Posted on 05/28/2004 5:25:59 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
A Mormon Girl Gets Her Start in the Adult Movie Business
Jan. 23 — When 20-year-old Michelle saw the handsome Spaniard who would later become her fiancé, she thought it was love at first sight.
[WARNING: This article contains descriptions of sexual acts that some readers may find offensive.]
"The day we met, he said, 'You're going to be the mother of my children. I love you,'" she remembers. "You know what I mean? I never had that before. I never had a guy be so in love with me."
The couple met on the set of a porn film in a rented house in Prague in July 2001.
Michelle, the daughter of a retired Air Force captain and former bishop in the Mormon Church, was an up-and-coming starlet in the adult video world. She had had some setbacks in her first year in the business, but believed her career was turning around with the Prague trip, which would be her first starring role. Her co-star, 28-year-old Nacho Vidal, was already a well-established star.
The director had told Michelle that Vidal liked her work, and when the pair saw each other they immediately fell into each other's arms, kissing from one side of the house to the other.
"There's nothing bad about you," she told him admiringly as they prepared for the shoot. "You don't know me very well" he replied with a grin.
But when the director finally got the pair to settle down to the business at hand — filming a sex scene — the tone changed. Without any prompting, Vidal got rough during the sex, slapping Michelle's face violently from side to side, and choking her. [Pleased to meet you/Hope you guessed my name]
Afterward, she looked shaken, her face reddened and her eyes watery. But she insisted she was OK. "I look torn up — can you tell?," she asked an ABCNEWS producer who was following her progress for Primetime. Laughing and wiping her eye, she turned away and said without conviction, "I took a beating today, and it was great."
'Belladonna' Is Born
Michelle had gotten her start in the business at 18, when she came to Los Angeles from her home in Utah to look for work as a nude photograph model. When she failed to get modeling work, her agent encouraged her to try porn. She refused at first. "I always hated porn. I thought it was the most disgusting thing in the world," she told Primetime, which followed her career for more than two years.
But she finally agreed. Taking the name Belladonna, like the poisonous flower, she found herself preparing for what she thought would be a simple boy-girl sex scene. She was shocked when the director told her he wanted her to do anal sex — something she says she had never even thought about before. Worried she'd have to go through with it if she wanted to work again, she let him talk her into it. "I was kind of scared. I didn't know if I could say no," she remembers. "I didn't know any better, you know?"
After the session, she was shattered. "I wasn't ready for anal sex.... It was painful. But I can hide it really well." She had just turned 18, the legal age for participation in sexually explicit films.
Michelle went on more shoots over the next few months. Then her agent sent her on a job where she would have sex with male actors in prison outfits — 12 of them. Once again, she tried to back out, telling the director it was "sick," but once again she was talked into it. She had sex — all kinds — with the 12 men. "It was really hard because I really felt like a piece of meat ... in a lion's cage, 12 lions.... I had to do a lot of things I can't imagine anyone wanting to do." She was paid $4,000.
Afterward, she says, she couldn't stop crying. She packed her bags and went home to her family in Utah.
Glimpse of the Big Time
But within a year, she was back, even agreeing to promote the prison movie that had so upset her.
She began to feel that her career was picking up. She got a small part in a movie for VCA, one of the "high end" companies that produce big-budget films, and hoped it might lead to a contract. On the shoot, she met porn legend Ron Jeremy, who was making a cameo, and began to feel like she was fitting in. "The first second I walk in, this girl grabs my breast, and I'm like, Wow, you know, that's like the best welcome ... 'cause then you feel like, Oh, someone likes me, you know?"
Another company considered giving her a contract, but at a meeting, the owner, veteran porn star Ona Zee, sensed that Michelle was not emotionally ready to become an adult star. "There's a part of me that wants to say to you, 'Run for the hills, girl, do something else, because you can be something better,'" she told her.
At the high-end companies — which produce a small proportion of the thousands of adult titles released each year — performers often have contracts and can make six figures by shooting just eight to 10 movies a year. They can pick their own partners and condoms are generally required. Shot on film with elaborate, sets, costumes and plots, the movies can have budgets up to $250,000.
But Michelle did not get a studio contract, and ended up taking a job with a company known for "gonzo" porn — sex-only, amateur-looking productions shot on video. The company, Elegant Angel, was making a film in Prague and offered her a starring role, which she hoped would show the big studios that she could carry a film.
Love Blossoms in Prague
She was thrilled at the attention Vidal gave her during the week in Prague — but wary. "It's weird to have a guy love you that much. That almost scares me because I have a hard time trusting men," she told Primetime, explaining that her first boyfriend cheated on her repeatedly and ultimately left her for a stripper. Privately, Vidal had told Primetime he could never be with just one woman, and would be happy if Michelle's attraction did not lead anywhere.
She came back to Los Angeles by herself, so sore from the week's filming that she says she could hardly walk. But then she flew to Spain to visit Vidal, and their relationship seemed to be going places. She said he could keep having sex with other women, as long as he agreed to be "honest to me, loyal, and just respect me and tell me that I'm number one every day."
She even began hearing wedding bells, telling Primetime, "The second I get married, I won't having sex with men in this business any more."
Wedding Bells
By December 2001, Michelle and Vidal were engaged. As she proudly showed off her diamond ring, saying how pretty it was, Vidal joked in his Spanish accent, "I need to f—k so many girls for that ring."
The couple was in love, Michelle says, but they were fighting regularly. Vidal would sometimes get what he calls "Latino jealous" when he saw her talking to other men at clubs. Michelle told Primetime, "It's hard to be in a relationship with someone in porn."
By now, she was working steadily, even shooting for the same company she shot the prison gangbang for. "I guess now I've gotten past the whole feeling-bad-about-it thing. I'm like, 'OK, I did it and that was pretty damn rough of me' ... Like wow, you know?," she said with a laugh. "I can say that I've done pretty much everything there is to do, and I can walk away feeling a little proud about it, you know?"
The Primetime producers who had been following her noticed changes. At 18, she had said she would never use drugs, but now Primetime learned that she was sometimes high on marijuana during her scenes. She was working without condoms, though she said the risk of AIDS was never far from her mind — or her prayers. "The fans don't like to see condoms ... If I would have said I want to use condoms every time, I really wouldn't get any work," she explained. She contracted chlamydia, which can make you sterile.
And anal sex — which she had be talked into during her first shoot — was now her specialty. "Funny, isn't it? Something I didn't want to do and now I'm known best for it," she told Primetime. No longer a fresh face in the business, she found she had to agree to even riskier sex acts to earn the same money.
Ona Zee, the producer who had interviewed Michelle the previous year, noticed a difference, too. "I said to my husband, Our baby is all grown up and left home. She's no longer the adorable fresh-faced girl that I met ... Now she's really in the life ... Even in the pictures that I see of her, she's much harder, much tougher."
Behind the Smile
During interviews with Primetime, Michelle kept the happy smile she had always had — even when describing things that many people would find disturbing. However, her composure cracked when Diane Sawyer asked why she always smiled. Tears came to her eyes as she said, "Because I like to hide — hide everything, you know?" Then she began to cry, explaining that she hides her real emotions because she wants to show everyone how happy she is. "And I'm not happy ... I don't like myself at all," she said.
Michelle confessed she often felt physical revulsion during her scenes: "My whole entire body feels it when I'm doing it and ... I feel so — so gross." While pretending to be enjoying the sex, she said, she was in fact counting the minutes, telling herself, "Hey, I only have this much time left. Don't worry about it. Get the check. Gonna go deposit it in your bank." She admitted: "You get addicted to the money."
Like other performers Primetime spoke to, Michelle said that during shooting she often imagines herself outside her body. "I call it the 'other half,'" she said.
Bringing Home a Trophy
In January 2002, Michelle's Prague movie won an award at the Adult Video News awards in Las Vegas, considered the Oscars of the adult industry. Things were not going smoothly with Vidal that day — he complained that Michelle "don't do the ironing my clothes... I still 28 and I need my mother," and at the ceremony he openly checked out other women — but there were crowds of admiring fans for Michelle and she soaked up the attention.
After going on stage to pick the trophy, she was beaming, telling Primetime she had worked hard for it. "I think this is the very beginning of my career, like I've just begun," she said.
And at the 2003 AVN awards two weeks ago, Michelle was an even bigger winner, taking home awards for best supporting actress and three other categories.
You're like a broken record repeating your mantra that what you see as 'sin' is "intrinsic evil".
That is the question at issue. You are begging that question.
Non-violent consensual acts are not 'criminal' under our rule of constitutional law.
The public aspects of such acts can be 'reasonably regulated' by state/local governments. No power has been granted to prohibit or to criminalize them.
-- Why do you advocate ignoring our constitution?
I've said this before several times, but I'll say it again as succinctly as possible. The proper object of the human reproductive system is the procreation of children within marriage. It also serves to unite the married couple. If you disagree, you'll have to propose a more reasonable proper object of the human reproductive system.
Your opinions on human sex are beside the point at issue.
Why do you insist upon ignoring our established constitutional rule of law in order to prohibit & criminalize 'sin'?
I don't. I just get the idea that you think along those lines. Because, to say that it is commiting adultery for my husband and I to tape ourself having sex, unless we erased the tape as soon as we where done.
You sound like one of those that thinks anything other than lights out, missionary position sex is sinful.
Can be good or bad, worth or unworthy of suppression. This is a matter for the prudential judgement of the State. While our Constitution allows free political expression, this is not an absolute, natural right upheld by God. The argument in favor of the First Amendment can be made on a prudential basis, but it is not a principle.
At times, the common good can be advanced by suppressing erroneous political belief systems. The suppression of Nazism in prewar Germany and the suppression of communism in pre-revolutionary Russia come to mind as examples where suppression of political speech would have been desirable.
Was Aquinas a fan of a so-called 'benevolent dictatorship' of the community? Communitarian-ism?
-- I think that's what you are preaching here A-Fan, and using your own standards you could be shut up, amusingly enough.
- Fortunately you live in a republic where we tolerate such apostasy.
- I personally welcome such remarks, as they really illustrate what fanaticism can degenerate into. -- Thanks for outing yourself.
Why?
Define freedom.
After reading your last communitarian post, I've concluded you couldn't understand our concept of freedom even if you were enslaved. You're truly pitiful.
Your definition is circular and without merit. Even using your definition, the only item on your list which is evil in every circumstance is murder (and that assumes we use the legal definition of murder).
A completely unsupported argument. Just because you believe something is evil, does not make it so.
Why is prostitution evil? Whose rights are harmed if consenting adults engage in sex for money?
The viewing of pornography is also evil because it interferes with the proper ordering of sexual desire. Sexual desire is naturally and properly ordered toward the unity of husband and wife the procreation of children.
Again, you have no basis for your argument other than your personal feelings.
To counter my argument you will have to offer a different proper object of sexual desire and intercourse.
Why? Your premise is incorrect on its face. There is no need to provide a different premise to replace it.
Depends on the circumstance. Is it evil to lie to the Nazis if you are hiding Jews in your attic?
Depends on the circumstance. Is it evil to lie to the Nazis if you are hiding Jews in your attic
In the Aquinasworld utopia, there wouldn't be any Nazi's, because the Communitarian state would have forbidden fascism from ever even being discussed.
I would assume that the hot topic of the last few hundred years or so would still be on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
How is this relevant?
"Why did nature include pleasure in the design of the human reproductive system?"
Well, pleasure probably evolved as an aspect of sex because the more pleasurable an activity is, the more it will occur, thus increasing the specie's chances of survival. Those that had more fun tended to last longer. But again, relevance?
"Is this a proper use of the will? It can be if the couple isn't using artificial means of birth control, which is analogous to gorging and vomiting."
Birth control is not "intrinsically evil". Also, neither you nor the law has any business whatsoever deciding "the proper use of the will" of another, if that will harms no one.
If the only "proof" you have for your positions are "we all know it's evil..." and "the Bible says...", I really don't see where this is going.
Not to point out another hole in A-Fan's argument, but isn't banning discussion of a certain political ideology, no matter how loathsome the ideology, fascistic?
How does The State acting in a fascistic manner increase the mythical common good?
Future? I'm talking here and now, in the time of gay marriage and political correctness. Your side does not have the power -- the other side does
I guess I missed that part. So, why is prostitution "evil"?
Different people have different ideas of "best". Your definition of "best" is directly derived from your value system. You can't even get a good percentage of the people on this (very conservative) board to agree with your value system -- you expect to get 50%+ of the voting population to agree?
First, heresy presupposes some connection to actual Christianity, which implies some exposure to the Bible and especially the New Testament, so you haven't gotten heretics off the hook.
Second, does the above imply the Catholic Church spent the Middles Ages (and a good deal of time afterward, for that matter) violating natural law?
Third, even if the promoters of Christ-denying false religions are "innocently" spreading soul-destroying lies, why withhold compassion from those who would be fooled if false religions are allowed to proselytize, but would remain Christian if they are not? After all, that was, as I recall, your first argument for banning pornography. I can hardly see how reiterating the distinction between "intrinsic" and "non-intrinsic" evils takes away the virtue of protecting the vulnerable from harm. After all, if you knew someone's breaks were going out (which involves no kind of moral evil at all), you'd stop them from driving, wouldn't you?
1) The Preamble of the Constitution does not say that promoting the general welfare is the purpose of the state. It doesn't say anything about the purpose of the state. It says a few things about the purpose of itself, the Constitution.
2) Given what you mean by "prohibit evils", your position is at war with everything the Founders understood the general welfare to be.
Nope; can't find the phrase "common good" there. Must be hidden in one of those emanations from a penumbra.
You can do that, or you can fess up to being intellectually incoherent. You have no third option.
Your objection to the viewing of boxing is that it is a perversion of combat prowess. Combat prowess is properly ordered when it serves to defend oneself and others for whom one has taken responsibility and when it deters agressors.
Accept one, accept the other. Or admit that your position is not based on rational argument.
Now, now; your pretense of obtuseness grows tiresome. As you know perfectly well, because I have explained it in terms comprehensible to anyone capable of following simple logic and simple English, to provide repressive regimes with the tools of selective information control is to treasonously release them from the trap that would otherwise force them to either abandon repression or abandon any influence on world affairs.
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