by Hyapatia Lee
“Get a real job if you don’t like real sex!”
It was mostly men against women. Women, being in far greater risk of catching the disease, were more likely to want condoms used. Almost all the actors, on the other hand, who didn’t have as great a risk, were worried about performingsexually with condoms, and really couldn’t care less about the actresses.
After some semblance of order was finally achieved, the representative for the production companies got up and made a statement.
“The producers and distributors have decided that using condoms cause our product to sit gathering dust on the shelves. It has therefore been decided only talent willing to work without condoms will be hired.”
There were audible reactions from the crowd.
Then Stan from Vivid stood up.
“As most of you already know, we work with Adam and Eve and the Playboy channel. We have had scenes with condoms in our movies in the past and haven’t noticed any decrease in sales because of it. We will continue to use condoms in one or perhaps two scenes per video.”
Blacklists were discussed so directors would know who would work without condoms and who wouldn’t. Producers said blacklists were not necessary, they would just be asked point blank as part of the hiring process! People who had originally been in the Actors Association and on the side of safe sex, realized that if they wanted to get enough work to stay in this business, they would have to pretend to have been on the side of unsafe sex all along.
I had made my decision long ago that I would never work in an explicit movie again, no matter what. Not even with a condom. I saw this business for what it really was, not the expression of guilt-free sex as naturally healthy and right, but the exploitation of sex and the people involved for the almighty dollar. It was not to help our society accept sex as a normal part of humanity, not to stop rape and child molestation and not because the people involved even believed in healthy sexual encounters. Most of them were just as screwed up as the general population, if not more. It was for one thing and one thing only, i-tse-u-s-di go-whe-li, the green paper everyone craves, money. It didn’t matter to any of them how many people died a most horrible death, how many innocent children, husbands, fathers, mothers and grandparents would be tragically affected. They didn’t care about anything but the money. Is it any wonder the business subsequently turned to the most bizarre and kinky sex acts? With a sexual circus of obscure and dangerous behavior, they could shock the public into buying more.
It wasn’t about art, or making an erotic movie, or helping rape victims heal or balancing the scales of the Victorian views on sex. I should have seen it to begin with, or when the people I began to work with were so different from Harry, or when we went to shooting on video with cheaper budgets. I kept hoping for the good old days to return. Instead, our industry had stooped to the gutter-residing smut peddlers society thought they were all along.
MY FIRST CD, ROCKIN’’ AND ROLLIN’ IN LA
I could never make another X-rated movie again and look myself in the mirror. I felt like it would be a way of abusing myself to get in that position. Since I had filed for divorce, Bud paid absolutely nothing in child support and consistently tried his best to ruin every job offer I got dancing on the road. I was really hurting for money.
Bud was now working for Vivid Video and had his own office and shooting schedule that kept him quite busy. My babysitter worked for a BMW dealer during the day and personally saw contracts for three different BMWs Bud bought from that dealer, one for himself, and one for each of his two favorite girlfriends. One of them was even moving into an apartment with her young son and out of her mother’s house. By her own admission this was at Bud’s expense. We had several friends in common and grew to be closer behind Bud’s back. She was becoming disillusioned.
In Bud’s house lived a model from Hungary and Tianna Taylor, an X-rated actress who had once been my friend. Bud paid for all of this with his extravagant salary from Vivid and the other movies he was shooting for other companies on the side. In 1993 from Vivid alone he made over $100,000.00. Again, I received no child support.
Before the divorce was final, the child support was set at $150.00 per week. After the divorce hearing, where his salary and mine were compared, he was ordered to pay $200.00 per week. He consistently refused to pay and even though the court ordered Vivid to withhold money from his salary, they never withheld one red cent.
This is a matter of a father shirking his responsibilities and a system that does not enforce a court order. This is a matter of the government preferring to prosecute a dancer who breaks a G-string than parents neglecting and abusing their children.
I still loved to act, but was very uncomfortable with the sex. I decided to try my hand at a legitimate acting career. I got new 8X10 head shots taken, revised my resume, and sent them out to every major casting director in LA. I had my name and photo listed in the Academy Players Directory. I got myself an agent. I already had my SAG and AFTRA cards. I went to auditions, and most people were aware of my work. I was happy to get a part in a movie called “Swingers”, even if it was a small budget production. I played myself. In the movie, a man is obsessed with me and I keep coming to life out of the film he is watching. It was a very short shoot.
One of the directors I had worked with many years before in the X-rated world had a friend who was doing a small budget R-rated movie. It had a nude scene in it and he asked me if I would be interested in auditioning for it. Of course, I was!
It was for the role of a stripper/prostitute and I would be murdered in it. My friend said that the director was from New York and that he thought the part was for a girl from Manhattan. This movie had a bigger budget than the last, and would star John Savage from “The Deer Hunter” and “The Godfather”. I was very excited.
When I went to the audition, every word I spoke from the introduction, the reading and the good-bye’s at the end, was said with my best New York accent. The director, Paul Leder, even asked me where in New York I was from and I gave him an address across the street from the club I had worked in the most there. The movie was to be called “Killing Obsession” and they treated me very nicely, even though they knew I had been asked to be there by a director from the “porn” business. I was amazed when I got the call telling me that I had been cast in the role!
I was so nervous on my way to work, afraid I would be looked down on, coming from the X-rated side of the industry. When I got there and the first person I saw was a tall gaffer named Mike that I had worked with for years, I was relieved! The rest of the cast and crew treated me very well. I was treated just like anyone else.
My first scene was shot in a bar and I was to dance and strip for John Savage. His character had recently escaped form a halfway house and he was obsessively searching for a girl he used to know and he thought I might be her. It’s funny, but after all the times I had stripped on stage in clubs, I was still nervous abouttaking my clothes off in this situation. I think it was because I was not sure of how everyone else would react. If it were to be viewed as just another scene, nothing special or unusual, I would have no problem with it, but if people were going to get all nervous and uncomfortable, it tends to make me feel the same way. Luckily, most of the cast and crew did not make a big deal out of it.
The following days were much easier, even though there was one more nude scene. By the time we were ready to shoot it, I had spent enough time working with everyone that I didn’t feel so self-conscious. John was great to work with, it was so much fun actually getting to take our time and do our best acting. When the scene came for him to stab me, John taught me a lot about how to make it look real. We had never been able to do violent scenes in the X-rated business. Even if someone had wanted to be creative and add a story line that included murder or crimes, we couldn’t because of legal reasons. If an X-rated movie had such scenes in it, people could think they were real and that actresses were being coerced or threatened. Such a movie could lead to jail time for i
ts producers.
Paul Leder, the director, introduced me to one of his friends, Tim Campbell. Tim was working for Orion Films at the time and we hit it off. He was down to Earth, a real person. He reminded me more of the polite, friendly people back home than the pretentious party animals of LA. When the movie was over, we continued to see each other. One of his associated, Richard Hearn, was starting a management company called Star Care. Richard talked to me about how he might be able to help my career.
Richard had been managing the financial careers of many popular athletes. Unfortunately I had no finances to manage, only debts. There wasn’t much he could do for me there. He introduced me to as many people in the entertainment business as he could, but no deals were ever made. There were dozens of bites. People had scripts they wanted me to be in, but no financing to produce them. There were add campaigns for sunglasses, but company presidents kept changing and budgets were dropped. As Richard put it, my notoriety got many people’s interest, but it was not professional. They just wanted to get to meet me but not to seriously do business. This proved to be as frustrating for Richard as it was for me.
Paul Leder, the director of “Killing Obsession”, was casting another movie and I was given a role! Seven Arts Distributing Company, who was handling the movie, requested that I be given a larger role as they thought my name might help sell it. I was overjoyed, of course! This movie was to be called “The Wacky Adventures of Dr. Boris and Nurse Shirley” and starred Paul Bartell and Karen Black. It felt so good to be out on my own, working. Bud didn’t know anything about the movie or the people involved, so there was no way he could make any damaging phone calls and ruin it for me like he was doing with my dancing career. I felt more confident on the set this time. I didn’t have that feeling that at any minute I would be pointed out and laughed at.
It was a marvelous experience to go to the previews of these movies. Neither was released to video without a theatrical run. It reminded me, in a way, of the first few movies I had made for Caribbean Films and the limousines and red carpets they had rented. The best part of it was that my sons could come to the opening and see them. Paul was always very good to my kids. He treated them like part of his family. They came to the set and ate lunch with me a few times and Paul showed them around and explained all the equipment and whetted their appetite for a career in film. It sure was good to be able to share my work with them for a change. I was so happy!
Double Euphoric, my band, was playing out as often as we could, considering I was still going back to Indiana every now and then. It was a smart decision I had made to home school. My kids had no trouble accompanying me wherever I went.
I really wanted to dance to my music in the clubs on the road. All the clubs were only using CD’s now, no tape decks anywhere. I needed to get my music onto CD. It would cost a lot of money without backing from a major record label. Bud was still not paying child support.
When I could afford it, I cashed in on favors of friends and took advantage of vacant studio time in LA to record our musicon to CD. We did four songs the first time, “Little Jumping Mouse”, “Strike Back” “Don’t Forget the Red” and “Obsessed”. Then I ran out of money and had to go out and dance again. These first studio sessions with the band were quite a learning experience.
I felt totally alienated from the rest of the band. They were all in one big room together, playing, and I was in a small soundproof room off to the side by myself. I had to strain my neck to even see them. I did not feel like a part of the band, and I wasn’t, judging from how they were all treating me. They did not take my suggestions seriously and anything I requested was blatantly ignored. They obviously didn’t think I knew what I was talking about. They were going to do as they damn well pleased. It was just like being back on a porno set, no one took it seriously, they just wanted their money. I was becoming angry, but I knew you only catch flies with honey. I decided to explain the medicine story behind “Little Jumping Mouse” to them before we recorded it.
I took some sage in a shell and smudged everyone in the green room. As we all sat in a circle, I began the story.
“There once was a mouse. He was a good mouse, doing all the things that good responsible mice do. He hunted for nuts and seeds all day long. He explored the ground next to his whiskers and kept busy. As he went about his life, he noticed a sound, a noise in his ears, a roar. He tried to ignore it for many moons, and still, he heard it. The more time went on, the more he could not ignore the sound he now heard all the time. One day, after finishing his mouse duties, he decided to go investigate.”
Everyone fidgeted in their seat. They thought of it as a children’s story, and they were ready to get back to work, collect their pay and go.
“As he walked out of the familiar mouse territory he was raised in and moved closer to the source of the sound, he met a raccoon.
‘Hello, brother mouse. What are you doing outside of your mouse home?’
‘I’m searching for something’, he said, with his nose close to the ground.
‘What are you searching for?’
‘I have a roaring in my ears. I am trying to find out where it is coming from.’
‘That is the river.’
‘What is a river?’
‘Come with me and I will take you to it.’
So the mouse followed the raccoon until he was standing by a big beautiful river. All the things of his world floated down it. There were logs, leaves, stones and branches, but he had never seen water like this, unless it was raining. He looked back, but the raccoon was gone.
Back in the river, he noticed a frog sitting on a lily pad.
‘Hello brother mouse, what are you staring at?’
‘I have never seen a river before.’
‘If you think this is something, then bend down real low, and jump up in the air as high as you can. Look over there, if you want to see something really spectacular.’
So the mouse did as he was told. He crouched down real low and jumped up just as high as he could. As he looked, he saw a magnificent mountain in the distance. He had never seen such a wondrous sight. Then he fell down, splat, into the river.
‘You tricked me!’ He screamed.
‘No, you are not hurt, you were only tricked into seeing something you could not see before.’
The mouse was very anxious to get back to his home after that experience.
When he reached his neighbors and relatives, they were all afraid of him. They could not understand why he was wet. It had not rained. He tried to explain how he had fallen in the river, but they had never seen the river. They doubted that such a thing existed. They thought a big animal tried to eat him and spit him out because he was poison and that was why he was wet. They wanted nothing to do with him. Besides, he was always kind of weird anyway, always talking about a roaring in his ears.
Little Jumping Mouse decided he did not want to stay where he was not welcomed. He wanted to go search for that mountain, and climb it to the top.”
The band was a little more interested, but just a little.
‘He ran across the Forest until he came to the edge, where the plains start. He knew if he ran onto the grassy plain, the eagles and hawks would be able to see him. There would be no cover to hide under, and he would be very vulnerable. But he could see the mountain a bit and he still wanted very much to climb it. He took a deep breath and ran.
Every time he looked up into the sky, he could see black specs, and he just knew they were eagles, just waiting to swoop down and eat him. He ran harder and faster, until finally, he came to a small bush, just big enough to hide in. He ducked in for safety and found all kinds of nuts and seeds, tunnels and fun mouse places to explore. It was a wonderful place with a small stream nearby, and a female mouse that was very happy to see him.
After a while of living there, the two mice went out to get some water from the nearby stream, as they were used to doing. As they bent over the water, Little Jumping Mouse was amazed to see how fat h
e and his wife had become. Before he could say anything, a snake jumped out of the bushes and caught his wife. There was nothing he could do.
Back at the bush, he decided he had spent too much time sitting and looking at the mountain. He was going to go back to his dream of climbing it, even if it meant going out across the prairie and possibly being eaten by an eagle.”
The band was now much more interested. They saw that this mouse was them, and the mountain was their dream. They finally understood the meaning of the story.
“He gathered all his courage and ran across the plains. He went for a long time, and then he came to a big animal lying down, breathing heavily, as if it were in great pain. Next to it, was a very very small bush, just big enough to hide in if he was still. He rushed under it and studied the animal. It was a buffalo.
‘Brother Buffalo, you are such a mighty animal of the plains, why are you laying there like that?’
‘I am going to die.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Yes, I am going to die. The only thing that can save me is the eye of a mouse. But I do not know what a mouse is, I do not think they even exist.’
Little Jumping Mouse was very glad the buffalo did not know that he was a mouse. After a while though, with a lot of thought, he started to speak.
‘I am a mouse, brother buffalo. If I could, I would give you one of my eyes. After all, I could still see with the other one.’
As soon as he said that, one of his eyes popped out of his head and the buffalo was instantly restored to health.
‘Brother mouse, you did not have to do that! I know what you are searching for. You want to go to the mountain. I will take you there. Run under me and I will be sure the eagles cannot see you. I will be sure not to step on you with my big hooves.’
And so the mouse ran under the buffalo all the way to the mountain’s edge where the buffalo told him he could not go up the mountain as he was an animal of the plains and his hoofs would not take him there. Little Jumping Mouse continued up the mountain. At first, it was not so bad because of the bushes and trees to protect him, but the closer he got to the top, the thinner the cover was. When he was at a place where he was sure all the eagles could plainly see him, he saw another animal lying down breathing hard, and another very small bush just big enough to hide under.