Saskatoon- A University of Saskatchewan student and a Christian newlywed couple from Regina star in the first episodes of an erotic reality TV show that explores the amateur porn industry.
While some reality shows imply sensuality, there’s no illusion in Project Bluelight. That’s exactly what it’s about.
“We’re not acting. This is just who we are. It’s pretty much as realistic as you can get it,” said David Mihalyko, 40. “I think what we did is beautiful. Don’t forget, God created man and woman without clothes and that’s how we are our most pure.”
He and his wife Alischa, 22, invited cameras into their Regina bedroom as they consummated their marriage.
“We did it in such a spiritual way together. It’s something we’ll carry with us forever,” said Alischa.
Every episode of the show — being considered by major U.S. networks — probes behind-the-scenes of amateur adult videos to uncover why ordinary people get involved.
“We want to show real people that you may deal with in your everyday life. They could be your relative, your neighbour or your co-worker, said Edmonton filmmaker Jason Danilak, who came up with the idea.
In Saskatoon, it’s a 25-year-old single mom with student loans, enticed by a $20,000 compensation.
In Regina, a God-fearing scripture-reciting couple invite us into the bedroom on their wedding night to proclaim the sanctity in loving thy partner and letting everyone know it.
The cameras capture the sex, the goggle-eyed reactions of family and friends and the unfeigned emotion of the performers themselves when reality hits with a sudden cognition, like a sucker punch.
“It was weird. It was something I’d never done before and all of a sudden I had to go into a room with this person and be totally intimate with them. It kinda sucked,” said Saskatoon’s Melissa Wright, whose TV debut shows her cruising by a familiar skyline and under an emerald green road sign marking Idylwyld Drive.
Her foray into the frisky business took place in a room at a local downtown hotel. Following the shoot, her tears start running when she’s told an ex-boyfriend is waiting in the hotel lobby. His presence hits home. She’s afraid she has disappointed him and shamed herself.
“I cried quite a bit,” she said. “I brushed my teeth, I had a shower and sat there and basically didn’t even talk about it (to him). We were just silent.”
In retrospect it was a minor tremor, a moment of coming-to-grips with the situation. Now, Melissa is quite happy. The money helps.
“I don’t know if I’d do it again but it was a good experience,” she said.
But not everyone’s so receptive.
“My mom cried and my dad just walked away and didn’t talk to me for a while,” Melissa said. “We haven’t really talked about it since.”
Future Bluelight episodes include an elementary school teacher and an architect.
“It’s people we can relate to. They’re not professional adult video actors. To picture this prim and proper teacher doing an adult video is exactly what makes it interesting. Why? Why is she doing that?” said Danilak, whose company, Real Productions, makes XXX videos with first-timers.
Project Bluelight was spawned from that. It spotlights those people making a full-length video for Danilak and uses “action” footage that is filmed at the same time as the video.
Danilak’s hopes are pinned on a major network picking it up. That would mean a 13-episode season with people from Canada and the U.S. Taping in Las Vegas and New York is already lined up.
The episode with the Mihalykos will have actual home-made handycam footage from their wedding ceremony.
“My mother’s there and my mother-in-law. They know about it,” David. “The main reason we did it is because we are devout Christians and wanted people to know married couples can do that and still have a righteous marriage. We looked at it as doing something in truth with each other.”
The couple doesn’t drink or take drugs. They read and recite scriptures nightly. And they have a three-year-old daughter with whom they pray every evening before she goes to bed.
“We’re a very normal family,” said David, who worked in the emergency medical field but is now changing gears in his career.
He has been accepted to a motion picture acting school in British Columbia in the fall. He believes the video experience will help him in front of movie cameras. He can’t imagine a situation where he should be more nervous.
Alischa hopes to get an education degree and become a school teacher.
Bluelight is slated to be half-hour episodes but there’s more than enough footage to flesh it out, so to speak, said Danilak.
He found performers through newspaper classified ads across the country seeking actors for videos. During casting interviews he broached the idea of the TV show.
“I thought we’d have trouble finding people willing to do this because a lot of the girls, in particular, expressed worry about someone like grandma seeing them on cable,” he said. “They’re pretty confident granny doesn’t rent porn but she does have cable. So they’d opt for video only.
“But to my surprise, 60-75 per cent of the people were willing to do the TV show as well.”
Before anyone is given a contract they must pass a test for sexually transmitted diseases, a background check for sexual offence convictions and be at least 18. Danilak is aware of the potential to attract seedy individuals so he is cautious about who is hired, particularly the men, who are easy to find. Male applicants outnumber females almost seven-to-one.
That is reflected in the pay rates. Women are guaranteed $12,000 from one 90-minute video but the earnings are more likely to be $15,000-plus. Men earn $100. If the TV series is also shot during the video, performers earn an additional $5,000 ($1,500 advance and the rest upon airing).
As with the Real Production videos, the TV series will feature only raw rookies.
“To me, that’s really what makes it interesting,” Danilak said. “We could do the show in L.A. and shoot the episodes around girls who’ve done 100 videos but there’s no other story there. You’re not learning about someone like you and me and what makes them want to do this for the first time.”
The discreetly-edited TV series is being done for Danilak by a Toronto production company. It will focus on the story behind the action.
“We’ve done it very tame with the thought it could be aired pretty much any time (of evening),” Danilak said. However, “there will probably be a more explicit version at some point down the road. We have the footage.”
The uncut full-length videos will be sold on Danilak’s web site (www.realproductionsxxx.com).
At times, the calamitous part of reality is also on full display. The man in Melissa’s shoot turned flaccid in front of the throng of the peering eyes of people and cameras on-set.
The room was brimming with personnel making the Real Productions video and those working on Project Bluelight crowded along the periphery of the bed. There was also a variety of creative types peeking through the doorway to the room.
The man apologetically retreated to the bathroom with the Bluelight crew in tow to film it all — his flop, his feelings and his foray back into the bedroom. That led to the only on-set squabble Danilak has ever encountered.
“I didn’t want to do that to that guy. So I cleared the room and left just my crew there,” he said. “Of course, we were conflicted about it. We wanted a good scene and that drama would have done it but we also wanted to be humane about it.”
As it turned out, the actor let Danilak’s cameras into the bathroom where he was being comforted by a girlfriend. After some time the actor was, er, back up and ready to go. The bathroom footage is used in the TV episode.
David didn’t encounter anything similar. During filming he concentrated on Alischa “and what we were doing. We just completely let go.”
“You just kind of think (about the) money and block the rest out,” said Melissa, a legal secretary who wants to further her education at the U of S.
She met Danilak through a photographer friend in Saskatoon who knew of a video shoot coming to the city. Melissa went to the location. Six months later, they were discussing her own video and Project Bluelight.
Her “first-time” video is due out near the end of the year.
As for the Mihalykos, David had clipped Danilak’s classified ad before ever meeting Alischa. After they moved in together she found it. She was intrigued.
After a little conversation that went something like, “Should we?” Do you want to?” they were phoning Danilak. Their video features the two of them alone and in another scene on another day, being joined by Melissa.
“I’m kind of open-minded so I thought it was really cool. A lot of people fantasize about being with another person but they hide the truth from their partner,” she said. “To know that it would be my husband and I experiencing it together, sharing our sexuality before others, was the fun of it all.”
Alischa said her mom greeted the news with a grin because “she kind of swings herself. She’s not new to the scene.”
In fact, her mom showed up at the couple’s home on one of the shooting days to wish them luck and give them hugs.
Alischa’s father, who’s separated from her mother, is likely finding out about it right now.
“He lives in Saskatoon so he’ll read it in the paper,” Alischa said, breaking into a laugh.
Prior to committing to the video and TV show, she thought long and hard about what people would think and who might see it.
“If I would have thought I was going to feel ashamed at all about anybody that I know knowing about it, then I wouldn’t have done it,” she said. “I have no regrets at all.”
Alischa intends to be completely honest about it with her daughter when the time comes.
“Once she hits a certain age to understand sexuality I’ll explain to her that we were open-minded enough to experience this together.”
During the TV show, she and David are asked if they are concerned about people harshly judging them for their liberal position, or rather positions.
“The Lord says that judging people is a bigger sin than any other you can commit,” said David. “We’re all sinners and we’re going to die sinners. That is from the word of God Himself. That doesn’t mean we think the Lord is going to jump up for joy and will be pleased with us. But we know we’ll be forgiven.
“A lot of people do things behind closed doors, hiding their secrets in the dark. But everything that a person does in the dark will be revealed in the light (of judgment) anyway,” he added. “We’re just living in the truth with each other.”
The couple’s candidness astonished and pleased Danilak
“I’ve never heard of a video doing that (exploring the intimacy of a wedding night bedroom) before. They gave us a level of access to their lives that made for an exceptional episode. I mean, the parents are there — you can’t ask for more than that.”
That’s why the Saskatchewan performers are being used to sell the show, currently making its way through the labyrinth of networks in the U.S. and Canada.
“We have to have that access for the television series to work. It’s crucial,” said Danilak. “If they don’t want us showing them anywhere in their public lives it leaves the project dead. For the video, we don’t need any of that. There’s more room for mystery.”
David and Alischa used their real names in the TV show but are known as Alexis and Antonio in the full video. A screen name is a strict policy for Danilak’s videos.
“If I had it my way, I’d have my real name there, too. I want people to know,” David said. “People try to live by their deeds to please the Lord but you can’t do that. It is by the grace of God, by your faith in the Lord, that you are saved.
“We have that faith. What we do makes no difference. We still feel comfortable going to church and singing in our congregation and being a part of all that. No one’s going to tell us we don’t believe in the Lord and nobody’s going to tell us the Lord don’t love us.”
Melissa also turned down the offer to use a screen name in the TV pilot. She used her nickname, Mini, by which she is well known. It’s also tattooed on her butt.
“Your face is going to be on TV so you’re name is definitely going to come out. I’ve got nothing to hide,” she said, expressing thrill at the notion of being recognized instead.
“I’m wondering if I’m going to walk down the street and everybody’s going to say, ‘You’re that girl.'”
That doesn’t mean she’s about to store the video on the living room shelf in plain view. But she’s not going to back down from defending herself if necessary, either. Like the Mihalykos, she has decided to tell her four-year-old son when the time is right.
If in the future the tables were turned and it was her own son who was interested in making porn, Melissa said she wouldn’t stand in the way. She would have advice though: “I’d tell him to get lots of money — and to wear a condom. There are people out there who could take advantage of you, so you’d better get the most of it for yourself then be able to leave it behind.”
She considers herself lucky that she stumbled upon Danilak, for whom she had nothing but good words.
“He was awesome and Real Productions is awesome to work for. They really make you feel at ease and important,” she said.
She was introduced to the filming crews as well as David and Alischa a couple days in advance of shooting.
“So you kind of had a relationship with them before the video (is shot),” she said.
The one person she didn’t meet was her sex partner. Danilak deeply regrets that, but was caught flat-footed when the scheduled guy couldn’t make it. That left the crew scrambling for a replacement who had the STD tests already.
“So the first time either of them meet is when he walks into the room,” Danilak said. “It’s not ideal.”
He began thinking about the project a year and a half ago after catching the tail end of Kink, a masochistic show on the LifeNetwork.
“I understand the show has its audience but I didn’t find it all that interesting because you never saw these people as real people. It was sort of like getting hammered over the head with the message that they’re kinky but you’ve pretty much figured that out,” he said. “Okay, you’re kinky. But do you ever go out and buy groceries? You never saw them in their real lives.
“I thought the people we shoot with are certainly just as interesting and a hell of a lot better looking.”
The metamorphosis from concept to creation started shortly after an article on Danilak’s search for porn stars to be in his videos appeared in The StarPhoenix and Regina Leader-Post in October 2002.
He was contacted by “a fairly prominent person at CBC” in Regina who wanted to do the story for broadcast. During the meeting, Danilak pitched the TV idea.
“He loved it and came on as the director of the show and will do the entire series,” said Danilak.
“I think that gives us a real strong journalistic presence. I didn’t want the show just a rah! rah! let’s-go-porn thing. I want it to be a real fair assessment of the industry, particularly the amateur industry in Canada.”
The theme of openness deemed necessary for the show to work with the show apparently doesn’t apply to the personnel involved. The director from CBC is not yet willing to identify himself.
“I talked to him extensively about it and he doesn’t want to say until the show is sold,” Danilak said.
Toronto-based Canamedia Productions Ltd. signed on in February to find Bluelight a network partner. Danilak was working with another company but things moved along as smoothly and quickly as a metal toboggan on concrete — but with less spark.
“We just weren’t happy with them,” Danilak said. “Canamedia has already been in discussions with a few of the networks it has sold other shows to and they tell us there’s a lot of interest. They also told us Bluelight is one of the only projects to come through their door that every single person in the office wanted to work on.”
While Danilak’s show will be a first, mainstream TV is pushing the amorous envelope ever more in an effort to break TV taboos. The success of shows like Sex in the City, Queer as Folk, Kink, Paradise Hotel, and Temptation Island has opened the floodgates.
Showcase is shooting a series called Show Me Yours about a sex psychologist. Among other scenes, two females engage in unabashed foreplay.
The Fox network’s reality show, Forever Eden, features men and women playing games laden with sexual innuendo.
“I was watching TV with my wife one night and CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) and Law and Order both had as their plots something to do with the porn industry,” Danilak noted. “It always seems it’s a porn star being killed but I guess you get the start where you can.”