Katja Kean's New Book
2002-12-10 07:41:45
Brew writes on RAME: Following is my translation
of the danish article on:
http://www.berlingske.dk/artikel:aid=229604/
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Star in the city of sin
This month the memories of pornstar Katja Kean will be released.
M/S brings you this excerpt.
Told by Henrik List
The pornbusiness in L.A. isn't quite a village or a small limited
subculture as in Denmark for example, which has ten professional
models tops and less than five companies. That is, if we're talking
people who work in porn fulltime.
In L.A. porn is a business, an industry, a work that generates
millions of dollars and keeps thousands or tens of thousands of
people at work. Not only the ones on the set but also those who
work for the bigger companies: book-keepers, secrataries, designers,
managers, lawyers, accountants, PR-agents, writers, producers,
receptionists, journalists, webdesigners and
people specialized in possible niches.
For example, there are fulltime employees who doesn't do anything
but register and describe the scenes on a computer so they in
the future easily can find them and use them in the socalled compilation-movies.
Releases on video or DVD where a sequence of good scenes of a
theme are cut together - for example anal, blowjobs, black girls,
lesbian sex and so on. Only the imagination sets a limit for what
there is for an audience out there - an audience who knows what
they want and don't want to bother with storyline and dialog but
simply want the real raw deal, their stuff, for hours.
In the meantime there's a lot of people who are dependant of the
porn industry or related to the porn industry close to it, where
just as many work in a metropol as L.A.: the softcore mens magazines
such as Playboy or Penthouse; Trade magazines and websites as
Adult Video News who follow the porn in articles and interviews;
Stores that sell underwear and sextoys; Mailorder businesses with
dirty catalogs; Striptease joints where the models make guest
appearances; Porn shops and cinemas where the products dealt and
the girls sign their new movies for fans at special arrangements.
An endless foodchain of businesses. And an endless subculture
which spread as rings in the water into the mainstream culture,
where ordinary media made reports about the porn industry, books
and movies were about the sex industry,
famous models and directors performed in television talkshows,
musicvideos and commercials, and fashion designers sold t-shirts
with slogans, pictures or faces from the industry. If the porn
was illegalized in the US tomorrow, the economy of southern California
would feel it. Bad. Very bad.
The size of this was one of the things that was making this business
unpersonal. Not necessarily in a bad way but in the same way as
if you were working in any other business in a big city - of course
not everybody in the traveling business knows eachother in a city
with 13 million citizens as in L.A. When you work together with
such big companies, producing 40-50 titles
with upwards of 100 different models on the castlist a year, not
everybody can know each other anymore.
Therefore the amount of contact to the director was different
from one movie to the next, whether he was interested in talking
to the models or not, whether he wanted a personal relationship
or not. Especially when you're working freelance it's limited
how far you can get into a trust relationship with the director,
because you might only will be seeing him this one time -
and maybe even only make a single scene one afternoon, where all
you say is hi, go to work and then leave.
For a lot of the directors the models are nothing but sexdolls,
bodies they need to create their product - unless we're talking
about types like Michael Ninn or Andrew Blake, who have a kind
of artistic ambition with what they're doing. It all took a different
turn when I signed with Sin City and made a series of movies with
-one- director, Michael Raven, whom you of course come to know
over time, as you go to parties together, eat lunch together during
takes, whom you give your honest oppinion.
I've often been asked what happens on a typical day in the pornbusiness.
Well, it's just like any other day in any other business - except
the work is different, except you're having sex instead of sitting
in front of a computer, serving food, selling tickets or clean
an office.
If it's a bigger and more amitious production, you've received
a script or maybe spoken on the phone with the director a couple
of days before, to get an idea of what is expected of you. In
most cases you've simply been booked by your manager to go somewhere
one a particular day at a particular time, usually in some million-dollar
house, which is rented out for pornshoots by
the owner. It was always such houses that you only see in womens
magazines. Alison used to drive for me, because I didn't have
a car. You usually go to work early in the morning; get your make-up
and hair done; say hi to the other models and decide what clothes
to wear. Before you change to your costume, you change to a bathrobe,
take off the bra and panties to avoid marks on the skin. The men
come shuffling a couple of hours later because
they don't need that much make-up or hair done. The atmosphere
is usually coasy and relaxed. You chit-chat with the ones you
know, and get introduced to the people you don't know.
If you haven't shaved from home (but of course you have) - armpits,
legs, and between the legs - you do it yourself. It's a trend
not to have too much hair on the body - even the men shave all
over. The less hair, the better that's the way is, and it also
has something to do with personal hygiene when you lick eachother
for example. All in all, I've never met more clean
people than porn models. They train a lot, work on their body,
eat healthy, shave, and are aware about being clean and smell
nice before a scene. You brush your teeth again AFTER lunch and
take a mint between shots to avoid having bad breath. There is
never anything disgusting, and that is probably one of the worst
ideas women have about the porn business: about being with
a chubby disgusting guy with bad breath and smelly feet.
But that has definately never been the case, and in the business
in L.A. that guy would never be hired for the next movie. The
girls wouldn't go near him. There were some unwritten rules that
everybody would live up to - or at least in the movies I've had
a part in. The stylists got ones measurements from ones manager
up front, to make sure that the clothes or costumes would
fit - it was very professional. Unless a director had a special
wish for the model to wear certain clothes on stage, you would
have an influence yourself. You would have different pieces, dresses
or bras to choose from. Whatever you liked, as long as it fitted
the character. That is, if you had to be the dominant type, a
classic "lady", an innocent schoolgirl or whatever it had to be
on that day for that movie. When you've got your
clothes on, the stillphotographer takes some pictures of you on
the set in front of the stage. For use as pictures for the press
or for the website of the company to name a few. Fashionable,
erotic pictures which can also be used other places than on the
cover. Never hardcore. The hardcore stills for the cover or for
magazines are taken while the scene is done, by the same
photographer.
There is a lot of idletime. "Hurry up and wait!" as we always
said to each other when we hung around the wardrobe for hours.
After dressing and maybe shaving, after "morning toilette" and
photography, that takes about three to four hours, well, then
you eat lunch. The everlasting nightmare. Not because the food
was bad, or it wasn't nice sitting and eating and talking to the
other guys, but because it wasn't practical. Better to be hungry
than do an anal scene with air in your stomach.
When you do analscenes, you get this special bottle with lukewarm
water, an enema applicator. You simply go to the toilet and clean
your rectum, flush until the water that comes out is clean as
spring water. Easy and practical. Once in a while though, it was
litterally a pain in the ass. I remember an
episode when I had to do an anal scene for Michael Raven's "Millennium
Y2K". The scene was on location in the city, where we had a trailer,
to dress in and taking baths standing up, outside a warehouse
in downtown. I was on the toilet in the trailer to clean my rectum
and flushed and flushed water up
there, but couldn't seem to get clean. Or maybe it was something
psycholigical because I, that day, wasn't set on having anal sex.
Anyways, I emptied and filled that enema bottle time and time
again and sat out there for ages - untill people started looking
for me for the scene and came out knocking on the door, asking
if I was alright. And then you just had to get done with it.
Unless it's a big production such as "Ritual" or "Millennium"
there will be an average of 25-30 people on the set all in all,
like on a smaller ordinary movie. In the afternoon the director
will attend, and if you haven't talked to him about the movie,
about his ideas, you run over it quickly. You're in a livingroom
or the bedroom where the scene in about to take place and the
director describes the foundation of the sexscenes. Should we
start on the sofa or over by the window; should you be the active
or passive; should you follow a plot or just knock yourself out.
In the more freaky movies there could be complicated elements
with props and effects - such as that time I
was soaked in liquid latex in "Ritual" or hooked up with hoses
to a strange machine in "Millennium". Although it's pretty straight
forward how a scene progresses: oral, vaginal, anal, double penetration,
cumshot. That's not too difficult to remember!
Before the scene starts, before the director yells "action!",
the air is filled with excitement. That's when you feel that a
director expects something from you. Especially if he doesn't
know you. What does she do? Is she as wild as they say? They expect
you to let yourself go, that you're as naughty and pleased as
possible; that you look like it's the f-ck of your
life every time. The minutes before the scene you feel the pressure,
but when it's begun it's almost never that bad. You learn to distance
yourself from the people around you, except for the one you're
having sex with. You learn to dive into the sex and enjoy what
happens with the bodies in the light from the lamps.
The director sits by the monitor and gives you encouraging remarks:
"Yeah, baby, that's sooo hot, that's sooo good, keep on doing
that, girl!". Or he directs the models how to perform or move
to avoid parts of their bodies blocking the camera or casting
shadows: "Hey, put your leg down, please. No,
your right leg, not your left leg. Your right leg, OK baby!".
There you go, you can lie there in the hottest game of sex and
get confused about what he's saying - where does my leg go when
there's a guy on both sides of me? In the meantime you're unconsciously
focusing on looking as attractive as possible. How do I look now?
Do I have a stupid expression on my face while
he's pumping? Small, vain human things runs through your mind,
and you'll also have to think about your partner(s) if you're
doing a good job for him or her or both of them, if you turn them
on, if you're about to bite a guy in the dick or are too hard
on a sensitive girl. If it has to be a hot scene
preferably everybody has to get turned on from the situation.
The most important task of the porn models is to show the lust
and make the people on the other side of the screen believe that
they enjoy what's happening. You try to suck a guy or lick a girl,
so it's nice for them, that's a given, but you always remember
to keep contact with the camera, have lively eyes, look
horny, because it's not just the f-ck itself, the blowjob, or
the cumshot, that the audience is turned on by, but the mood and
the looks and the small details.
It's in the detail, a model's image and personality resides, and
it's the calculating detail that creates a foundation for popularity
with the fans. Because they notice EVERYTHING...
A scene with another guy or another girl - or both of them in
shifts - is pretty straight forward but when you're two girls
and a guy or two girls and two guys, there have to be partner-
and position changes under way, so everybody gets their turn in
different ways. It's a question of choreography. You have to know
what happens when, what has to show, who the guy or guys have
to cum on. Important details.
You have to know what the director wants to get into the scene.
It's not good to get too involved in the scene - if the one guy
suddenly cum a long time before before the other, or if a guy
cums before all the scheduled variations. Premature ejaculation
is as big a problem as is getting off too late or a having trouble
getting it up.
It would be pathetic for the guy - he would be a dead man. Imagine
that you're doing a 69 scene and the girl has to get it in both
holes, and the guy cums after a two minute blowjob. I've seen
problems like getting off too late or wood-problems from time
to time - mostly in Europe - but I've never seen premature ejaculation
in a pornshoot in L.A.
The workday is over when the guy or guys have blown their load.
That's the way it is. The fireworks of the day. When they've cum
and you lie there moaning on the floor or the couch, the director
yells "cut!". A workday of 8-10 hours for a scene in an average
American hardcore movie is normal. You're done in the afternoon,
but then other models might attend for the next scene and the
director and the team works longer than the models.
The day ends in a good mood, the same way as in the morning: You
slip into your bathrobe, smoke a cigarette, take a shower, drink
a soda, and talk to the models from time to time. Just chit chat
amongst colleagues in a workplace. What are you doing tonight?
Have you heard that thing about X? How about that new director?
Damn, we made a cool scene for Y last week!
I called Alison, as soon as we were done and she would pick me
up around an hour later.
And there you were, in a car at rush hour on your way home to
San Fernando Valley, as two friends working together at an office
in the city.
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