy bass emanating from the customized car show with which the event is sharing space. A man tries to sell bottles of “male enhancement” pills he swears will make you “longer and harder.” An Asian girl with guns tattooed on her hips sells T-shirts emblazoned with her face. A blonde in a sparkly sailor suit and a Playboy bunny logo for a tramp stamp tries to get passersby to sign up for a lingerie cruise. A shirtless, baby-faced male stripper sits in a chair, waiting for something to happen, a giant “Magic Mike” poster behind him. In the “Dungeon Experience” corner, a man secures a woman to a chair, a strap across her forehead, her wrists and ankles bound, her male date watching. Porn star Stormy Daniels is selling a “hands-free lube dispenser,” and the man at the table shows me how it works by pretending to pump lube out with one hand and waving his other hand in the opposite direction as if engaging in sex with the Invisible Woman. I take notes in a booth selling sex toys, and “Making a wish list?” the proprietor inquires. A brunette struggles to stay on a giant pink mechanical ride before a crowd of appreciative men. Near the restrooms, a black man working a shoeshine booth gives up and takes a seat on a stool. In the bathroom, it smells like porn stars and strippers: peaches and apricots, sticky body glitter and platform heels with slits for tips, humping unicorns and money shot stardust.
***
Walking around the place, you can almost see the fork in the road. The point at which things split. The exact place where one group of pornographers went one way, one group of pornographers went another way, and things were never the same.“Everyone will have to evolve or die,” Fixx told me, and he was right.
“We’re in the Now Generation,” asserts Shirley Lara, the “all-around person, so COO,” of Chaturbate, an adult webcam site.
According to Lara, 21st century porn is all about control. The porn consumer no longer wants canned movies shot on video a lifetime ago, directed by someone else, and featuring sex that follows a script. The new porn consumer wants to pick the girl, they want to control what happens, and they want to develop an intimate relationship with her, no matter how fleeting.
Jenna Jameson’s unattainability, her Barbie-on-a-pedestal unknowability, has been replaced by an independent contractor who works from home and is paying off her college debt with your virtual tips by having virtual sex with you. She’s a bombshell or the girl next door, the naughty teacher or the punk rocker, the MILF or whatever it is that your wife isn’t, that you don’t have, that you can’t get, that brought you right here, right now, rather than watching some stale free clip on an X-rated tube site that stole their content from a porn producer who is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy in a Chatsworth office park, thanks to you.
***
“What happened? The Internet came around,” Butts said. “That changed the game. Nobody imagined these tube sites would pop up, giving away this content we fought so hard to create.”A few feet away, his porn star girlfriend signed another autograph.
“Will recorded sex ever go away?” Butts asked rhetorically. “No. It’s for the collector out there.”
In theory, the porn dilemma is the same as the printed-on-paper book dilemma. Some people like the feel of the pages, the smell when they open a book for the first time. Some people like the new new thing, their porn digital and interactive.
Truth be told, nobody is sure where things are heading. The sexual appetite is a tricky thing to predict, and everyone here believes whomever gets it right will be raking in the dollars.
***
Raylene used to be a porn star. Then she left the porn business. She became a wife, a mom, a real estate agent. Until the housing market tanked. Then she came back to porn. Porn took her in with welcoming arms because that’s how porn is. It takes all comers.Nowadays, she’s shooting eight scenes a month, and it’s a hustle.
“I’m a little bit older, being a porn star at 35,” Raylene tells me near a line of men longing for her to return their attention to them. “In dog years, I’m, like, 100,” she laughs.
Raylene has long brown hair and big brown eyes. She’s smart, articulate, and self-aware. She’s a businesswoman, and she has adjusted to the new market. Her rate for a boy-girl scene is $1,500 – but that’s negotiable. Her rate for a girl-girl scene is $800 – but that’s negotiable, too.
“I wish it was like it used to be for the financial aspects,” Raylene says wistfully. “Porn will never go away, but the money isn’t there anymore. There’s nothing left.”
***
On my way out, I stop and talk to J. Handy, the director of Exxxotica, which, as it turns out, isn’t really a porn convention, per se.It’s “the largest event in the country dedicated to love and sex,” Handy explains, with stops in Chicago, New Jersey, and Miami. They tried doing it in Los Angeles, but there was too much porn there already, and the show was a bust.
Handy started the event at 26 as “something fun to do” with his friends. This weekend, he’s expecting around 15,000 people to show up and check out the porn, the paddles, and the penis ride. The bulk of the event’s revenue comes from ticket sales, and they make money from sponsors and exhibitors.
“You put a couple porn stars in there and call it whatever you want to, and guys will show up,” Handy confides, more and more people spilling through the doors.
***
I take the escalator to the ground level. Outside, it’s hot. Police officers are directing traffic. Two girls in skintight dresses and sky-high heels trot across the street, heading for the show inside where sex is for sale, and everyone’s trying to figure out what you want so they can make another dollar off it.______________________________________________________
