Labor Day in Porn Valley

This weekend I watch Alexis Texas, who is a perfectly charming and affable woman, strip down to nothing and shake each well-exercised buttock independently of the other.

We are on the set of “Cafe Amore,” Adam & Eve’s debut in the growing porn romance market, in which adult movies deal with feelings.

I turn to a colleague, the photographer Jeff Koga, and say, “Her ass is like a miracle of science,” and he says “Yes.”

Then I think about it and add, “I couldn’t get away with saying that if we were math teachers.”

(NB: I say “math teachers” because Koga is Asian.)

But no matter how much fun we are having, everyone in the room (there are nearly 20 people) is there to work.

Running the show are numerous laureates of adult industry awards. David Lord, who just directed “Killer Bodies,” Adam & Eve’s biggest movie of the year, is producing. The Production Manager is Andre Madness, who directed last year’s biggest movie for Adam & Eve, “Rawhide 2.” Directing is Lee Roy Myers, who helped to launch the “romance” genre when he was with New Sensations and has since directed and produced about a thousand porn parodies.

Most of the crew had just worked on Wicked’s huge-budget “Horizon,” directed by Sam Hain, and continue to shoot for New Sensations. An Argentine named Demian, working as a boom operator and production assistant, brought empanadas his mother had made. I eat two, and they are delicious.

In the office of the small warehouse studio in Canoga Park, PM Madness is checking IDs and printing scripts. For many in the studio, it is the first day back from an industry-wide sex moratorium called when a male performer tested positive (then re-tested negative) for HIV.

In the next room is Glenn Alfonso, applying makeup to and teasing the hair of Andy San Dimas, who this year shared AVN’s Best Female Performer award with India Summer. Porn’s makeup artists have the scoop on everybody, and there is nothing they don’t know.

From what I can put together, “Cafe Amore” focuses on San Dimas’ character, on whom partner Anthony Rosano cheats with Alexis Texas. Then San Dimas finds comfort in the arms of sympathetic (but heretofore platonic) friend Rocco Reed, who defends her honor against lout Rosano.

Because the ass of Alexis Texas is the star of the scenes I watch being filmed, it is first up to Myers, and then Rosano, to make sure that ass stays at the center of the frame. It is always the male performer upon whom that job ultimately rests.

For this reason, Rosano makes sure Texas’ ass stays in the light, and that his hands don’t cover any part of her ripe frame that the audience would like to see. Then Myers calls “Soft!” and Texas and Rosano obscure various hanging and dangling parts for the cut of the film that business travelers might see in their hotel rooms.

It is a convivial set. Sound technician Alan has few interruptions by low-flying planes (always a hazard in that part of the San Fernando Valley), and people come and go on stocking feet as the moaning and groaning continues on camera.

It’s a considerate group of people in a difficult and tenuous situation.

The set of “Cafe Amore,” Myers explains, is condom-optional, a nod to an increasingly fraught safety-vs. the illusion of safety environment in the porn industry.

“But no one is choosing to wear them today,” Myers says.

Indeed, condoms are readily available on the set, but each performer, after checking her his/her scene partner’s STD test, opts to go without.

“I don’t see people saying they’re not going to buy my movies because of condoms,” Myers says. “Condoms don’t determine whether it’s a good movie or not, so I’m happy to shoot with them.”

Also on hand is Barrett Blade, himself a director and performer. Today he’s filming behind the scenes footage for the “Cafe Amore” DVD.

“There may not be as much work,” Madness told me last year, “but the people who are working know how to perform more aspects of the job.”

Wicked is currently the only major studio that mandates condoms, but performers tend to prefer not working with condoms when given the option, putting their faith in regular testing and abiding by the occasional quarantine.

But recent attacks on porn performers’ privacy, spawned by the compromise of the database of the now-shuttered testing facility AIM, fanned by a defunct website called PornWikileaks, and amplified by Twitter feuds and rumor-mongering, make people like San Dimas wary.

“Don’t trust the Internet,” she says.

With the collapse of AIM earlier this year from wounds both external and self-inflicted, no successor that can guarantee the performer privacy, medical competence, and media and legal savvy required of such a lightning rod has asserted itself. Performers tend to prefer Talent Testing Services, with locations in Northridge and Miami, but industry lobbying group Free Speech Coalition is championing a collective known as Adult Protection Health And Safety Services (APHSS) with a base in Van Nuys.

The lack of a clear choice is confusing.

That is why everyone in the building is a known quantity to the other. Madness and Lord are the recognized veterans, having labored in the porn business since the 1990’s, but cast and crew had, in various capacities, worked on dozens of movies together.

On a break, Lord tells me how he filmed Tori Black walking away from an explosion in “Killer Bodies.” It’s a technique popularized by Steven Spielberg in “Jaws.”

“You either zoom the lens in while pulling back, or you zoom out while walking forward,” he says. “Same effect. It looks awesome.”

A naked Texas tells the story of when she donned a strap-on to fuck Jada Stevens.

“I thought she deserved a big black one,” Texas says, “but all they gave me was a little blue one.”

“That’s all most guys have,” says Rosano.

On-set photographer Chad Duerksen first snaps still photos of Rosano and Texas in poses. The pair cycle through various positions. Duerksen checks with Myers to find out where the semen will go (“On her ass,” Myers says), and Duerksen squirts a confident line of Vaseline Intensive care on her left cheek to simulate what will eventually be there—and to relieve Rosano from having to come twice (even though someone like Texas could probably get him to).

When Duerkson is done, Myers tells Texas and Rosano to get dressed, re-apply makeup, and then shoot their dialogue scene, which in two minutes will give way to an actual sex scene that takes 45 minutes to complete.

It is only later that I realize Rosano dropped his actual load on both her right ass cheek and left, though Duerksen’s staged photograph will clearly show a left-cheek popshot. This emphasizes that even romance is messy and fraught with doubt.

Three hours have gone by and I go home to prepare for a Labor Day barbecue. The cast and crew will be there until much later, the second day of a 2-day shoot that contains five sex scenes in several different rooms.

But everyone knows his job and is good at it. Each person there may not know if he’ll have work next week, but at least this check won’t bounce.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Last Man Working in Porn—Andre Madness, Lee Roy Myers; A Short History of the Greatest Photograph Ever Taken
See also: Adam & Eve

About Gram the Man 4399 Articles
Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

1 Comment

  1. Thank you for always providing REAL insight on the inner workings of porn. It’s not often that those not inside this industry hear exactly what “movie magic” and work is required to turn out professional adult entertainment.

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