OSHA: Spanking Kayden Kross improves workplace morale

As temp secretary Kayden Kross is paraded into his office wearing assless chaps, high-powered but gravel-voiced attorney Randy Spears says what’s on everyone’s mind in this tight economy:

“Interesting look. But what about her secretarial skills?”

Studio: Adam & Eve
Director: Ernest Greene
Starring: Kayden Kross, Mika Tan, Justine Joli, Shyla Styles, Alexis Texas, Claire Adams, Randy Spears, Tom Byron, Tommy Gunn, Marco Banderas, Chris Cannon

Today’s porn fans will put up with a lot for their three minutes of satisfaction 40 times a day: but never try to tell them that it’s easy to get a job.

Kross must prove her worthiness both as a secretary and as a submissive in Ernest Greene’s recently-released and deeply-porny interpretation of the 2002 Hollywood movie “Secretary,” which starred Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader.

In this version, Kross is like a spirited pony who must be broken by a series of trainers, including Tom Byron, Claire Adams, and Justine Joli.

Kross is also sent to a submissive secretaries’ training academy where she is classmates with other naughty typing pool ladies, such as Shyla Styles and Alexis Texas, who has the following conversation with Tom Byron:

“I’m a bad girl,” she says.

“How bad?” he asks, taking out a clipboard.

“Extremely bad, and getting worse all the time.”

I visited the set when “Perfect Secretary” was shot last year, both at a rental facility in Glendale and at the studio Greene shares with his wife, Nina Hartley. There I saw the punishment-superabsorbent Mika Tan get it both ways from Marco Banderas and Suffolk County’s own Chris Cannon, and then the ultra-white trio of Adams, Joli, and Kross in Kayden’s final trial by straps.

“Perfect Secretary” made me think of certain people I know who commit the crime so that they may get the punishment. Kross does this a couple of times in the movie and, no matter how delightful Kross is to look at, I’ve always found that character trait unappealing; the idea of “punishment” in fetish play really needs to mean something, in my opinion.

Kross has gone on to become a Digital Playground contract player since “Secretary” was shot on Adam & Eve’s payroll, so this movie might be the last time you see her writhing away with such freedom.

I talked with director Greene about the shoot and about paddling one’s employees as a morale-building exercise.

Greene: “Perfect Secretary – Training Day” was in some ways a bit of a departure for me, in that I rarely do parody features of any kind and as the great British actor once observed, “Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.” It’s especially challenging to address BDSM sex with, as it were, a light hand.

Gram: So how do you present kink for a mainstream porn audience?

Greene: First of all, the source material, somewhat like that of the “O” pictures, was problematic. I liked the performances in the original film, and thought it had some well-observed moments, but overall it suffered from a lot of the cliche thinking about kinky people that drives me nuts. It was, after all, a film built around the concept of using kink sex as DIY psychotherapy, which I often see in mainstream media and have yet to encounter in my decades of hanging out among active kink players. We’re like, in it for the sex, man.

Gram: I feel about mainstream movies like “Secretary” (and, to a greater degree) “Bound” that they serve as gateway drugs for lifestyles many people want but don’t know how to ask for.

Greene: I’ll grant the original this: it did manage to mix some dark and sexy stuff with a few laughs, and I figured if they could do that in Hollywood, I could do it in an office building in Glendale.

Gram: You had some of your own usual suspects in this picture.

Greene: I started out by stacking the deck with performers who have BDSM experience in their backgrounds and can sell it on camera. I really pulled in the good ringers on this one. Claire Adams is a fantastic player in either a dom or sub role, an amazingly creative bondage rigger and a director in her own right. Mika Tan, in addition to being one of the nicest, smartest, funniest people ever to grace our business with her participation, is an experienced kink player also and Justine Joli is probably the most magnetic crush object ever to do BDSM specialty work. Tom Byron was spanking girls before it was trendy and Randy Spears, always stuck with playing normal guys in features, is a pretty pervy dude, in a good way. When Kayden Kross, whose legs have been known to give hard-ons to statues in museums, put on her black stockings with a little prompt from Mrs. Ernest Greene, aka Nina Hartley, I knew Randy would be a happy guy.

Gram: I like that Kayden didn’t appear to be trying on the fetish like a t-shirt to be discarded; she looked committed to the character.

Greene: Of course, Kayden couldn’t expect to be spared the kind of corporal tutelage that is the picture’s centerpiece, and she got plenty of it from Justine Joli, who is as fiendish a domme as she is piteously adorable sub, and Claire, once again providing us with a long list of fun things you can do to a beautifully bound beauty. Kayden took her licks in various ways and the obvious delight her teachers took in inflicting floggers and suction machines on Kayden’s fabulous physique once again made BDSM playful and fun on video the way it should be in real life.

Gram: Like the “O” movies, “Secretary” seemed like a nice primer for that lifestyle, even if I’m unconvinced that anyone really upped her words-per-minute.

Greene: All in all, everybody gave everything and as a result we got a much better, more daring and more entertaining picture than the core material would have led us to expect. I’d go so far as to say that if someone wanted to introduce an inexperienced partner to the pleasures of kink, this pic would be a pretty good example to present. It contains absolutely nothing that isn’t fun to watch, as it was fun for the players to do. I’ve been to parties that weren’t half as much fun, and that’s saying a lot because I generally worry may way through every production. For most of this one, I just sat back and watched, enjoying the superior work of superior players.