Marilyn Chambers was signing autographs at a Girls And Corpses magazine event at Sunset Blvd.’s Meltdown Comics Saturday night. Having never seen one of her movies (1972’s Behind the Green Door is the most famous), I know her more as an Ivory Snow model and proud native of the State of Rhode Island.
But I know her cultural impact so I wanted to talk with her. She was surrounded by younger men (one resembled a Bat Out of Hell-era Meatloaf), all of whom had blogs about comics. As comics fans are more often than not also porn fans (it is less often the other way around), I deferred to the prevailing geekery until I really had to go.
Knowing that younger porn performers are often labeled as having a false sense of self, I wanted to get a feeling of how Chambers had grown out of this.
Chambers said she lives in Porter Ranch (a community at the north edge of Porn Valley) “and Beverly Hills” and that she was about to sign a contract for an upcoming off-Broadway show. She couldn’t tell me anything about it, but said the news would be listed on her website.
A fan came up and said that, growing up, he would see Jamie Gillis and Joey Silvera watering their lawns in Porter Ranch. Unlike the porn starlet Faye Reagan, who was flitting about nearby, Chambers seemed past interested in the sort of attention young men with cameras historically provide.
She didn’t seem particularly attention-seeking, but she would have been forgiven for this if she had been. This was Marilyn Chambers, after all. She had a table of her own, apart from the seats where younger porn stars would be signing issues of Girls And Corpses. Chambers and they didn’t interact with each other.
(Nina Hartley, on the other hand, seems to actively seek out the younger performers, if anything to make sure they’re saving their money, getting enough sleep, etc.)
A porn star in a comic book store is not unheard of, but the amount of roving media (if you think porn bloggers are a suspect group of people, you should have seen these guys) necessitated Chambers’ use of a handler. Chambers’ handler doubles as a Los Angeles court mediator, so she was pleasant. I dutifully approached the handler having been directed thereto by Chambers and told the handler that Marilyn Chambers had said it was OK that I took Marilyn Chambers’ picture, but needed permission from the handler, who was three feet away. The handler said OK, and then Marilyn Chambers asked me if the handler had said it was OK, and I said that the handler had said it was. So I took her picture with a Wonder Woman comic.
Then a guy came up and took a couple of pictures of Chambers without permission. Chambers asked where he was from, and he very clearly lied when he answered “Us Weekly.” I’ve seen the guy at porn events before. I thought, “Is he in the Porn Media Guild? Does he have a laminated badge?”
I asked Chambers if she had “written it all down,” and she said Yes, and I felt bad I did not know about the book. But there is no book, she said; she is writing it. She also appears in the independent film Stash with Saturday Night Live alum Tim Kazurinsky.
Like Hollywood, Porn sometimes seems filled with people who feel compelled to tell you about the irons they have in the fire, probably because not having irons in the fire is like showing up somewhere on the bus.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Henri Pachard – “He was one of the greats”; John Holmes shot Wadd on a Sunday; Hair apparent – The Violation of Claudia
See also: Marilyn Chambers on MySpace
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