We talked for 45 minutes on camera in a Beverly Hills park Wednesday morning. Video
Pic pic pic pic pic pic Here’s her blog.
Julie spent 1980-1984 in Germany (from kindergarten to fourth grade) before coming home to Washington D.C. "grudgingly."
"I don’t really like this country. If I had my way, I would go back to Europe. It’s a much simpler way of life. I didn’t know about such things as racism until I moved here. I lived in a farming village. I went to the butcher, the baker, and you could walk there."
Luke: "What do you love and hate about America?"
Julie: "I hate the hypocrisy."
"It’s supposed to be so democratic, which I don’t buy. The Religious Right is trying to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do, meanwhile they have mistresses and dominatrixes…. People should be allowed to make their own decisions. Overseas, they teach people to think for themselves while here they teach people to follow like sheep. Thinking for yourself is strongly discouraged here."
"The educational system here. There are different standards depending on where you live. Why is it ok for people in the South and Mid-West to be stupid? It seems like the system is intentionally keeping certain segments of the population down."
Julie loves the "freedom" in Europe. "It’s just so beautiful there."
"I lived there as a child. I’ve been there as an adult but I haven’t lived there. Other than Checkpoint Charlie which I visited when it was still up, it just seemed more relaxed. Here people live to work and there people work to live."
[Afterwards, Julie praises by email "the lack of homeless in Europe, centralized health care, and lower crime rates (depending on where you are, of course)."]
Luke: "Why do you choose to live here?"
Julie: "I live here for work. Unless I find some European to marry, I’m stuck here."
"I was raised atheist but I wanted to convert to Catholicism."
Simone has lived in Los Angeles since 2003. "The people here are passive-aggressive. I’m from the East Coast where people say what they think."
"I love the East Coast. There are actual cities there. I love when you walk out on the street and people are in suits and ties. They care about their appearance. People here go to work in jeans and t-shirts. How is that acceptable?"
Julie’s parents didn’t "impose anything upon me… So long as I was happy."
"I didn’t know anything about S&M until I did it in photo shoots. I think it’s the danger. I’m an extremist. I like edge play, taking things to your limit. Things like breath play, the element of danger beyond how much pain you can take."
Luke: "What was your reputation in high school?"
Julie: "I was strange. People thought I was odd. People thought I was a slut."
"I was very quiet… I’ve always been a loner. I was a cheerleader. I was in junior ROTC."
Julie married at 20. It ended three years later though the divorce didn’t come through for another two years.
"I was starting to model. He liked bragging about it to all his friends but he was not OK with it and that became a big problem."
"He wanted to start a family and I wasn’t ready for that."
Luke: "Why would you choose modeling over your marriage?"
Julie: "That was not the only problem. He also got into the internet and chatting with young girls online. He wanted to go visit one of them. I said, ‘That is not OK. We’re married.’"
Luke: "How did you get the niche as a fetish model?"
Julie: "Unfortunately, after you’ve done just a handful of those, that’s what you are labeled. My first love was fine art modeling and glamor. But once I started doing the fetish, there’s a stigma attached to it. I’d get booked for a fine art shoot and I’d go yay, I get to do something fun and flirty today, as opposed to getting tortured, and I’d get there and they’d have all these fetish ideas because they didn’t want me to be bored."
"I wish that people would stop trying to make me a one-dimnensional person."
Julie has done some hardcore porn work "but it just wasn’t me. I started having a problem with it. I started going out and thinking everybody knew. It made me not want to leave my house."
"I don’t ever want to do work that says ‘I needed money.’
"My father and I don’t have a close relationship. My parents divorced when I was young. My father found my site and said I was treading on dangerous ground."
"My mother is just happy that I don’t do porn anymore because now she and her husband can watch porn again without worrying that I’ll show up on their TV."
"When I’m in front of the camera, it’s the most creative I feel."
She recently took two years off of modeling. "When I did fashion, I was 110 pounds. I’m 5’9". That’s not a healthy weight."
As a photographer, Julie "hates dealing with models… A lot of models don’t get it. One model complained the whole time she was there. When I later tried to talk to her about her behavior, she said, ‘You tried to make me into something I’m not.’ Yeah, that’s what photographers and directors do.
"A lot of models don’t show up on time. They don’t bring the stuff you ask them to bring… The ones who act like it is a chore, it makes me not want to do it."
"The only thing I don’t like about directing is that the financial payout hasn’t matched up yet with the amount of work I do. The models get paid twice as much as I do and I have two works of post-production to do."
"I don’t mind being vulnerable [as a model] as long as it is within my comfort level. I never want to feel unsafe. That’s only happened to me once or twice in the ten years I’ve been doing this."
Julie owns three cats.
"I’ve gone sober a few times. Two years ago, I went two months minus a one day break."
Currently Julie has been sober for a few months. "I’m trying to make it a lifestyle change."
"It’s been a problem for most of my adult life."
"I was in denial for a long time. It’s not just alcohol."
"I can’t seem to just have a couple of drinks like normal people do."
As Julie gets drunker, she gets more happy and wild. "It helps me be the person I am inside."
"Coke is the only drug I’ve had a problem with. It’s so socially acceptable."
"I was doing speed to maintain my weight."
"From living in LA, I started doing coke again. Everywhere you go, it’s here. As a female, everybody wants to give it to me. Coke is what started me going back to AA. …Unfortunately, alcohol leads to it."
Luke: "Do you become more sexually available when you’re high or drunk?"
Julie: "Sure. Most people do."
Luke: "How often have you been offered drugs or alcohol on a set?"
Julie: "Never."
Luke: "Photographers have never offered you a drink?"
Julie: "They do but I don’t."
Luke: "Do photographers offer you cocaine?"
Julie: "There was one in Indianapolis."
"I haven’t worked the [twelve] steps. I’ve just been going to meetings, trying to find a sponsor."
Luke: "What if the only way you could stay sober was if you had nothing to do with the adult industry?"
Julie: "Then I’d leave it. But I don’t think the adult industry has anything to do with my problems with drinking and drugs."
"When I was doing penetration, it was a factor. There was a period when I had to be high to do a shoot. That’s when I realized I shouldn’t be doing [penetration]."
Regarding blogging, Julie says "some people don’t want their sex objects to be a real person."
Luke: "How has your ‘Julie Simone’ character affected your relationships?"
Julie: "It’s often a problem. A lot of people can’t separate work from personal. In my most recent relationship, we got into fights all the time. He’d say, ‘You had sex with a girl. I should be able to have sex with a girl.’"
"A lot of people are jealous of my work. That’s ridiculous."
"I can see that if I was getting penetrated on film, I could see that as sex."
"A lot of men feel threatened by what I do, as if I’m having some sort of sexual experience without them, even if I’m only holding a camera."
Luke: "My estimation is that about 80% of men would have a problem with that."
Julie agrees. "I wish it couldn’t be like that. I wish a guy could say, ‘My girlfriend directs porn. That’s great. As a female, she’s trying to bring something to a male-dominated world. It’d be nice if they could see it as some kind of social benefit."
Luke: "What kind of guy will think it is great his girl directs porn?"
Julie: "Maybe some kind of crazy deviant. Or maybe an intellectual. Maybe I need to find a professor. A sociologist. He’ll think it is grand."
"I tend to date musicians."
Luke: "Do you feel vulnerable right now?"
Julie: "No. I guess you haven’t asked the right questions."
Luke: "How has your life changed by being sober?"
Julie: "It’s just very strange."
"Pretty much everyone I know drinks but they don’t do it very often."
"I choose not to hang out at drug parties anymore because they’re boring."