Porn Valley- Hall of Famer, not only in sex but the sartorial dept., Sean Michaels will be one of the co-hosts at the Urban Spice Awards June 8 in Studio City.
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As I’ve been doing a lot lately in connection with the book I’m writing, I’m running across notebooks, tapes and interviews which haven’t seen the light of day in years. The following is an excerpt from a chat I had with Michaels at the time the Cambria List and Interracial Sex Scenes were at issue in the business. We talk about Michaels’ start in the industry.
“Cripes, I remember seeing your first movie. This is frightening,” I tell Michaels. “Did you encounter a lot of prejudice when you first got started?”
“Oh yes,” he says. “Ray Victory was supposed to go to Germany back in 1990. It was the Teresa Orlowski little porn thing she had going in Hanover, Germany. He couldn’t go for whatever reason. Jim South goes, hey, you want to go to Germany? I go, sure. Knowing damn well I had only worked like, twice, here in six or seven months.
“I went there and it was great,” Michaels continues. “You know how Europeans are when it comes to brothers or anyone who’s cool. If you’re cool, you’re cool and you’re in. I went over there and started going for two, three weeks at a time. Then I started to go to other countries. It was great. Because I was damn sure not getting any work over here. No offense to Jim South who was my agent at the time.
“None, whatsoever. I was shooting still photography for John Cook and every now and then my good friend Jim Talmadge would come along and throw me something. Then, after I started going to Europe for a year and a half, then John Leslie heard of me. He and John Stagliano gave me my real first shots.
“Face Dance was your breakthrough feature,” I point out.
“Exactly,” says Michaels. “And then there was Oh What a Night with John Leslie. Those two movies showed everybody that, hey, they like him over in Europe, let’s see what he’s got over here. Still, I ran into shit.”
“How about a for instance. Were you knocking on doors?”
“That wasn’t me,” says Michaels. “I was still doing the nursing-thing part time and full time when I needed to, so I didn’t need to go that way to make ends meet. Basically, I’d hear that this guy or that was shooting interracial and there weren’t too many doing that except the guys that were were calling me.
“Every now and then I’d run into a guy who would be like, ‘Sean, this girl’s never worked with a black guy before. But I think it’s going to be okay.’ I’d say I can understand that. This one particular time, someone had rented out the DWP building and they had a bunch of people doing scenes late at night between shifts. I went to this gig and it was like one in the morning. There were a lot of people there including Ron Jeremy and they were shooting scenes all night. I sat there for awhile and when it comes time to do the scene, all of a sudden, the girl doesn’t do interracial. I’m like why couldn’t have someone told me this hours ago?”
“I ran into this type of shit a lot more than brothers today. And they still run into it but just not as much. I know people go, oh, you had a lot to do with that. But it’s one big circus. People smile in your face and the next thing you know it’s like where the fuck did that come from? As you know. So I stayed to myself and kept my blinders on and forged ahead.
“Remember your first ever scene?” I ask him.
“Yes I do,” he says. “It was for Jim Talmadge and it was with Rachel Ryan. It was called The Lottery. That was for CDi. Rachel was quite a lady.”
“What was your feeling at that particular moment?” he’s asked.
“I was definitely awe-inspired by the whole thing and came too soon,” says Michaels. “Then Jim goes, hey, that was a little early. Think you could do that again? Yeah, just give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready. I did it and he goes I think you’re going to be okay in this business, kid. Because, usually, when that happens, it either goes one way or the other. And you definitely went the other so welcome. It was nice. To this day Rachel Ryan is someone near and dear to my heart. The way she handled it, she kind of laughed it off and wasn’t a bitch about it.”
“I met her on occasions and she could be extremely moody,” I note. “But she was okay with you?”
“She was a sweetheart to me,” Michaels recalls. “That’s why I remember her dearly like that. She was of the magnitude of one of the bigger stars, especially in those days. But she was cool and helped me get going again.”
“How do you make this strange transition from being a male nurse to being a porn star?” Michaels was asked.
“Because I’m a little strange myself, I think,” Michaels answers. “I think it’s a blessing to not be normal. What can I tell you? I’m an artist by nature. I draw, I paint, I sculpt. I’m a little eccentric. And a lot of other people are that as well. I was thinking about that the other night.”
“I have one question that’s be gnawing at me?” I aalso ask him. “What do you do with your used suits? Obviously if you hung on to them you’d have a clothes’ closet the size of Santa Monica Boulevard.”
Michaels cracks up.
“I try to follow that old rule that if you don’t wear it in two years, donate it,” he replies. “I donate my stuff to Salvation Army. The stuff that my son can’t wear, of course. Because the way I dress is not the way kids dress these days. With my suits most of the time I’m donating them. Whatever.”
“If you knew about an Ebay back then would you have been auctioning your shit off?”
“Probably,” says Michaels.