Free Absolute Mayhem by Monica Mayhem Page B

seat in the Queensland parliament in 2001
and the Australian senate in 2004 – which, if you ask
me, is an easy way to get famous. She can't have realistically
believed that she'd be voted in. From what I'vet
witnessed, when girls in our industry do these kinds of
things, it's seen by most people as a publicity stunt. As a
result, people lose respect for girls like us. But Jodie was
clearly of another school of thought – any publicity is
good publicity, right? And as for Bobbi Barrington, she
made a small splash doing 'gonzo' porn and did well for
a while, although she seems to have vanished from the
scene almost as quickly as she came in. I have no idea
where she is today.
    Gonzo, by the way, is a sub-genre of hardcore porn
that's half-improvised theatre, half-reality TV, whereby
performers work without a script and have to make
stuff up as they go along, including the sex, which oft en
doesn't have a director calling fixed positions. Usually,
it is shot cheaply with a very small crew, oft en a single
cameraman with a hand-held camera. The resulting
'amateur' effect is part of its appeal, as is the 'shock
value' of performers having spontaneous sex with real
people suddenly roped into scenes. The creation of
gonzo porn is oft en credited to the famous director
John Stagliano.
    Bobbi did a scene in a 2001 VCA Pictures production
in which I had the leading role, Portrait of a Woman .
Bobbi's appeal was obvious, since she was a big-breasted
blonde who totally fit the preferred porn-star stereotype.
We once did a photo shoot together for the
photographer Suze Randall, in which I dominated her. I
was dressed up as a 1940s Mafi a chick. It was a smokin'
hot layout, but I'm not sure where it ended up. I would
have loved to have seen that magazine. We don't always
know where our shoots end up, unless we want to spend
time at news-stands looking at porno magazines, hoping
to see ourselves on the cover! I don't do that, of course,
and usually find out which magazines I'm in through
my fans telling me.
    As I've said, posing for magazines was one of my
favourite things to do at first. I particularly loved posing
for Suze Randall, for whom I probably did at least
20 layouts. Suze is hysterical. She's British, a great
photographer and was originally a Playboy model. She
was always really loud during photo shoots. She would
say funny things like, 'Spread your legs, you lazy sheila!'
or, 'Point your toes, bitch!' It was (and still is) rare to
have a female photographer shoot you in this business.
The other female photographer whom I really liked
is Robbye Bentley. She is a really crazy character too.
Robbye did a lot of my early shoots in 2000 and 2001
(before moving into directing porn films, as you've seen
at the start of this book). I loved posing for her.
    Among the female movie directors, I really like Kelly
Holland. Kelly is just really cool and laid-back. She's very
easy to work with, knows what she wants and gets great
results. I remember having her as a cinematographer
during the shoots I did with VCA, and then eventually
she became a director. She hails from Dallas, Texas,
and was at first a mainstream actress with a trained
theatrical background and then became a mainstream
documentary director before she moved to shooting
porn. (She has actually done serious documentaries,
for her company Art Attack Productions, on a variety
of fascinating subjects, including two she shot in Latin
America about military coups and the fanaticism of
soccer fans – a whole world away from porn!) Kelly
got the break of her career when Vivid Video hired her
to direct movies, which she did for seven years under
the name Toni English. She then directed for another
big porn company, Adam & Eve, under the same name
before working under her real name in 2004 at Playgirl.
('I started directing under my name with Playgirl
because I couldn't tell women to "claim their sexuality"
and then work under a pseudonym,' she said.) She
moved to Penthouse in 2005