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Director Paul Cowan's National Film Board of Canada 80-minute documentary
"Give Me Your Soul" premiered on the Canadian TV program "The
Passionate Eye" October 29th at 10PM on CBC Newsworld (there is also
a satellite channel, Newsworld International, that airs in the United
States).
Here are some audio clips: Clip 1 Dr Susan Block Clip 2 Brittany Andrews, Matt Labash from the Weekly Standard, Luke, Dr Kaplan at the fan panel Clip 3 Luke, Rob Spallone John Doyle writes for the 10/28/00 newspaper The Globe and Mail: "Part of the continuing mainstream fascination with the sleazy world of pornography, this NFB film is neither condemnation nor celebration. It's an as-is doc, an introduction to a cast of characters in the porn business that is ostentatiously non-judgmental. At the start, filmmaker Paul Cowan says the film is about the porn actors ("Give me your soul and I'll make you a star!"), but it turns out he means all the actors in the unsavory drama that is porn. We meet Bill Margold, a former porn star whose mission is to shepherd youngsters, male and female, through the business and ensure they don't end up broke, diseased or dead. We also meet Luke F-rd, a young man who is deeply religious and simultaneously devoted to chronicling the porn industry through his Web site. The film's star is Katie June, a young woman just arrived with her mom in Los Angeles from Tennessee, who is determined to be a big porn star. Her brittle self-assurance is grating and eventually heartbreaking. "I have this talent," she exclaims. "I really enjoy sex!" Give Me Your Soul is a fine film, but flawed -- so much is implied that the suggested horror gets buried beneath the distanced attitude. We have to wait until the final credits, the where-are-they-now bits, to find out what it all really means." From the NFB.ca website: Enter the strange world of commercial porn films, where voyeurism meets the profit motive to the tune of $8 billion a year. The feature-length NFB documentary Give Me Your Soul… premieres at 10:00 pm, Sunday, October 29 on CBC Newsworld's The Passionate Eye Sunday Showcase. Filmmaker Paul Cowan encounters an unusual cast of real-life characters, observing their pursuit of fame and fortune with a seasoned cinematographer's eye. From the casting couch to the shooting stage and the world's first porn conference, Cowan reveals a complex human drama in which dark comedy vies with genuine pathos. There's Katie June Moon, who gets on a Greyhound bus in Tennessee and gets off in Los Angeles, determined to be a porn star. And her mother Dolly, a stage mama who proudly displays childhood snaps of her little girl, already dolled up to look like a sexpot. Then there's Bill Margold, a former actor, now "managing" young talent, who takes Katie underwing. Margold remembers his pleasure in humiliating female co-stars; revenge, he says, against all those blond cheerleaders who rejected him in highschool. Among the predictable array of sleazy producers and agents are more surprising characters like Luke F-rd, a troubled convert to orthodox Judaism, who hosts one website on ethics and another on the porn trade. Ford incurs the wrath of the industry when he goes public with news of an HIV epidemic among porn actors. And there are the performers themselves - JD Ram, a conflicted young man with a shot at stardom, and Kimberly Jade, whose flourishing career goes terribly wrong. In the best documentary tradition, Cowan avoids sensationalism or easy conclusions, creating instead a complex tableau of life inside the porn industry, offering a film that elicits a range of responses. Give Me Your Soul… was directed and photographed by Paul Cowan, and edited by Hannele Halm. It was produced by Adam Symansky and Paul Cowan for the National Film Board of Canada. Sally Bochner is executive producer. Luke says: I appear early in the program, in a black executioner's mask peering in through a window. Underneath reads the captions: "By the late 20th Century, watching porn had become chic. Although being a porn star was still a very questionable career move." Then the scene shifts to the 1998 World Pornography Conference in Universal City. The narration, written by director Paul Cowan, is intelligent and perceptive. "But society's acceptance of porn is not without limits. Those who do porn, the actors, are still considered misfits. This is a film about them." The title of the documentary, "Give Me Your Soul," comes from a Bill Margold quote. Shortly after the title sequence, the NFB follows Dr. Susan Block into the ladies room. "Inside the room are two journalists. Matt Labash, who writes for the Weekly Standard. And Luke F-rd, who has a website devoted to the porn business." Soon we see Brittany Andrews tell journalists: "I'm a model. I masturbate. And I'm an actress, all in one. I'm a multi-faceted female." Matt Labash tells the camera: "It's pretty simple. These people like to f---. More than that, they like to watch people f---. You can ascribe all sorts of purpose to it and make it a discipline and a field of study. But that, at the end of the day, is what it is." Luke: "I really do think there is room for serious academic study of pornography. I don't have as harsh a view as Matt. Pornography may be the very best revelation of basic male nature. The male animal is not a very nice animal. The greatest task of every civilization is what do you do with the men. Men have to be domesticated... Traditionally that has been through marriage. Pornography reveals what men want." We then cut to the fans panel at the conference. Dr. Kaplan tells the small crowd. "Sex has never been easy for me. I attract women sometimes but they don't get where I am coming from. I do something dumb to screw it up." Narrator: "The one panel at PornCon that almost nobody attends is perhaps the most revealing. It's made up of men who watch porn, a lot. It's mostly single lonely men but they have a champion." Bill Margold: "My name is Bill Margold for those who don't know me. And if you don't, then you're big trouble because I've been around a very long time [but not involved in one leading porn film] and hopefully you've jacked off to me." Dr. Kaplan then leads a chant. "I masturbate. It feels good. I am proud." Few people join in. The camera then cuts to an earnest elderly academic who talks about the many professional conferences he's attended. "I considered myself very liberal, sophisticated and open minded." Narrator: "At the end of the conference, there's one final consciousness raiser." Professor: "I've seen more intelligence, more humanism, more sensitivity than in many professional meetings." Applause. Narrator: "Bill Margold thrives on the adulation..." Camera pans celebrating hugging porners then cuts to me sitting soberly alone at the back of the room. Narrator: "After the excitement of PornCon, Bill Margold retreats to his sanctuary where he lives alone." Bill on the phone: "Michael has already told Christian [Mann] that the one word he wants to see on Jeffrey's [Douglas] resume is 'resign.'" Narrator: "His meager income comes from managing his small small apartment block and being the trade fair coordinator for the Free Speech Coalition [and setting up wealthy fans with porn stars]." Bill: "I knew I wanted to get into the business to be the very first person to write about it." The camera cuts to me spraying down the path outside my apartment. Narrator: "Not far from Margold's apartment is Luke F-rd's one room converted garage. It is here where Ford writes his website devoted to the porn industry. On the site, which gets 50,000 hits a day, Ford often posts his reader's sexual musings. Like Ford, many of them have a troubled relationship with porn. "A few years ago, Ford converted to Judaism. Later, when he started writing on porn, he neglected to tell his rabbi what he was up to." The camera cuts to Rob Spallone's shooting house on Grimes Street in Woodland Hills. Narrator: "Part of Luke F-rd's job is covering porn shoots. That's not as easy as it seems. Ford's take on the business is not particularly porn friendly which closes a lot of doors. This is one of the few locations where Ford is welcome. That's because the landlord, Rob Spallone, like Ford, does not always play by the rules." Rob: "They've got to get nastier than that." Luke: "I mainly write about the people in the industry. I concentrate on the human drama. Still, writing about pornography places me in conflict with my religion and with my highest ideals. The way I justify it to myself and to my coreligionists is that I am simply writing on a part of life. There are journalists who cover mafia, there are journalists who cover communism, there are journalists who cover porn." Paul Cowan to Rob Spallone: "Why are you friends with Luke and nobody else is?" Rob: "You don't know the story of how I met Luke? I'm going to have to tell you. Jim DiGiorgio called me up one day and said 'Your name is all over the website.' He reads it to me that Rob Spallone is some wiseguy from New York who goes around beating people up with a baseball bat. I say, what? Tell him to be in my office tomorrow at 2PM. "Luke's in the office sitting there and I say, 'If I'm such a bad guy, wouldn't I f---ing kill you?' And he got all nervous. I scared the s--- out of him. "Yeah, I did beat up a guy with a baseball bat but that was only because he owed my company money and he didn't pay. He deserved it and he knew he deserved it. That's where I got that little bit of a reputation." We cut to Bill Margold talking to Dirty Bob on the phone about picking up a new girl at the bus station. Narrator: "Margold's apartment often serves as a crashpad for new girls. A way station on the way to God knows where... The one time there wasn't a girl staying there was when Bill had a girlfriend, Viper. When Viper dropped him after three years, Margold found out that his heart could be broken. For all practical purposes, that heart is now off limits." Bill: "This maybe the first time I've ever gone to a bus station to get a girl. This is amazing because you always have these horror stories about our industry. These girls getting off the bus and getting whisked into the dens of pornographic iniquity. I've been to the airport 100 times." Narrator: "The girl that Bill will soon pick up was attracted to the world of sex early on. The day she turned 18, she walked down to the local strip club and got naked. "Bill Margold is closing in on the new kid. He won't have sex with her. He won't make any money from her. But unwittingly she validates who he is. "Bill's new girl [Katie June] has already made a couple of adult films. Now she wants to move into the big time." Bill tells Katie: "You're not doing anything illegal. You may be shattering moralities..." Katie giggles: "What does 'shattering moralities' mean?" Bill: "Having sex and getting paid for it, performing in front of a camera, taking what people tend to hold as sacred and making it into a performing art..." The scene switches to World Modeling. Jim South Jr takes Polaroids of a nude Katie June. Narrator: "Jim South Jr is the designated shooter here [of nude new talent]. In the last four years, Junior has managed the concentration to shoot the last four shots several thousand times." Paul: "So Jim what potential do you see for Katie?" Jim South Sr: "She's natural breasted, which does help... She's young looking... She's not an older girl. She seems very enthusiastic. I'm told that she does boy-girl and girl-girl. I think we can just about book her every day while she's here." Katie: "When I was in high school, I was a cheerleader. I had girl friends, guy friends. I did things with them. I was very sociable. But I had a talent that nobody else really understood. Which was, I loved sex." Katie talks about making porn a career. She praises her "wonderful mother" who packed her bags for the trip to Porn Valley. Bill: "I'm concerned for her. I think that Katie June needs to be educated on contraception. She admitted to not taking any birth control or doing anything to prevent pregnancy. I will try and see to it that she goes to one of the holistic clinics and gets a diaphragm." Camera cuts to Jim South on the phone with a client. Jim looks uncomfortable with his conversation being taped. Jim to client: "You can tell them that you shoot the regular stuff but that you've got this shoot bimdeedeedebom... That and I am on camera right now. They're doing a documentary... No, no, no, that's fine. I have't said anything yet." Richard Pacheco talks about his career. Richard: "Then the kids came and everything went up into the attic." Narrator: "One of the attic videos is this one [picture shows a lamp swaying on a table next to a bed, with loud sounds of two people having sex] which was shot by the film director's son [Anthony Spinelli's son, possibly Mitchell] which chronicles Richard Pacheco's big scene with Seka. The boy had never witnessed live sex before and was so shocked that he had fled the set and left the camera running." Subtitles: 1. After the filming... 2. Luke F-rd faces three separate suits from pornographers for libel. He undergoes a thorough psychological assessment. 3. Bill Margold acquires a new porn kid for his back room. 4. Richard Pacheco is inducted into the adult entertainment Hall of Fame. 5. Kimberly Jade returns to the sex business, behind the scenes. 6. Jim South's modeling business is booming. 7. Katie June's mother, Dolly, returns to cleaning houses for a living. 8. Katie June goes back to stripping. She is arrested for drug possession and is bailed out by Randy West. 9. Then she disappears. Here's a Q&A with director Paul Cowan: Why a film on pornography? There are two parts to the answer: In the beginning, I was really interested in censorship: why people are afraid of certain things and why they go the route of censoring rather than dealing with it in another way. The more I read about censorship issues, the more it came down to sex. Sex - or rather, the depiction of sex - was a problem for people throughout history: So the film really started from a censorship perspective and then the more I got into it, one thing led to another, and the film gradually became about people who work in the porn film industry. We live in an age of porn chic. Pornography used to be the most debased adjective that one could use to describe something and all of the sudden it was okay, even trendy. People were becoming fascinated with pornography, and I decided to make a film about it. I didn't want to condemn it, I didn't want to say it was wonderful, I just said here's the world of porn. Here it is from the inside. And that's the film. Describe the production history of the film. When I was at Porn Con, this young guy came up to me and introduced himself to me as Luke F-rd. Why he ever came up to me I don't know. There were hundreds of people there and he said "I'm Luke F-rd and I write about this business." I also met the godfather of porn, Bill Margold. I stayed in touch with both Luke and Bill and at that point I knew I wanted to move into that world and that they were natural protagonists. The other stories developed through Bill and Luke. And I had a gut feeling that told me to follow these people and see where they would take me. You're in a world that you don't know, with people doing something that's only quasi-legal. Stories are unfolding before you and you make decisions every day. I had long since lost the notion of a theoretical film about sex and censorship; it just became about the world of these people trying to make their way in this world. So you chose to go to California, the mecca of porn? Yes, 95% of the porn tapes that are bought and rented in Canada and the United States come from the San Fernando Valley - that one little piece of real estate out there. And so it was a natural place for me to go and film. The stories just unfolded before the camera and for the most part they were all intermeshed. I had filmed other people who had interesting perspectives outside the San Fernando scene, but there was nothing evolving, their stories weren't changing. The stories in California were real and constantly taking new directions and that became the style of the film - almost a dramatic quality where characters rather than ideas dictated the direction of the film. And people weren't sitting there giving intellectual or quasi-intellectual arguments of why this was good or not good. I think the film is much more interesting to look at and it also presents the arguments about pornography in a way that forces people to think about the issues. In a certain sense I was really lucky that the good, the bad and the ugly of pornography presented itself organically. Rather than my saying, "I'm going to find a person who's a victim and I'm going to find someone who thinks pornography is wonderful," and so on. I didn't want to make that kind of film. How you would situate your film with the 1981 NFB documentary "Not A Love Story"? I didn't make the film as a male answer to "Not A Love Story." In fact, it wasn't until I finished shooting the film that I actually sat down and watched "Not A Love Story," which I hadn't seen since it was first released. I only watched it because I wanted some stock shots of Manhattan. That's not a comment on the film, it's just that my making this film had nothing to do with that film. Do you think our ideas about pornography changed since "Not A Love Story"? "Not A Love Story" speaks for that time, when pornography was a natural target for feminism. It was clear from the outset that this is why the filmmakers made the film. And that was their choice. I think women's views on porn have changed more than men's, especially among younger women. Instead of seeing porn as nasty and anti-woman, I think women see porn as a more complex issue than before. I didn't want to make a film that was going to tell people what to think. I wanted to make a film that showed porn the way I think it is, and let people make up their own minds. How did you decide what shots to put in the film? We filmed lots of intelligent people saying intelligent things with interesting perspectives, but unlike the lives of Luke, Bill and Katy June, there was nothing evolving, their stories weren't changing. We kept gravitating more towards the stories, making a film that was about the stories and not wanting to do anything else. My editor and I would be going along with the stories in the film and then there would be an interview with an "expert" or someone like that and it would pull the film down. Those interviews were eliminated one by one and that's how we ended up with what we have. Was it hard getting access? For the most part, these people are pretty open given what they do for a living. Some of the access is also just spending time with people and by that I mean spending time while they're shooting and also spending time with them when they're not shooting, just hanging out, having meals and that kind of thing. Also, I think they were convinced that I wasn't trying to do a hatchet job and that I wasn't moralizing. At the same time, there were certainly people along the way who didn't want me to film them. A lot of what you do in documentary is finding people that you're simpatico with, both at a human and filmic level. Also, one of the fortunate things about making films with the NFB is that you have the time to get the story. We had a tiny crew, just myself and a sound person, so it wasn't a big expense for me to spend a couple of days every time just hanging with people. What drew you to the characters that you chose to be in the film? Let's start with Luke. I thought that Luke represented a lot of males in the sense that he was very conflicted about pornography. On an intellectual level he thought pornography was trash and yet, at the same time, he admits his own fascination with pornography and with people in that world. Luke also allowed me to have someone in the film who was anti-porn and who was organic to the film. Bill Margold was the epicenter of the porn world. People were constantly coming in and out of his world. When porn men and women get in trouble, they come to Bill. Spending time with Bill was never boring. It may have been frustrating, but never boring. I came across Katy June exactly as it shows in the film. Bill told me that there was a new girl coming in from Tennessee and I decided to film her when she got off the bus - the cliché. She was fine with that because I guess if you're going to take off your clothes and have sex with someone in front of the whole world, it's not going to bother you to have a film crew follow you. Is Katy typical of a lot of the girls you met? It's hard to say what's typical because everyone has a story. She's typical in the sense that she had a troubled background and she got started in the business by stripping - stripping is often how young women make their entry into porn films. But beyond that there are no two girls who are the same. Some of the scenes in the film must have been hard to shoot. As a filmmaker, did it ever feel like you were being exploitative? Yeah, sometimes it did. For example, when I shot the scene of Katy June on set. At one point I just left because I couldn't take it any more, but I really regretted that I left. I shouldn't have left because I'm a documentary filmmaker and it was a good scene and I should have stayed until the end. But at a certain point, I just wanted to get out of there. But you do get a sense from that scene that the situation is very awkward, the fact that Katy June's mom is hearing her daughter have sex on camera... Absolutely, but I should have stayed because after I left, her mother got so freaked out that she eventually went upstairs because she couldn't take it any more. I could have filmed anything with Katy June and her mother. It was almost embarrassing. There were things that I didn't film because I couldn't do it. For example, in the narration there is mention of Katy June doing a scene with her mother and Bill Margold and a second guy and I could have filmed that and but I said, "I don't want to do this." Why did Katy June's mother decide to turn to porn herself? She was shocked to be there but I think there was a part of her that was just fascinated by the sex - and of course attracted by the money. And so when the opportunity was presented to her, she didn't have to think about it very long. You talk about AIDS in the film and how shocking it is that for so many years AIDS wasn't an issue in the porn industry and yet, even now, a young porn actress like Katy June doesn't seem concerned about it. She's nineteen and she can't imagine that AIDS is going to happen to her. She knows that all the actors have to get tested every thirty days, but look what happened to Kimberly - she saw the guy's test too and he faked it. It's the belief when you're 19 that you're invincible. There were great calls for making porn shoots all condom, but now they've gone back to making it optional and of course they're hoping that the actors don't use them because tapes which are non-condom sell much better than tapes that are condom. It's scary. Why did you choose to make a film that deals strictly with heterosexual porn? I filmed people working in gay and lesbian porn films, and some S&M performers as well - there's a very big gay porn world out there. But I ended up with a movie about heterosexual porn because that's where the people I met took me. That's where the stories went organically. What does the film say about the porn industry? Everything I wanted to say ended up in the film. There's a woman in the film who tells how porno films make us think it's wonderful and that everyone's really enjoying sex and having a great time, and it's not quite like that. Porn isn't the big bad boogieman that so many people think it is, but on the other hand it's a nasty business. It's a world where everyone seems to hate everybody else. But I imagine it's like being inside the mafia where you can never quite trust anybody, but at the same time they're thrown upon each other because nobody else on the whole planet trusts them. There are all sorts of rivalries and nastiness that goes on. It's a crazy world. What do you think the reaction to the film will be? I don't know. I'm curious to see what audiences will think about it. I think the film will elicit a fair spectrum of emotional responses. The film is a pretty nasty look at pornography. Critics can hardly say that we glossed it over or are supporting porn in any way and yet at the same time we're really honest about it. One of the biggest questions might be why we want to look at porn anyway. Well, why would we want to look at crime, or pollution or anything else? It's part of life. It says a lot about humanity. It's not going to go away. And I think it says a lot about our culture - the extent to which market forces exploit our voyeuristic tendencies and shape our notions of sex. How has your own understanding of the porn industry changed from when you first started working on the film? Well first of all, I knew very little about pornography when I started. I had probably watched a half a dozen parts of porn tapes in my whole life. I wasn't against it; I just had no particular desire to watch and, more than anything, no occasion to watch it. I felt too embarrassed to go down to the local video store and take one out. Obviously, I knew porn was out there, but I didn't know much about it so I didn't have a whole lot of feelings about it one way or another except that I thought it must be an interesting world. How could it not be? I didn't feel disgusted by it or think that it was the worst thing that humanity's ever invented or anything like that. And after having made the film, I wouldn't make porn illegal; however, I think that a frank and open discussion about sexuality is good and that discussion should include pornography. I think putting pornography into the light of day and looking at it and talking about it is a good thing. Do you think that "Give Me Your Soul" is successful in opening up the discussion? Well, I think it's one little tiny step. Any time people have information they are better off for it, whether they like pornography or hate it. Pornography has such a weird mystique about it, but there isn't much mysterious about it at all. Making the film certainly took any of the allure of pornography away from me. It's similar to working in the movies for a long time and seeing the guy with the boom pole and the gaffer outside the frame line every time you watch a film. You're there. The artifice is gone. And the magic is gone. And so I guess to whatever degree porn had any magic to me, it doesn't any more. You've seen the inside... And the fact that these people who you're supposed to think are so passionate actually just met five minutes before and frankly they're looking at their watches and can't wait until it's over. I might have assumed that anyway, but now I know it. What do you think the future of porn is? Well it seems to have enduring appeal. People are fascinated by watching other people having sex. I don't get it. But it's not going away. Dirty Bob writes: Luke: I gotta comment on your interview with Paul Cowan' and his documentary on the porn industry "Give Me Your Soul". HAH! They had him snowed. Totally. His comments about Katie June (correct spelling) were hilarious. Katie's trip(s) to L.A. to shoot were well-planned in advance, she knew exactly what she was getting into, and her mom (who totally supported Katie) not only came out once to "hang out" with her during one her L.A. trips, she also agreed to be in a shoot with her daughter. It was all planned. Yes, one of her trips to L.A. was "off the bus" only because she had to get from Vegas (during the 1999 CES) to L.A. and a bus was the most convenient way to get there (for her) at that time. Katie, who has been out of the biz for well over a year now, also had done a few amateur shoots in Tennessee prior to going West. Speaking of West, she also had a "thing" going with Randy West, but that is another story. DJX, an employee of Randy West, writes on RAME 1/18/00 about Katie June, who entered porn with her mother in early 1999: "She's in Tenessee, and can leave the state only upon authorization of her probation officer. (She was caught transporting drugs, pills, in Texas). Randy was kind enough to bail her drug-addicted ass out of jail, and then she disappeared. She is a cutie and had a future in porn if she could handle it. Obviously, she couldn't!" Ben writes: Luke F-rd. First of all, I'd like to say it's kind of "ironic" that I would catch a glimpse of you on TV, since over the past few weeks, I've been clicking on your website for just general X-rated industry news and gossip...as a "fan". Second of all, it "irritates" me how people in the X-rated industry and take offense to you exposing the HIV problem in regards to certain actors/actresses. Sulking like tiny children. Poor babies. In my opinion, the probing you did was all within "journalistic parameters". Although they maliciously target you like some scapegoat, you did NOTHING wrong. I admire you for maintaining some dignity and pressing-on in the line of fire. They should act like adults and take their exposure with some maturity...and not like a snivelling children's clubhouse. It's all about the "publics interest", and you were thinking of that "first". Jamie Lisk writes on RAME: This was one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences in my life. IMHO, the documentary was presented as an indictment of the porn industry despite what many Canadian reviewers say. The filmmaker, Paul Cowan, seemed to prop up the all of the industry's horror stories and presented them as the norm. Weaved in amongst a soundtrack seemingly borrowed from the Exorcist is the Marc Wallace nightmare, Katie June and her mom and their disfunctional relationship, JD Ram's drug overdose-suicide, as well as, Luke F-rd, who seems to come off as a holier-than-thou messenger of the porn biz who is hated by everyone including himself. Every business has it's horror stories, it's suicides, it's drug addicts. I liken the Marc Wallace scandal, to a madman running into a post office with a loaded gun and blowing away some of his co-workers. In the aftermath, one doesn't hold all the employees of the post office responsible for one man's psychosis. Yet, this documentary seemed to want to do this, it was absurd. I felt like I had to take a shower after I watched this just to get the gook off. Someday I hope to see a documentary that focuses on the sexy side of the industry. The beautiful people, the money and the fun!!!! They do have fun sometimes don't they??????? John Doyle writes in the 10/27 The Globe and Mail: The Passionate Eye: Give Me Your Soul (Sunday, Newsworld, 10 p.m.). Several mainstream movies about the porn trade, especially Boogie Nights, created the impression of a family atmosphere in the places where they film cold, hard sex to peddle to the public. Give Me Your Soul, a rigidly non-judgmental National Film Board doc by Paul Cowan, finds something similar but lingers long enough over the family to find flaws and barely disguised despair. Cowan takes us from a porn-film convention to the grubby sets where the sex films are made. The star of Give Me Your Soul is Katie June Moon, an alarmingly enthusiastic wannabe from Tennessee. Accompanied by her mother, she poses for nudie pictures, does sex scenes with strangers and burbles about becoming a porn star. Watch to the end to read the epilogue about what happened to these sad, desperate people. 10/26/2000 Lethbridge Herald TORONTO (CP) -- Forget about The Sopranos. CBC Newsworld is up to here in bare breasts and the f-word in a pair of frank documentaries that look at both the porn industry and the plight of exotic dancers. First up on Sunday night's instalment of The Passionate Eye is Give Me Your Soul!, an unblinking look into the seamy, steamy world of hard-core moviemaking. While the subject is an easy one for an expose of the bleaker side of human nature, the National Film Board's Paul Cowan embellishes the obvious with some perceptive visions. 10/29/00 Sunday Daily News, Halifax, NS Cowan interviews the men who produce and watch porn, the young women who see it as a route to stardom, and its various hangers-on, like a strange young man named Luke who "reports" on the X-rated world, but who obviously has some big sexual problems simmering below the surface. Mathew Hays writes: What is new about the film, and something that makes it well worth seeing, is the controversy Cowan explores. Besides the rather typical interviews with starlets who suggest they just wanted to let it all hang out before the cameras etc., there is the journalist, Luke F-rd, who outed members of the industry who'd tested HIV+ but were continuing to act in porn. In doing so, Ford induced the wrath of porn godfather Bill Margold, but also probably performed a major public service. For years, we've heard members of the porn industry discuss the fact that their business is "clean" and that workers in the trade are routinely tested for HIV and other STDs. 11/6/00 I talked Monday with National Film Board (NFB) of Canada director Paul Cowan, who recently created a documentary on the porn industry entitled "Give Me Your Soul." Listen here. Part Two here. Luke: What did you think of the film? Paul: It's a complex reaction. My first reaction when I finished it, was that as a film, I really like it. There are some things I would've changed and one of them is you. I would've put more of you into it... There are just certain scenes I would've put in but people didn't want them. They wanted the sex. And these are people who don't like sex. I was interested in your personal dilemma. I think in many ways that has more to do with me than Katie June's dilemma or Bill Margold's dilemma... But I didn't prevail on that. I felt the film was tamer than I wished. The reactions were predictable. The people on the left, who write for the left-wing rags like the LA Xpress... They felt that I was too anti-porn. And of course, the people on the other side, felt why would the Canadian population want to spend a nickle on this subject. The NFB should never have done it. They see the film as somewhat sympathetic because it doesn't totally condemn everybody all of the time. I have to discount both of those [reactions] because they are predictable. I wished that the mainstream media would've seen the human dimension more than the porn dimension...seeing the porners as representatives rather than as human beings who merit discussion. If you made a film about politicians, they wouldn't just look at them as generic politicians. They [mainstream media] would rather look deeply into a murderer's soul than a porner's soul. Porners are not worthy of being looked at as human beings, they're just aberrations. Though on an individual basis, I've had many good discussions with people who've watched it. I get a much stronger reaction from men. They all want to watch it. They're just fascinated by it. They're fascinated by the thought of watching pornography legitimized, that it was a film about it rather than a porn film. That they could watch with their wives. They were moved by the ability to go behind the scenes with something that was so taboo to them. I wish that there had been more reaction from women. Most of the reviewers are men. But nobody wanted to go further than superficial musings on the subject. Luke: They didn't deal with your documentary as it was but reacted to pornography. Paul: Yes, the same way they would react to a pornographic magazine in front of them or any other discussion of pornography. So many of them would say, 'Oh, I can't stand Bill Margold.' Well, whether you can't stand Bill Margold or not, he's a force to reckon with. He's worthy of more discussion than he got. Because there have been other films about porn made, it's looked at as though "It's been done." I was really disappointed that when the CBC showed it, they pixilated out any frontal nudity and brought down the volume on all the nasty words, of which there were many. So it made it a choppy reaction to look at. And that it was punctuated by many commercials. They even had a newscast in the middle of the two hours, which does not make for the best viewing experience. The commercials were all for mainstream products, so certainly none of the sponsors were afraid of that particular show. [Or they didn't know the content?] I'm amazed at people's capacity to not want to contemplate something that disturbs them. They would rather not see it, so they don't have to think about it, so they don't have to look within themselves to see what is it that is so disturbing about that? And why do I feel queasy? Why am I drawn to watch it? Maybe it's just too personal for people to express overtly. Luke: I think a lot more people would be fascinated by it if they allowed themselves to be. Paul: Maybe they do in the privacy of their own homes but who is going to stand up in public and say, 'I was really turned on by Katie June when she was getting f---ed on the pool table. Even though I was appalled by her mother sitting there. Though maybe I was even more turned on because her mother was watching. And it was with a black man.' Who in their right mind would ever say that? Luke: I was mesmerized by the Naked News. Paul: I wish there was a survey... How many people changed their views of anal sex as a result of this documentary? Luke: I thought the documentary was pretty much down the middle but in various ways you tilted against the industry. Paul: When you're making a documentary, you have to work with the material you've got. And the bottom line is, the documentary has to be interesting. So if Katie June and Kimberly Jade were more interesting than somebody else who gave you a better feeling about the porn industry, I have to go with them. I didn't set out to do anything. I filmed lots of people who were pro porn, from Brandy Alexandre to various people in Canada. I filmed long sequences with people doing sex on phones. And at the beginning, we had all of those sequences cut in. And as soon as that stuff came up, it was just, 'Oh, it's a documentary now.' Luke: The arguments for and against pornography are really boring. Paul: Yes they are. You can summarise them in a couple of minutes. And nobody is going to change their minds about it as a result of hearing it again. We made the conscious decision to give people an emotional experience without a lot of editorializing. And if the stories unfold in a way that gives you a more negative view than a positive view, then so be it. That's another problem with making a film about the porn industry. Everybody looks at it as though "This is the definitive film." As though this is everything there is to say about the porn world. And obviously it is not. It is one person's experience. One hundred other people could go out and have different experiences. I did not want to be burdened with having to make the film about porn. We decided at a certain point to not go with the talking heads unless they were integral to the unfolding of the story. I had filmed experts who had one view or another on pornography and they were the first to go. When you put that stuff up against Jim South, I'd much rather look at Jim South. Whatever I think about porn, he is a fascinating guy to watch. He's fascinating to watch work. My wife loved Jim South. She doesn't necessarily love what he does but she thought he was fascinating. "I could watch him all night." You then leave yourself open to all sorts of criticism... How come you didn't have any black, gay... Luke: It didn't bother me if you tilted in a direction. But what tilted the documentary for me was not the material, it was the title "Give Me Your Soul" and the music in places. I thought your narration was perceptive and down the middle. I thought the material was down the middle. Paul: When I was watching it, I felt that I did not like the music. I regret that [AIDS breakout coverage]... That's the one sequence where I feel that I did them [porners] a bad turn. Especially because those people in that shot [World Pornography Conference] are the good people." Luke: Jeffrey Douglas, Will Jarvis, Gloria Leonard, Jane Hamilton, Candida Royalle... Paul: They're the luminaries of that world. Luke: They're intelligent thoughtful people. Paul: Who've ended up throwing their lot with an unsavory crowd and managed to keep their head above water. Whenever I see that come up, I think, 'Oh God, I wish that I could've figured another way around that.' And I couldn't. ..........
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