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.
not going to happen. ever. keep the government OUT of the internet.
I don't understand your point.
I don't believe you. My point is quite clear (turning an activity into a spectator sport is either a wrongful subversion of the activity's basic purpose, or it is not), and you are simply evading an argument you cannot answer.
This is merely a synonym for "moral relativism". Violation of individual liberties is an inherent evil, and to justify it on the grounds that there is a practical way to pull it off is equivalent to justifying crime because the criminal has figured out a way to not get caught.
Yes, it seems that you cannot rule out any act in principle, for the same reason Bill Clinton cannot rule out any act in principle -- neither of you has any principle higher than "prudential judgment" of what you can get away with doing.
Here, we run into another evil of your proposals.
Repressive societies such as China are stuck on the horns of a dilemma -- they can either allow modern technology and accept that the government's grip on information will be loosened, or they can retain the status quo and slip behind the civilized world in military and economic power. Attempting to develop tools that would release them from this dilemma is, to put it bluntly, an act of treason.
Please define intrinsic evils. And specifically, since you are talking about criminalizing them.
Intrinsic evils are acts that are evil in every circumstance. Intrinsic evils include theft, murder, abortion, sodomy, adultery and pornography.
The penalty is a matter for debate. The overarching objective of the penalty should be the advancement of the common good. If the penalty is too harsh, greater societal vice, such as the corruption of law enforcement, can result.
Does it include pre-marital sex? Does it include oral sex between married partners? Does it include group sex?
Yes.
Does it include cutting someone off on the highway?
Depends on the circumstances.
It's easy to say that "all things wrong should be illegal, but much harder to qualify.
I'm saying that all intrinsic evils should be criminalized, not necessarily penalized, in order to best promote the common good. For example, an attempt to penalize an intrinsic evil like lying would be practically impossible, and would not promote the common good.
You're making a circular argument based on your error about 'evil'.
And, the first principle of the State is not to promote the common good, but to insure individual freedom.
Yes, of course, - the State is within its rights in using force against someone who is engaged in acts that are criminal, [intrinsically evil] in order to promote the common good.
- But it is also charged with protecting our liberty from those who would initiate force to control what they see as 'sin'.
Is it written in cursive or block letters ?
Your arguments would have more weight if there was less sophistry and more substance.
All you're really saying is that everybody who agrees with you has "seen the light", while anybody who doesn't is ignoring what's "written on the human heart and is knowable to all people".
This is a circular and unsupported argument. Your desire for religious law is no different than those who want sharia law.
I trust that the following quote from Jorge Luis Borges will make the problem with your sort of "definition" clear (you will no doubt insist that you don't understand what I'm getting at, but everyone else will see it quite plainly):
In a certain Chinese encyclopedia, animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.
Nonsense. Inasmuch as an act that is not itself an initiation of force or fraud cannot be "intrinsically evil", a legitimate state (What's with the capitalization? Is the state your Deity?) would never be in the position of initiating the use of force.
If drunkenness causes you to beat your wife then there is a big problem.
I didn't ask you have an opinion whether wife-beating, drunk or sober, should be illegal or not; I assume we agree that it should. What I asked was: Do you have an opinion whether drunkenness in the privacy of one's home should be illegal or not?
Drunks lose their licenses to drive when caught drinking and driving. Is that unfair, even if the drunk hasn't injured anyone?
Endangering others is properly punishable even if no harm results. Do you think drunkenness in the privacy of one's home is in and of itself dangerous to others?
You got a fixation on a legal product? You think that because alcohol is legal, everything should be legal? Man, get a friggin' grip on reality.
Overconsideration, in the form of government policies that create not merely a safety net, but a nice comfy hammock from which one has little incentive to rise and go to work, can cost us our Republic. I'm astonished that I have to explain this here, of all places.
It's a way to test whether posters are consistent in their principles.
Seconded!
This is an example of what I meant by my comment that Aquinasfan's invocation of "prudential judgment" is a weasely evasion. There is no principled decision involved -- just the obvious realization that denouncing porn plays well to the peanut gallery, but endorsing religious bigotry earns a scarlet letter (K, for "kook").
Digressing a bit, IMO the practice of mailing pre-approved credit card applications ought to be outlawed on the grounds that it exposes the (intended) recipient to a serious identity-theft risk.
We now return to our regularly scheduled flamefest, already in progress....
Resist the temptation to turn this into a drug thread and try to stay on topic.
That's the slippery slope fallacy. Legislators should work to create the best, most prudent body of laws that they can. They shouldn't override this objective because of a feared future, hypothetical situation.
"I didn't come to bring peace but division."
I'm trying to awaken consciences. Even one would be worth it.
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