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On The Set With James Avalon In Camarillo
2003-08-28 16:52:17

Thursday's location, a mansion, is in Camarillo, near Thousand Oaks. I've been in Los Angeles for over nine years and I've never made it out to Thousand Oaks.

Most of the streets are clean but they have Mexican names. The landscape reminds me of Australia and Auburn, CA, above Sacramento. There are acres upon acres of dead grass. On my drive, I pass a horse ranch.

There's good news, porn fans. DUC, a notorious cheapskate broke his digital camera (used since August 1998) Thursday afternoon, probably on purpose. So he must go to Sammys Camera tomorrow and buy a new one, which will provide higher quality shots for this website and, with each photograph, will feel starving children in North Korea.

MacKenzie Mack is the nude model who holds all the segments together. She's the host but she never has sex. She earns $1000 for two days work.

In real life, MacKenzie, 22, is a USC student about to graduate with a degree in creative writing. She comes from a poor family. Her father is jobless and her stepfather is in jail. Her mother makes less than $30,000 a year. She has three siblings. She got great high school grades and SAT scores.

She got into stripping to pay for her tuition. She had two boob jobs, each one making her breasts bigger.

MacKenzie has a lot of trouble delivering the dialogue with the camera running but she and the director and crew keep a good humor about it.

James Avalon gives me a friendly greeting when I walk in at 10:20AM. The commute took me over an hour.

James: "I've been thinking about your question - what is my heritage? I'll be known as the man who brought Franz Kafka into porn. Because most of my movies have Kafkaesque dream sequences. The Trial of Copulation is a spin of The Trial.

During film of MacKenzie writing in her diary, she writes out her lines.

DUC to James Avalon: "Where did you find her? The Lee Strassberg Studio? The MFA program at UCLA? Juliard? Did you hire her primarily for her acting or her looks?"

James: "At CS Models (Cam Smith's agency). As this is a movie where looks come before remembering lines, we had to prioritize the looks. She got through everything."

Luke: "She's got a good sense of humor."

James: "The behind the scenes stuff is going to be good."

Most of the crew has not worked in porn before. They find it hilarious how much effort is put into shooting bad dialogue with bad actresses. "I don't think I need to come here again," says one guy. "It's so cliche. It's something I'll be able to laugh about for years with my male friends."

James tells MacKenzie about me. "He doesn't know you, so anything he says will probably be made up.

"Actually, he's the only one who reports stuff that's accurate. He quotes people word for word."

MacKenzie has great trouble saying the word "fulfilling." So instead she keeps saying fantasies help a couple achieve a "more filling sexual relationship."

James Avalon's face goes through humorous contortions as MacKenzie tries to get out her dialogue. She may be a creative writer, a stripper and a nude model but she's no actress.

MacKenzie has as much trouble with her four-inch heels as with her dialogue. She totters on them, about to crash to the ground, knocking her desk and chair and mirror over.

James wants me to photograph him applying a blindfold to MacKenzie. She protests that it will smudge her makeup. He gets her to do it anyway.

James grabs her by the waist and tells her to hug the desk. He pushes her towards the desk. "Just move me where you want to go," she says, tottering on her heels."

MacKenzie: "I have to pee."

Scott, crew guy: "Not here!"

James: "If you did it in the shower, we could use it."

Time for another take.

MacKenzie: "I can't do it when you say rolling."

James: "We are not rolling. We are not checking sound. We are not saying action."

After a take, James says: "You look good."

MacKenzie: "That doesn't mean I'm doing good."

I ask James Avalon about his dream of doing a pornographic version of Franz Kafka's novel The Metamorpheses. "It will be an artistic gonzo slant."

Luke: "Do you think that's what Kafka's intended?"

James: "I think so. It was in his notes."

I drink a couple of fruit smoothies prepared by the caterer and eat a few chocolate chip cookies and a granola bar.

This is the sixth and final day of the shoot. There's a big masquerade scene with numerous extras.

James: "All the real gossipy smutty stuff happened on the first two days. And I know nothing."

That's when I was not on the set.

I hear that a former Jill Kelly Productions manager named Rudy, late 20s, owes many poners money. He owes Kurt Lockwood $2400. Nobody can get a hold of Rudy. He's reportedly holed up in Las Vegas.

Ava Vincent's boyfriend Kurt Lockwood: "I did four scenes for him. He said he was going to pay everybody in cash on Monday. He owes Todd Todd money. Another porn star who did a shoot for him, wigged out on him on the phone, so he got paid.

"He claimed to have repped Lexington Steele.

"This makes it uncomfortable for me because I work a lot for Jill Kelly."

Kurt, a former music producer, has been in the industry for ten months, though he did some gonzo porn in 1998. He is 33 years old and has a college degree in theater. He declaims Hamlet for me.

"The porn money got so good, I reduced the music producing.

"I have my own line through Hustler, Trailertrash.com. I play Johnny Cocksville, a take-off of Johnny Knoxville from MTV's Jackass."

Luke: "What don't you like about the industry?"

Kurt: "That sometimes the talent doesn't get treated with respect they deserve. I've been on sets where there was no shower. You'll pop and they won't have paper towels or wet naps. There's no industry standard. It's, 'Well, it sucks to be you. You're talent. You have to take it.'"

James Avalon arranges flowers on a basket for Ava.

Scott: "James, you've missed your true calling as a florist."

James: "Don't make those comments around DUC."