My day on a Porn Shoot I: Naked Lunch

The house rented for the porn shoot looked like any other film set. There were blazing lights, mic rigs, a jib, a couple of serious cameras on tripods, monitors, cords everywhere, and all the requisite flotsam and jetsam of light meters, extra batteries, laptops, charging equipment, various equipment cases, crew jackets and personal effects. A handful of people milled around doing nothing except exude that patient and practiced all-business vibe of seasoned film crews the world over.

Bourke Wills, the owner/producer/writer/director of adult film production company Adult Voyeur [LINK NSFW], announced my presence and I introduced myself around. I was doing my best to be all “Hey, I’m on a porn shoot, no bid deal, I’m cool,” and I was doing pretty okay…until I saw what was going on in the kitchen.

From here to there away, on a high Caesarstone table, were two very pretty women. One was completely naked and on all fours with her exposed posterior aimed palely in the general direction of my face. The other had a single digit inserted into the orifice of the aforementioned rear-end.

Do you remember that scene in Talledega Nights when Will Ferrel gets interviewed and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands so he holds them at these unnatural angles by his face and the interviewer has to keep pushing them back down out of frame? That’s what happened with my eyes. Eventually I caught the look of a semi-amused camera operator. His expression wasn’t unfriendly, but the message was clear: Welcome to the show, buddy.

After the girls finished their business on the table and Bourke cheerfully announced that lunch would be served momentarily, “Right there, where those two just fucked!” The atmosphere relaxed noticeably. Cigarettes were smoked, phone calls were made, much shop was talked and after a while one of the girls reappeared reassuringly clothed in sweats and a t-shirt. Up close she looked maybe 20. She was slight with dark brown hair, full red lips and sad Bambi eyes. She sat down not far from me on the L-shaped sofa, tucked her legs up to her chest and played with her phone. I tried not to think about the position I’d just seen her in, introduced myself and asked if I could turn on my digi-corder (I could).

She introduced herself as Delilah Grace, which I’m just going to go ahead and assume is a pseudonym. She told me she’d not been doing porn very long, only a few months.  When she wasn’t doing porn she worked as a dental nurse and studied regular nursing at university. When I asked her why she started doing porn, her answer was: “Fuck it. Let’s give it a try”. When I pressed for slightly more detail she insisted she just wanted to try something different. I agreed that being a porn star was pretty different all right. She only laughed and shrugged and said that life would be pretty boring if you did the same thing all the time. I conceded the point and decided not to push it any further.

As disingenuous as her answers might seem, the just wanted to give it a try theme was pretty much consistent amongst all the performers I met that day. Another Adult Voyeur actress called Kara told me outright that “the biggest misconception about the porn industry is that actors or actresses are pushed into doing it because they don’t have other skills, or it’s the only thing they can do to earn money and companies don’t treat actresses well and that it’s all fake and the performers are just putting up with it for the money.”

Where many people assume desperation and exploitation, they forget that for some people sex isn’t taboo or a behind-closed-doors-only type of deal. For some it’s just a total lark and not at all serious. “I’ve always been quite open minded and I’m quite into nudity and being naked,” Kara told me. “I’m quite a sexual person so I didn’t find it that strange. It was sort of an extension of things that I already enjoy doing. Like I enjoy being a bit of a tease to people, I enjoy playing with myself for someone else’s camera, or someone else watching. I have such a great time with it. I’m a full time student, so I’m doing it for fun and for a bit of extra income. And for a company such as Adult Voyeur, they take really great care of us.”

Stayed tuned for Brett Hamm’s next installment of his day on a porn shoot tomorrow in Milk Bar.