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.
Ready? Here goes.
Football isn't combat.
I know. But you said that it evolved in order to promote procreation or the survival of the species. "In order to" means the same thing as "purpose."
Are you going to retract what you said and say that there is no purpose to the pleasure involved with intercourse?
Pick one, and we can proceed from there.
The standard of empirical evidence most certainly does apply to the premeses on which a logical argument is based. If I declare that Joshua Norton was the soverign Emperor of America in 1870, that persons living within an empire owe allegiance to the emperor, and that President Grant therefore served at the sufferance of Joshua Norton, I have constructed an ironclad logical argument -- which nevertheless falls to the empirical fact that Joshua Norton was Emperor of America only in his own imagination and the words of those who chose to humor him.
How very sad for you that my example plainly refers to boxing, and that boxing is most definitely a form of combat.
This case is an example of choosing the lesser of two evils, lying to the Nazis or handing two people over to be killed.
You are utterly daft to consider such a concealment an 'evil', A-Fan. What you consider a 'lie' is an attempt to prevent an act of force by the nazis.
Lying remains intrinsically evil,
A lie is an act of fraud. No fraud is being committed by concealing these people from harm. Can you agree?
yet lying is the proper action in this case, since only two courses of action are possible.
The concealment is not an 'evil' act of fraud. It is a proper action to prevent force. Can you agree?
Nice try at justifying your "intrinsic evil" theory, but no sale.
-- Blind obedience to an 'authority' is the evil, not an effort to thwart it.
Well, is the person telling the truth or lying?
Neither. They are concealing the people from harm. Can you agree?
I think that the person is lying about the Jews' whereabouts.
Imagine what you like. Calling the attempt at concealment a 'lie' is your ethical cross to bear.
You can believe that the person is telling the truth if you like.
Just as you can imagine they 'lied'. You are not being honest with your own faith, imo.
As I said before, the liar is absolved of moral culpability since the lie was done under duress and was a choice of the lesser of two evils.
There was no liar, thus no culpability. The moral man has no obligation to cooperate with a fascist state. Can you agree?
You need to question your basic assumptions my son, before you meet your maker.
Your assertion is incorrect. From the article:
Inquisitors did not have to be clerics, but they did have to be lawyers. The investigation was rule-based and carefully kept in check. [Remember, this is the conclusion of group of historians who began their investigation hostile to the Church]. And most significantly, historians have declared fraudulent a supposed Inquisition document claiming the genocide of millions of heretics.This is 3000-5000 deaths in 350 years or about ten deaths per year, in an effort to eradicate Mohammedanism and Mohammedan sympathizers from Spain. Again, to keep this in perspective, compare the number of dead in this "theocracy" to the 1.3 million babies killed annually in our society. Which is morally superior?What is documented is that 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 year history.
Show me the empirical demonstration that natural laws are always predictable and uniform, and that we can trust the evidence of our senses.
Boxing is not synonymous with combat. You're equivocating.
Does it rain donuts in your world? And if I may ask, what color is the sky? ;->
Sorry, it's not my assertion; it's the assertion of the author you chose to quote:
The inquisitors enjoyed a powerful position in the towns, but it was one constantly jostled by other power brokers. In the outlying areas, they were understaffed - in those days it was nearly impossible for 1 or 2 inquisitors to cover the thousand-mile territory allotted to each team. In the outlying areas no one cared and no one spoke to them.The investigation was rule-based and carefully kept in check.
Meaningless. Lawful evil (e.g. fascist enforcers) and chaotic evil (e.g. mad slashers) are both evil.
Boxing is to combat as pornography is to sexuality -- in each case, the former is a subset of the latter which is at least partially divorced from the primary purpose of the act.
I'm sorry; the subject under discussion is your empirical evidence supporting your premeses concerning what is "unnatural" and "disordered". We'll wait as long as it takes for you to produce something relevant to that, but we won't let you change the subject.
True. And since you have yet to adequately support any single assertion you have made, I must guess that your opinions are based on whatever you found in your last box of Cracker Jacks.
We had help. At least our founding fathers thought so.
"In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle have observed frequent instances of superintending Providence in our favor.... And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or, do we imagine we no longer need His assistance? - Ben Franklin
Straw man. Were 60-80% of the population thrown in prison because they drank. Were 60-80% of the population thrown in prison because they did drugs?
Only 5% of the people in prison for drug offenses are there because of possession. In other words, the people in prison are the producers and pushers of drugs.
That's a conclusion based on nothing except your own beliefs. You seem to be incapable of making an argument without relying on the God-crutch.
Not when people say that all people who use porn should be in prison.
I never said that.
Calling a mental illness evil is anthropomorphication of the highest order. It would be like calling a gun "evil."
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