Introspective on the mainstreaming of porn
- Thread starter Tazmaniac
- Start date
The original story on Belladonna after she appeared on Primetime:~Alexandria~ said:Taz, do tell us about the Belladonna expose...
Love on a Porn Set
A Mormon Girl Gets Her Start in the Adult
Jan. 23 — When 20-year-old Michelle saw the handsome Spaniard who would later become her fiancé, she thought it was love at first sight.
"The day we met, he said, 'You're going to be the mother of my children. I love you,'" she remembers. "You know what I mean? I never had that before. I never had a guy be so in love with me."
The couple met on the set of a porn film in a rented house in Prague in July 2001.
Michelle, the daughter of a retired Air Force captain and former bishop in the Mormon Church, was an up-and-coming starlet in the adult video world. She had had some setbacks in her first year in the business, but believed her career was turning around with the Prague trip, which would be her first starring role. Her co-star, 28-year-old Nacho Vidal, was already a well-established star.
The director had told Michelle that Vidal liked her work, and when the pair saw each other they immediately fell into each other's arms, kissing from one side of the house to the other.
"There's nothing bad about you," she told him admiringly as they prepared for the shoot. "You don't know me very well" he replied with a grin.
But when the director finally got the pair to settle down to the business at hand — filming a sex scene — the tone changed. Without any prompting, Vidal got rough during the sex, slapping Michelle's face violently from side to side, and choking her.
Afterward, she looked shaken, her face reddened and her eyes watery. But she insisted she was OK. "I look torn up — can you tell?," she asked an ABCNEWS producer who was following her progress for Primetime. Laughing and wiping her eye, she turned away and said without conviction, "I took a beating today, and it was great."
'Belladonna' Is Born
Belladonna Porn star Belladonna spoke to Primetime over a two-year period. (ABCNEWS.com)
Michelle had gotten her start in the business at 18, when she came to Los Angeles from her home in Utah to look for work as a nude photograph model. When she failed to get modeling work, her agent encouraged her to try porn. She refused at first. "I always hated porn. I thought it was the most disgusting thing in the world," she told Primetime, which followed her career for more than two years.
But she finally agreed. Taking the name Belladonna, like the poisonous flower, she found herself preparing for what she thought would be a simple boy-girl sex scene. She was shocked when the director told her he wanted her to do anal sex — something she says she had never even thought about before. Worried she'd have to go through with it if she wanted to work again, she let him talk her into it. "I was kind of scared. I didn't know if I could say no," she remembers. "I didn't know any better, you know?"
After the session, she was shattered. "I wasn't ready for anal sex.... It was painful. But I can hide it really well." She had just turned 18, the legal age for participation in sexually explicit films.
Michelle went on more shoots over the next few months. Then her agent sent her on a job where she would have sex with male actors in prison outfits — 12 of them. Once again, she tried to back out, telling the director it was "sick," but once again she was talked into it. She had sex — all kinds — with the 12 men. "It was really hard because I really felt like a piece of meat ... in a lion's cage, 12 lions.... I had to do a lot of things I can't imagine anyone wanting to do." She was paid $4,000.
Afterward, she says, she couldn't stop crying. She packed her bags and went home to her family in Utah.
Glimpse of the Big Time
But within a year, she was back, even agreeing to promote the prison movie that had so upset her.
She began to feel that her career was picking up. She got a small part in a movie for VCA, one of the "high end" companies that produce big-budget films, and hoped it might lead to a contract. On the shoot, she met porn legend Ron Jeremy, who was making a cameo, and began to feel like she was fitting in. "The first second I walk in, this girl grabs my breast, and I'm like, Wow, you know, that's like the best welcome ... 'cause then you feel like, Oh, someone likes me, you know?"
Another company considered giving her a contract, but at a meeting, the owner, veteran porn star Ona Zee, sensed that Michelle was not emotionally ready to become an adult star. "There's a part of me that wants to say to you, 'Run for the hills, girl, do something else, because you can be something better,'" she told her.
At the high-end companies — which produce a small proportion of the thousands of adult titles released each year — performers often have contracts and can make six figures by shooting just eight to 10 movies a year. They can pick their own partners and condoms are generally required. Shot on film with elaborate, sets, costumes and plots, the movies can have budgets up to $250,000.
But Michelle did not get a studio contract, and ended up taking a job with a company known for "gonzo" porn — sex-only, amateur-looking productions shot on video. The company, Elegant Angel, was making a film in Prague and offered her a starring role, which she hoped would show the big studios that she could carry a film.
Love Blossoms in Prague
She was thrilled at the attention Vidal gave her during the week in Prague — but wary. "It's weird to have a guy love you that much. That almost scares me because I have a hard time trusting men," she told Primetime, explaining that her first boyfriend cheated on her repeatedly and ultimately left her for a stripper. Privately, Vidal had told Primetime he could never be with just one woman, and would be happy if Michelle's attraction did not lead anywhere.
She came back to Los Angeles by herself, so sore from the week's filming that she says she could hardly walk. But then she flew to Spain to visit Vidal, and their relationship seemed to be going places. She said he could keep having sex with other women, as long as he agreed to be "honest to me, loyal, and just respect me and tell me that I'm number one every day."
She even began hearing wedding bells, telling Primetime, "The second I get married, I won't having sex with men in this business any more."
Wedding Bells
By December 2001, Michelle and Vidal were engaged. As she proudly showed off her diamond ring, saying how pretty it was, Vidal joked in his Spanish accent, "I need to f—k so many girls for that ring."
The couple was in love, Michelle says, but they were fighting regularly. Vidal would sometimes get what he calls "Latino jealous" when he saw her talking to other men at clubs. Michelle told Primetime, "It's hard to be in a relationship with someone in porn."
By now, she was working steadily, even shooting for the same company she shot the prison gangbang for. "I guess now I've gotten past the whole feeling-bad-about-it thing. I'm like, 'OK, I did it and that was pretty damn rough of me' ... Like wow, you know?," she said with a laugh. "I can say that I've done pretty much everything there is to do, and I can walk away feeling a little proud about it, you know?"
The Primetime producers who had been following her noticed changes. At 18, she had said she would never use drugs, but now Primetime learned that she was sometimes high on marijuana during her scenes. She was working without condoms, though she said the risk of AIDS was never far from her mind — or her prayers. "The fans don't like to see condoms ... If I would have said I want to use condoms every time, I really wouldn't get any work," she explained. She contracted chlamydia, which can make you sterile.
And anal sex — which she had be talked into during her first shoot — was now her specialty. "Funny, isn't it? Something I didn't want to do and now I'm known best for it," she told Primetime. No longer a fresh face in the business, she found she had to agree to even riskier sex acts to earn the same money.
Ona Zee, the producer who had interviewed Michelle the previous year, noticed a difference, too. "I said to my husband, Our baby is all grown up and left home. She's no longer the adorable fresh-faced girl that I met ... Now she's really in the life ... Even in the pictures that I see of her, she's much harder, much tougher."
Behind the Smile
During interviews with Primetime, Michelle kept the happy smile she had always had — even when describing things that many people would find disturbing. However, her composure cracked when Diane Sawyer asked why she always smiled. Tears came to her eyes as she said, "Because I like to hide — hide everything, you know?" Then she began to cry, explaining that she hides her real emotions because she wants to show everyone how happy she is. "And I'm not happy ... I don't like myself at all," she said.
Michelle confessed she often felt physical revulsion during her scenes: "My whole entire body feels it when I'm doing it and ... I feel so — so gross." While pretending to be enjoying the sex, she said, she was in fact counting the minutes, telling herself, "Hey, I only have this much time left. Don't worry about it. Get the check. Gonna go deposit it in your bank." She admitted: "You get addicted to the money."
Like other performers Primetime spoke to, Michelle said that during shooting she often imagines herself outside her body. "I call it the 'other half,'" she said.
continued...
Bringing Home a Trophy
In January 2002, Michelle's Prague movie won an award at the Adult Video News awards in Las Vegas, considered the Oscars of the adult industry. Things were not going smoothly with Vidal that day — he complained that Michelle "don't do the ironing my clothes... I still 28 and I need my mother," and at the ceremony he openly checked out other women — but there were crowds of admiring fans for Michelle and she soaked up the attention.
After going on stage to pick the trophy, she was beaming, telling Primetime she had worked hard for it. "I think this is the very beginning of my career, like I've just begun," she said.
And at the 2003 AVN awards two weeks ago, Michelle was an even bigger winner, taking home awards for best supporting actress and three other categories.
In January 2002, Michelle's Prague movie won an award at the Adult Video News awards in Las Vegas, considered the Oscars of the adult industry. Things were not going smoothly with Vidal that day — he complained that Michelle "don't do the ironing my clothes... I still 28 and I need my mother," and at the ceremony he openly checked out other women — but there were crowds of admiring fans for Michelle and she soaked up the attention.
After going on stage to pick the trophy, she was beaming, telling Primetime she had worked hard for it. "I think this is the very beginning of my career, like I've just begun," she said.
And at the 2003 AVN awards two weeks ago, Michelle was an even bigger winner, taking home awards for best supporting actress and three other categories.
A female producer responded with a letter to AVN shortly after the Belladonna expose appeared on Prime Time w/Diane Sawyer (quite some time ago). This will give you a little insight into what had happend:
Give 'Em Enough Rope
Dear AVN,
As an adult film producer, I watched the recent Primetime starring Belladonna and Diane Sawyer... and cringed. We are living in precarious times, where a highly conservative and judgmental few in government are eager to inspect us, judge us and close us down. And we are asking for it.
Diane Sawyer's yellow journalism was certainly an eye-catcher. Now everyone who watched the show can believe that they "know" what our industry is like. The fact that the Primetime show was carefully edited to achieve a goal, ignored competing points of view and presented only the most sensationalized things that could be found will be lost on the average person who watches. I have real trouble with the hypocrisy of mainstream TV, where sensationalized stories about the adult industry are used to get better ratings. But watching the show made me uneasy about a lot of things.
As a woman, a feminist and an adult producer, I tend to grind my teeth when women demand equality and then refuse to accept responsibility for their own choices. If we truly want to be equal and run with the big dogs, we had better be ready to accept that we are making our own choices and if those choices are bad, then we have the power to choose differently. A man or woman who does some things in an adult film, having been fully advised and giving complete, informed consent has no one but himself/herself to blame if she later feels shame or discomfort with what she did. The brave thing to do is to say, "I made this choice and it was wrong for me. I won't choose that again" instead of blaming others for what you decided to do.
We, as an industry, make a great target. We suspect who the bottom-feeders are in our industry, and yet we do nothing to stop them. We have no code of ethics to which adult filmmakers can subscribe and no means to insure that any sort of industry standard is enforced. It is true that dogs, cats and rabbits have more legal protections on the set than do women and men. To call for a change within ourselves is not capitulating to the right-wing -it is common sense. Finding a code to which all can subscribe will be tricky. But it can be done. Here are a few suggestions that might be a good place to start this conversation:
1. All adult performers should be compensated fairly for their work.
2. All adult performers should be tested immediately prior to shoots for STDs (including HIV) and should not knowingly be exposed to any contagious sexually-transmitted disease. Safer sex guidelines should be followed.
3. No adult actor or actress should be coerced, bribed or begged into anything they don't feel comfortable with. Period. If more dangerous or extreme is your thing, then find actors who are comfortable with your brand of kink. Performers should be fully advised before being hired as to what they will be expected to do.
4. No performers should be allowed to use drugs or alcohol on the set. Period. There are so many problems with allowing actors to come to the set high that the risk is not worth it.
5. Actors and actresses should have maximum work hour times and standardized breaks. I know we're all under the pressure to get shoots done, but working people too long has serious hazards to their mental health and physical health.
6. We can all avoid using language that heaps scorn on us all as an industry. You may personally not respect the women who work in the industry - we have no thought police - but choosing better language publicly will only help us all. Calling women "bitches," "whores" and "filthy c***s" may be your thing, but it only convinces John Q and Sally Public that there's some abuse going on. This is 2003 and wise people have chosen to reform their misogyny or at least not advertise it publicly.
These basic things are already being done by ethical studios (my own company included) who are making adult films. These suggestions are meant as a starting point for dialogue, not the final word. If we don't start talking and changing, we can expect that others will change things for us.
Alpha, Owner/CEO
Passion Fruit Video
Austin, TX
Give 'Em Enough Rope
Dear AVN,
As an adult film producer, I watched the recent Primetime starring Belladonna and Diane Sawyer... and cringed. We are living in precarious times, where a highly conservative and judgmental few in government are eager to inspect us, judge us and close us down. And we are asking for it.
Diane Sawyer's yellow journalism was certainly an eye-catcher. Now everyone who watched the show can believe that they "know" what our industry is like. The fact that the Primetime show was carefully edited to achieve a goal, ignored competing points of view and presented only the most sensationalized things that could be found will be lost on the average person who watches. I have real trouble with the hypocrisy of mainstream TV, where sensationalized stories about the adult industry are used to get better ratings. But watching the show made me uneasy about a lot of things.
As a woman, a feminist and an adult producer, I tend to grind my teeth when women demand equality and then refuse to accept responsibility for their own choices. If we truly want to be equal and run with the big dogs, we had better be ready to accept that we are making our own choices and if those choices are bad, then we have the power to choose differently. A man or woman who does some things in an adult film, having been fully advised and giving complete, informed consent has no one but himself/herself to blame if she later feels shame or discomfort with what she did. The brave thing to do is to say, "I made this choice and it was wrong for me. I won't choose that again" instead of blaming others for what you decided to do.
We, as an industry, make a great target. We suspect who the bottom-feeders are in our industry, and yet we do nothing to stop them. We have no code of ethics to which adult filmmakers can subscribe and no means to insure that any sort of industry standard is enforced. It is true that dogs, cats and rabbits have more legal protections on the set than do women and men. To call for a change within ourselves is not capitulating to the right-wing -it is common sense. Finding a code to which all can subscribe will be tricky. But it can be done. Here are a few suggestions that might be a good place to start this conversation:
1. All adult performers should be compensated fairly for their work.
2. All adult performers should be tested immediately prior to shoots for STDs (including HIV) and should not knowingly be exposed to any contagious sexually-transmitted disease. Safer sex guidelines should be followed.
3. No adult actor or actress should be coerced, bribed or begged into anything they don't feel comfortable with. Period. If more dangerous or extreme is your thing, then find actors who are comfortable with your brand of kink. Performers should be fully advised before being hired as to what they will be expected to do.
4. No performers should be allowed to use drugs or alcohol on the set. Period. There are so many problems with allowing actors to come to the set high that the risk is not worth it.
5. Actors and actresses should have maximum work hour times and standardized breaks. I know we're all under the pressure to get shoots done, but working people too long has serious hazards to their mental health and physical health.
6. We can all avoid using language that heaps scorn on us all as an industry. You may personally not respect the women who work in the industry - we have no thought police - but choosing better language publicly will only help us all. Calling women "bitches," "whores" and "filthy c***s" may be your thing, but it only convinces John Q and Sally Public that there's some abuse going on. This is 2003 and wise people have chosen to reform their misogyny or at least not advertise it publicly.
These basic things are already being done by ethical studios (my own company included) who are making adult films. These suggestions are meant as a starting point for dialogue, not the final word. If we don't start talking and changing, we can expect that others will change things for us.
Alpha, Owner/CEO
Passion Fruit Video
Austin, TX
Re: Rob Black
Courtesy: www.mikesouth.com
The United States of America vs Extreme Associates:
The Miller test is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labelled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.
The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller vs. California. It has three parts:
1. Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
2. Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The third condition is also known as the SLAPS test. The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.
The pending case United States of America v. Extreme Associates includes a video called Forced Entry, which includes rape, murder, suffocation, beatings and urination in sexual contexts.
Lets examine how this mght play out before a jury:
On Point 1 we must first define "prurient", according to the dictionary it means:
1. Inordinately interested in matters of sex; lascivious.
2. Characterized by an inordinate interest in sex: prurient thoughts. Arousing or appealing to an inordinate interest in sex: prurient literature.
Because of the context and nature of "Forced Entry" it is clear that it does in fact appeal to an interest in sex. I don't see any argument there
So on prong one of the Miller Test The Prosecution will point out that Forced Entry does, in fact comply ad a jury is likely to agree.
On prong two it is clear that "Forced Entry" depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and the fact that all 50 states have laws against assualt and battery, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault and similar statutes make it very clear that "Forced Entry" will fail this prong, and a jury will likely agree.
On prong 3 The prosecution is going to hold forth that "Forced Entry" is not a real movie, it is not a real story, it contains illegal activity, not just depections of illegal activity. The prosecutor will maintain that it's sole purpose is to appeal to a deviate interest in sexually violent aggression towards women and even likely will represent it as being outside the standards of even the adult community. They may even attempt to prove this by noting that AVN wouldn't even review or acknowledge that the work existed.
Prong 3 will be the hardest to prove and ultimately will be the one the jury will argue, it could go either way easily, much will ride on jury selection in this case.
Much will also ride on decidions by the judge and without a doubt, appeals that may go all the way to the Supreme Court. Other counts against Extreme will test what community will have applicable standards, and when dealing with content from a website what constitutes a work as "a whole". I put the chances of a conviction on at least one count at about 55-45 in favor of Rob being convicted, lets face it people, we handed the government the best case they could ask for.
Since most in porn have embraced Mr Black and appointed him our defacto spokesperson we are walking on thin ice indeed.
Personally I would prefer to see this trend end and the ilk of Black and others behind bars, not for obscenity but for other more egregious violations of mostly state laws that do not have anything to do with obscenity.
Rob Black has never and will never speak for me, he is illiterate and not very articulate but mostly he is vile and disgusting and his views do not represent mine.
If you are in this business you may want to give this some thought, I know I am.
Courtesy: www.mikesouth.com
The United States of America vs Extreme Associates:
The Miller test is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labelled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.
The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller vs. California. It has three parts:
1. Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
2. Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The third condition is also known as the SLAPS test. The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.
The pending case United States of America v. Extreme Associates includes a video called Forced Entry, which includes rape, murder, suffocation, beatings and urination in sexual contexts.
Lets examine how this mght play out before a jury:
On Point 1 we must first define "prurient", according to the dictionary it means:
1. Inordinately interested in matters of sex; lascivious.
2. Characterized by an inordinate interest in sex: prurient thoughts. Arousing or appealing to an inordinate interest in sex: prurient literature.
Because of the context and nature of "Forced Entry" it is clear that it does in fact appeal to an interest in sex. I don't see any argument there
So on prong one of the Miller Test The Prosecution will point out that Forced Entry does, in fact comply ad a jury is likely to agree.
On prong two it is clear that "Forced Entry" depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and the fact that all 50 states have laws against assualt and battery, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault and similar statutes make it very clear that "Forced Entry" will fail this prong, and a jury will likely agree.
On prong 3 The prosecution is going to hold forth that "Forced Entry" is not a real movie, it is not a real story, it contains illegal activity, not just depections of illegal activity. The prosecutor will maintain that it's sole purpose is to appeal to a deviate interest in sexually violent aggression towards women and even likely will represent it as being outside the standards of even the adult community. They may even attempt to prove this by noting that AVN wouldn't even review or acknowledge that the work existed.
Prong 3 will be the hardest to prove and ultimately will be the one the jury will argue, it could go either way easily, much will ride on jury selection in this case.
Much will also ride on decidions by the judge and without a doubt, appeals that may go all the way to the Supreme Court. Other counts against Extreme will test what community will have applicable standards, and when dealing with content from a website what constitutes a work as "a whole". I put the chances of a conviction on at least one count at about 55-45 in favor of Rob being convicted, lets face it people, we handed the government the best case they could ask for.
Since most in porn have embraced Mr Black and appointed him our defacto spokesperson we are walking on thin ice indeed.
Personally I would prefer to see this trend end and the ilk of Black and others behind bars, not for obscenity but for other more egregious violations of mostly state laws that do not have anything to do with obscenity.
Rob Black has never and will never speak for me, he is illiterate and not very articulate but mostly he is vile and disgusting and his views do not represent mine.
If you are in this business you may want to give this some thought, I know I am.
