Screwings: On-Screen and Off. When Porn Careers Clash

The all-time worst case of clashing porn careers has to be the tragic event that happened on the night of January 25, 1996.

From SKINFLICKS: The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry:

For Randy Potes–AKA Cal Jammer–that stud image was everything. “Cal obsessed about his erections,” wrote AVN’s Gene Ross. “…he told me that after 20 years of living a wastrel’s existence, sex was about the only thing he had left going for him.” Able to perform 16 scenes in four days, the dislexic Potes wasn’t hired for his dialogue readings. Then, plagued by marital problems and that bane of porn stars, the IRS, Potes began failing. He fell into the funk of impotence anxiety, worsened by watching his estranged, actress wife Adrian continue her career in porn. With the O.J Simpson murder case as “inspiration,. Potes set out on the night of January 25, 1995, to murder her. Adrian locked herself in her bathroom, heard a “pop,” and emerged to find Potes lying on her lawn amidst his splattered brains.

Tensions between off-screen lovers who both have porn careers rarely reach the horror-show level of the Cal Jammer suicide.  At worst, they enter the realm of absurdity. (Note: Passages from SKINFLICKS are in italics.)

Matt Daniels couldn’t function for a doggie-style scene in Spinelli’s The Party, even though it was with his off-screen girlfriend, Heather Lere.  After she cussed him out in front of cast and crew, according to witnesses, the agitated actor slapped her butt and proceeded to–in Lere’s term–“spring board.”
     Whatever gets the juices flowing.

Serena Blaquelord in SUBMISSION OF SERENA, a full-length version of the scene in BOUND

In my S and M video Bound, Jamie Gillis and Serena Blaquelord demonstrated their bizarre sex-style:

In a skit the couple had concocted themselves, he made her beg, lick his hands and feet, and crawl on hands and knees wearing a collar and chain. If she was slow to obey his commands, he’d strike her with his hand, a riding crop or a cat-o’-9-tails. It looked brutal, with Serena’s yelps and the cat landing in her face, but she said later, “Jamie’s never given me a bruise, ever.”

On the past Halloween, he’d tied her naked in a bay window of their Polk Street apartment, displayed to the crowd below. Even revelers as bizarre as San Francisco’s could only stare upward, open- mouthed. 

Serena and Jamie were strong performers and established stars. (Maybe that’s why they eventually went their separate ways.)  But what about when a porn star has a partner who also performs but is known to be a “weak model?”  That was the case when a beautiful woman I hired for a loop series insisted that she work with her boyfriend.

Buxom Desiree West, “the BlackPanther porn star (she really did belong to that radical political group),” had to suck her boyfriend Dashiell hard for every shot; he kept losing his erection. Better with punches than penis, he practiced Kung Fu during breaks.

Sucking Dashiell for the come shot, Desiree warned, “Better not let a drop of that shit land on my face.” (Maybe the implications in that warning were the reasons he practiced Kung Fu.)

“Take it on the tits, then.” I wanted to feature them anyway.
(Dashiell managed a “dribbler.”)

“He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she.”  –Florence King, Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye

Especially in the fast-paced porno business.

So, were there any porn performer partnerships that worked?

Samantha Fox in my video production, SIZZLE WITH SAMANTHA

Yes. Bobby Astyr and the delightful Samantha Fox were a couple  from 1978 until Astyr’s death of lung cancer in 2002.  Bill Margold and his wife Drea were together from 1982 until their divorce in 1984.

 … in an Adam interview (1982), Margold said that he and his porn director wife Drea left the business on the movie set “and then we go home. Just as if we were working in K-Mart or Dunkin’ Donuts…You can only live in a fantasy land just so long before it starts driving you crazy.”

Nina Hartley in my video E.X.

The best porn relationship I ever witnessed was that of Nina Hartley and her husband Dave, with whom she was mated for 20 years.  Their relationship was unusual in that Nina also had a wife.

Dave often accompanied her on shoots. He enjoyed watching Nina in action, and she enjoyed being watched by him. Their mutual “wife,” Bobby Lilly, heads the anti-censorship group, Californians Against Censorship Together (CAL-ACT).

Dave was not a performer, but I was glad to have him on the set when I cast Nina.  He was an able crew member whose upbeat energy was welcomed.

Barbara Dare in E.X. (when she was still known as Kimberly Dare)

That supreme super-bitch, Barbara Dare, didn’t let a boyfriend get in her way.  Of course, it helped that she was a lesbian.

To these ladies, the malady of boyfriendinitis is irrelevant. “I don’t need men…” Dare told an interviewer from the lesbian magazine On Our Backs, “I need women.” They trade tales among themselves about seducing both the boyfriends of straight ladies and the girlfriends of screen studs.

Next:  The Rape Films of Porn’s Golden Age

 

 

 

Getting It Up the Hard Way: Odd tricks for “getting wood”

A pornographer’s worst nightmare is the actor who can’t get erect.  The moviemaker must then  either shoot  the scene “sim (simulated)” and cut in hardcore close-ups from previous shoots or pay the flaccid actor a “kill fee (a small goodbye payment)” and hire a replacement.  At least the pornographer has options.  But the poor guy who can’t perform suffers a worse fate: no more work.  Men have suffered nervous breakdowns over penis limpus and at least one (Randy Potes—AKA Cal Jammer) has committed suicide.  To continue in a lucrative career, porn studs develop unique ways to get aroused.

(Note: Passages from SKINFLICKS are in italics)

Having a beautiful woman available may not work.  She was every surfer boy’s fantasy: blonde and petite, with breasts that stood out from her tan like scoops of ice cream fallen on smooth sand.  But Gayle Monica’s patient fellatio didn’t “fluff up” her porn-partner husband.  He wasn’t looking at her. (Too familiar?)  Instead he stared at Boobs ‘n Buns magazine. It didn’t help. Then, male star Mike Ranger strolled into the room, sat on the bed and began fondling Gayle.  Her startled husband suddenly became hard.  Lesson: The unexpected can work wonders.

On the same shoot was a guy whom Ranger derisively dubbed “Right Sider.” He had to lie on his right side and masturbate in order to function.  When ready, he’d scramble to get in a few pumps with his female co-star before he lost it, then he’d revert to his right side.

Willem Lowen, Cindy Carver, voyeur in Nixon Mask, from NIGHT MOVES

With big bucks dependent on male performance, the “reliables” hogged all the stud work. (My favorites: Jamie Gillis, Billy Dee, Willem Lowen, Joe Elliot.)  One of the best, the late John Leslie, insisted that his craft was a form of method acting—drawing upon emotions and memories to play a scene.  In one of the first loops I ever shot (in 1977), Leslie demonstrated his “method.”  Ignoring his female co-star, he’d close his eyes and stroke himself up.

A man whose performance depends upon the charms of his partner won’t have a long porn career.  The best men rely on fantasy imagery, ironically doing exactly as the fans who envy their access to porn queens: they’re masturbating.

Billy Dee and Juliet Anderson. PHYSICAL

 

Richard Pacheco learned this lesson during his porn debut, in Candy Stripers.  In an Erotic Film Guide article, he described going limp after seeing Nancy Hoffman grimace from 45 minutes of kneeling on concrete: “People were lying around sleeping, snoring, just plain waiting for me to get it up…Nancy even fell asleep on my thigh…I sat there masturbating myself and praying for the Russians to launch a surprise attack.”  Finally, Pacheco had an inspiration: “I closed my eyes and started all over…I was back on the couch of some rec room with the first girl who ever let me finger her.  I could hear the Kingston Trio on the record player.  There was life in that old memory yet.”  When Pacheco reached his climax, he “heard the cheering of millions.”

The late director Henri Pachard claimed that the best way to treat stud failure was through ridicule. “Point a finger at him and go, ‘Ha ha ha! Look at this wimp! Look at that shriveled little putz!  Guy thinks he’s a stud; he couldn’t get wood in a lumberyard.’
“You get the guy mad, get his blood pumping. Next thing you know it’s ‘wood city.’ Works every time.”

The Pachard theory reportedly worked when Matt Daniels failed during Anthony Spinelli’s The Party.  His screen partner—and real-life girlfriend, Heather Lere—cussed him out and according to witnesses, the agitated actor slapped her butt and proceeded to—in Lere’s term—“spring board.”

The most unusual hard-on aid I’ve ever witnessed was moi !  That’s right: yours truly.  I was working “boom.”  The job is physically taxing. You stand there with arms raised, holding one end of a boom, which is a long pole (“fishpole”) that has a microphone on the other end.  The mike is suspended over the scene, above the camera frame but still close enough to capture crisp dialogue. Holding the pole in position is damn tiring.  I was standing on a chair, near the ceiling, the hottest part of the room.  I was sweating, muscles straining. I had a weird feeling of being watched.  I glanced down and into the eyes of an actor (a known bi-sexual) who was furiously stroking himself. And staring hard at me!  I turned my gaze to the microphone, and froze in position, like a statue. (Literally a “statue of David,” but thankfully with pants.)  The actor was able to perform with his designated actress.

Glad I could help.