The Chimes at Midnight. And it’s not Orson Welles playing Falstaff. Rather, it’s Dino Bravo leaving me a voice message at the bewitching hour to say that his shoot ran rather long Thursday because of all the dialogue scenes.
Next you’re hearing Frank Sinatra singing Love and Marriage in the background. Which is Bravo’s little joke, because the shoot he’s talking about is the porn rendition of Not Married With Children, and that was the show’s ironic theme song.
I love Dino. He’s like the son I’m glad I never had, and he’s the first person I run into at the Van Nuys studio earlier that morning. A baseball junkie who wields a statistic like a juvenile delinquent wields a switch blade, Dino’s quick to tell me that former NY Yankees pitcher Tom Sturdivant had just died. Celebrity deaths are a popular chapter in Dino’s conversation manual.
“Lot of people don’t know this, but Sturdivant pitched the fourth game of the [1956] World series- the one before Don Larsen’s perfect game,” Dino informs. Which really isn’t news if you’re an avid collector of baseball cards, and I can picture Sturdivant’s from the ’57 Topps series, one of the great baseball card series of all time.
On the subject of death which must also be his favorite Jeopardy category, Dino informs me that industry legend Ted Paramore has passed away, apparently last July, from what he’s told. This, too, I didn’t know. And, sadly, maybe no one else in the business does, either. Paramore began his adult career in the Russ Meyer-Immoral Mr. Teas era directing the nudie movie classic Not Tonight Henry and eventually took his profession into hardcore under the pseudonym Harold Lime.
Next Dino tells me that Tom Tresh, another Yankee, had just passed away. Which I didn’t know and this surprises Dino greatly. But I casually inform him that I’m not always up on the demises of ballplayers from my old gum card collections. Dino also tells me that he’s playing the next door neighbor Steve in this porn parody.
“You know Steve?” Dino’s now asking.
“Yeah of course.”
“I didn’t,” confesses Dino. “I never watched the series.”
Dino always says things with the straightest of faces so you never know whether he’s leading you on or is actually this character straight off of a spacecraft. I prefer to believe that Dino’s sense of humor is dryer than Arizona, and that he’s not as perplexing as he sometimes leads you on to believe.
The show’s director Will Ryder is also somewhat amused because a prankster has put a notice on Craigslist advertising for a black guy and an Asian guy to perform in the shoot for $600 apiece. Ryder says this is nonsense and that the ad’s a phony.
Now that he’s red hot, I’m sure Ryder gets as many porn satire ideas thrown his way as Octomom gets Google mentions.
Dino thinks All in the Family would be a perfect choice for a parody. But I had to explain that Scotty Fox did a watered down version in 1991. Then I had to go into who Scotty Fox is. Some of which explains porn amnesia and the fact that no one seems to recall Sex Trek, either, a Cash Markman-Mark Stone collaboration for Moonlight Video.
Regardless of that or any other salient fact, Axel Braun’s upcoming Star Trek project is the big talk on set as though this were a brainstorm of Noah’s flood proportions.
With inspired thinking on my part, I’m going to talk Ryder into doing Not The Three Stooges XXX, knowing that this will be a big hit among the ladies who absolutely embrace the cult of Moe, Larry and Curly.
I also remember Ryder saying on the Cosby XXX shoot how the whole Not Married With Children project for Hustler Video would hinge on the casting of the Kelly Bundy character. Porn directors are concerned about things like that [Kagney Linn Carter from LA Direct Models is playing her, by the way], but overwhelming curiosity had me wondering more who was going to play Al Bundy since Randy West tackled that notion in an ill-advised 1991 version called Married With Hormones.
But I don’t think anyone in that ’91 cast had legs equal to Carter’s. She’s wearing black pumps and one of those tight dresses that just about covers her magnificent ass. In porn thinking you wonder how Al Bundy could have a daughter like this traipsing around the house without soiling his pants.
For his rendition of “Family,” Ryder says even Randy Spears, Sex Trek’s Capt. Kirk, auditioned for the role. But Spears’ gravelly voice is now in the bassoon registry, and Ryder felt that the deep octave wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, he went with Eric Swiss who’s been in the business maybe two years.
Ryder says he took some heat about the choice of a non-marquee name but told people to trust his judgment. As it turned out, Ryder couldn’t have been more correct. Besides cheese, Swiss is as physically close as you can get to Al Bundy without actually walking into a shoe store.
“He’s got the doofus-thing nailed,” I mention to Ryder after observing how Swiss mugged aggressively like Ed O’Neill in rehearsal.
“I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear that,” Ryder comments sarcastically.
I was also going to tell Ryder how I felt Swiss successfully got in touch with the angst of the henpecked working man but didn’t get the opportunity.
And, since you asked, Brittany O’Connell is playing Peg Bundy. I know because the flying wedge her red hair’s sprayed into, almost took my head off. You have Kelly Nichols to thank for this, and I asked Nichols about the “comeback” scene she did with Tom Byron.
“I was totally sober for it and in the moment,” Nichols laughs but doesn’t think there will be another.
Regarding O’Connell, the last time I saw her was, I think, in 1995. And not a scintilla of suet has taken up residence on her marvelous body since. O’Connell came out of retirement last year at fan behest, and though she’s been working for Zero Tolerance, Playboy and Chris Streams, she’s heralding this feature as her official comeback.
“They really nailed me with Peg Bundy- with the hair and the costumes, everything,” laughs O’Connell. “I love playing her character.”
O’Connell stopped shooting in, maybe, ’97.
“I started my own website, www.brittanyoconnell.com, got on that and with dancing and running my fan club, that’s what I was doing.”
I gather no one stole her domain name. Then, again, O’Connell isn’t the easiest name to spell.
“I immediately jumped on the web,” she explains. “I saw it coming and was having a lot of fun with live cams shows for my members and producing content for my website.”
Asked if porn, like love, is better the second time around, O’Connell vows that she’ll be doing a lot of stuff she didn’t do the first time. Only she laughs ruthlessly when asked to embellish that statement.
“I’ll stick around for maybe another five to ten years; I really love this business,” she adds
Ryder’s mentioning the fact that there was a “divorce party” the night before for the Marcy character [played by India Summer] in the script.
[Maybe few realize that the TV actor who played Marcy, Amanda Bearse, was also featured in a soft porn movie titled Fraternity Vacation.]
The shoe store scene is also a funny bit, and the set designer must have staged a raid on Payless’ back wall for the props. Yet, once again, Ryder’s boys have waved the magic wand of facsimile.
The slinky Kimber James plays a customer looking for something in a wedgie, and Al puts the make on her, not realizing until her leans legs are spread wide in his face that she’s carrying a package which is peeking out of her baby blue underwear.
“These are size 9’s,” says Jade to Al, referring to the shoe, not her jock strap. With that, Al whispers to his shoe store co-hort that he thinks he’s going to vomit.
“This is going to be great,” Ryder yells out in encouragement. “This is comedy gold.”
In real life, James is an Imelda Marcos with about $40,000 worth of footwear occupying her own closet, she guesses.
“They’re in storage all over the country,” she laughs.
With Cuban blood and a few other nationalities thrown in, Kimber grew up in Miami and began shooting movies maybe a year ago.
“I came out to LA and was getting some plastic surgery,” she explains.
“The plastic surgeon was Gia Darling’s plastic surgeon, so he thought that we would get along and he introduced us. Long story short, I expressed interest in being in the industry and she showed me around a little bit.”
James had signed on with LA Direct but left a couple of weeks ago.
“We just didn’t see eye to eye on things.”
James has her own production company, does club appearances and shoots content for her website, www.ts-kimberjames.com.
“I wanted to put more energy into that so we [her and LA Direct] parted ways,” James explains.
I figured that with this strange URL address, someone had staged a raid on James’ name closet as well. James says I figured right.
“And they wanted $10,000 from me to buy it back,” she adds.
“Or they said I could see them in court. This has happened to friends of mine.”
James also mentions that she’s just signed a distribution deal but doesn’t want to say who it’s with, yet. In other matters, sexual, she lost her virginity at age 15 to a boy she was somewhat attracted to.
“He knew the situation because I started transitioning at the age of 12,” James relates.
“I felt like since everyone else was doing it, I should do it, too. We had sex and that was the last time I saw him or spoke to him. So that wasn’t the best experience.”
Among her recreational pursuits, James puts plastic surgery at the top of her list.
“I’m going to keep having them until the day I die,” she laughs. “If I need a face lift and I’m dead, I’ll be in that operating room and it’ll be easier because I won’t need anesthesia.”
So I’m asking Dino Bravo how things are going with him, what with the adult industry apparently sharing the same operating table with James.
“Perry Como’s rolling around in his grave things are so bad,” mulls Dino who begins selecting tunes from the Como songbook to croon me to death with.
“It’s impossible, tell the sun to leave the sky, it’s just impossible…know that one, Gene?” Dino asks.
“Yeah, I know that one. Would you shut the fuck up, Dino? I’m trying to take notes.”
Dino continues to sing and is being relentless about it. I tell him he’s an obsessive-repetitive if there’s such a term to describe his condition. Dino looks at me blankly as if wounded.
To get Dino off track, I ask him why he doesn’t age. He attributes this to olive oil and garlic plus the fact that he drinks a lot of prune juice. Dino swears this fact is true but I’m not buying it.
“I’ve been drinking prune juice since I was 21,” he insists. “My mother and grandmother drank it right out of the bottle.”
“Papa loves mambo…Mama loves mambo…Look at ’em sway with it…Gettin’ so gay with it…Shoutin’ ‘olay’ with it, wow…Know that one, Gene?” Dino again asks.
“It’s a tough market right now,” chimes in Ryder, answering the question I had asked Dino earlier before he got on this juke box nostalgia kick.
It’s only his opinion, but Ryder thinks maybe 85% of the porn companies will be gone in a year and a half. I’m giving it a lot sooner.
Wielding this huge press kit for Not Three’s Company XXX as though he were a Southern Baptist with a bible, Ryder also mentions that Entertainment Tonight had postponed it’s earlier announced Not Three’s Company porn piece until Friday night [March 6th]
“Otherwise, we’re continuing to chug along,” Ryder continues. “We’re spending extra to reach everybody.”
And apparently this is what Dino Bravo is trying to do with his all-star salute to cheesy Vegas lounge acts.
“Feelings, nothing more than feelings… trying to forget my feelings of love…Remember that one, Gene?”