The Prime of Miss Jean Jacobs or: Would I lie to you, Honey? or: De Jean Vu

The reason that there is no Oscar presented for Best New Starlet is because novelty is not as important in Hollywood as it is in Porn Valley. in fact, Hollywood prizes known quantities more than untested talent.

That doesn’t mean people wouldn’t rush to buy movies with Penny Flame in them (I would, if I had to pay for such things), but the idea of being the first to commit to film some new porn talent is one of the few things in the adult industry that is still looked on with wonder and awe.

Such was the feeling I had when I and a few other gentlemen thought we were witnessing the first scene ever by an 18-year-old named Jean.

Read more after the gap.

Since I work in the media I am lied to all the time. This is a story of my trying to not pass on those lies to you.

Some people lie so much that I am safe in the knowledge that the opposite of everything they say is true. This applies to certain porn publicists like Jeff Mullen. When I run his press releases, they come with disclaimers. He is OK with that (and he has no choice but to be) because he believes that all publicity is good publicity. Also, he believes that readers of other porn news sites are stupid enough to believe him, and he doesn’t worry about the five people who read this site.

After the director Jennifer James lied to me – repeatedly – in a story I wrote for XBiz, I began interviews with porn people by saying, “I will not repeat off the record information, but don’t lie to me. If there is something you don’t want to talk about, let me know and I will not press it. You are fascinating enough, and my words are scintillating enough, that together we can work around that unpleasantness without drawing attention to it. Just don’t lie to me or I will make sure people know it.”

Most of the lying in porn, and in mainstream entertainment, is of the self-deluding variety. “I’m going back to school,” “I can maintain a relationship with someone not involved in pornography,” “People respect and are not creeped out by you if you give them teddy bears,” or “I use cocaine recreationally” are all examples of self-deluding falsehoods, and I cut them slack.

I, for one, say that I am America’s Beloved Porn Journalist when I am actually the World’s Beloved Porn Journalist.

Then there are business-related lies, such as sales charts of trade magazines, the existence of Abby Winters or Simon Wolf, or our deeply-buried lede of the day, the feigned inexperience of Jean Jacobs, aka Jean Laconia.

I met Jean Laconia last week on a small shoot run by Porn Week and Harmony Films. She told everyone assembled that she would be shooting a movie for Vivid this week but that the scene she was shooting in a small room at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino – our special scene – was to be her first porn film ever.

“If there’s something you don’t want to say, just let me know, rather than lying,” I said to her at the bar. “Just say, ‘Gram, I don’t want to talk about that’. Is this your first porn scene?”

“Yes,” she said.

I found Laconia charming and sexy and dirty beyond her years. She said things to Dave West’s camera that seemed characteristic of someone who’d gone to the L.A. Direct Models’ School of Intensive Pornology.

Laconia (as camera zooms in on her parts): Do you like this?
West: Yes
Laconia: Do you love it?
West: Is this my audition now?

Laconia said she was in Vegas for the first time. A stripper from Connecticut, Laconia said she worked at a club in Oxford, MA. She got the name “Laconia” from her street. She can speak Romanian and she likes Jagermeister.

She lamented that she had not been told how expensive Las Vegas was, and Gazzman said that at least he would pay her in cash. He also had the following helpful tips we should all employ:

“It’s good when you shake your tits,” he said in a Scottish brogue, and, “It’s good when you bring your legs back as well.”

Laconia had been booked for the Harmony solo shoot by Fox Modeling, a local talent broker. Knowing that she was shooting for Vivid in a few days, I wondered if it was for their Brand New Faces line, which has its performers sign a quasi-legal affidavit confirming they’d never performed on camera before.

In an intervierw with Brand New Faces director B. Skow, he told me that once or twice he had been able to find out at the last minute that women saying they’d never performed before in fact had. “We’re putting together a ‘Caught’ section on the DVDs and website,” he said, “for people we catch in a lie.”

When Laconia shot for Brand New Faces on Monday she used the name Jean Jacobs. Shortly after I wrote a story on Fleshbot (in which I noted my suspicion about Laconia/Jacobs never performing before), I received a letter from Woody West, the partner of a Connecticut company called Real Passion Productions. He said that Laconia had shot both solo and lesbian scenes for them before and had been paid to do so. He also provided a link to her promotional work for a production called Adult Toy Story.

“We shy away from calling what we do ‘couples’ movies’,” West (no relation to Harmony’s Dave) said. “But it’s hardcore that we think women will be comfortable watching.”

Indeed, Laconia talked a pretty hardcore game.

Working with a vibrator, she said all the right things for the audience assembled. “I’ve got a pretty small pussy so let’s see how it goes. That’s kinda big,” she said, looking right at me.

Laconia turned 18 in April of last year and, as everyone knows, no one thinks sexually until it is legal for them to do so. How did she get the lingo down in just eight months?

The one loophole in Brand New Faces‘ contract is if a woman has never done a scene with a man before. So in this case Laconia/Jacobs might actually be paid for the Vivid scene she did.

Still, as you can see by these pictures, Jean will have no trouble getting work. Why she had to lie – and I ask this of any person in porn, where the truth is almost always more compelling – is a mystery.

Jean Laconia in Gram’s Gallery.

Previously: Postcard from Porn Week
See also: Real Passion, Vivid, Gazzman