Porn Valley- Nicki Hunter on KSEX Tuesday night gave the Cliff Notes version of a Cliff Notes version of a shoot gone awry in New York last weekend. www.adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=10343
Thursday night Kylie Ireland and Eli Cross spent an hour filling in the blanks and in the process managed to take down what career Katrina Kraven apparently has left in the business. You’ll remember that “Crash and Burn” Kraven was a protege of Ireland’s. “We were in fucking New York,” Cross said summing up the Kraven experience. Ireland said it was actually Long Island. “The very wee tip.” Ireland said it was supposed to be a fun trip that it was backed by Johnny Taurus who is the producer of Stunt Girl 1 & 2.
Jack The Zipper directed those movies, and Ireland explained that Johnny and Zipper still work together on Clockwork Pictures projects. Taurus, said Ireland wanted to shoot a girl-girl movie in New York. “He named a couple [of girls] and said pick out some girls you want to work with.”
Ireland said he wanted her to co-direct and put her name on the box. Ireland said she couldn’t do that because she was under contract to Platinum X Pictures. But Ireland said she’d help him out. Ireland that it was supposed to be a great beach house- a mansion, if you will. “Private beach- big deck, big boats- these are all the words that are getting thrown at us.”
Ireland said the game plan was to take the red eye out of LA and arrive 7:30 Friday morning in New York, then head out to the place, kick back, then shoot Saturday and Sunday, three scenes one day, two the next. “It was a little vacation a little work.” The girls that wound up going were Venus, Julie Night, Nicki Hunter, Ireland, Trinity Post and, supposedly, Katrina Kraven. Ireland said the idea was to have with a slumber party atmosphere. Cross said he was going with the idea of shooting BTS and content for the girls’ websites.
Cross prefaced his remarks by saying there are two extreme ends of porn flaking. “There’s the soft flake and the hard flake.” Cross said the lowest level of soft flake is the performer calling you 5pm the night before a shoot, saying they’re not feeling so great. “I think I’ve got strep throat- that’s the soft flake.” At the other end of the spectrum, said Cross, would be to book a plane ticket and confirming several times you were coming including the afternoon of the flight. Cross then gave an example of the hard flake: “Then at 10:10 PM, 15 minutes before your flight is supposed to take off, answering the phone and announcing, in fact, that you’ve made your own travel arrangements and will join the show later which everyone knows is bullshit.” Cross was referring to Kraven.
Cross said because of Kraven not only could they not get a new ticket for somebody, there was no one you could get at the last minute. “You’re going to be in New York out on Long Island where there’s no fucking talent anyway. Even if you could get a hold of them, you couldn’t get them there in time for the shoot.” In other words, said Cross, you’re fucked.
Ireland let it be known that she helped Kraven get in the business, that Kraven’s first web scene and paid scenes were done for Ireland and Cross. Ireland explained that Kraven came into the business via Ireland’s ex-husband who manages a Hustler Hollywood store in San Diego. According to Cross, Kraven lived at their house for four months without rent, was driven around and fed. “But she fucked us.” It was noted that Kraven was in Stunt Girl 2 and so worked for Taurus who was excited that Kraven was coming to New York. Or so he thought. Cross observed that the last few times they’ve shot Kraven she presented a problem. Ireland suspected ego, drugs or alcohol. The last shoot involved Kraven and a crying jag. “All drama-traumatic.” On another shoot, Kraven arrived hung over from a party.
On another occasion that involved Kraven in an anal scene, Kraven, according to Cross, showed up “broken, sore and barely able to work.
“That’s what we were getting beforehand so we were a little nervous.” Ireland started calling Kraven Tuesday of that week. According to what Ireland was told, Kraven wanted to change her flight info to stay in New York longer to shoot for Joanna Angel. Cross said don’t feel bad if you never heard of Angel. No one else has, either.”
Ireland said while Kraven didn’t come to her shoot as promised, bet your money that Kraven was at Joanna Angel’s shoot. “She agreed to our show then found out it wasn’t in the city,” said Cross. “She heard New York and assumed it was Manhattan. She found out that she wasn’t going to be able to get back to the city on Monday then got pissed off and decided to fuck us over to go do the Joanna Angel shoot.” Ireland said the girls were getting paid top dollar for this shoot. “And we know for a fact that Katrina works cut-rate,” added Cross. Ireland said if Kraven’s life was falling apart she could have at least confided the fact. “But she led us to believe that she was going to be there right until the last minute.”
Cross said the baffling thing was that as late as 2 pm Thursday, Kraven turned down a ride to he airport but said most definitely she’d be at the airport by 9pm. At 10, Kraven picked up her phone and turned on the drama full bore, according to Cross. Ireland said she couldn’t understand anything Kraven was saying. “I put my name on the line with these girls.” Kraven wouldn’t tell them why she wasn’t coming to the airport. “You guys wouldn’t believe me, anyway.” Cross translated that as more bullshit especially when Kraven said her own plans would get her into New York Saturday morning. “She was leading us to still believe that she was coming.” We knew it was bullshit but I’m playing the game.” Kraven was instructed to call as soon as her plane touched down. “She was, okay, okay. And that was the last we spoke to Katrina Kraven. What a fuckin shock.” Kraven’s absence also posed a logistics problem with five girl performers and five scenes.
There were profuse apologies around to Taurus, said Ireland, noting that he was very cool about things. According to Cross, the mess continued when they arrived at the airport. Cross talked about the porn girl luggage ratio which created havoc as far as transportation plans. Cross said the formula is to expect two huge bags per girl plus one bag for every day over two that they’re staying at the location. “Plus the boyfriend.”
Taurus and his mainstream friend who was shooting camera showed up at the airport with their transportation but because they were lugging gear, they were short on space. Besides that said Cross, they had to hunt down Venus’ luggage. Venus flew out earlier and two of her bags were sent on to two different airports. With at least 14 pieces of luggage they tried to use the two vehicles but it was deemed necessary to rent cars. Cross said he discovered earlier online that the rental car places were all booked out. Cross assumed that in New York there would be 20 or 30 rental places that served JFK. Wrong. There were four.
“None of them had cars,” he said. The only one with a car was Avis who could provide a huge vehicle at $600 for the weekend. The plan was to go to an Enterprise in Babylon where Taurus lives. “We’ll go an get a car,” said Cross. “Three Enterprises later- and nobody besides you [Ireland] and I have any plastic.” Ireland said they did get a car and by two in the afternoon were heading out to the location. “We’re falling dead asleep.”
Noting that Ireland had some expertise in interior designing, Cross asked her to describe the mansion. However Ireland didn’t appear to have expertise in elaboration. “It wasn’t a mansion,” she said. “It could have been a really nice beach house. It needed some love.”
“People are supposedly renting out this place for $17,000 a month,” said Cross. “And the guy has a fuckin’ VCR and a projection TV from 1983, top of the line Magnavox. Cross said picture a family whose kids have their movies on DVD. “That’s a long fuckin’ four weeks.” But there was a beautiful view of the bay, Cross said. “The weather was fairly nice.” According to Cross, the first thing that got Tommy the owner bent out of shape over was the fact that the girls stripped down to nothing. Cross made note that Taurus rented the place for a porn movie. This was not a favor. “He [Tommy] knew what was coming but obviously has never done it before. Nobody said don’t go here naked.”
Tommy was getting really irritated that there was porn being shot there. Because of that, Cross said Tommy would start trailing them everywhere like a Long Island Sasquatch. “Trying to get us to clean everything immediately.” Ireland said he was being a big pain in the ass and really hated Cross, immediately. “I was the most obviously not from New York guy there,” he explained.
According to Cross, when Venus showed up, she exploded all over her room. “Shit was everywhere,” said Ireland. Tommy was bent out of shape about that as well.
“He got pissed off that we weren’t cleaning up everything that was out of place every second it happened.”
Cross said the kitchen was being kept very clean, however. But when he spilled some water, Tommy told him ya gotta wipe up dat wahtah. Cross wanted to yell back at him. “Ya fuckin burnout. I know Vietnam was tough for a lot of guys but back the fuck off!!”
But Cross remained calm. Ireland then explained that she and Hunter had to double up duty to make up for the missing Kraven. The first scene was on Tommy’s boat but it had to be explained to him that the steering was out of oil. Cross said the boat had to be maneuvered towards shade and out of bright sunlight. And every time Tommy was asked to move the boat he got bent out of shape with Cross. “But it wasn’t like we were anchored.”
From that instance on, Cross, who was shooting second camera, said Taurus felt a little out of his depth and asked Cross to direct the show. Cross said it took about 90 minutes to shoot the scene but that wasn’t unreasonable all things considered. Cross could also see that Tommy would be giving Johnny grief in down moments. His biggest beef was about the clean up and Cross said that both Post and Night spent a lot of time doing that. “These girls were there as talent- that’s not their job.” Cross also noted that Night spent most of her Saturday drunk. “She was going to party no matter what. She pretty much subsisted on beer and hot dogs that entire weekend.”
Cross, thankful that he handpicked his cast, said imagine if there were four Vivid girls on that shoot. By the last scene things came to a head Sunday night. Cross compared a girl-girl show to trying to carry sand in a fishnet. “No matter how hard you try you’re not going to catch all the pieces.” In between, said Ireland, there was drama when Venus went out partying and brought back some guy 5 in the morning.
Otherwise, the final scene was being shot on a leather couch and entailed a group scene. Nicki Hunter had talked about this on her show, but Tommy was looking for an excuse to really get pissed off. “He sees that she had her shoes on and asks one of the guys to have her take off her shoes,” said Cross. Cross also said Hunter had better sense and there was no damage to the couch. But some guy named Johnny was commissioned to harass Hunter. Hunter took off her shoes when Tommy started shouting at Johnny calling Cross a bald headed cocksucker.
Cross said short of working with Axel Braun, nothing will make him scream or yell on a set. “It’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons.” Tommy was telling him, “You want a piece of me? We’ll go! We’ll step outside.” Cross said these words were coming out of the mouth from a guy who claimed he was trained in Tibet by monks. “Unfuckingbelievable.”
Ireland on hindsight said it was all part of the adventure and you have to look at it that way. But she started screaming at Tommy. Tommy was rendered speechless with a woman standing up to him as he said to Johnny, “You see dat?”
Cross explained that the scene will be picked up at Alex Sanders’ house as opportunity presents.