At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I stumbled upon “The Deuce.” It’s 1970: the Golden Age of the porn industry. Porn is in its infancy, on the precipice of something more… Prostitutes and escorts crowd around the blocks surrounding New York’s Times Square looking for work.
We focus on a woman, Candy: she has a mind full of ideas she can’t seem to make happen. She is strong and assertive: things a woman wasn’t supposed to be in the late ’60s or early ’70s. Binging this show in the late hours of the night, I began to realize that I could make the porn I wanted to make.
Candy is searching for that exact same feeling, she was a representation of my desire on screen. I felt seen by her character- someone who moved into their passion with purpose. Candy is inspired by Candida Royalle, a woman who started off as a porn actress and moved into directing.
Much like Candida, I want women to express their sexual desires and see that in this industry. I want beauty, I want the story, I want love, sex, and connection but most importantly: I want safety. I describe my pornography as “porn but like it’s a sex scene in a movie,” a little inside joke I have with myself.
Sex, Art, and Media
Every time I’ve watched a mainstream movie with “sex” in it, I felt underwhelmed. The best sex scenes I can recall are from Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden. Between the intricate gripping story, there is the love of two lesbians with beautiful imagery to accompany it.
This movie, in my opinion, is a must-see for all visual media sex workers who want to create higher art in their field. This film opened my eyes to exciting storytelling involving lesbian love, something I hadn’t seen represented on such a large scale before but most importantly, seeing sex shown so explicitly gave me hope I didn’t know I needed. It ignited a flame to create in me.
Maybe to my own fault, I’ve never bothered to see the work of the men before me. I’ve never sat down and watched the pornographic rape film “Deep Throat” or the ever-so-deep pornographic film “Blue Movie” which urges us to “Make Love, Not War.”
I should thank these men for making porn more acceptable in people’s eyes today, but do I owe them that? Linda Lovelace was assaulted on the set of “Deep Throat” and coerced into sex acts she stated she was not comfortable with. Do I owe these men a thank you for creating the building blocks for what parts of the porn industry are today?
As for my venture into the industry… in a town with not many friends, every day was exactly the same: Wake up. Turn on FX and watch a movie. Pause to pee. Come back. Watch another movie. Finish the season finale of the show I’m currently hooked on. Rewatch twilight. Rot in bed. Scroll through Tumblr. Consume media day in and day out, constantly imprinted by the media I consumed.
I had dreams of creating something. I began making videos on Vine when I was young, using it as an outlet for the visions I saw in my mind to become tangible. “Slice of life” has always been one of my favorite genres of films right below horror and that’s exactly what I was trying to do with my time on Vine. My love lies with those two genres; horror and slice of life, everything I’ve ever done has been inspired by one or the other.
Creating A Masterpiece
At the begging of September last year, I had an idea and scrawled it out in my notes. I wanted tocreate a film inspired by Argento’s Suspiria. A movie that has shaped my tastes in many ways. A movie I named my pets after.
“Resurrection,” the film I created, is the magnum opus of my currently available work. It ties in my love for movies with the values I hold on set. Conversations of consent before, during, and after filming, collaborating on ideas with my costars, and having friends be able to collaborate with me.
This year, I’m not in the place I once was as an artist. My resources are a bit dried up after taking some time off and I am not able to make a complete horror film as I did the year before. I feel disappointed in myself but my day for making a masterpiece will come. How much can you know before you’re 25? 30 even?
I may even look back on past work at those ages and say “Hey, that was my masterpiece.” I may revisit it. I may rewrite it. Even when I’m not in the place to make the thoughts I have in my mind become tangible I’m still an artist, even when the room is empty, even when the lights are not on. I am an artist.
Porn Is Art Too
I call my production Golden Age to call back to this time in the 70s. It is here I declare Andy Warhol my greatest enemy. Why? I believe to make porn and insist it is not because it is “more artistic,” is an insult to what the industry can create. Porn is not a dirty word. Four Chambers is arguably creating better porn than any porn company along with most mainstream movie production houses.
I believe my love for movies, being on movie sets, and my background in art I believe is what’s given me this love for the porn industry. The porn industry is hibernating and it’s been waiting for someone to wake it up.