Synced & corrected by kinglouisxx www.addic7ed.com
I have Suze Randall, photographer for Playboy, ex-model.
You find yourself having to use, let's say, feminine wiles
in your pursuit of your career goals.
Absolutely.
Times have changed. I mean, it was topless in Playboy,
and then Guccione came along and showed the bush.
Discovered the bush.
- Do you wanna film it? - Yeah.
Good. Let's do it.
And action.
Well, I managed to blackmail my way in there.
Then all the guys were very, "My God. What the hell are you doing here?
Silly little girl, go home." You know? "Stop playing with your camera."
Well, it's really great to make somebody look beautiful,
- which you can with the lighting. - Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you!
Let's do it again!
And draping...
Great, Jada. Gorgeous.
Yes, perfect.
I feel I'm a feminist.
You can take total advantage of the men,
if you've got the balls to do what you want.
To do it better. To do it harder.
And you're also cute. Come on.
I'd like to get into sexy movies.
Only because I've done the whole magazine trip and...
As an actress?
No, on the other side.
Kick these guys out of line, 'cause it is a boys club.
But you can do it.
And cut. Perfect.
That was lovely. Thank you very much.
We've shown them!
I mean, this is cool. Like, this piece...
Like a dark plating...
Yeah. And that opens up in the front. So you can see boobs.
My name is Holly Randall.
And I'm an erotic photographer, producer and director.
This really caught my eye.
- Oh! Yeah, that's beautiful. - Isn't that neat?
There are mostly male directors and producers in this industry.
So, I'm one of the very few females.
I'm just hoping this doesn't cut into her boobs weird.
You know what I mean? Like if it cuts into them here.
And then, she has, like, a weird under... squished underboob.
Squished underboob is in right now. It's the new sideboob.
I'm known for fabulous hair and makeup...
great wardrobe...
great locations and settings...
good posing...
beautiful girls.
You know, just high-quality glamour work.
I think we have more stuff that would work, like, for the sorceress.
- Right. - And the priestess.
This is kind of cool. It's a cape.
And it's open.
My clients come to me because they want that feminine touch in their work.
Perhaps the more female-friendly view, whatever you wanna call it.
They want that high quality.
They want the glamour. They want...
They want that look. They want the Holly Randall look.
I'm such a perfectionist, and I'm such a detail-oriented person,
that if I'm watching something and a girl's, like, eyelash is coming off,
or, like, her hair is out of place,
or there's a water bottle in the background,
or if the bed's not made, that makes me crazy.
All of those little details that you put into something,
I think, brings the production value up.
Pretty porn is more erotic.
And that's something that I try to invoke in my work.
Come on, piggies.
Come on, Mama.
Oh, piggery.
Piggery.
Mom, you should say, "I'm Suze Randall, and I'm an erotic photographer."
I'm not anymore.
Okay, a retired erotic photographer?
Does that work?
I'm Suze Randall, and I'm an erotic photographer
who's been put out to pasture.
People always ask me,
"When did you find out what your parents did for a living?"
And there was never this moment,
this epiphany, like, "Oh, my God. My parents work in porn."
Hey, Mom, this has got some weird, like, lock thing on it,
that I'm not familiar with.
- Hey. - Yeah, it's a Parelli.
And it's also broken.
- That would explain it. - Yeah.
My parents never really...
I don't think we ever really talked about sex
when I was young.
They never were, like,
- "Okay, this is how, like, sex works." - Oh, so embarrassing.
But they did buy me this book called Where Do I Come From?
I think it's really awkward...
to talk about sex.
Two old people talking to children...
Yeah, but someone's gotta tell them.
You're a good girl.
The only thing I ever lectured her about were her table manners.
Otherwise, you know, she learned it all herself.
Table manners.
I don't know. My birthday's actually on Labor Day.
- Oh, you wanna have a party? - So...
- Why're you so lazy? - I just...
I always loved pictures.
And I was always obsessed with images.
But it wasn't something that I necessarily thought
I was gonna get into.
I mean, when I was really, really young, I wanted to be a veterinarian.
- And, it's kinda funny, I... - That would've been good.
- It would've been very convenient for you. - Very helpful. Yeah.
But I started working for my parents when I was 20.
And then I just sort of never left.
I grew up very much in this kind of bubble.
Like this little... this Suze Randall bubble,
where, um... the porn that we shot was very much, like, on our own terms.
We were shooting the best girls. We had the best makeup artists.
We had the best wardrobe.
We had so much creative freedom.
And it was like playing with Barbies.
They just take their clothes off afterwards and then have sex.
But the industry has changed so much since I got in it.
And boom. Good. Boom. Boom.
Keep going. This is where you're gonna poke me.
So I just blocked it, boom.
Boom. So when I hit it, let it keep going.
That's it. Exactly.
When I hit it, keep it going.
Boom.
There you go. That's it.
I don't think that anybody could've anticipated the Internet.
It's just...
nobody pays for porn anymore.
Bring it in and step back then.
Because so many people watch porn for free...
shooting those high-end productions is very difficult.
Episode 3.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's a lot of dialogue. You know, my budgets continue to shrink.
The amount of time that I have to shoot continues to shrink.
I have to keep coming up with shortcuts to bring in that feminine touch
that I'm known for.
- Hey, Michelle. - Yeah?
We gotta run her makeup by Montreal.
We are shooting a big feature for Digital Playground.
Their working title is Quest.
It's basically like a fantasy kind of medieval type of movie.
So, it's pretty involved.
I'm gonna have to redo that whole section of her face.
Obviously, I'll have to redo the eyebrow.
Do the eyebrow.
In my day, we would spend three days on a centerfold.
Today, my daughter has to do three centerfolds in a day.
That's a lot of pressure. It's bonkers.
You all right?
Yeah. I'm just stressed. I'm just...
- Hate this show right now. - Huh?
I just... yeah, it's fine.
It's just one of those struggles that I'm dealing with right now.
Imagine... a woman, blonde...
she's giving a blowjob.
Why?
Because this nice guy came to her rescue when her car broke down.
It's time for porn to change.
We need women in the leadership roles.
I don't want to get women out of porn.
I want to get women into porn.
I'm Erika. Erika Lust.
I do erotic films.
It all kind of started a long time ago,
with Five Hot Stories for Her,
which I don't have in stock.
But I do have one of my first films, Barcelona Sex Project.
Life Love Lust.
And Cabaret Desire, I should have somewhere.
This was the beginning
of Erika Lust.
When I look at regular mainstream porn, it's not good enough for me.
See that little booty right there.
I want something more. I want emotion. I want passion.
I want intimacy. I want to feel with them.
- I have to suck dick... - You lose.
You have to do something.
I have to suck his dick now.
- Don't be shy. - Okay.
The people creating it
are people more interested in...
punish-fucking women...
Shut up.
than showing a good sexual encounter.
But when you start criticizing porn,
there's many people getting afraid that you are kind of sex-negative.
I've been called everything from feminazi to a fake feminist.
Many producers feel that I'm pushing too much for the female perspective.
It's just not fair that only men work in pornography,
that only men are the ones portraying human sexuality
through the media of pornography.
Okay, let's look at this again, very organized.
What's the first shot?
- The confession. - The confession.
At this moment, I'm working in a project called Xconfessions.
And it's a very interesting project,
because people are sending their fantasies to me.
And I turn them into erotic short films.
Crowd-sourced erotica.
The typical structure of a pornographic movie
is that the man is the main character.
It's about him. It's about his desire.
That really didn't work out for me,
because when I have sex with someone, it's about both of us.
When you show sex, it should be based on values
where you feel that the people in it, that they are connected.
That they are respecting each other.
Another thing that I didn't like about pornography
was that most of it was so badly done.
It didn't feel like they had cared about the cinematic vision of it.
I realized that I wanted to see something made for women
where you could actually see female pleasure.
But at the same time I wanted to see something aesthetically interesting.
And I thought,
"Yeah, maybe I should try to make an adult movie."
I'm, uh...
I'm looking for the pilot.
So, I wrote the script and I shot it.
I started erikalust.com,
and after a few weeks, I had two million downloads.
And people were just writing and writing and writing to me.
"When are you gonna make more?"
I need a signature, lady.
Should I sign the last or...
Yes, any kind of signature.
Pablo is my partner.
We came out with this phrase to say that we're partners in lust.
Meaning we're partners in this company.
And also in lust and in life.
- And in... - Partners in life and lust.
- Life... - Sounds super great, doesn't it?
Partners in life and love and lust.
You need to go back to production.
Time is tickling.
Our relationship is not as weird as people would assume.
We have, like, a normal...
healthy sex life, I guess.
It's not that special.
"It's not that special."
Oh, my God!
Sorry.
Erika, she takes all the creative work.
And I do more of the operational and the human resources
and marketing work.
- Sorry, I wanted to show something. - Okay.
Today...
We are shocked with this ad
that is today on the tubes called "Teens Get Destroyed."
Look, this is what tube sites today look like.
- Yeah. - They look like this.
This is the kind of content that is out there.
We can't ignore that porn today is sex education.
Especially for people who never had sexual experiences in their own life.
How are they gonna know how sex actually works?
I have two daughters. And porn is one click away.
Many parents have absolutely no clue.
If their kid has access to an iPad,
that kid has also access to all the porn tubes online.
Even YouTube, which is the television of today,
you can find pornography.
And the one who are teaching our children are the porn stars.
I mean, imagine if I would leave...
my kids to learn about drugs from the drug dealers.
That is why it is important that this company has success.
I remember being so excited about this set,
'cause this is, like, really when I...
My mom finally trusted me to shoot a set with all the bells and whistles, you know?
I'll, like, look back through old shoots that we used to do for Suze.net
for inspiration for, like, shoots today.
Here's something that you won't really see anytime soon.
My mom did an eight-girl orgy,
with Nikki Tyler, Jenna Jameson, Bonita Saint
and a bunch of other famous girls.
Look at that, every single one of them is styled.
Like that kind of high-end, like, super glam...
Oh, that must have taken forever.
I don't think it's possible to shoot the way that she used to shoot these days.
She was such a legend.
It was probably early '70...
I was a nurse in London,
and I met my husband who was a writer... a penniless writer.
So, in order to make some extra money on the side, I answered an ad...
in an underground newspaper for nude modeling.
The guy nearly fell off his chair when he saw me
because nice girls didn't do that.
When I was modeling, I was just horrified by the way men would treat you.
Stand you on a backdrop and ask you to do something.
I mean, they're not encouraging, so you get all stiff and...
Then I realized I should be a photographer,
rather than some important man
who's such a great lighter and such a great technician,
and, "You better be a great model, in order to work with me,"
and all that sort of crap.
That doesn't make you feel good.
So...
It helped me... kick their ass.
Playboy flew me over here in '75,
because I discovered a wonderful model, Lillian Muller.
And I shot her for Page 3,
and Hefner got a hard-on and flew us both over.
Tried to get rid of me.
"Oh, Suze,
food and nudes are the hardest thing to shoot."
I said, "Well...
I'll have to sell my pictures to Penthouse then, won't I?
'Cause I've got no money."
So they gave me a job.
I worked for Playboy for three years.
The boys were jealous.
They'd say, "Load your own damn film, you stupid woman."
But it didn't matter. I did it.
Don't know why people complain about women.
You've got such an advantage, if you can work harder than the guys,
if you can kick ass and you're feminine.
You've got it made, baby.
Women on the other side of the camera are great.
Then they become empowered and then they realize
that they can run their own business and, um... they rule.
They rule, baby.
Monica.
Tomorrow, I'm gonna shoot a film called My Dream Piano Concert,
and it's a confession by a pianist,
and she is giving this piano concert,
and at the same time, she's seeing people from the audience in erotic situations,
some of them with her.
Even a man under the piano...
giving her pleasure while she's playing.
We didn't know exactly how we were gonna be able to do a confession like this
because we didn't know anyone playing piano.
But then, suddenly, we received an e-mail from Monica,
and it turns out she's a pianist.
So this is my first time in erotic cinema.
Erotic film.
I know Erika's work from many years ago.
I have been following her.
Finally, I...
I had this impulse to...
to participate with her, and I called her, and we have a meeting, and...
Yeah, and we are here.
So here we have a situation with a quite big man...
with a quite little space under the piano and we need to figure out
how we can make this work so we can actually see something.
Because we were thinking to have a cunnilingus situation,
- with you playing with the piano. - Mm-hmm.
The interesting thing when I work with people
who are not professional performers is that they are not performing porn.
They are just having sex.
And I think that... that's more powerful.
But sometimes they have a harder time,
especially when it's the first time for someone in front of the camera.
No. And, then for the sex with the bench,
it's you up on your knees, you know, on the bench.
- And he would be behind, okay? - Mm-hmm.
So, when the music is getting more powerful,
there we would like, you know, a climax from you.
All these people that you've been fantasizing about,
their hands upon your body, touching you.
Maybe I'm concerned
because I never tried to play the piano while doing other things so it's...
This is my worry.
So we'll just do the two of them fighting here first before anything. Okay.
Let's cut. Your outfit's falling off.
This is the most ridiculous thing ever, like, seriously.
Okay, you guys ready?
- Keep rolling. - Three-I, take two.
Shit.
Whoa! Assistant dies on set.
- I almost died! - Are we still rolling?
- Still rolling. - Jada...
Don't be afraid to just cheese it up, like, overdo the fuck out of it.
It's a fantasy role-playing game...
and it's porn. Cheese it up.
All right. Action.
What weakling now defies me?
Ha! Typical meat shield, I'll destroy you.
Fight me if you dare.
That sword's mine.
- This way. - We're clear.
- Perfect. Okay. Cut. - Good.
- Good? - Yeah.
Okay. Come.
I just wanna see how you do on this path over here.
I've definitely been pushed to shoot more aggressive stuff lately.
And stuff that's more taboo, for sure.
Scene three. Take one... two. Take two.
But I always draw a line.
There's definitely, like, things I would not shoot.
I don't wanna shoot anything degrading to women...
like, we're not doing swirlies.
When you dunk a girl's head in the toilet and flush it
- while you're fucking her from behind. - Oh, really?
Yeah. We don't shoot that. That kind of stuff.
I would never shoot, like, that.
- You know what I mean? - Oh.
Like, that's terrible.
Okay, action.
Gorgeous.
With feminist porn,
the most important thing I learned from my mom
is how you treat your models,
making sure they look and feel beautiful, all that attention to detail.
Perfect. And then bend the elbow and bring the arm in.
Gorgeous.
It's the movement. It's just like doing ballet.
It's the movement that goes from your toes to your fingers...
- Yeah. - And everything's gotta be in alignment.
- It all flows like a river. - Yeah.
It's like watching somebody doing a great dance, you know.
It's really beautiful.
Gorgeous. Can you come on that toe again?
That's great, Jada.
And also, you always put the woman in the position of power.
Have the guy on his knees. That's super.
Exactly.
- Now you fight like a berserker. - Okay.
I think that we can definitely bring female power into pornography.
We look after the women.
- Yeah. - We are for the women.
Okay. That was good.
Women rule.
We are proof.
- How was that, Morgan? - Perfect.
Okay. Cool.
Cut. Okay. Let's move on. What's the next one?
Hello, everybody.
- Hello. - How are you?
How's it going?
- How are you? - Very good.
We do live in a society today,
where we are getting more and more responsible as consumers.
The same way as when I go to the supermarket,
and I wanna buy eggs or meat...
when we look for adult films,
you have to understand who's making it, who's behind it.
It makes a difference when I have many women in my crew.
For example, the one behind the camera,
is the one ultimately deciding what images we are gonna see.
When I have men behind the camera,
I end up with much more footage of her than of him.
You have everything under control?
Yes.
With women, actresses feel a lot more like...
That they are surrounded by a sisterhood somehow.
- How are you? You good? - Yeah.
- Are you good? Yes? - Good. Yes.
- You didn't sleep much? - No. Not too much.
- What happened? - A few hours, I think.
- You were nervous? - Yeah.
- Turning around in the bed? - Yeah, I couldn't sleep. It was just that.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
Okay. And timing?
We are good with timing. Very good.
Okay. Promise.
We're about to roll on the first shot of the day.
And action.
I'm a pianist with a dream.
I want to perform on the stage... nude.
Um, s-sorry.
Don't worry!
Silence, please, we're going to roll!
- Let's do it again. - Rolling? From the beginning?
- Yes. - Yeah, okay.
- Oh! - Sorry.
Okay, when the music...
- Just a second. - Yeah, cut.
Let me think this sentence because I'm a bit blocked here.
Now we do it!
Action!
I'm a pianist with a dream.
I want to perform on the stage... nude.
Surrounded by the crowd.
When the music comes to the end...
I climax.
I can't stop having this fantasy.
And cut! Perfect! We have it. That was lovely!
Time table, time table, it's tight, huh?
We're, like, one hour late.
I would like to have the sexual part done before lunch.
I do have a professional actor coming in.
The important thing is, even though this is sex,
it's very technical and everything.
The important thing is to try to feel at least a little bit.
But do you want it romantic or hard?
Romantic, right?
At the beginning, I want it a little softer...
and then a little stronger, because the musical piece.
But the thing is, I'm scared to tell you to go too hard,
because then it's going to be really hard.
Hmm.
Performers who are used to work in the mainstream porn industry,
I need them to understand that I'm not interested in them "doing porn."
I want to show sex, which is much more emotional.
Let me know when you're set.
Rolling.
Cámara.
Six, three, one.
Action!
Can we stop?
Hold on a moment...
Hold on a moment.
We're holding. Do you need water?
- Are you okay? - Yeah, it's just painful.
- Do you need to go to the restroom? - No.
Really? Are you okay?
I'll be more careful.
Yes. Okay, then as far as sex goes, I'm done. I got what I need.
I could really use an orgasm in this position,
which can be fake, no problem at all, but it will be like an orgasm.
- Yeah, there's not a lot of air here. - Yeah, it's hot.
Heavy, it was heavy.
It's very hot. Do you want some fresh air?
No, it just hurts a little.
Come. Do you want to go to the restroom?
I'll be careful. This is how I do it at home.
The only thing we are going to do is this fake scene.
We don't need your orgasm. It wasn't part of this.
You can take care of that tonight, maybe?
That way he'll want it more tonight.
Yeah, he'll be left hanging.
Later, he'll say, "Erika doesn't even let me come."
It is definitely a challenge
when someone works quite a lot in the mainstream porn industry,
because they tend to reproduce what they learned in the industry.
You have, of course, the hair pulling.
That's always in there, and he did a few of those things.
But with the material that we have,
I have enough to choose
what I want to show and what I don't want to show.
Because in the end, even if it is real sex,
this is a film, and it's an illusion,
and I create the image that I want you to see
as an audience.
Cut!
Was really intense. More intense than I expect.
Monica, Monica, Monica!
Gracias.
I think I need to process a little bit, the experience, yeah.
We really started to shoot a lot in that first High Society we did.
You rented a beautiful house in Malibu,
and it was the one where I'm wearing that red top with the white collar,
- and these white combat boots. - I remember that set.
That was the set that changed my career.
- It's all my fault. - It was great.
You had people there taking care of us. You had water.
- You did things specifically... - Yeah.
with our care and concern and I would feel good when I left.
Isn't it funny, though, like, how the industry has gone
from when you were shooting,
as to now when the Internet came along and, like, then it became like,
"Can you put a baseball bat up there?"
Do you mind having your head in a toilet?
Yeah. And, like, insane porn antics. Like, it's just crazy.
- I know. - They just have a quota.
I am struggling so much because, like, I have so much...
less money to work with, so now I can only use one assistant.
I've got to rush my hair and makeup artist,
and I can't phone it in.
Like, I can't, physically, like, just let that stuff slide,
and so at the end of the day,
it's a longer day than I wanted. I ended up paying more than I wanted to,
and I end up taking home very little.
And I'm just like, "How the fuck am I gonna do this?"
- Yeah. - You know?
And just try to bang it out as fast as I can.
You need to move on, my baby.
Honestly, I mean, this year, I've been in a place
where I, like, wonder if there is a place for me in this industry anymore,
because I just don't know that...
I don't know if it can support, like, the high-end...
you know, stuff that I'm used to shooting.
When you lose money at the end of the day...
I can see where you're kind of at a breaking point.
- You're at the breaking point. - She needs to get out.
I've got the stigma of porn attached to me,
and as much as I'm not ashamed of what I do for a living,
there's a lot of people who view what I do for a living
in a much different light than I do,
and they just don't want a pornographer,
ex-pornographer, whatever you wanna call me,
shooting their fashion line.
I think she should be a sex therapist or something, come on.
Move on.
But, you know, you can't tell your children anything.
I wonder where my place is.
I don't know. I don't know.
Like, I even had this client say to me,
like, "I'm not sure that the extra production value
that you put into your sets matters in the end."
I was like, "All right, well, that's it.
I'm starting the website 'Three Girls on a Shitty Couch dot com.'"
That's all it's gonna be.
Three girls on a shitty couch.
I'm gonna put no effort into it whatsoever.
It's gonna be a hit.
Gorgeous.
Maybe kind of push your boobs together and lean forward a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, awesome.
So good.
There are definitely...
There are people who care about their porn and people who want to see high-end stuff.
But it's a small niche. And it's hard to break into it.
Yeah. Yeah.
I really would like to stay in this industry.
I like what I'm doing.
I'm hoping that, you know, things will change,
new opportunities will come up.
You never know.
You know, I mean, I hope that ten years from now,
I'm still gonna be working in it and hopefully doing well.
But, yeah, it's hard to say.
I don't know.
It has been, like, a particularly good week.
Yeah? A very good week?
- Yeah. - That's great.
- This is Xconfessions, right? - Yes.
- Yeah, Xconfessions, this is the curve. - So it's going up.
It's going up. It's constantly going up, and it's a beautiful project.
- Best month ever. - This is a record.
- People love the films. - Yes. That's good.
Okay. So then good news is we had a very good month.
- Traffic is, uh... - Increasing.
Increasing.
Retention rates also.
And we have a lot of new movies coming out.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
I am very moved to see so many people here.
Thank you very much!
There's people who feel that they want more diversity.
They want more people of color.
They want people of different body sizes.
Sometimes it's difficult to fit them all into only my work.
But we really need to be able to do it.
It's more people getting involved.
It's more people daring with this genre.
And as women, we need to use our voice.
We need to tell the world how we would like it to be.
What kind of films do we want to see? What kind of stories do we want to tell?
The gender roles that most porn shows, it's not a modern vision at all.
It's not a feminist vision.
But we're gonna change it.