I spoke with Holly Randall as she drove through the Valley
to the Randall family ranch in Malibu. Our cell phones
kept giving out. We talked very briefly about the reissue
of her mother’s classic porn films from the 1980s – that
was the reason I called – but we mostly discussed Holly’s
own life in the porn industry, from getting an eyeful of
Randy West when she was three to her impromptu counsel
of the dissolute of the adult journalism racket.
We started by talking about her mother, veteran photographer
Suze Randall. I get the impression that a lot of conversations
with Holly begin that way, but she seems not to mind, and
the conversation quickly veered off.
“For some reason, my parents never discussed my name in
all the time my mother was pregnant,” she said. “When I
came out, all they could think of was the Hollywood sign.”
“Good thing you weren’t born in La Crescenta.”
Holly is working with her mother now that Suze has returned
to directing. Suze Randall has a distribution deal with
PurePlay Media. Drew Dixon, PurePlay’s head of sales, marvels
at Suze’s ability to attract talent. “Everybody in the
industry loves Suze; she’s been around so long,” he said.
GP: Suze, Suze, Suze. That’s all anybody
ever talks about. What’s it like working alongside your
mother? Are there significant differences in your styles?
HR: At first it was odd. We’d both be
in side-by-side director’s chairs. She’d drive me insane.
She was air-humping, shaking her hips, getting really into
it. When she shouts, she’s really loud.
The two Randalls have since worked out an arrangement
in which Suze sets up the shot and takes still photos and
Holly steps in to shoot the video.
“She feels she’s too old to do it in the first place,” Holly
said. The Randalls’ deal with PurePlay calls for one new
title and one reissue a month, Dixon said, “until the reissues
are done.”
Holly has said that her work gets better every time she
does it, and that she’s ready to branch out on her own.
She’s not sure of her chances, though.
“I don’t have the clout to shoot a feature film,” she
said, but that’s a little hard to believe. She is good
friends with Wicked head Steve Orenstein, and Wicked, she
said, would be her first choice for a feature product.
She mentions another company, too, saying, “basically they
stole a bunch of our shit.”
Around this point in the conversation I realized that
my original reason for calling was dumb, and that I couldn’t
print half of the things Randall was saying. Offending
people was not her concern, however. (It is often mine.)
“I don’t give a fuck what you write,” she said, and I
immediately signed her up to sponsor the inside and back
covers of my trade publication. “I just went back on birth
control, and I have bitched out so many people in the past
few weeks. It’s great.”
GP: When you get the contract with Wicked
or New Sensations or whomever you choose, what do you want
to produce?
HR : When I was at UCLA
I had affairs with some professors. Not UCLA professors,
but sort of visiting professors. I am going to write a
script about the teacher/student relationships that I have
fantasies about. I’ve always had a thing for teachers.
I mention a feud between an adult industry trade magazine
and one of its former employees, a long-time editor and
current pornbloggeur . The publication refers
to him as a “frustrated English teacher.” He refers to
the publication equally harshly.
GP : That sort of fantasy? An English
teacher fantasy?
HR : More of a dominant teacher-type
thing. My dream cast would include Ben English as the teacher.
Speaking of trade publications, Holly mentions that her
boyfriend is AVN’s Acme Andersson, a cool guy and friend
to Gram Ponante.com’s BananWatch editor Stephen Ochs. Randall
said that Ochs will be writing a profile of her in a coming
issue of XBizWorld. The world is small.
GP : Who else is in your dream cast?
HR : Jana Cova, Cytherea, Devon, maybe.
I need someone to play the headmistress who, you know,
has to give the girl some extra counsel when the teacher
catches the girl masturbating. It needs to be realistic
so I need a kick-ass chick. Maybe someone older.
GP : So you’re writing the script this
weekend?
HR : We’ll see how that goes.
Randall can’t escape her second-generation porner status,
but she has been accepted on her own merits.
Her obituary on AVN’s blog about Hustler photographer
Clive McLean was very simple and touching, and she relates
well to people in the porn world.
“I am the world’s fucking therapist,” she said. We talk
about guests at McLean’s funeral, and how Scott Fayner’s
blog has been sad recently, like the last episode of M*A*S*H ,
as he undoubtedly prepares to pull another Eddie Tour or
Eton Veterans. “I saw him the other night. I spent
half the night being his shrink. He said he was a hack.
He said people didn’t respect him.
“I said, ‘Just because you work in porn doesn’t mean you
aren’t a human.'”
Still, she constantly encounters people who knew her when
she was a little girl.
“I was at Jenna Jameson’s birthday party the other night.
Jenna goes, ‘I remember you when you were this big !’
and I was like, ‘You’re not much older than me, Jenna.'”
Holly was three when she caught Randy West masturbating
in her parents’ garden.
“I’d gotten away from my nanny or something and Randy
West is in the yard getting himself hard for a Playgirl
shoot my mother was doing. I said, ‘Ewww! What are you doing ?’
That was the quintessential example of my youth.”
Her parents taught Randall that sex wasn’t shameful or
something to be hidden. “My mother told me that sex is
a beautiful thing and not to let anyone tell me it isn’t.”
GP : My mother taught me just the opposite.
HR : I’ve always been a pervert. Am I
into porn because I was raised in it or because I’m just
a pervert? I don’t know.
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