The Stuff of Legends
“I think we should start with the blow job, then the missionary followed up by the reverse cowgirl and then finally the anal and he should pop on her ass”. Then someone else: “Nah, start with a sixty-nine, then the reverse cowgirl, then missionary and have him cum on her face”. Apparently, there is no Robert’s Rule of Order on a porn set: most of the cast and crew freely give their opinion to the director.
Sometimes, it’s hard to know when you’ve made it in the porn biz. Not so, if you’re Jenna Jameson. When you’re known by one name, when they line up to have you sign your autobiography at Book Soup fer chrissakes – okay, maybe not then. But when you’re the porn screenwriter, well then, sometimes it’s hard to know if you’ve made a name for yourself in Silicone Valley. You tell people that you write porn and you are invariably met with one of two remarks: “There are scripts for porn?” (most likely the women) or “You are my hero” (the guys, natch). It’s tricky working the requisite five sex scenes into the eighteen-page script. Usually it winds up that there’s at least one sex scene that, truth be told, is not inherent to the plot. And, yes, there are plots. Some of my favorites from my personal oeuvre include: “Best Little Haunted House in Hollywood” (loosely based on the night I spent at a hotel in Bruges haunted by some randy spirits) which included the tag line “The thing that goes bump in the night is in your pants!” “Thrills” (and “Thrills Part Deux”) which were equal parts “Quills” and “Interview with a Vampire” and “Grand Opening” which was the pornified version of a legitimate movie I wrote.
I had been writing for Vivid Video for a couple of years before moving back to Los Angeles. AVN’s review for my first movie, “She Town” (I wanted to call it “Coochie Town” but Playboy nixed that title); mentioned the “crisp dialogue” – you can look that up. I think it was the exchange between the movie’s Private Dick and the Femme Fatale when he tells her that he gets “four hundred a day plus blowjobs … um, expenses” that garnered me that favorable review. That movie actually helped pay for my honeymoon in Italy. But now that Marco J. Spumante (people sometimes ask how I came up with my nom de porn – and I’ll tell you what I tell them: It just came to me, I swear) was single and back in driving distance of the San Fernando Valley. There was nothing to keep me from visiting the set. Actually, that’s not completely true. The first script to shoot – “Hollywood Hostel” based on my fantasies about my friend Mike’s new job managing one of the Hollywood youth hostels around the corner from my place – was being shot at a freeway-side motel in Oxnard. Try asking a friend for a ride to Oxnard sometime – it’s about as bad as needing a ride to LAX on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving. Now, ask that very same friend for a lift to a porn set and all questions of time, traffic, sick day from work and gas money go right out the window. The only question is “what time shall I pick you up?”
The shoot took over the entire Wagon Wheel Motel. I found my friend directing a dialogue scene (yes, there is dialogue. That’s what I do) in the lobby. The star, Kira Kenner as the proprietor of said Hollywood Hostel, was to check in a female guest. Try as she might, the blonde making her porn debut across from Miss Kenner, couldn’t get the two lines of out in any way resembling what I had written. Mind you, it was some tongue tying verbiage. I think she had to walk up to the counter and mention that she was checking in: “I need a room” and then, something like “thank you”. Moving on – they set up the sex scene (referred to as the “commercial scene” in porn parlance) on the couch in the lobby. I was sitting about ten feet away on some apple crates. Kira was on the couch looking bored as the male actor did her from behind. During a short break as the male star woefully attempted to get himself hard for “the pop” (not called the “money shot”, I’ll have you know), Miss Kenner and I had a lovely chat. No … really. We talked about fashion (I had commented on her cool, Diesel sneakers – the only thing she was wearing at the time unless you are the sort of person who considers anal beads as clothing) and books (of course, it was books that could potentially be pornified). They finally resumed the business at hand. Popping her co-star’s cock out of her mouth, Kira began rubbing her cheeks. She asked me, “am I getting stretch marks?” I assured her that her face was fine. A little later, Kira pulled the cock out of her mouth again, looked over it towards me and asked, “how’d you like something this big in your mouth, Brian?” I assured her that that occupational hazard was, fortunately, not mine.
Later, as they set up the blonde’s first sex scene, she came over to chat with me. Seemingly, the writer on a porn is, believe it or not, something of a hero. The all male crew all came over when they were informed who I was to say “hey”. This was usually followed with comments about how good my – or rather, Marco’s scripts were. If I didn’t know any better, the blonde actress was flirting with me. She was fresh off the boat from Florida – her now ex-boyfriend there didn’t like her stripping, so she left for the Valley and got herself cast in this adult entertainment in a flash. That’ll show him! She was called to the next set – one of the motel rooms - for her sex scene with Mr. St. Croix. We’d had beers a few times; he’s a good guy. I mosied out to the parking lot of the Wagon Wheel towards the room. My friend Steve likened the experience of being on a porn set to somewhere between the first time he discovered dipping chocolate in peanut butter and discovering that first Playboy in his dad’s sock drawer – only a little more boring.
As the blonde readied herself with wine and a vibrator (she was much less nervous about her sex scene than she had been for her dialogue scene), my friend Steve and I positioned ourselves near the monitor. The room itself was way too small to fit anyone other than the actors, cameraman, director and boom operator. Even that was a stretch. The rest of the crew, a mixture of older guys with graying pony tails and younger guys trying to work their way up the porn ladder, now mostly unsupervised, did whippets out of a Hefty bag in the parking lot. We watched the blonde fuck the living crap out of Mr. St. Croix on the monitor. The sexual gymnastics became so pronounced they actually broke the bed. Not missing a beat, I turned to Steve and said, “Exactly how I wrote it”.
By Brian Mazo
