HOME



Tigr Mennett aka Chelsea Manchester worked porn during the 1980s. A dark blonde, she featured small breasts with sharp nipples.

Sharon Mitchell's stormy relationship with production assistant Tigr Mennett was the subject of the 1986 documentary Kamikaze Hearts. "Alternately distressing, instructive, contestable, and fascinating," writes Johnathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader. "Juliet Bashore's 1986 documentary about a lesbian couple working in the porn industry--a cynical older woman (Sharon "Mitch" Mitchell), who is a seasoned porn star, and her lover (known as Tigr), who is an uneasy newcomer to this world, where drugs play a significant role--offers a disturbing glimpse of the modification of bodies, feelings, and lives. The camera's presence has a shifting role in the film, moving from seemingly impartial witness of certain events to stimulus and catalyst for certain others, and this tends to confuse and change one's relationship to both the film and its characters. Rarely has the alienation implicit in the porn business been so tellingly exposed, but in the process of exposing the film raises a few questions about its own tactics and complicity. And it isn't only porn that gets deconstructed; the central relationship between Mitch and Tigr seems to have been figuratively and literally taken apart."

Kamikaze Hearts, wrote L.A. Weekly, "drags you to a certain place - the world of lesbian-junkie porn stars - and keeps you there for 90 minutes. If you're excited by that place, or even if you find that place disturbing, you'll like this film because it's so relentlessly inside the world of naked bodies, make-believe, addiction, despair, two-bit sleaze and two-bit dreams."

In The Village Voice, Alisa Solomon called Kamikaze Hearts "the most interesting - and disturbing - lesbian picture, there are no taboos to break. Only the camera, with verite charm, trembles during kisses here."

Tigr Mennett aka Chelsea Manchester wrote Kamikaze.

Mitchell introduced Tigr (pronounced Tigger) to intravenous drugs.

Ten minutes from the end, Sharon and Tigr take a shower. "Do you know why I hate you?" asks Tigr. "Because you have this power… And you are a failure though."

Sharon: "I understand that. And when you understand something, it's all right.

"One person is going to get off on this. And that's enough. And more than one person jerks off to me. And I hate that. The Sharon Mitchell they see is not Sharon Mitchell. That's why I am, maybe a failure. But you just say that because you're talking about yourself. I can rationalize my way out of anything.

"I can be a snake. Remember the last time I was in bed with you? I was crawling around and pulsating like a snake. Did you dig that?

"I'm always f---ing acting. That's all I know how to do."

Tigr: "You're an asshole for doing this to me, Mitch. You're doing the same thing to Mantra. You're drawing us into your little game. All you do is perform. You have no real person. I really believed in you once. That you had a seed of power that would change the business. But you're not going to change the business. You're stuck. And you've got me stuck with you and you'll try to get everyone else stuck with you.

"I have to get high again. And say it on film."

Sharon: "This is the truth. You got what you want. You did not have to put it in. You could give it to me. I'll put it in my movie. As I said in the cab scene, there is no legitimate or illegitimate anything. No one dragged you into anything. This [Sharon holds up a needle] was my dick and I f---ed her with my dick. And I waited for this relationship to mature.

"This is a movie within a movie within a movie… This is timeless, just like the woman [Tigr] sitting here freaking out."

Tigr: "I am not freaking out. I just want to put in on film… There is too much dialogue in this…

"It's just the movie business… Something to fit into every hole. I feel like we have totally blown it but we still have another chance to do what we have to do. I wanna make a movie that shows that you don't have to find all these holes and creating holes…"

Sharon: "It's just in out."

Tigr: "I want to learn how to do it. I wanna learn technique, method… I have all this heart and guts but I don't have technique. I didn't used to need to fix all the time. I know that it is wrong but I can't get it together. What are we missing? Why do I have to keep doing this? It's not magic or the Bermuda Triangle. There's nothing left that gets me off. And I don't feel like killing myself either. That's the only thing that still gets me off is that I can still live. I have to find some other way of getting off without being a total junkie."

Kamikaze also starred Jon Martin, Sparky Vasque, Jerry Abrahms as Gerald Greystone, Robert McKenna as Bobby Mac, Jennifer Blowdryer, George Paul Csicsery, David Clark as the make-up man and Mistress Kat aka Kat Sunlove aka Kilgore Rangerette.