In Lust We Trust: Adventures in Adult Cinema

by Gerrie Lim

  I did run into Micah Levenson, the Operations Manager for Vivid Interactive (overseeing cable, satellite, pay TV, as well as laserdisc, CD-ROM, DVD, and MPEG-compatible media), as he was watching and fast-forwarding through some newly filmed footage, in preparation for a presentation; a lurid errand for some civilians, perhaps, but for him just another day at the office.

  Their hard work must have paid off. By 2005, one could buy Vivid condoms with the seductive charms of Vivid Girls like Briana Banks on the box cover (promising “wider shape and longer length for easier fit” and “lubricated for extra comfort”). And for women into porn stars, there was a line of Vivid Girls cosmetics, distributed to salons and boutiques across America, available online (www.vividgirl-cosmetics.com). The cosmetics division was headed by Tonia Ryan, a former Lancome executive who had worked “with top chemists to create proprietary formulas for a range of ‘luxury lipsticks,’ ‘super glosses,’ blushers, eye products, air brush foundation kits and a variety of other items” (as reported in AVN, April 2005). The Vivid girls all made personal appearances to help support such products.

  Naturally, they also did so for the Vivid Herbal Supplement line of male and female sexual virility products, with reportedly an upsurge (so to speak) in sales in Asian markets (notably Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China). Now, how apropos was that? However, the folks in those places weren’t as lucky as those in Anaheim, California, where Vivid Girls Monique Alexander and Lexie Marie met with fans at the Natural Products Expo West. The target customers were males aged thirty-five to sevety, a perfect demographic and the same one that Vivid sought when it signed, in June 2005, a licensing deal with MZL LLC of Miami—to market a line of high-end, light-alloy Vivid Wheels, for use on SUVs, pick-up trucks and even luxury cars. The tyres all featured the company’s newly designed Vivid “V” logo, available from September 2005 in two designs and in 20-inch, 22-inch, and 24-inch rims.

  At the end of 1998, thirty percent of Vivid’s total revenue of US$25 million came from DVD and other interactive media (as reported in “Vivid Imagination,” yet another piece on the company in The Economist, November 21, 1998). It was already releasing 150 new titles a year, though often these were different versions of the same movie (hardcore for video, softcore for cable, penetration without anal or close-ups for hotels, and multi-angle DVDs shot on four cameras—offering angle-switching choices for the more discerning porn fan).

  The Vivid Girl concept itself was first introduced in 1984, to impart a sense of glamour to the business (not unlike what 20th Century Fox had done when it famously signed Marilyn Monroe), and the first batch of Vivid Girls from that period—Ginger Lynn, Tori Welles, Hyapatia Lee, Jamie Summers, Julianne James, Nikki Charm, Nikki Randall, and Barbara Dare—were the very first girls I ever saw myself on video. But it was the next batch, from 1988 to 1991—Ashlyn Gere, Deirdre Holland, Racquel Darrian, Janine Lindemulder, Christy Canyon, Heather Hunter, Jennifer Stewart and the incomparable Savannah—who caught my attention.

  Truthfully, I wouldn’t even be writing this book if I hadn’t sat down one night in 1993 with my then girlfriend to watch Ashlyn Gere in Andrew Blake’s Secrets, even though that wasn’t a Vivid film (since the luscious Miss Gere had already left the company). I was completely captivated by her opening scene with Rocco Siffredi. However, by the time the next Vivid Girl class of 1992 to 1995 took over—Asia Carrera, Nikki Dial, Chasey Lain, Dyanna Lauren, Nikki Tyler, Lene Hefner, Celeste, and Jenteal—I had been formally introduced to the industry and realized that the bravest kind of celebrity was that of the porn star. Talk about putting oneself out there, literally, for the scrutiny of millions. But, most of all, I liked the self-effacing humor these girls had. They clearly loved sex but also had the good sense not to take it too seriously.

  And my all-time favorite porn wisecrack was uttered by Janine Lindemulder. Asked to explain why she finally decided to forgo her girls-only policy and started having sex with men onscreen, she quipped: “In high school, instead of Janine Lindemulder, my nickname was Janine Weenieholder. And now it all comes together.”

  I really liked her assertive sassiness, and I was never once surprised when girls new to the industry would tell me that she was the one who had inspired them to do it. (This included some who, unabashedly, admitted to me that they did so in hopes that they would someday have sex with Janine.) She had a mystique beyond words. Two of my favorite films of hers actually emphasized her acting ability: Ralph Parfait’s The Cult, made in 1999, in which she played the high priestess of a quasi-spiritual sex cult, and Toni English’s wry tone poem, Girl Next Door, made in 1997 but released in 2001, in which Janine played a car mechanic with a penchant for spontaneous sex, eventually stealing a curvaceous customer (played by the luscious Tia Bella) away from her uncouth boyfriend and rendering new meaning to the automotive term “body shop.”

  Ah, Janine, what a dream. I never got to check under her hood, certainly not in the literal sense, and I should be satisfied with the fact that I once made her blush.

  I kept in touch with her sporadically, once calling her on her cellphone while she was shopping at a supermarket in Sherman Oaks (she’d sold her house in La Mirada and moved), and then met her again some months later, at the 2001 AVN Awards.

  I was stunned. She had jet-black hair and many new tattoos, including a garish series of flowers and butterflies covering her entire right arm. The sunny blonde cheerleader I once knew had apparently moved on. I had once adored her, but only from afar, and it had been only one version of her. Metamorphosis was a characteristic of the porn star, and I had forgotten that. No longer a Vivid Girl, Janine was now lost to me in the fog of memory.

  She would later go on to win the “Best Actress” trophy at the 2006 AVN Awards, at the age of 37, a rare achievement in an industry that prized youth beyond reason. But the woman I once knew, or thought I knew, was already gone.

  Contractual Obligations

  By the time the Vivid Girls of 1996 to 1999 came around—Julia Ann, Kobe Tai, Taylor Hayes, Kira Kener, Lexus Locklear, Raylene, Devon, and Veronica—I was utterly intrigued by the business, and had already begun my own incursion into the adult entertainment ranks. To me, being a porn star was the furthest-out anyone could go in terms of being a celebrity, and I wanted to know everything.

  Like, what’s a contract girl got to do to stay one? What happens when contracts get broken? Why was it that some girls don’t get re-signed? And what’s in that damn contract anyway? In general, nobody had a straight answer for that last question. Different companies offered different contracts, and much depended on the girl in question. And on how questionable the contract itself was.

  Jenna Jameson, in her autobiography How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, actually provided a sample contract for the reader’s perusal, stating in an opening caveat that “like most contracts, it is still biased heavily in favor of the production company. If you take the time to read it carefully, you will notice the many ways in which a female performer can get shafted—both literally and metaphorically. When signing a contract, most girls don’t add in their own demands.”

  She learned the hard way herself, given her own less than amicable parting with Wicked Pictures. But the terms of her sample contract provided a useful case study. The document was always an agreement by “the Company” and “the Talent” for a certain duration of time, usually twelve months, with four options of one year each that the company may decide to exercise. It must give “the Talent” sixty days prior notice in writing stating so. The gist of the deal itself was simple and direct: “The Talent will be required to act, play, perform, and take part in rehearsals, acts, roles, and scenes of a sexual hard-core nature over the duration of the contract” and the “scenes may be in the form of any of the following combination (at the discretion of the Company): Girl/Girl, Girl/Girl/Girl, Boy/Girl, and Multiples.” Additionally, “involvement in any scenes involving Anal, Interracial, and DP (Double Penetration) is at the sole discretion of the Talent.”
But the company decided on the number of feature films the girl should star in, usually six a year but it “may increase this number based on marketing.” And at least six video/DVD box covers as well; in the United States, box covers were usually shot separately, and the girl on the cover earned extra money.

  The girl was expected to work exclusively for “the Company, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by the Company.” Any other work done outside, including “dancing (feature or otherwise), bachelor parties, and any and all other services in the entertainment industry must be approved in writing in advance by the Company, not to be unreasonably withheld.”

  The girl also agreed to “take diligent care of her health, weight, and appearance” and “shall refrain from drug or alcohol abuse and prostitution (including legal prostitution)” and also refrained from anything that could bring her employer “into public disrepute, contempt, scandal or ridicule, or that shocks, insults or offends the community, or that may reflect unfavorably upon the Company.” If so, punitive measures would ensue, usually the suspension of residual income, and this often gave the employer room to declare a default of the contract.

  Beyond all that, things got complicated. For instance, compensation was agreed upon, but with a “Schedule A” appended for “Additional Compensation” which typically included things like “Same Sex Anal Intercourse (excluding d.p. and Air Tight): US$125 per scene; Opposite Sex Anal Intercourse (excluding DP and Air Tight): US$250 per scene; Opposite Sex Double Penetration (excluding Air Tight): US$400 per scene; Air Tight (three males with three simultaneous penetrations): US$650 per scene; Multiple Partners: US$250 per partner over three.”

  The Air Tight element, if included in the contract, usually reflected the company owner’s insecurity, a deep-seated need to cover his own ass (pardon the mixed metaphors). Most productions never shot such scenes. I’d been to a lot of them, and had never ever seen one. (They shoot them in Europe, though.)

  In general, the average income of a porn star in the United States was US$80,000, but some contract girls made only half of that. Vivid, for instance, had often offered a contract girl US$39,000 a year with the assurance of an easier shooting schedule and, as an upside, a longer career. Dancing at the clubs, however, was almost an imperative. A stripper on the circuit armed with a porn company contract immediately raised her rates. The clubs in turn partook of the Vivid promotional machine too, since more patrons would be lured in by the famous names on the marquee.

  The girls, in general, did this for one overarching reason—they needed the protective sheen of a self-esteem boost, created by enhanced value. A Vivid Girl was viewed as a glamorous girl, because she was with a glamorous company. Marketers called this “brand parity” and it was a desperately valuable commodity; most girls entered the business to overcome shyness or self-image problems often linked with childhood abuse or parental neglect. The companies, of course, knew this and worked to exploit it, resulting in the current system. It always worked in their favor, because unlike performers in the mainstream film and music busineses, adult stars usually worked for flat fees, earning no royalties or residuals from their movies.

  Was this a fair system? Well, like any contractual bond, that depended on whatever the upside was—to the girl signing the contract. “Getting the contract with Vivid helped me a lot, by slowing me down and not having to work as much,” Vivid Girl Raylene told me, when I met her to talk about this in February 2000. “I didn’t want to be around it all the time, so now I can totally space it out so that I can deal with it. You get bored when you’re around it all the time. Doing movies, they usually bunch ’em up into, like, four movies in two months, something like that. And then I’ll take a three-month break or four-month break before I do another movie.”

  “I couldn’t really say how many days I work a month, other than being on the road dancing,” she cagily disclosed. “Usually five or six days out of the month.” She was then in the third year of her tenure, and would go on to win her first-ever AVN Award in 2001, for “Best Actress” (in a tie with fellow Vivid Girl Taylor Hayes), before deciding to retire. Six years in the business was long enough for her, and she moved on to a new career—in real estate, at the San Fernando Valley-based brokerage firm Paramount Rodeo Realty, specializing in clients from the adult entertainment world. Since 2003, with her co-broker Staci Mintz, she’d closed over US$13 million in sales, US$4 million of which were porn-related. Porn stars bought houses like anyone else and she’d found herself a new niche.

  “You need to go on to bigger and better things,” she had told me. “This is a stepping stone, what I’m doing now, and I don’t want to be an actress forever. I don’t want people to get burned out on me, you know, and I don’t want to get burned out on myself.” Really? Could her ardent fans burn out on her? “Well, yeah,” she replied. “There’s new girls all the time.” She was smart enough to realize that no one was indispensable in this most fickle of businesses.

  I learned about that when I wrote a feature on Sin City contract girl Shay Sweet, and her contract was suddenly terminated just before my piece could go to press. My editor hounded me for clarification, and so I simply called Shay myself and pressed her for the gory details.

  “They told me I had to go on the road to dance, and I didn’t want to,” she explained. Ah, so that decoded the subtle clause in the contract—“dancing (feature or otherwise) … must be approved in writing in advance by the Company, not to be unreasonably withheld.” The operative words were “by the Company”—which meant they had the right to dictate the terms—and “not to be unreasonably withheld,” which was a superbly crafted piece of legalese aimed to confound and confuse many an impressionable eighteen-year-old girl with a Valley-girl vocabulary. (Gag me with a spoon, ohmigosh!)

  My story eventually ran in the August 2000 issue of Penthouse Variations with all mention of Shay’s Sin City contract excised. One Sin City staffer told me Shay was fired by the company because she was a total pothead; the company had also hired her as their receptionist, and Shay “couldn’t answer the phones half the time because she was stoned.” I asked Shay about this and she merely giggled.

  Sin City knowingly chose to sign her as one of its contract girls as well as its front-desk receptionist? Only in porn could such a thing happen, with no forethought for consequences.“These girls can’t be expected to be brain surgeons,” my editor V.K. McCarty sighed. “They’re employed because they can fuck. Which is all well and good, but what do we do now?”

  She was referring to many of Shay’s quotes in my piece, many of which made her sound like an airhead. Well, she was all of twenty years old and three years straight outta Fort Worth, Texas, and had been in 150 videos, none with much compelling dialogue. When I asked her during our interview if she was aware of the sheer amount of noise she made during sex—usually some variation of “Yes, yes, oh my God, oh my God, yes, oh fuck yes, yes, yes, yes!”—she looked up at me, batted her dreamy blue eyes under her bleached-blond hair, and giggled again. “Wow, yeah, I guess I do that, don’t I?” she said. “I have to watch my videos more.”

  I asked another Sin City contract girl about what had happened with Shay. “Um, I think that they didn’t pay her for a while,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you something, if you won’t quote me by name. You know what I was told when I signed? ‘Contracts are not for people who do not have any other source of income.’ They said they were thinking of signing me as long as I was not depending on them for the money. That was the first year that they signed me. Now, with the amount of money I’m making, I don’t have to dance. I just choose to. But the first year, that’s what they told me. They came right out, and were like, ‘We’re not going to support you.’”

  At about that juncture, I started to hear rumblings from other quarters. Some of the new Vivid girls were unhappy with their contracts. Cassidey, for instance, was incensed, claiming that her Vivid contract locked her into indentured servitude for three years. Vivid even owned her name, Cass
idey. (Methought she should’ve kept the use of her previous name, Paizley Adams, which I’d always liked better, but alas she’d signed her contract and thereby forfeited it.) Name ownership could be explained by the clause in her contract stating that “the Talent shall cooperate with the Company in connection with any licensing agreements entered by the Company to license, manufacture, and/or distribute adult novelty products or any other product using Talent’s name, image or likeness.” (In 2002, Cassidey, at age twenty-one, quit the industry; but she returned in March 2006—with a new Vivid contract!)

  But not all contract girls were unhappy. Many had signed the forms and accepted the trade-offs. Jessica Drake, for instance, renewed her contract with Sin City for nine more feature films and also scored a provision in the same deal to actively participate in designing her own sex toy line. This was officially announced in AVN, in August 2001, but she’d actually told me about it two months earlier, in June. She also told me the craziest thing she’d had to deal with was getting fan mail from prisoners. She lovingly dubbed them her “jail mail.”

  “It freaked me out and I threw it away,” she’d told me, about the first one. “It was the first inmate mail that I had gotten. I opened it up and it was a really, really graphic, explicit letter. I’m reading it and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this criminal is infatuated with me and he’s stalking me!’ At the end of the letter, he wrote: ‘I get out in two years, and I want to come see you!’ I didn’t think that was very cool.”

  She’d been in the business for two years when we first met, at the 2001 AVN Awards in Las Vegas. Bold as brass and typically Texan, she had moved to Los Angeles from El Paso and called herself a “sex therapist” who ministered to those in need. Getting attention from the incarcerated, however, raised the stakes.