Porn Valley- If you google Raven Touchstone’s name you’ll come up with a picture of Raven Symone. Which proves that Google is still far from perfect. And so is Amber Lynn, apparently.
Touchstone, a writer in the adult business for over 20 years, was also the object of Lynn’s wrath during the shooting of We Are The World XXX, a project to benefit Ron Sullivan. But Touchstone, who’s convinced that Lynn’s got a screw loose, also believes that Amber was there to benefit herself.
[By the way, if you Google Touchstone’s name you’ll also come up with the fact that she was a child actress and was the voice of the mama doll at the end of the original Planet of the Apes movie.]
Which probably gave Touchstone cache in dealing with Lynn who, judging by all the horror stories coming off the set, treated a bunch of porn people, besides Touchstone, like primates during the project. Touchstone has also described Lynn’s behavior as analogous to the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Lynn, for all intents and purposes, attempting a Wonderland power grab.
“This had been going on since the whole thing started,” says Touchstone.
“I don’t to this day know what her agenda was when she started all this. I think she had a moment of altruism in the beginning but somehow it became The Amber Show. I’ve never seen anyone in this industry treat so many people so badly and consistently.”
Touchstone recalls one instance in which Lynn, standing in Touchstone’s living room, apparently cried the blues about not having enough money to furnish food on the set.
“I called Ona [Zee] and talked to her about it, and she said let me donate a couple hundred books toward the food,” relates Touchstone.
“I said fine I’ll give it to Amber. I gave Amber the $200. I gave her condoms. I gave her lube. I gave her trays for the food, utensils, all kinds of stuff. She didn’t say thank you, which she never does.”
Touchstone explains how the concept of the shoot shifted from an original idea which was a fable.
“Then it changed to five different scenes from five different directors,” says Touchstone.
“There was a line that ended the fable and I told Amber now that we’re in a different structure, that line no longer works. She began to scream at me for ten minutes to stay out of her face, that she knew what she wanted, she was going to do what she wanted, that I was trying to take her production away from her. I stood there looking at this woman wondering if she was insane or what. At first she had been on the phone with me saying I need you to help me, I said I’ll be there.”
Touchstone remembers after being yelled at that she e-mailed Lynn making a point to say everyone’s donated their time and effort and suggested that people need to leave with the feeling that they had done something wonderful.
“I got no response from her.”
According to Touchstone, it was obvious that Lynn was getting into trouble when she attempted to direct a wraparound scene with Ron Jeremy and Georgina Spelvin.
“And Georgina who’s a mild-tempered human being, wound up giving it back to her,” relates Touchstone.
“She said, finally, just tell me what you want me to do.”
Touchstone then tried suggesting something to Lynn to work out of the mess. Then Lynn yelled at her, “I don’t want to hear anything from you! You just keep your mouth shut!”
Touchstone says from there that set the tone for the entire shoot.
“Except the guys on camera, tech and lighting- they’re the only ones that escaped,” says Touchstone. “Everybody else was screamed at, raged at and humiliated. Except for that small group of minions Amber has that hang around her. I don’t know what those people get out of it, but she kicks them around a lot as well.”
Touchstone also couldn’t believe how Lynn treated the deaf performer Savannah Jane.
“She was so cruel to her, and Amber didn’t understand that she couldn’t hear,” adds Touchstone. “But it was so intense and frightening. And Amber had nothing good to say about this girl. She just ran her down. Until the orgy scene when she saw that the girl could perform. Then suddenly she was nice to her.”
Touchstone says the only reason she stayed on was because of Sullivan otherwise she would have left. Many others felt the same way. Touchstone mentions how Lynn also treated Bionca with generous dollops of disrespect.
According to Touchstone, Bionca made it clear she was there from the beginning in whatever capacity she was needed.
“She and Amber ran around for days trying to get things done. But every time Bionca tried to initiate something, Amber would shoot her down. Bionca donated money but Amber lied to me where the money went. I asked about the X amount of dollars Bionca donated and Amber said it went for costumes. Nobody used anything for costumes. I brought whatever costumes were used in this thing. It was a nightmare from the start.”
Another Amber P.R. misfire came when she gave everyone the impression that Ginger Lynn was considering the project. According to Touchstone, Ginger never did.
“She does that- she sent me a list of who was in it. It included Ginger, Debi Diamond and Chi Chi LaRue,” Touchstone goes on to say.
“None of those people were in it. She told me she talked to Ginger many times and Ginger was considering it. She got a lot of people involved by telling them Ginger was going to be in it. Then she later told me Ginger decided not to do it, that Ginger had issues with Vivid and Ron Jeremy.
"She knew going in that Ginger never was on board. Bionca was there and would be in the scene. But Amber didn’t want Bionca in the scene because Bionca’s gained a little weight. I said let her direct and so bring her name into the credits. Amber didn’t want her directing it.”
Touchstone also recalls how when Amber shot her sex scene with Porsche Lynn, she walked on the set like some bizarre Gloria Swanson character from Sunset Boulevard ready for her closeup.
“She had two minions with her,” roars Touchstone. “One is a guy carrying her bag. The other, a girl, is carrying a glass of water with a straw in it. What the hell is this!? But this is who she thinks she is. The whole thing was amazing. The fact that anything got done was amazing. It was insanity.”
Touchstone also brings up the Anna Mills incident.
“I was standing right there and saw the whole thing. Amber was screaming at her, ‘Get out! Get out! And Anna Mills is shaking trying to close her suitcase to get out. And Amber grabbed her suitcase and shoved it screaming, Get Out! Anna is walking past me, tears running down her face. I said honey don’t cry over this and Amber yells, ‘let her cry!’”
“She treated everybody badly,” observes Touchstone. “She was completely centered in self. There was no graciousness about her. There were a lot of people cut out of it because Amber didn’t want them around.”
In one of Lynn’s Screaming Mimi incidents, Touchstone said she just looked calmly into Lynn’s eyes.
“I swear to God I saw madness there, such rage,” says Touchstone. “And the fact is she treats everybody else this way. She is somehow bent on destruction."
Touchstone is willing to concede that Lynn had rough experiences as a kid, seeing her mother and father die.
“She had some really difficult things to overcome in life but so did a lot of people. And they don’t turn around and trample on everyone around them particularly when those people are giving of their talent, their time and their love to help someone. And she’s treating everyone like they’re her personal slave.”
On the second night of the shoot, Touchstone talks about how Ona Zee got out without signing a release and Lynn screamed some more yelling at Touchstone to take care of this.
“I just said to Amber shut up and stop yelling at me. I have nothing to do with the release. She was just out of control. She has no sensors. Her sensors aren’t working and she has no boundaries. She certainly hasn’t a clue on how to work with people or treat people. She’s no producer. She’s no director. She’s no writer. She should stick with what she knows best.”
Touchstone says she had no idea that when the project was over, Lynn would attempt to hijack the project.
“I don’t think anybody did- it was just a good thing that the guys who shot the movie didn’t turn the tapes over. And poor Ron. He’s dying and he can’t take this stress. And she’s just been pounding him, calling him, e-mailing him. She hasn’t given him a break and doesn’t seem to have a sense of the right thing to do."
"This should have been a shining star in this industry, something so beautiful that everyone would have been cheering for it. There should have been humanitarian awards for this thing.”
Touchstone also relates how Lynn began sending annoying deal memos to Steve Hirsch, which basically caused Vivid to back out of the distribution deal.
“And I have no idea what Bill Margold’s angle is in all of this,” Touchstone adds. “I don’t know what his game is here.”
Touchstone was first contacted with the idea of writing the script. Later, however, she discovered that Lynn wanted her more to be her secretary and go-fer. At first, Touchstone had some reasonable questions about the script outline and Lynn told her not to do anything until she was told what to do. Then, a few days later, Lynn handed her “a jumbled mess”.
“Amber called it an outline of stuff that didn’t work together and made sense,” Touchstone recalls. “I told her I’d try to straighten it out. But she didn’t want me to put anything on paper unless it was what she created.”
“Then P.T. read it and said this isn’t going to work. Then he came up with the idea of five directors each directing a scene. Amber liked that idea. So all I had to do was write a wraparound for the scenes and that was to include Ron Jeremy as the devil, Georgina Spelvin as an angel and Bill Margold as sort of an emcee/announcer.”
“But she even wanted to dictate the wraparounds and bring in Larry Flynt,” continues Touchstone. “She wanted Larry Flynt spouting First Amendment issues. It was beyond belief.”
When Touchstone tried to make sense of everything, that’s when she and Lynn really got into it.
“She exploded. She had her vision and didn’t want me to change one word.”
Touchstone tells another story involving Sir Richard de Montfort who was one of the photographers on the set.
“Amber called me after the shoot screaming bloody murder that in the Ron Jeremy scene, Richard’s pictures were out of focus. I called him and said what’s going on. He said what happened is she wouldn’t let me use my flash. She wouldn’t let me bring my lights in. They had lights on the ceiling because she wanted the camera to do a 360 movie around Ron Jeremy."
"So we had no lights, and Richard explained that without them he couldn’t get a good shot. I e-mailed her and told her her decisions created this problem. This is the way she functioned through the whole thing.”
Earlier this past week Deloras Sullivan brought up the “sociopath” angle when describing how Lynn was behaving. Touchstone agrees with that assessment.
“They have an overblown sense of their ability- they think they can do anything and everything. And people exist to serve their purposes.”
When the project was first announced, Touchstone said she’d get jubilant e-mails from Ron Sullivan whenever a big name was announced as being involved with it.
“He was so overjoyed and deeply touched- he cried over it,” recalls Touchstone.
“Time and again, and for it to turn into this garbage because of somebody’s ambition? What is her gain? What does she think she’s going to get out of this? She doesn’t own the project. If she was after glory she should just have let this thing become the biggest thing and the best thing and she would have had all the glory in the world. She wanted to control everything and everyone. I’m baffled by both her and Bill Margold.”
