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.
Inasmuch as some lies serve the purposes of initiating force or fraud (e.g. "This car gets 200 miles to the gallon"), some do not (e.g. "That dress looks just fine, dear"), and some actively defend against the evil of agression (e.g. "Nein, Herr Gauleiter, there aren't any Jews hidden around here"), the question cannot be answered without more specific information.
Having already admitted that the state has every right to do just that by your "moral" system, you have now added hypocrisy to the other failings of what passes for your argument.
What of nontheistic religions such as Buddhism?
Er, no. A liar asserts as fact that which he does not believe to be true, and therefore does not "know".
(One might reasonably question whether Bill Clinton is, strictly speaking, a liar -- he gives some indication of actually believing what he says at the moment he says it, however it might conflict with the facts of the matter or his own experiences.)
Nice try.
This case is an example of choosing the lesser of two evils, lying to the Nazis or handing two people over to be killed.
Lying remains intrinsically evil, yet lying is the proper action in this case, since only two courses of action are possible.
A completely unsupported argument. Just because you believe something is evil, does not make it so.
I've explained why pornography and prostitution are unnatural and evil many times in this thread.
Do you believe that theft and murder are evil? Should they be illegal? Why can't I murder someone if I want to?
Lying does not exist in a vacuum. Whether or not lying is evil is based on the circumstances of the lie. I can sit around all day saying "I am Napolean." Clearly a lie, but no evil occurs as a result of such a lie. On the other hand, if I lie about my identity in order to use someone else's credit card to make purchases, my lie results in evil.
It is impossible to judge the evil or non-evil of a human action without knowing the circumstances surrounding such action.
In any event, your definition of "intrinsically evil" has been repeatedly shown to be circular.
My ideas of what is best are derived from the natural law.
The truth and popularity don't necessarily go hand in hand. Popularity is only relevant with regard to determining the best tactics for use in the advancement of good legislation.
Your explanations have clearly fallen flat. As has been show, they are based on unproven premises.
Do you believe that theft and murder are evil? Should they be illegal?
If we're using the legal definition of murder, it is evil. If we're talking about killing another human being, that is only evil in certain circumstances. Whether theft is evil is based on the circumstances of the theft. Robbing a bank to feed one's drug habit is evil. Stealing classified information from the Soviets in order to protect the US is not evil.
Why can't I murder someone if I want to?
Because murdering another human being violates that human being's right to live. Of course, we're relying on the legal definition of murder here.
The concept of natural law is an intellectual dead end. At its base, it requires that all human beings "know" what is the natural order of things. That is impossible.
How is this relevant?
An evil is defined as something that is unnatural or disordered. Therefore, anything that interferes with the proper ordering of human sexuality is an evil. The State is within its rights in criminalizing evil.
"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?
You're right. Sex was designed for reproduction, hence the name, "reproductive system." Nature also intended that the mother and father raise the child produced as the result of their sexual union. The pleasurable aspect of intercourse also serves to unify the couple, adding to the strength of the family. Therefore, sexual expressions that serve to break the family bonds are unnatural, disordered and evil.
"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".
Care to offer a reason?
Again, anything that serves to hinder the proper operation of the body is unnatural, disordered and evil, just as gorging and vomitting is disordered and evil.
We all recognize the latter, because we all recognize the proper way to eat, just as we all recognize the proper use of the eyes, legs, arms, ears, etc. But when it comes to human reproduction we suddenly become very obtuse, deliberately obtuse.
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.
How does engaging in evil not harm anyone? The purpose of the State is to promote the common good or the good of everyone in a society. Certainly those engaged in evil are harming themselves, at the very least. As members of society, they diminish society when they harm themselves. They diminish the common good. Therefore, the State is within its rights to limit their evil behaviors.
Of course, those who engage in "consensual" evils harm others as well. Ask the spouse of a man who engages in "consensual" sex with a prostitute. Or ask the children of a drug addict if they're harmed by "victimless" drug use.
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.
No Bible-based arguments above.
Er, you do realize that you've blown yet another hole in your notion that "intrinsically evil" (which you still have not defined in a manner more satisfactory than Borges' Chinese animal classification)?
How can you possibly justify empowering the state (I don't spell it with a capital letter, as I do not consider it to be a Deity) to punish someone for taking the "proper action", as that is clearly antithetical to the "common good"?
Since your argument applies with equal force to prove the absurd conclusion that boxing and football are evil (they turn combat prowess from its proper ordering toward defense and deterrence toward vulgar bread-and-circuses entertainment), it is not convincing.
FascismHow does The State acting in a fascistic manner increase the mythical common good?1)a.A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b.A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2) Oppressive, dictatorial control.
Suppressing fascism is fascist?
Under a fascist regime all rights are eliminated. An effort to prevent the rise of a fascist regime by suppressing fascist ideology serves two goods, it diminishes the spread of evil ideas and it can help to prevent the establishment of a fascist regime.
Unless you believe that fascism serves the common good.
You have repeatedly admitted that your philosophy justifies legislation that most people (and all sensible people) recognize as tyranny. Your response is not the honest one of seeking different tactics to advocate such legislation while openly admitting your goal, but the dishonest one of disavowing your advocacy in order to avoid being considered a crank.
I cannot put my finger on any distinction between your approach to politics and Bill Clinton's.
The state (lowercase; it isn't a Deity) has no "rights" at all. It has only delegated authorities given to it by the people in order to serve as their agent.
The situation is similar to that of (for example) the exterminator. He has a delegated authority to enter my house; I let him in, or give him a key, because he needs access to do his job. He doesn't have a right to be in my house -- if he did, I wouldn't have the option of terminating his employment and requiring him to leave.
Um, No. Evil is defined as:
e·vil ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vl)
adj. e·vil·er, e·vil·est
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked
2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful
3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous
4. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous
5. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious
I don't see anything about "unnatural" or "disordered" in there. If you're going with disordered=evil, then people with a mental illness qualify as evil.
The purpose of the State is to promote the common good or the good of everyone in a society.
The nanny-state, maybe. Conservatives prefer not to live in a state like that.
One example that follows inevitably from this argument is the right of your deified "State" to prohibit its members from neglecting their physical condition:
'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.
I don't know what you mean.
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?
No. The establishment of State Churches is legitimate, if not desirable. The suppression of heresy can be a legitimate act of the State in such cases. Generally speaking, the Catholic nations tolerated non-Christian religions to various degrees. The most intense State/Church suppression of non-Christian religions occurred with the Catharists and Mohammedans. Even so, the extent of the Spanish Inquisition has been greatly exaggerated. A recent research project of the BBC revealed that 3-5,000 people were put to death under the Spanish Inquisition, over a period of 700 years.
People are coming to see the suppression of Mohammedanism in a different way in light of recent events. The Catharists prohibited marriage, and the spread of their religion would have obviously destroyed society.
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?
That's a fair point, and a matter for prudential judgement. The prime conflicting principle is freedom of conscience.
Suppressing fascism is fascist?
Suppressing the free flow of ideas certainly qualifies as "oppressive, dictatorial control," don't you think?
Unless you believe that fascism serves the common good.
No, but the free flow of ideas certainly serves the common good. Unlike you, I don't trust the state enough to give it the power to decide what ideologies are "correct" and which ones are not.
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