Porn Valley- When it comes to computer technology, I’m the first dope like Laura Bush is the first lady.
At least that’s what struck me when I began watching Upload- or at least the first dialogue scene and the first sex scene- that I wasn’t getting it. At least for the time being.
[Be advised: viewing this feature requires weay more than faint attention skills.]
Eva Angelina’s playing this character named Cassandra- a Federal agent in the “24” mode- and she’s being grilled or reprimanded by her superior played by Eli Cross. Angelina’s slouching in her chair like someone just called to the principal’s office. I know the feeling.
Something bad has gone down involving a computer virus called Enigma. But instead of fathoming thecomplex enigma of Enigma and continuing with the movie, for diversion, I checked out some of the extras which begin on Disc 3 of this lavish 4 Disc set. Good move.
I love this BTS stuff- particularly the unscripted moment when a blond slams down on a wisecracking Evan Stone’s hardened penis, and you can feel it across the room.
Cross, who directs and who also co-wrote the 68 page project, admits that the porn talent pool- “shallow” as it is for this type of movie and what it calls for- might have their own particular set of problems with it.
Describing Upload quite accurately as “a geek script,” Cross concedes that it features lines of dialogue incredibly unkind to porn actors. [Which is putting it mildly. One segment shows a few of the actors during a screen test gargling the complex lexicon.]
“Adult agents have no idea what real auditions are,” Cross goes on to say, noting how some of the girls came for the audition, vamped, expecting to blow their way to a part; while others in dressed down attire evidently did their homework.
And some were just royal pains in the ass. Like the one girl [didn’t get her name] who was hired and subsequently replaced for those reasons by Adrianna Nicole. Ginger Lynn’s house was also used at the last minute when the owner of another location became one of those pains in the behind.
In a candid moment, Cross roasts Chasey Lain and how there’s not enough money in the world that would get him to fuck her.
“She’s on my no-list,” laughs Cross. But what Lain did to earn such laurels isn’t entirely clear. In another instance we’re told that Sandra Romain came in as a last minite replacement for Trinity Post who got sick. Sledge Hammer showed up two hours late to the set and forgot his pants, that Julie Night owns a blood curdling scream and Veronica Rayne was pissed off because she didn’t land the Cassandra part.
“There was some bad casting decisions on my part,” adds Cross who swore he’d never make a porn movie with special effects, gunfights and action sequences. Upload, of course, features all three.
According to Cross, the original idea was to make Upload a “rip off” of X-Files but it got bigger than that. A 19-day shoot, in fact, with Angelina lending the kind of dedication to her part that’s hard to come by.
Cross also owns up to the fact that the desert [two days on location there] wasn’t probably the best place to shoot, especially when generators went kaput and a nearby meth lab blew up bringing in uninvited helicopters and fire trucks.
Then on Day 2, when things couldn’t get worse, they did. People got lost, cars got stuck and a wind storm fucked up the audio.
“When you don’t have the money, you never shoot in an environment you can’t control,” Cross states.