Our esteemed friend David Aaron Clark died a year ago this week, and last weekend his work and life were remembered at the debut show of downtown L.A.’s Starrlight Gallery.
Clark’s porn career ranged from writing for literate, dirty magazines on both coasts (New York’s Screw, San Francisco’s Spectator), to penning dark BDSM literature, and finally to directing Asian-themed porn of varying budgets, including last year’s “Pure” for Evil Angel, an extra-adult retelling of the already adult “In the Realm of the Senses.”
“Pure” starred Asa Akira and Keni Styles, both of whom attended the gallery opening, along with BlueBlood.net’s Amelia G. and Forrest Black, Mean Bitches’ Glenn King, Crazy Bitch Dana DeArmond, Kimberly Kane, and Starrlight founders Aiden Starr and Bobbi Starr (no relation).
Guests mingled in the New York-style warehouse space that was anchored on one end by a projection of “Pure” (“Here comes the castration scene,” said Starr. “It’s my favorite part”) and on the other by a metal stand that stretched out the arms of Clark’s signature XXXL duster.
I asked Akira if sawing off Keni Styles’ fake penis and being sprayed by fake blood had bothered her, and she said, “Not as much as (another part of the movie).”
(You really should see “Pure.”)
Clark won AVN’s Best Director award posthumously for “Pure,” and I’m sure he would have been very pleased. And I’m sure that, in death, he would have been pleased to overhear the grousing of another director friend of mine the night DAC finally won Best Director.
“They gave it to the dead guy,” my friend said.
Chances are DAC would not have won that award had he lived, and he would have been the one complaining had the trophy gone to someone at Wicked, Vivid, or Digital Playground. He may have even raised his eyebrows at some of the people who showed up at his gallery opening.
But we would have welcomed the bitching had he just been there.
The Starrlight Gallery, open by invitation in a nice space on E. 14th Street, will next host an exhibit of (probably schizophrenmic and homeless) outsider artists in January, 2011.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Into the Realm with David Aaron Clark
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