Whenever I go to L.A. to shoot my porn and sex-ed movies, my partner and
I stay at his mother's house in Pasadena. And this time, his sister was
getting married there in only two weeks. So the house had been transformed
into wedding central. Rooms were filled with boxes of color-coordinated
napkin rings and tablecloths and party favors. Everywhere you turned, there
was a gift from Macy's or a set of silverware or decorations. In addition,
about a dozen boxes had arrived for us, filled mostly with items for the
movies like brightly colored buttplugs made from the same material as
bowling balls, butter-soft leather-dildo harnesses from Aslan Leather, and
assorted bondage toys from JT's Stockroom. I kept having nightmares of
someone in the family innocently cracking open a box, expecting to find the
Waterford-crystal champagne flutes and instead stumbling upon Sportsheets'
Under the Bed Restraint System. Yikes! Luckily, I managed to keep the
vibrating dildos separated from the personalized M&Ms.
Over seven days, we shot four movies, which is the most we've ever done
in one trip. Not surprisingly, there were the typical casting snafus:
Tuesday's performer just got her most recent test back, and she has an STD;
we need someone else! Her replacement can't get her nails cut short in time
for the shoot, which involves fingering buttholes, so we need to replace
her! (I'm a stickler about short nails when it comes to anal penetration.)
Tomorrow's girl sprained her ankle on the set of a zombie porn movie today,
and she can't put any weight on it! There were also some less-than-ideal
conditions—like the house in Studio City built on stilts with an
amazing view and an air-conditioning system that barely worked. Under bright
lights, with seven people breathing in one small room, I could swear it got
to be 85 degrees.
On the final day, we were doing a scene with Aiden Starr, a feisty
ex–professional dominatrix from New York, and Devin, a newish male
performer who has appeared mostly on Internet sites like meninpain.com (where I first saw him). The
plan was for Aiden to dominate him and rough him up a bit. While she was in
makeup, we all chatted about the scene and they negotiated their limits,
especially his, since he would be bottoming. When the scene began, she
started taunting and teasing him with her sharp tongue. I think she asked
him to bark like a dog a couple of times. Things had just started to get
rolling (i.e., the fucking had commenced) when I looked behind me and saw
two men I didn't recognize.
"Who are you?" I asked quietly, knowing that the performers couldn't see
them from their vantage point and not wanting to disturb the fantastic
handjob in progress.
"L.A. Vice," the one in front responded, and he flashed his badge. It
looked pretty real to me. I didn't want to stop rolling, so I led them away
from the bedroom into the dining room.
"Do you have a permit?" the vice cop asked.
"Yes, I do," I said. "I'm not sure where my production manager
is—he must be getting lunch. Um, let me look for it." I started
looking through the production binders somewhat frantically as the officers
rolled their eyes at me.
"You're going to have to stop filming until we see a permit," the first
cop said firmly.
"It's here somewhere, I swear." They continued to look skeptical. At this
point, they clearly did not believe me.
Just like "regular" moviemaking, in Los Angeles as elsewhere, filming
porn requires you to apply for and receive a permit from the city (or
county). If you're in a residential neighborhood, the neighbors are notified
in advance, and sometimes you also have to reach out to the community or
homeowners' association in advance. There are rules about when you can film,
where you can park, etc.—and for porn, you always have a clause that
says nudity and sex cannot be visible or audible to people outside the
house. In addition, officials from the permit office can drop in, the fire
marshal can do a spot-check, and apparently, the vice squad can stop by,
too. Houses become known as "hot" when they are busted too often for
shooting without a permit, or the neighbors repeatedly complain, or there
are too many companies applying for permits at one location. Apparently, I
was filming in the hottest house in Northridge. Just my luck.
"We've busted this house pretty much every time we've come here," one of
the cops told me. "No one ever has a permit. And last time we came, people
were doing drugs and other bad stuff."
I picked up my phone and called the production manager. He came walking
around the corner from another part of the house with a quizzical look, like
"Why are you calling me when I'm in the house?" I told him I needed the
permit. He produced it in an instant and handed it to the cops. They looked
it over and clearly seemed surprised. Everything was legit, and they said we
could resume filming. They asked us to call the owner so they could have a
chat, and they stuck around for a while waiting for him.
