Speaker 1: Everyone thinks it's just a big orgy, but it's so technical.
Speaker 1: You have all these other people in the room. A
Speaker 1: three minute scene might take three days to film. Linda
Speaker 1: Wong performer.
Speaker 2: Coming from the adult industry. I had a lot of
Speaker 2: doors that wouldn't open for me. I would wait for
Speaker 2: the next one, but I try to go in through
Speaker 2: the side door, you know. Heather Hunter performer.
Speaker 3: Welcome to General World. Welcome back to General World. I'm
Speaker 3: your host, Molly Lambert. This is episode ten Beyond General World.
Speaker 3: Jenna Jamison feels like her success as a porn star
Speaker 3: is self directed. Sure, it takes a lot to stand
Speaker 3: out in a room of skinny, blonde white women with
Speaker 3: really big breaths, but Jenna also benefits from being a skinny,
Speaker 3: blond white woman in the first place, working in an
Speaker 3: industry controlled primarily by white men pushing eurocentric beauty standards.
Speaker 3: Anyone who doesn't fit into a very specific mold is
Speaker 3: treated as exotic or niche. But in both born and
Speaker 3: mainstream pop culture, there are performers and directors of color
Speaker 3: who want to change things from the ground up and
Speaker 3: create space in their industries for other people who look
Speaker 3: like them.
Speaker 4: You have to be an exhibitionist, to last long in
Speaker 4: this business. I am venessidelio performer.
Speaker 1: I'm betraying a It's just a character. My personal life
Speaker 1: is totally separate.
Speaker 3: Even early on in porn history's seventies golden age, there
Speaker 3: are performers who manage to break through porn's racist barriers.
Speaker 3: Linda Wong, the Japanese American actress we mentioned in episode three,
Speaker 3: is born Linda Carol Secchi, a virgo in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: Linda is a high school homecoming queen ballerina and college
Speaker 3: dance major who starts nude modeling and is asked to
Speaker 3: do adult films. She co stars with John C. Holmes
Speaker 3: in The Jade Pussycat, one of Bob Chan's Johnny wadd
Speaker 3: series of movies. She struggles with addiction and makes her
Speaker 3: last film, The Erotic World of Linda Wong in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, before dying of an accidental drug overdose in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven at a motel in Petaluma. The first
Speaker 3: major crossover star of color is a d's performer named
Speaker 3: Vanessa del Rio who becomes known as the Latin from Manhattan.
Speaker 3: She is born Anna Maria Sanchez. An Aires, the child
Speaker 3: of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants from Harlem. Raised as
Speaker 3: a strict Catholic, she starts to rebel after her mom
Speaker 3: takes her to see movies starring Isabelle Sarley, a former
Speaker 3: Miss Argentina who starred in a string of hit sexploitation
Speaker 3: movies like Fuego. Sarle is considered the Latin American equivalent
Speaker 3: of the French sex symbol Brigitte bardow Anna Maria Sanchez
Speaker 3: drops out of school in eighth grade, learns to code,
Speaker 3: and at age eighteen, becomes a computer programmer, then runs
Speaker 3: off with a boyfriend who steals cars to live in
Speaker 3: a series of hot Volkswagen Beetles. After tiring of bug life,
Speaker 3: she starts waitressing, go go dancing and bartending topless. She
Speaker 3: also works as a call girl and street walker. Then,
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy four, or she's offered one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty dollars to act in an adult film called Cherry Hustler.
Speaker 4: I just asked how much does it pay? She said
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty dollars, and that's exactly what I needed.
Speaker 4: That was my half of the rent. I guess it
Speaker 4: was meant to be.
Speaker 3: She takes her stage name from a friend named Vanessa
Speaker 3: and Dolores del Rio, the Mexican actress who became Hollywood's
Speaker 3: first Latina star. Vanessa del Rio stars in films like
Speaker 3: Dracula Exotica. She uses her new influx of cash to
Speaker 3: take herself on a dream vacation to Europe. Vanessa del
Speaker 3: Rio makes one hundred and twenty movies and appears in
Speaker 3: innumerable peep show loops before retiring from adult films in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six. She continues to dance and model, and
Speaker 3: appears in a nineteen ninety six episode of NYPD Blue.
Speaker 3: Vanessa del Rio has a second wave of notoriety from
Speaker 3: being name checked in songs by ice Cube Digital underg
Speaker 3: in Junior Mafia. She cameos in the music video for
Speaker 3: Junior Mafia's Get Money, and on set, Little Kim approaches
Speaker 3: her to say she's a fan. Vanessa deploys her coding
Speaker 3: skills to create a personal website for her Goddess of
Speaker 3: Lust fan club, where she sells memorabilia and does cam shows.
Speaker 3: There's also a tashi in art book about her.
Speaker 4: Listen you Can't unring a bell, I can't be a
Speaker 4: porn apologist. You can't undo the fun. I just considered
Speaker 4: my life an adventure. It's like I let the wind
Speaker 4: blow me wherever. Everything that you could consider exploitative, I
Speaker 4: found something to get out of it.
Speaker 3: Stars like Linda Wong and Vanessa del Rio are among
Speaker 3: the first to break the white blonde mold, but performers
Speaker 3: of color also have to contend with issues that white
Speaker 3: actors don't like being exoticized and racially fetishized. For these
Speaker 3: performers of color, working within the studio system often means
Speaker 3: agreeing to take racially stereotyped roles because that's all that's
Speaker 3: being offered to them. But in the eighties and early nineties,
Speaker 3: there are actors and directors on both sides of the hill,
Speaker 3: in both Hollywood and porn Valley, who are actively aiming
Speaker 3: to challenge and change the racist status quo by changing
Speaker 3: who is behind the camera, in front of it, and
Speaker 3: running the studios. In the nineteen eighties, Eddie Murphy is
Speaker 3: a world famous comedian and a list Hollywood star, wildly
Speaker 3: popular from his stand on Saturday Night Live and blockbuster
Speaker 3: movies like Beverly Hills Cop. Much like porn stand up
Speaker 3: involves doing something rehearsed and trying to make it appear spontaneous.
Speaker 3: Bruce Gowers is a Scotsman who directed the proto music
Speaker 3: video for Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Gowers helped pioneer the form
Speaker 3: that became music videos by filming promotional performance videos for
Speaker 3: legacy acts like The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart. Gower
Speaker 3: shot up to become one of the most sought after
Speaker 3: names in the burgeoning music video economy.
Speaker 5: It changed the way music was perceived. Everyone was doing
Speaker 5: videos and bands were seeing their sales and chop positions rise.
Speaker 6: Bruce Gowers director.
Speaker 3: Bruce Gowers moved to La where he directed the music
Speaker 3: video for Michael Jackson's Rock with You and several Prince videos,
Speaker 3: including nineteen ninety nine and Kiss. Eddie Murphy hand picks
Speaker 3: Bruce Gowers to direct his landmark stand up special Delirious,
Speaker 3: which shares its title with a Prince song. In nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, Eddie Murphy hosts the MTV Video Music Awards
Speaker 3: and goes off script, ad libing and cursing in defiance
Speaker 3: of MTV censorship rules. The Los Angeles Times runs letters
Speaker 3: of Complaint.
Speaker 7: I was watching the MTB Video Music Awards on Channel
Speaker 7: eleven and was appalled by the number of times Eddie
Speaker 7: Murphy used profanity and was bleeped. My ten year old
Speaker 7: daughter was watching, and even though Murphy was censored, she
Speaker 7: could figure out what he said. If a show was
Speaker 7: going to be aired at eight PM, it should be
Speaker 7: clean enough for the whole family to see it. Susan
Speaker 7: Wattling Chino.
Speaker 3: In the eighties, Prince has also become famous and controversial
Speaker 3: for his envelope pushing lyrics and raw overt sexuality. Eddie
Speaker 3: Murphy and Prince are both part of what pearl clutters
Speaker 3: like Susan Wattling from Chino see as a new raunch culture. Really,
Speaker 3: it's that Eddie Murphy and Prince's huge celebrity as black
Speaker 3: men threatens the racist American pop cultural status quo. So
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty three, a backlash starts. It begins when
Speaker 3: Rick Alley, a thirty year old junior executive at a
Speaker 3: Cincinnati tool company, buys the Prince album nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 3: from a record store and brings it home to play
Speaker 3: for his family on the living room stereo. Rick ally
Speaker 3: buys the album because he loves little red Corvette, which
Speaker 3: he thinks is about a car that is small and
Speaker 3: red and not about Quissy.
Speaker 8: The whole one side of the album had what you'd
Speaker 8: call top forty hits. We didn't get to the four
Speaker 8: letter words until I turned it over, Rick Alley concerned
Speaker 8: father Cincinnati.
Speaker 3: When rick Ally flips the LP over to Let's Pretend
Speaker 3: We're married, he is shocked by the content and tries
Speaker 3: to run his eight year old son an eleven year
Speaker 3: old daughter into another room while his wife, Mitzy freaks out.
Speaker 3: But it's too late. His kids have heard Prince's ode
Speaker 3: to matrimony. Rick Ally runs to look at the record
Speaker 3: to see if the obscene words coming out of his
Speaker 3: stereo system are listed on a lyric sheet, only to
Speaker 3: find that there is no lyric sheet provided with the album,
Speaker 3: and so rick Alley begins a personal crusade against what
Speaker 3: gets termed porn rock that starts with a demand that
Speaker 3: record stores warn you if the album you are buying
Speaker 3: contains profane lyrics.
Speaker 8: I think Prince is a fantastic artist. I bought Purple
Speaker 8: Rain too. He's an incredible musician, and my wife and
Speaker 8: I are big fans, so you can't say this is
Speaker 8: a vendetta.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty four, a group called the National Parent
Speaker 3: Teachers Association takes up rick Alley's cause with a conservative
Speaker 3: lobbyist group called Parents Music Resource Center, a coalition of
Speaker 3: women married to influential politicians funded by ghouls like Mike
Speaker 3: Love from The Beach Boys. The PTA and the PMRC
Speaker 3: go after the National Association of Broadcasters and threaten to
Speaker 3: get their radio licenses revoked if they play songs with
Speaker 3: explicit lyrics or indecent thememes. They demand records come out
Speaker 3: with ratings and warning labels for sex, drugs, violence, and
Speaker 3: the occult. Good Housekeeping magazines suggests parents write angry letters
Speaker 3: and boycott record companies. An anti censorship group forms called
Speaker 3: the Musical Majority, whose members include Martin Scorsese.
Speaker 8: Hall and Oats.
Speaker 3: The Musical Majority says ratings and warning labels are okay
Speaker 3: as long as obscene content itself isn't being suppressed. The
Speaker 3: controversy just sells even more prints records. The record companies
Speaker 3: agree to do the parental advisory stickers, which they have
Speaker 3: already been putting on explicit comedy albums like Eddie Murphy's Delirious.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty nine. The stand up comedy landscape has
Speaker 3: become rife with comedians whose gimmick is that they are
Speaker 3: raunchy in court controversy, usually by doing sexist, racist, and
Speaker 3: homophobic material. Eddie Murphy resents that he gets so much
Speaker 3: public flack for working blue, while white comedians who do
Speaker 3: much dirtier material and are less funny than Eddie Murphy
Speaker 3: seem to.
Speaker 6: Skate hickory dickery dock.
Speaker 9: Some chick's been sucking my cock clock Struck two. I
Speaker 9: dropped my goo, dumped the bitch down the next block. Oh,
Speaker 9: Andrew Dice Clay comedian.
Speaker 10: Now when I did Delirious, I got all this flag
Speaker 10: from my material being so filthy. The truth is it's
Speaker 10: nowhere nearest fieldy is some of the stuff they're doing. Now,
Speaker 10: I'll feeling like a fucking oh guy watching Sam Kinnison
Speaker 10: or Andrew Dace Clay Eddie Murphy comedian.
Speaker 3: By the late eighties, Eddie Murphy has become one of
Speaker 3: the most powerful people in the film industry after starring
Speaker 3: in a string of blockbuster heads. While Hollywood power brokers
Speaker 3: are still extremely openly racist behind the scenes, they'll make
Speaker 3: an occasional exception for a star like Murphy if they
Speaker 3: sense there's money to be made. In an interview with
Speaker 3: Jet magazine, director Spike Lee criticizes Eddie Murphy for not
Speaker 3: using his power to help other, less powerful black film
Speaker 3: workers break into a racist industry that runs on a
Speaker 3: closed circuit of gatekeeping and private golf course networking.
Speaker 11: If Eddie Murphy, who made a billion dollars for Paramount,
Speaker 11: went into their offices and said, I ain't making no
Speaker 11: more films until you hire some black people in your
Speaker 11: front office, they would have to do it. I hope
Speaker 11: he'll use his clout rather than focus on who gets
Speaker 11: the best table at Spago's Spike Lee.
Speaker 3: Director Eddie Murphy directly responds to Spike Lee's comments in
Speaker 3: a Rolling Stone interview, saying that Spike Lee is overestimating
Speaker 3: how much power Murphy actually has with the big movie studios.
Speaker 10: The company is called Paramount, not Eddie Murphy Productions. I
Speaker 10: can't walk into the studios front offices and demand, shit,
Speaker 10: how's some black people here.
Speaker 3: Murphy also gets critiqued by actor director Robert Townsend, whose
Speaker 3: movie Hollywood Shuffle is about reductive screen caricatures of blackness
Speaker 3: at Hollywood studios. The success of an Eddie Murphy is
Speaker 3: seen as an exceptional outlier, not a sign that a
Speaker 3: larger breadth of voices makes for better art. After initially
Speaker 3: getting defensive, Murphy processes the feedback from his black peers
Speaker 3: in the entertainment industry. He hires Robert Townsend to direct
Speaker 3: his second stand up special, nineteen eighty seven's Raw. Eddie
Speaker 3: Murphy knows the film industry is racist and that studio
Speaker 3: executives still don't care about fostering diversity, only about using
Speaker 3: him to make more money. He is also a where
Speaker 3: that Hollywood's old white establishment wants to make him a
Speaker 3: token to pretend that the film industry is more progressive
Speaker 3: than it is Presenting. At the nineteen eighty eight Oscars,
Speaker 3: Eddie Murphy again goes off script.
Speaker 10: They came to me and said they wanted me to
Speaker 10: present the award for Best Picture. My manager came and
Speaker 10: told me that the Academy had picked me. My first
Speaker 10: reaction was to say, no, I ain't going. My manager said,
Speaker 10: but why. I said, I'm not going because they haven't
Speaker 10: recognized black people in their motion pictures. He said, what
Speaker 10: are you talking about black people? Win Oscars? I said, well,
Speaker 10: black actors and actresses have won Oscars throughout sixty years,
Speaker 10: but I'll probably never win an Oscar from saying this,
Speaker 10: but hey, what the heck, I gotta say it. Actually,
Speaker 10: I might not be in any trouble because the way
Speaker 10: it's going, it's about every twenty years we get one,
Speaker 10: so we ain't due till about two thousand and four,
Speaker 10: so by the time this all blows over. I said
Speaker 10: I wasn't going, but my manager said, you have to go.
Speaker 10: You can't sub the academy. So I came down here
Speaker 10: to give the award. But I just feel we have
Speaker 10: to recognize as the people. I just want you to
Speaker 10: know that I'm gonna give this award, but black people
Speaker 10: will not ride the caboose of society and we will
Speaker 10: not bring up the rear anymore, and I want you
Speaker 10: to recognize it.
Speaker 3: Murphy expects his speech to spark a big conversation about
Speaker 3: race and representation on screen. He is surprised to see
Speaker 3: nobody mentioning it in the news or the trades the
Speaker 3: next day, almost as if to pretend it didn't happen.
Speaker 3: There are rumors that Oscars brass are very pissed about
Speaker 3: Eddie going off script to critique the Academy, and that
Speaker 3: in doing so he has detonated his own chances of
Speaker 3: ever winning an Academy award. Rather than responding to the
Speaker 3: truth and his criticism with a big show of action,
Speaker 3: they choose to punish him for public criticizing the Academy.
Speaker 3: The Academy proves his point approximately twenty years later when
Speaker 3: they nominate Murphy for Best Supporting Actor for his role
Speaker 3: in Dream Girls and then have him lose the award
Speaker 3: to Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: Spike Lee's third feature, Do the Right Thing, comes out
Speaker 3: and hits really big at the box office, both critically
Speaker 3: and commercially. The success of Do the Right Thing helps
Speaker 3: kick off a new era of filmmaking known as Black
Speaker 3: New Wave or Black New Hollywood. Do the Right Thing
Speaker 3: makes almost forty million dollars on a six million dollar budget,
Speaker 3: and as always, it's visions of potential profits that finally
Speaker 3: motivate some producers to bankroll a handful of young black
Speaker 3: filmmakers after studios are forced to see that there is
Speaker 3: a large underserved audience for films about the black experience
Speaker 3: in America that are made by black filmmakers. In October
Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety, Spike Lee and Eddie Murphy make peace
Speaker 3: publicly in a Spin magazine cover story conversation where they
Speaker 3: clear the air, reminisced about growing up in New York
Speaker 3: and connect over both sponsoring the United Artists Against Apartheid
Speaker 3: benefit for Nelson Mandela or Nelson Mandela told Eddie Murphy
Speaker 3: his comedy made him laugh while he was stuck in prison.
Speaker 3: They also discussed Hollywood's double standards for black creatives versus
Speaker 3: white ones, which Murphy experienced firsthand when his nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: nine directorial debut Harlem Knights flopped and he suddenly saw
Speaker 3: himself being labeled in the trades as washed up and
Speaker 3: box office poison.
Speaker 11: The way I see it, they only want one black
Speaker 11: person at the top anyway, And even though you've made
Speaker 11: two billion dollars for Pair Amount and Hollywood, I still
Speaker 11: think they'd rather have somebody white in that position. And
Speaker 11: anytime there's a white boy that comes around that might
Speaker 11: take the title from you, like Tom Cruise or whoever,
Speaker 11: it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it from Eddie.
Speaker 6: You know what?
Speaker 10: I felt like that when I did come into America,
Speaker 10: because it felt like that was a really good movie
Speaker 10: and it got really really bad criticism. It was like, well,
Speaker 10: what the fuck do they want me to do?
Speaker 12: You know?
Speaker 10: But this movie, I think it was an okay movie.
Speaker 10: I mean, we got some bare views and we got
Speaker 10: some really good ones. But I'd expect to be like either.
Speaker 11: Or how come we never just talk to each other.
Speaker 10: What they like to do is to separate. You're the
Speaker 10: biggest black director in the world. Okay, I'm the biggest
Speaker 10: black movie star in the world. That's a dangerous combination
Speaker 10: to have us hook up because the people who have
Speaker 10: control don't have control.
Speaker 3: Then Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee commiserate about the huge
Speaker 3: pressure on both of them to fix the entertainment industries
Speaker 3: racism problems. And while they're talking about Hollywood, the same
Speaker 3: thing is happening on the other side of the hill
Speaker 3: and the other entertainment and just in the valley. In
Speaker 3: the late eighties and early nineties, porn studios are dealing
Speaker 3: with the same issues as mainstream filmmakers when it comes
Speaker 3: to representation and inclusion. Despite Asian American author Bob Chen
Speaker 3: being porn's first big director. As the business becomes ultra profitable.
Speaker 3: It's primarily white men behind the camera, and they tend
Speaker 3: to fetishize other races in their films. The earliest porn
Speaker 3: movies from the seventies are integrated. It's only later in
Speaker 3: the video age that performers of color are really siloed
Speaker 3: off into a separate niche of adult movies centered around
Speaker 3: racial fetishism and racist stereotypes. There is always acting work
Speaker 3: for performers of color, but mainly within this framework. But
Speaker 3: some people are always working hard to broaden what pornography
Speaker 3: looks like and make the industry more inclusive and better
Speaker 3: for participants. One of these people is a tall, handsome,
Speaker 3: life black performer who takes the stage name Shawn Michaels.
Speaker 3: When Jenna World returns, we meet the James Bond of
Speaker 3: Horn Shawn Michaels. Oh my God, Welcome back to Jenna World.
Speaker 3: Shawn Michaels is born Andre Allen in Brooklyn in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty eight, up Ices. He attends Boys and Girls High
Speaker 3: School in Bedstye. Because of his striking good looks and
Speaker 3: six foot three height, he gets scouted into modeling. He
Speaker 3: moves to la in the late eighties and works as
Speaker 3: a nurse in Woodland Hills. He gets back into modeling,
Speaker 3: this time without his clothes on. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 3: at age twenty seven, he decides to get into porn
Speaker 3: as a performer. He combines the names of two famous
Speaker 3: men epitomizing luxury and masculinity, Sean Connery and Michael Jordan,
Speaker 3: to form his stage name, Shawn Michaels.
Speaker 13: Sean Connery is a man's man on and off camera,
Speaker 13: Shawn Michaels performer.
Speaker 3: When Shawn Michaels enters the industry in the mid eighties,
Speaker 3: films with black performers having sex are treated as a
Speaker 3: niche genre. Money flows predominantly to white run companies and
Speaker 3: white performers. White men were still considered the most important
Speaker 3: consumers for the porn business to court because American porn
Speaker 3: is so racist. Shawn Michaels does his earliest work in Germany,
Speaker 3: where is likely racist in a different European way. Shawn
Speaker 3: Michaels has an ambitious plan to make high budget, glossy
Speaker 3: porn for a black audience that reflects his own tastes.
Speaker 3: Shawn Michaels wants to portray himself a suave, rich, and
Speaker 3: seductive like James Bond, talking women out of their clothes
Speaker 3: with his smooth charisma. In nineteen ninety, he appears in
Speaker 3: Oh What a Night, where he's the lone black performer.
Speaker 3: His sex scene is with Sherry Taylor, a wife and
Speaker 3: mother who entered a wet t shirt contest in her
Speaker 3: thirties and discovered she was an exhibitionist. Oh What a
Speaker 3: Night is directed by John Leslie ak John Nuzzo, an
Speaker 3: Italian American stud turned director from Ohio. John Leslie, a
Speaker 3: five foot eleven Steelers fan in Aquarius, worked at a
Speaker 3: steel mill, then moved to New York for art school
Speaker 3: and to play harmonica in a band called the Brooklyn Bluesbusters.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen seventies, he moves to Mill Valley, California,
Speaker 3: and gets into porn via the Mitchell Brothers. When John
Speaker 3: Holmes is sidelined by the Wonderland Murders, thirty year old
Speaker 3: John Leslie takes over his spot. Leslie is known for
Speaker 3: three watercolor paintings, playing blues harmonica, and directing the hell
Speaker 3: out of some sex scenes.
Speaker 5: John was one of the very very very few who
Speaker 5: I looked up to as having something to teach me.
Speaker 5: He was the best pornographer, best eerotic filmmaker. He was
Speaker 5: just an artist in many ways, from his painting to
Speaker 5: his cooking to his filmmaking. Paul Thomas director.
Speaker 3: Leslie is one of the first performers to move into directing.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty seven, he directs night shift nurses, and
Speaker 3: by nineteen eighty eight he's directing full time. He is
Speaker 3: fresh off a spate of AVN wins when he makes
Speaker 3: Oh What a Night for BCA with cub performer turned
Speaker 3: aspiring director Shawn Michaels.
Speaker 13: I was nervous. I knew my lines and everything, but
Speaker 13: I was just nervous about working with John Leslie, And
Speaker 13: of course I had a crush on Sherry Taylor, so
Speaker 13: I was totally intimidated. But put me at ease, as
Speaker 13: did Joey, and I was able to pull it off.
Speaker 13: That was basically the beginning of my career as a
Speaker 13: serious individual in the adult industry. That was my introduction
Speaker 13: to an actor becoming a director producer.
Speaker 3: Oh What a Night shoots on location in Bodega Bay, California,
Speaker 3: where Alfred Hitchcock made The Birds. Sean Michael scene gets
Speaker 3: him noticed by the big porn studios. For his on
Speaker 3: screen presence and physical prowess. He earns a sterling professional
Speaker 3: reputation and becomes known as the gentleman pornographer.
Speaker 13: John Leslie was the first person to give me a
Speaker 13: male performer in the adult industry who just happens to
Speaker 13: be black, an opportunity to do more than just be
Speaker 13: known for being a black dick in movies, and which
Speaker 13: also gave me the opportunity to see that the industry
Speaker 13: did offer more than a lot of racially demeaning types
Speaker 13: of roles towards not only African Americans, but all nationalities
Speaker 13: that are in the adult industry.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety one, Shawn Michaels gets his chance to
Speaker 3: direct his debut is Girls in the Hood, a takeoff
Speaker 3: on John Singleton's nineteen ninety one hit debut Boys in
Speaker 3: the Hood, for which twenty four year old Singleton became
Speaker 3: the first black director ever nominated for the Best Director Oscar,
Speaker 3: as well as the youngest ever nominee. Shawn Michael's career
Speaker 3: blossoms in tandem with nineties black New Hollywood, led by
Speaker 3: directors like Singleton, Mario Van Peebles, and the Hughes Brothers.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety two, Shawn Michaels directs a movie called
Speaker 3: black Jack City, titled after Van Peebles nineteen ninety one
Speaker 3: New Jack City. In nineteen ninety five, Shawn Michaels gets
Speaker 3: inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: he founds his own production company, Shawn Michaels Productions International.
Speaker 3: He hires his sister Sandy to run sales and marketing.
Speaker 3: Shawn Michael's films are diverse, which is not to say unproblematic.
Speaker 3: They have fetishistic language and themes, but for porn this
Speaker 3: is still major progress. He helps expand and humanize the
Speaker 3: portrayal of black men in porn. Michael stars in films
Speaker 3: like a porn remake of Othello and directs titles like
Speaker 3: Up Your Ass eight. He has big dreams for his imprint,
Speaker 3: envisioning a sex comedy porn series inspired by James Bond
Speaker 3: and Austin Powers called Sean Bond, which comes to pass
Speaker 3: with titles like License to Drill and Cold.
Speaker 13: Finger International Intrigue. Whatever it'll be, goofy, It'll have things
Speaker 13: that we can have fun with sexually. That's what I'm
Speaker 13: leaning towards sexual comedy.
Speaker 3: Michaels and another black performer named Ron high Tower work
Speaker 3: on the white side of the porn industry while calling
Speaker 3: out its continued racism. When high Tower retired from performing
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety six, he starts directing music videos for
Speaker 3: rap groups like Gangstar and Above the Law. He directs
Speaker 3: the music video for Tupac featuring Casey and JoJo's how
Speaker 3: Do You Want It, which features black porn stars like
Speaker 3: Angel Kelly, Jeanie Pepper, and Heather Hunter.
Speaker 2: I work hard, and I planned to go all the
Speaker 2: way to the top.
Speaker 3: Before Jenna Jamison. One of the porn stars who becomes
Speaker 3: most successful at crossing over into mainstream culture is Heather Hunter,
Speaker 3: a five foot three libra dynamo from New York.
Speaker 2: When I started in the business, I was being billed
Speaker 2: as black an Italian. I had to hurry up and
Speaker 2: nip that in the butt and let people know I
Speaker 2: was proud to be African American. And then there were
Speaker 2: the titles of the movies. My manager and I didn't
Speaker 2: really want to do any stereotypical titles like Chocolate Swirl.
Speaker 2: The porn companies did not get contracts to black girls
Speaker 2: back then, and I just felt, well, why can't the
Speaker 2: African Americans do that.
Speaker 3: Heather Keisha Hunter real name, is born to a funeral
Speaker 3: salesman and his wife in the South Bronx in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine. One of four kids. Her parents divorced when
Speaker 3: she's very young, and the family moves around New York
Speaker 3: to Bedside, Harlem and Fort Green. As a teenager, Heather
Speaker 3: is a New Addition fan who paints portraits of her family.
Speaker 3: She runs away at age sixteen and supports herself through
Speaker 3: odd jobs. She takes up with a graffiti crew and
Speaker 3: uses the tag Miss forty five after the Able Ferrara film,
Speaker 3: but gives it up after getting a paid citation. As punishment,
Speaker 3: She's enrolled in a youth art workshop to channel her
Speaker 3: instincts into other forms of art making. Her teacher is
Speaker 3: the artist Keith Herring. Heather works as a clerk and
Speaker 3: then a go go dancer at the Latin Quarter Nightclub,
Speaker 3: which opened in the forties as a jazz club, turned
Speaker 3: into a seventies disco, became a house music venue, and
Speaker 3: is now currently a reggaeton club. Hunter answers an ad
Speaker 3: in the Village Voice looking for exotic dancers. From stripping,
Speaker 3: she gets recruited into nude pictorials for Swank mag Her
Speaker 3: co worker at Latin Quarter is a porn star named
Speaker 3: Hyapatia Lee, who suggests Hunter could make good money in porn.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty eight, she makes her first adult film
Speaker 3: at the age of nineteen, titled Heather Hunter on Fire.
Speaker 3: In New York, she shoots titles like Coming on America
Speaker 3: and Screw the Right Thing. In nineteen ninety, Heather moves
Speaker 3: out to Porn Valley and gets a job dancing on
Speaker 3: Soul Train until nineteen ninety two, when they find out
Speaker 3: she's an adult actress and fire her. In La she
Speaker 3: fulfills one of her main goals, becoming a contract girl.
Speaker 2: When I got signed to Vivid in nineteen ninety, I
Speaker 2: became the first black female to be under contract.
Speaker 3: Her Vivid debut, Heather Hunted, is directed by Judy Blue,
Speaker 3: and detective work on the Internet Adult Film Database reveals
Speaker 3: that Judy Blue is a pseudonym used by Paul Thomas.
Speaker 3: The first porn star to crossover into music is Andrea True,
Speaker 3: a performer who has a nineteen seventy six hit with
Speaker 3: More and More and More during the double Golden Age
Speaker 3: of porn and disco. Andrea Trudan's parents were Slovenian immigrants
Speaker 3: in the Nashville polka scene. More and More and More
Speaker 3: is a fluke hit, and True's music career stalls out
Speaker 3: by her third album, a nineteen eighty anti war new
Speaker 3: wave rock album called War Machine, and she moves to
Speaker 3: Upstate New York to practice astrology and work as a
Speaker 3: drug counselor so By the nineties, the path to crossover
Speaker 3: between porn into music is pretty well established. In nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three, Heather Hung Hunter signs an Island Records contract
Speaker 3: and puts out a piano house single called I Want
Speaker 3: It All Night Long. As a vivid girl living in LA,
Speaker 3: she's romanced by La playboys like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Charlie Sheen,
Speaker 3: and Bill Maherr. She signs a new record contract with
Speaker 3: Tommy Boy. While her music career doesn't take off instantly
Speaker 3: like her porn stardom did, Heather Hunter is so famous
Speaker 3: for porn she gets name checked in rap lyrics on
Speaker 3: Lil Kim's debut album Hardcore. In nineteen ninety five, Asia
Speaker 3: Carrera becomes the first Asian American Actress to win Best
Speaker 3: Performer of the Year at the Avian Awards. In nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, she builds her own personal website, and in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight, Asia Carrera appears in The Big Lebowski
Speaker 3: in the Logjam in porn within the movie. In nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight, Heather Hunter starts hosting a music video show
Speaker 3: for BET called The Peep Show that shows uncensored music
Speaker 3: videos to show that Arizon pay per view, where she
Speaker 3: interviews rappers known for their sexual content like Achan Yele,
Speaker 3: Have Put It in Your Mouth Fame and Uncle Luke
Speaker 3: Campbell of two Live Crew. In nineteen ninety nine, Heather
Speaker 3: Hunter retires from performing in adult films and vows to
Speaker 3: crack the mainstream.
Speaker 14: Those old stereotypes about the adult business have been chipped away.
Speaker 14: It's not so disgusting anymore. Midori performer.
Speaker 3: By the two thousands, major strides are being made for
Speaker 3: diversity and porn. Heather Hunter is featured on Cool Keith's
Speaker 3: album spank Master. In two thousand and one, a black
Speaker 3: performer named Medori becomes the first black woman to win
Speaker 3: any Adult Video News award for Best Supporting Actress.
Speaker 14: You have the playboy blonde who is sexy in every
Speaker 14: man's dream, and as an African American woman, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 14: where's a sex symbol that looks like me? And there
Speaker 14: were very, if not any that made me a little headstrong,
Speaker 14: and I tried to figure out why, and the further
Speaker 14: I looked into it, I thought, I want to change
Speaker 14: this because this isn't right.
Speaker 3: Midori's birth name is Michelle Wattley. She is the sister
Speaker 3: of singer Jody Wattley. Born in Durham, North Carolina. Their
Speaker 3: father is a traveling minister who takes them on the
Speaker 3: road as he holds revival meetings. The family moves to
Speaker 3: Kansas City, Missouri, and then Chicago. Her parents split when
Speaker 3: she's twelve, and their mom moves Michelle and her sister
Speaker 3: out to California.
Speaker 6: I moved to California.
Speaker 14: It was junior high school and I was in seventh
Speaker 14: grade and the girls have boyfriends. They were kissing, and
Speaker 14: I was just mortified. I had never seen, you know,
Speaker 14: that sort of thing before. It was just different. I
Speaker 14: still have my Midwestern ways about myself.
Speaker 3: Michelle Wattley studies dance at a French ballet Academy and
Speaker 3: Theater in England. She works as a backup singer of
Speaker 3: Vidalsas hair model and a commercial actress, she is scouted
Speaker 3: into modeling, but her five foot seven height keeps her
Speaker 3: off high fashion runways. As Michelle Wattley, she plays one
Speaker 3: of the naked female attendants in the bathtub scene in
Speaker 3: Eddie Murphy's Coming to America. She decides to become an
Speaker 3: exotic dancer and takes the stage name Midori, after the
Speaker 3: Japanese melon liqueur Midori. The liqueur was originally named Erme's
Speaker 3: Melon Liqueur by its manufacturer, Suntri, and it was renamed
Speaker 3: Madori for US audiences unfamiliar with the green melon flavor
Speaker 3: popular in Japan, and launched two American audiences in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight at a party for the cast and crew
Speaker 3: of Saturday Night Fever. Midori means green in Japanese, and
Speaker 3: the Midori sour has the same sweet and sour taste
Speaker 3: as American green apple candy.
Speaker 14: I got into the adult business for several reasons. One
Speaker 14: of them was to create some controversy. It also appealed
Speaker 14: to me because there was a lack of African American
Speaker 14: women who were major porn stars, and I thought I
Speaker 14: could take my music, my dancing and everything and be
Speaker 14: an overall entertainer. I've always done music and that was
Speaker 14: something I never gave up on, but this was a
Speaker 14: big gamble.
Speaker 6: Luckily it worked.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, Michelle Madori Wattley decides she wants
Speaker 3: to fix the representation of black women in porn by
Speaker 3: entering the adult industry herself. Her sister, Jody Wattley has
Speaker 3: already become a world famous singer. Jody Wattley was a
Speaker 3: dancer on Soul Train who was hand picked by show
Speaker 3: producer Don Cornelius to join his prefab R and B
Speaker 3: group Shalamar. Her nineteen eighty seven self titled album for
Speaker 3: MCA made Jody Wattley a star and style icon. She
Speaker 3: won the semi cursed Best New Artist Grammy in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight. Like her sister Michelle, Jody Wattley hungers for
Speaker 3: more images of black glamour and high fashion mixed with
Speaker 3: street style, so she creates the wearing designers like Isse
Speaker 3: Miaki and John Paul Gattier with her signature accessory, Big
Speaker 3: Hoop Earrings.
Speaker 14: When I first got in The reason I wanted to
Speaker 14: go full force in the adult market is because I
Speaker 14: thought there was a lack of African American people, women,
Speaker 14: especially being promoted in the same way as my blonde counterparts.
Speaker 6: It baffled my mind and it pissed me off.
Speaker 14: So I did everything I could to make it where
Speaker 14: a black woman was able to be on the same level,
Speaker 14: so to speak, within this business.
Speaker 3: Jody Wattley's late eighties influence on culture is so wide
Speaker 3: ranging that the catchphrase Hasta la vista baby from her
Speaker 3: hit Looking for a New Love is then adopted by
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenager in the nineteen ninety two movie Terminator to
Speaker 3: Judgment Day. Jody Wattley is inspired by icons like Diana
Speaker 3: Ross and Grace Jones, and her public image of a beautiful, cool,
Speaker 3: sophisticated black woman who mixes streetwear and catore inspires artists
Speaker 3: like TLC and Selena. Her follow up albums are more
Speaker 3: straight R and B, and she never surpasses the success
Speaker 3: of her first album sales, but the Wattley name means
Speaker 3: something to audiences.
Speaker 14: I'm not saying my family's thrilled about what I'm doing,
Speaker 14: but they love me and support me.
Speaker 6: My sister and I have come to an understanding.
Speaker 14: We share the same last name and the same parents,
Speaker 14: but we have different laves.
Speaker 1: Jody is no comment about the situation, no comment whatsoever,
Speaker 1: Tom SD Jody Wattley spokesman.
Speaker 3: Medori tries to appear only in scenes she doesn't personally
Speaker 3: feel our racist. At first, she is only doing mainstream
Speaker 3: porn with white male performers, which she rationalizes to herself
Speaker 3: by saying that those are the scenes that win adult
Speaker 3: awards and get mainstream media attention. Medory brands herself as
Speaker 3: the black Barbie Doll in emulation of the popularity of
Speaker 3: rapper Lil Kim, whose art for her album Hardcore directly
Speaker 3: references the esthetics of hardcore porn.
Speaker 14: Society is a little more open now and people are
Speaker 14: more ready for what's going on. With artists like Lil
Speaker 14: Kim being so straightforward with her lyrical content, that's open
Speaker 14: a door for someone like me.
Speaker 3: But she adds that unlike Little Kim and other rappers,
Speaker 3: MADRORI does the stuff that Little Kim raps about, and
Speaker 3: she does it on camera.
Speaker 14: As a performer, Medoria is who I am, whether I'm singing, rapping,
Speaker 14: or in front of the camera. Who are you gonna believe?
Speaker 14: Between me, Foxy Brown and Little Kim, I'm the real deal.
Speaker 14: People use the media to their best advantage.
Speaker 3: Within the year, Midori starts to realize the racist limitations
Speaker 3: of the white focused mainstream porn industry and starts making
Speaker 3: porn with black directors and performers.
Speaker 6: I didn't want to have black guys thinking I didn't
Speaker 6: do them too.
Speaker 3: In nineteen nine twenty seven, Spike Lee offers Medoria a
Speaker 3: role in He Got Game as a prostitute, which she
Speaker 3: turns down because she doesn't want to play a sex worker.
Speaker 3: She starts directing porn herself and joins the free speech
Speaker 3: coalition of pro adult activists.
Speaker 14: I can cut myself off emotionally when I'm working, but
Speaker 14: when I'm home.
Speaker 6: I need that.
Speaker 14: It's made my personal relationships more intense because I look
Speaker 14: for more than the physical aspects of sex. I'm proud
Speaker 14: of the choices I've made.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety nine, Medoria is featured on a compilation
Speaker 3: of music by porn stars called Porn to Rock. The
Speaker 3: producer of Porn to Rock echoes other adult industry figures
Speaker 3: in saying that porn is actually one of the nicer
Speaker 3: tears of the entertainment industry, especially compared to music.
Speaker 15: It's certainly less scummy than the music industry. The people
Speaker 15: are more honest, the friendlier. It's, you know, more of
Speaker 15: a family. Maybe it's because they're all sleeping again, I
Speaker 15: don't know, Well, who's to say that in the music
Speaker 15: industry then not, I'll sleeping together too, DA's caller executive
Speaker 15: producer will pawn to Rock.
Speaker 6: It's the right time.
Speaker 14: I knew it was going to happen because with music
Speaker 14: videos and the girls damn Near naked, and the lyrics
Speaker 14: and the billboards and ads and Calvin kleinb everything was
Speaker 14: gearing towards sex.
Speaker 3: That same year, Midori has a three month relationship with
Speaker 3: Kid Rock, who says that she gets just as much
Speaker 3: attention from fans on the street as he does.
Speaker 14: It's so funny to watch him, you know.
Speaker 16: People see me and they run up they're like, oh,
Speaker 16: I got your record and.
Speaker 13: I love it.
Speaker 3: Then people see her and they're like are.
Speaker 13: You do you And she'll be like, yeah, that's me
Speaker 13: and they'll be like I thought so.
Speaker 16: And they'll never really come out with like, oh.
Speaker 12: Didn't I see you with a dick in your ass
Speaker 12: on TV Kid Rock.
Speaker 3: It's because they have respect for her work, just like yours.
Speaker 3: Kid Rock. Vadi signs a record contract with a small
Speaker 3: label in Seattle, and in two thousand, she appears on
Speaker 3: the cover of the Andrew Dice Clay album Face Down,
Speaker 3: Ass Up.
Speaker 14: I wanted to create some controversy to catapult my music,
Speaker 14: you know, like Madonna did.
Speaker 3: When Jenna World returns, abn holds a roundtable about racism
Speaker 3: in the industry. Oh my God, welcome back to jenal World.
Speaker 3: By the late nineties, the porn industry has become more
Speaker 3: diverse due to strides made by performers like Shawn Michaels,
Speaker 3: Heather Hunter, and Midori. They saw a gap in the
Speaker 3: market and catered to an audience that had been underserved
Speaker 3: for decades. But while these black performers led the way
Speaker 3: from onscreen representation, once they'd established that there was a
Speaker 3: large financial market, many of those same black creators were
Speaker 3: prevented from cashing in on it. Here's Jake Steed A
Speaker 3: Virgo talking with Madori for av And magazine in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine during a roundtable they conducted with black performers
Speaker 3: and directors.
Speaker 17: Years ago, there were a couple of big directors, guys
Speaker 17: that have probably been in the cover of ABN who said,
Speaker 17: nobody wants to see that shit. Nobody wants to see
Speaker 17: black Girls. It just won't sell. Now, we had something
Speaker 17: called Black Dirty Debutante, and almost every black man in
Speaker 17: America watched those movies. Then the same people who denied
Speaker 17: any kind of work or respect as far as black
Speaker 17: talent jumped on the bandwagon. And what you see is
Speaker 17: a bunch of white guys trying to commercialize the new
Speaker 17: untapped market of blacks, and the blacks don't have any
Speaker 17: power to capitalize on it because they've been so broke,
Speaker 17: trying to survive, trying to get work. Now that the
Speaker 17: black markets open, all the companies that are doing black
Speaker 17: movies are all white. They're just commercializing it. And these
Speaker 17: places cannot duplicate the black experience. They can try to
Speaker 17: commercialize it as much as they can. But I see
Speaker 17: that in the future what's gonna happen is that the
Speaker 17: consumers who watch my movies are gonna say, hey, this
Speaker 17: is real. We want something from our perspective, not something commercialized,
Speaker 17: and we don't want to support a company that's pretending
Speaker 17: to be black, that's not really black. Jake st performer
Speaker 17: and director. You can start by directing black movies and
Speaker 17: then you can direct white movies. It's not that a
Speaker 17: black man can't direct white movies. There's nothing special to it.
Speaker 17: The problem is that there's so little resources that how
Speaker 17: are they gonna get the money within the business. Because
Speaker 17: there's no money to be made if you're black. We
Speaker 17: can't get to a point where we say I made it,
Speaker 17: therefore everybody else can. That's like Bill Cosby attitude. You
Speaker 17: have to be pro black.
Speaker 6: I am pro black.
Speaker 17: Racism is so rampant in the industry. It has to
Speaker 17: be a dress and it's not a lie just because
Speaker 17: one or two people made it like I made it.
Speaker 17: I made it because I was lucky and talented to persist, persist, persist.
Speaker 17: But it doesn't have to be that.
Speaker 6: Way because it's a white dominated world.
Speaker 14: We all know that it's difficult and it's hard, and
Speaker 14: we have to get our hustle on it. And I'm
Speaker 14: lucky to have the things happen to me that have happened,
Speaker 14: but I've also had to work really hard and I'm
Speaker 14: still working hard at it now. With the dance market,
Speaker 14: and there are clubs that still will not book me
Speaker 14: because I'm black. It doesn't matter how many awards I've won,
Speaker 14: it doesn't matter how many box covers, magazine covers I've
Speaker 14: been on.
Speaker 6: It's because I'm fucking black, exactly.
Speaker 14: And I swear when my record comes out, if these
Speaker 14: clubs still do not book me, I'm gonna call the
Speaker 14: ACLU and the NAACP.
Speaker 3: Shawn Michaels, who joins the roundtable midway through, gets mentioned
Speaker 3: first a few times negatively by some of the other
Speaker 3: black performers, imply that Shawn Michaels panders to the white
Speaker 3: production companies and doesn't work hard enough to advance the
Speaker 3: careers of other black performers that aren't Shawn Michaels to
Speaker 3: help build out their own part of the industry. For
Speaker 3: those who run the white side of the porn industry,
Speaker 3: there's only room for one token blackmail performer at a time,
Speaker 3: and currently it's Shawn Michaels. Jake Steed alleges that even
Speaker 3: Shawn Michaels has had to take a cut in his
Speaker 3: pay rate because there's still so little work for black
Speaker 3: performers in the industry. And they're still not getting paid
Speaker 3: the same kind of money as the white performers. Jake
Speaker 3: Steed guesses that black and interracial content accounts for ten
Speaker 3: percent of the porn industry, up from three percent a
Speaker 3: few years before. Jake Steed and another black performer named
Speaker 3: mister Marcus credit their own careers to Ed Powers, the
Speaker 3: inventor of Dirty Debutants, who they say is one of
Speaker 3: the few non racist white guys in porn Valley.
Speaker 17: The key to the future is guys like myself and
Speaker 17: Sean who make a better product and outdo the white
Speaker 17: guys who are trying to make black movies. Put them
Speaker 17: back where they belong, doing their own thing.
Speaker 6: There's a female involved with that too, you know, okay,
Speaker 6: which is me.
Speaker 3: The white AVN interviewer states that for decades, porn has
Speaker 3: had a racist unspoken rule against scenes of black male
Speaker 3: performers with white women because they thought it would prevent
Speaker 3: the film from going to cable due to racists and
Speaker 3: television affiliates and markets like the Deep South. One cable
Speaker 3: company finally broke the rule, and the other larger pay
Speaker 3: cable softcore networks like Playboy and the Spice Channel followed suit.
Speaker 13: This year, I started my own distribution company, and I'm
Speaker 13: happy to say that we're doing quite well. We're black
Speaker 13: owned company, and it's been a long time coming. I've
Speaker 13: been able to achieve something that not many people of
Speaker 13: color or ethnicity have been able to do in this
Speaker 13: industry or any industry. In a Marriora, specifically what I
Speaker 13: do or interracial videos as opposed to all white, all Asian,
Speaker 13: all Hispanic. You know, I don't feel that there should
Speaker 13: be a division.
Speaker 3: Shawn Michaels is way more positive about the state of
Speaker 3: the porn industry than his peers, while also agreeing with
Speaker 3: Jake Steed that black creatives need their own studios and
Speaker 3: own distribution companies. Madori ends up working an office job
Speaker 3: at Shawn Michael's company later that year.
Speaker 6: White people will never understand what we have to go through.
Speaker 14: When I go shopping in Beverly Hills, I'm being watched
Speaker 14: all over the store and I have a platinum card.
Speaker 6: You will never understand what we have to go through.
Speaker 18: Blacks are always watching other blacks. We do that the
Speaker 18: minute I put my name on the tape is directed
Speaker 18: by I get letters. I'm so glad to see you
Speaker 18: direct fuck the movie you directed it. That's what they're
Speaker 18: happy about. They won't to see you come up, mister Mark.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 3: Director Sean Michaels wants to stretch his talents beyond porn,
Speaker 3: so he starts taking acting classes and trying to get
Speaker 3: in the Screen Actors Guild, which doesn't normally accept porn performers.
Speaker 13: I'm going to lease Strasburg, not because I want to
Speaker 13: lead the business, but because I want to do feature films.
Speaker 13: I just want to get in there and act with
Speaker 13: the public out there that support me. Why not try
Speaker 13: to support me on the mainstream side as well. It's
Speaker 13: worth a fucking try. You know, somebody's going to make
Speaker 13: that crossover, and damn it, it might as well be me.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and four, Heather Hunter appears as a
Speaker 3: judge on a Hustler produced reality competition show called Can
Speaker 3: You Be a Porn Star? Alongside fellow judge ginger Linn Allen.
Speaker 3: The show airs on pay per view and pits twenty
Speaker 3: eight female contestants against each other for a grand prize
Speaker 3: of a one year contract and one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: The reality competition show is hosted by a former adult
Speaker 3: performer and playboy model who goes by Mary Carey. Mary
Speaker 3: Carey ran for governor of California in the two thousand
Speaker 3: and three gubernatorial recall special election or incumbent Governor Gray
Speaker 3: Davis was defeated by incumbent terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger. This election
Speaker 3: portends a future where celebrity and charisma will start to
Speaker 3: take precedence over traditionally prized electoral qualities like competence and intelligence.
Speaker 3: While this trend was set in motion with the election
Speaker 3: of President Ronald Reagan, it's the election of Austrian born
Speaker 3: libertarian mega movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger to a high state
Speaker 3: office that predicts a future where the wheels of US
Speaker 3: politics will start to come off entirely.
Speaker 4: Look at Jenna Jamison. She wasn't a fearful woman, and
Speaker 4: I think that's exactly what it takes, actually being in
Speaker 4: touch with the power that women have over men when
Speaker 4: it comes to sexuality.
Speaker 3: It's now the mid two thousands and porn is a
Speaker 3: four point three billion dollar industry, generating about half of
Speaker 3: Hollywood's reported yearly revenue of nine billion dollars. Jenna Jamison
Speaker 3: has built a porn empire in her own name, first
Speaker 3: at Wicked Pictures and now with her personal production company,
Speaker 3: Club Jenna. Stephen Hirsch's Vivid Entertainment company is netting a
Speaker 3: cool eighty million dollars a year. Hirsch lives in a
Speaker 3: one point six million dollar eighty one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: square foot mansion in a gated community in the Santa
Speaker 3: Susana Mountains with a pool and a water slide. He
Speaker 3: has a three hundred and seven thousand dollars a year
Speaker 3: suite at Staple Center called the Porn Box, reserved for him,
Speaker 3: his friends, and his porn star employees. Meanwhile, thirty year
Speaker 3: old Jenna Jamison is at a crossroads to retire from
Speaker 3: the adult industry to have children with her husband, Jake Gerdina,
Speaker 3: But she knows that she can't afford to stop working
Speaker 3: for too long, or the industry will just move on
Speaker 3: to other stars. She's taking preliminary steps towards her planned
Speaker 3: future by getting a breast reduction, taking her gigantic double
Speaker 3: d implants down to a tasteful sea cup. She's also
Speaker 3: starting to worry about how aging will affect her business
Speaker 3: that involves her body in appearance.
Speaker 12: Our looks, pay our bills. I get botax and I
Speaker 12: love it. I'm very expressive and I'm trying to keep
Speaker 12: lines from appearing. I did have a chin implant, and
Speaker 12: I'm having breast reduction surgery. I'll get a full reduction
Speaker 12: after i have children.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and four, there's a great profile of
Speaker 3: Jenna by writer Vanessa gregoriotis in a rolling stone with
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise on the cover. It's called Jenna Jamison's Forbidden Desires.
Speaker 3: Time to promote Jenna's news auto biography How to Make
Speaker 3: Love Like a Porn Star. The writer visits Jenna in Scottsdale, Arizona,
Speaker 3: and notes all of her obvious contradictions. Jenna doesn't display
Speaker 3: porn in her own house to keep her life work balance.
Speaker 3: She shows Vanessa around the Neo italianate new build villa
Speaker 3: and complains about her dogs drinking out of the toilet
Speaker 3: and peeing all over the house. Jenna and Jay look
Speaker 3: like any other two thousand zero new metal loving Arizonian couple.
Speaker 3: The only sign in the house of Club Jenna the
Speaker 3: porn Empire that they run together is that Jay is
Speaker 3: hunched over some computers, editing a scene where Jenna is
Speaker 3: dressed in white Latex as a nurse. He jokes that
Speaker 3: they're submitting it to Sundance. The whole house is decorated
Speaker 3: with collages Jenna made for Jay celebrating their love. She
Speaker 3: complains about Hollywood people still treating her like a freak show.
Speaker 12: I'm so unaffected by the whole frig in Hollywood scene.
Speaker 12: Give me the job or shut the fuck up. I'm
Speaker 12: not a show pony. I don't want to hang out
Speaker 12: with you and your friends, and I don't want to
Speaker 12: leave a message on your answering machine. You've reached, Scott.
Speaker 12: He's busy with me right now.
Speaker 13: Ugh.
Speaker 3: At the peak of her porn career, famous enough for
Speaker 3: a big multi page spread and Rolling Stone, Jenna is
Speaker 3: still not satisfied. Whenever she accomplishes one goal, she already
Speaker 3: has her eye on another. She's got a new lifestyle
Speaker 3: in mind Housewife. She's also starting to feel like the
Speaker 3: porn industry has changed a lot since she started her
Speaker 3: own career. The sex acts have gotten more hardcore, and
Speaker 3: the market has become so saturated with talent that it's
Speaker 3: even harder to stand out.
Speaker 12: I look at these new girls today, taking on six
Speaker 12: guys and doing boukaqes. I think, what the hell are
Speaker 12: they doing? These girls don't know that You've just start slow, baby,
Speaker 12: and make them pay you more for each thing you do.
Speaker 12: And my day you hardly had to have sex, let
Speaker 12: alone too.
Speaker 3: Dix up your ass. At thirty years old, she is
Speaker 3: already saying things like in my day about her twenties.
Speaker 3: She's cut down her performing to a couple movies a
Speaker 3: year with a stipulation that Jay be the only male talent.
Speaker 3: After thoroughly exploring sexual exhibitionism, she now feels like taking
Speaker 3: her clothes off professionally has become mundane and wants to
Speaker 3: challenge herself in other ways.
Speaker 12: The fact is, I'm at a point in my life
Speaker 12: where I don't want to be butt naked in front
Speaker 12: of thirty people anymore.
Speaker 3: Like many people who just turned thirty, Jenna feels like
Speaker 3: she's turned a corner into mature adulthood. She feels ready
Speaker 3: to settle down into motherhood and a stable home life.
Speaker 3: Even in Scottsdale, she gets recognized constantly, so she stays
Speaker 3: home a lot, which is just how Jay likes it.
Speaker 3: She's tired of being Jenna Jamison all the time and
Speaker 3: wants to be Jenna Missoli again, albeit this time with
Speaker 3: a lot of money and a horse. She plans to
Speaker 3: get her signature heartbreaker tattoo lasered off her ass, cut
Speaker 3: her hair into a fuck ass bob, maybe even legally
Speaker 3: change her name to Jenna Gardina, and moves smoothly into
Speaker 3: the next phase of her life. While she's the moneymaker
Speaker 3: in the relationship, Jake Gardina takes care of the business
Speaker 3: side and tends to Jenna's many moods. He makes sure
Speaker 3: the Club Jenna website keeps posting enough Jena content to
Speaker 3: satisfy fans and keep the money rolling in. But for Jenna,
Speaker 3: shooting sexy photos has become a draining chore like any
Speaker 3: other job. Her mind is elsewhere. She and Jay have
Speaker 3: not yet been able to get pregnant, despite having a
Speaker 3: lot of unprotected sex. She's been seeing fertility doctors and
Speaker 3: looking into alternative medicine, but the thing she wants the
Speaker 3: most remains out of her grasp and not in her control,
Speaker 3: and she really really hates that. Every time she gets
Speaker 3: her period, she feels like a total failure as a woman.
Speaker 12: I'm trying to think positive, but sometimes I can't.
Speaker 3: Jenna's book is a huge hit that spends six weeks
Speaker 3: on the New York Times Bestsellers list. There's talk of
Speaker 3: a film adaptation. Jenna wants Kate Hudson to play her,
Speaker 3: although she says Kate would need stunt tits. Jenna keeps
Speaker 3: expanding into other fields that require less of her vigorous
Speaker 3: physical participation, video games, comic books, erotica. She writes an
Speaker 3: advice column for the British men's magazine FHM for Him Magazine,
Speaker 3: where she dispenses relationship and sex advice.
Speaker 16: When my girlfriend goes out on girls' nights, she never
Speaker 16: lets me tag along and keeps the plants top secret.
Speaker 8: Is she cheating?
Speaker 16: What could she be up to in the dark glen View, Illinois.
Speaker 12: She could well be having females athletic sex of her
Speaker 12: life with a richer, more handsome man than you. The
Speaker 12: point is this, You either trust your girlfriend or you don't.
Speaker 12: Everyone needs space. Enjoy the time of part with your
Speaker 12: friends and see how she reacts to you being Captain sneaky.
Speaker 12: If she freaks out, she's up to no good.
Speaker 16: When I left for Iraq, I thought i'd miss my girlfriend,
Speaker 16: but I don't. I'm thinking of dumping her. What's the
Speaker 16: best way to break up without upsetting her heart of
Speaker 16: steel the email.
Speaker 12: I think you're fooling yourself about not missing her, and
Speaker 12: you're building an emotional wall for yourself. It's nothing to
Speaker 12: get hung up about. That's a natural defense for men.
Speaker 12: You don't need to break up with a woman unless
Speaker 12: you go to prison. Feel free to give in to
Speaker 12: temptation while you're away. Be safe over there. You have
Speaker 12: my love and support. The thought of all those guys
Speaker 12: jacking off in one place gets me so hot.
Speaker 3: One guy writes in asking how to get his girlfriend
Speaker 3: to have a threesome. Jenna says, you let the girl
Speaker 3: pick out the third person. Don't kiss that person on
Speaker 3: the mouth, and ask yourself if you really want to
Speaker 3: do it, because it won't be like the porn film
Speaker 3: fantasy and could fuck up your relationship for real. Jenna
Speaker 3: is not ashamed of her storied career, but she wants
Speaker 3: to get out of porn before becoming a mother. She's
Speaker 3: tired of being on all the time and fielding lude
Speaker 3: comments and comments from strangers, both male and female, who
Speaker 3: expect her to be the same in real life as
Speaker 3: she is in her movies, but porn still pays the
Speaker 3: bills for now, so she's hosting events and banking content
Speaker 3: in advance for when she goes on a permanent maternity leave.
Speaker 3: She wants to leave porn on top, but life has
Speaker 3: other plans for Jenna Jamison. Next time. On Jena World
Speaker 3: episode eleven, Pirates, a director named Ali June starts Digital
Speaker 3: Playground Studio and makes the biggest budget porn film of
Speaker 3: all time. Jenna World is an iHeartRadio production executive produced
Speaker 3: by Anna Hosnier and Becco Ramos, supervising, produced by Bei Wang,
Speaker 3: produced by Victor Wright, script editing by Jonathan Mills, engineered
Speaker 3: by Graham Gibson, and edited by Rory Gagan. Today's episode
Speaker 3: of Jenna World featured Emily Yoshida as Linda Wong, Sydney
Speaker 3: Battle as Heather Hunter, Iffy Wataway as Shawn Michaels, Becca
Speaker 3: Ramos as Vanessa del Rio, Jason Walliner as Bruce Gowers,
Speaker 3: and Paul Thomas, Sara Sobsey as Susan Wattling from Chino,
Speaker 3: Ian Grant as Rick Alley, Peter Cellini as Andrew Dice,
Speaker 3: Clay Brian Moses as Eddie Murphy. Yasser Lester as Spike Lee,
Speaker 3: Jed Nick mayerd as Madori, Blake Wexler as Tom sd
Speaker 3: Mort Burke as Dax Couner, Carvel Wallace as Jake Steed,
Speaker 3: Freddie Gibbs as mister Marcus Grant Creator as In the
Speaker 3: Dark and Heart of Steel, and Lauren ser Video as
Speaker 3: Jenna Jamison Oh