Porn Valley- During the fond Stern Show farewells to the E! Channel crew on Friday, it was mentioned that High Pitch Eric gave some guy a bum check for $650. Eric owes a guy named Dino the money. Dino manages Ferrara's Restaurant and Uncle Vinnie's Comedy club in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ, and explained that he had catered a meal for Eric and about 14 of his friends/family for Easter. Eric paid with a bad check and has been dodging the $650 tab ever since.
Eric kept saying he would make it right, that he was having financial difficulties, but was working on the shaman "movie" with Tabitha Stevens [maybe he's playing the title character Shamu] so he would be able to pay Dino soon. Eric was trying to make it sound like he would have Tabitha's "people" take care of it.
Several days prior to this incident, I talked to Tabitha's people- one of them being Gary Orona who's producing and directing Stevens' Shaman movie. http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=9624.
First we were talking a little about the 2257 regs and Orona was telling me that his concern was that webmasters would start pulling sites and stop sending checks to the porn stars and use 2257 as an excuse for that. "The reality is if they were administering these sites correctly in the first place they should have had proper releases on any outside content- for instance on Tabitha's site as an example. They should have had proper I.D.'s and all the proper documentation. My concern is, as often happens in the industry, the talent ends up getting fucked in the ass. Tabitha can't be the only one. There must be hundreds of people out there experiencing this same thing. There are certain people being taken advantage of."
[Steven's site which is run by Digital Playground is one such site that has been taken down and the traffic is being diverted to another site.]
Asked how the movie was shaping up, Orona was ecstatic. "We just back from filming at Lake Tahoe," he says. "We were there for about 8 days. We've been filming all over this place and have about 20 days or so filming it so far. We have about another 8 or 9 to finish. So we'll have 30 days of filming on this thing before it's done. It is stunning. She pulls off an absolutely amazing performance. Truly amazing. The story is quasi-autobiographical. And I think people are really going to be stunned when they see it. It's a thriller. It's become this extremely edgy and twisted, dark film." Orona says there's no hardcore sex or simulated sex in the film.
"But, nevertheless, it is an absolutely, really beautiful thriller. And Tabitha shines. She's going to really prove that someone can come out of adult with extremely gifted acting abilities. And I think this is the vehicle that's doing it."
I note how Stern was trying to piss on Stevens' parade the last time she called in. http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=9969
Orona said when he heard the details of that chat, he thought it was great. "We understand his point clearly, relative to hardcore and all that," Orona states. "But the intent here is to produce something that's very unique and hasn't been done, certainly from a former adult star and she's doing it. I don't want to give out too many details but she's performing her own stunts. She is living the role and we've been shooting in a real shaman's cave. She really underwent several days of the real experience with the fast in the shaman's cave. She's being tormented and tortured through this entire film. And in the end, she clearly emerges as this re-born creature. It's pretty epic." Orona says the movie is being shot on 35 mm. "It's not just another little DVD production."
Orona says he and Stevens took the approach that this was going to be a work of art. "We're courting some huge names for the soundtrack," he's telling me. "I can't divulge them yet until they're all signed but I got to say this. We have monumental, international rock stars that are lining up to do the soundtrack. I can tell you that. And I can tell you that Tabitha is really living the experience. It's like Jennifer Lopez in The Cell and the twisted imagery she went through with these mindscapes. The entire Second Act of the film is this vision quest, and there are instances where Tabitha is bloodletting in the shaman's cave and it ends up on the walls. It's the real deal. There's no makeup effects involved. There's no movie blood involved. It's really something else. It's really different. We've been transferring from film to hi-definition and it just jumps off the screen. She looks more stunning and beautiful and sensual and amazing in this film than she's ever looked before. And the dark hair is certainly working in that respect."
