Porn Valley- LFP Studios in Canoga Park is this labyrynth of long hallways, sharp turns and loads of interesting rooms. And, like the Roman catacombs, you never know what body you’re going to run across. Somewhat surprising, still, is the fact that one of those bodies is director Jerome Tanner. In all my years in the business I’ve never been on the set of one of Jerry T’s movies. Might as well be this one, he says, since Tanner thinks this is one of the best projects he’s ever seen come across his desk.
It’s called The DaVinci Load, and screenwriter Nelson X is the first but certainly won’t be the last person in porn to think of a clever twist on the best seller, The Da Vinci Code. As far as that’s concerned, Dan Brown’s book is great on plot but has the kind of stunted dialogue that could choke a musical. Likewise, some of the lines in Nelson X’s script is choking Missy Monroe who’s playing a teacher which, you’d be correct in assuming, is a stretch.
Photog Richard Montfort, himself a former gigolo, is telling Monroe who’s posing naked, that she looks like a throwback to the dirty French picture postcard dames from a 100 years ago. Montfort has a word or two with Joel Lawrence who’s got a couple of girls from his agency cast as extras. Monroe says she talked to Lawrence about joining his agency and Lawrence apparently told her she’d have to lower her rates if she did. Not exactly in those words, Monroe pretty much says Lawrence can suck her dick if she had a dick. Lawrence is offering $500 finders fees to anyone who brings him new talent.
Montfort’s explaining how he used to hang around the periphery of the adult business when he was a young man. He particularly remembers an award show at the Hollywood Palladium where the Born Agains were picketing and Seka was kicked out of the show for wearing an outfit that was considered too revealing. Montfort also remembers Rhonda Jo Petty having her tires slashed and Suze Randall lifting her own dress and flashing the crowd.
In one of the scenes in The DaVinci Load, Monroe, wearing her hair blond again but short, is lecturing her class saying something to the effect that “we are the gate keepers of our own would be Shangri-La.” I remember this line because Monroe keeps repeating it. Only Monroe keeps calling it “Shangrilla”. Monroe’s struggling with the lines again and again, but it keeps coming out Shangrilla. Not to be confused with the species of lead character in King Kong which is coming out next week. [And for anyone who’s entertaining the idea, a porn version of Kong was done back in the mid-Eighties with Crystal Holland.]
Tanner’s chuckling because he’s seen this malady before. Afterwards, he relays a similar story concerning Traci Lords where Lords kept mangling this one word, but Tanner thinks Lords was doing it to bust his balls. Whereas Missy’s being genuinely sincere and finally gets the right word out. Dialogue coach Frank Bukkwyd’s breathing a sigh of relief. It’s his job to make sure that Monroe doesn’t say things like Shangrilla. And you read that right. A porn film is being afforded the luxury of a dialogue coach. Bukkwyd refers to himself as the Susan Lucci of porn for all the nominations he’s received in the Best Non-Sex performing category but has never won. Bukkwyd’s also got fond memories of Buck Adams screwing him for money on the script Little Girl Lost which was about the late porn star Savannah. Bukkwyd says Adams, instead, gave him a producer’s credit which is basically an atta boy without cash.
Jerry T’s also very excited about Hustler’s new contract girl Joey Hart who, I gather, was supposed to shoot a scene on Wednesday with James Deen but was called to Chateau Larry for a meeting of the Hustler contract girls. Hart’s scene gets picked up on Sunday. I have a lengthy chat with Deen who’s only 19 but looks older. Tanner agrees with me that Deen’s a pretty polished guy for his age, although Deen is saying that he found it hard getting work when he first got in because no one was going to chance an 18 year-old. It was Eon McKai who gave Deen his big break. Deen in The DaVinci Load plays a thief named Tony Petkovich [some inside porn humor, here]. The plot suggests that DaVinci mixed paints with his own semen, and the DNA in his masterworks is discovered centuries later to have supernatural powers.
And I guess whenever a script calls for a guy with long hair, supernatural powers and a square jaw, Evan Stone gets the nod. In a very handsome gesture, Stone gives me an engraved Astronauts pen with my name on it- a token of thanks, he says, for all the publicity he got this past summer out of the Evan Stone Got Shot story. Among other things says Stone, it’s appearance on Adultfyi https://www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=10532 got him a Google listing.
Stone’s also talking about how he got a jury summons but thinks they were on to his alter ego- particularly when questions, such as, what do you do for a living, were asked. Although he didn’t get selected, Stone says he would have loved to have served on the jury and feels he was kept around as long as he was for comedic value. Then, again, his non-selection might have been due to the capital murder case from years ago that he was involved in. Something about Texas, gang members and guns. Stone was coming out of a niteclub where he was working as a male dancer and found himself in the middle of an altercation. Stone possessed a registered firearm and used it, shooting in the air. Cops pretty much showed up with shotguns and told him to freeze. He got fined for discharging a weapon.
But no one shoots Evan Stone.