Jill C. Nelson's Blog, page 9

"Golden Goddesses" Update

I am proud and excited to announce that "Golden Goddesses" is about to enter its final editing stages. The book is completed and the carefully selected photos (over 300 in total) are indeed glorious. Both the front and back covers are currently being fine tuned in an effort to craft the most desirable and affecting impressions. We are still on track for a late fall release, and details for a Hollywood book launch will be revealed in the coming months. Soon, additional excerpts will be posted, but in the meantime, I'd like to share sentiments expressed by the highly respected former adult film director, Bob Chinn.

     ‘They were the larger than life images that flashed across the theatre screen during the period known as the Golden Age of the Adult Film. So what was it like to be a big star during that time? The answer not only to this question but many, many more comes in a remarkable series of candid and compellingly frank interviews with the stars themselves found in Jill Nelson's superb new book "Golden Goddesses." 
     What is truly remarkable is that in these revealing, often funny and sometimes touching interviews Nelson manages to persuade the stars to share some of the most private and intimate details of their lives and lay bare their true personalities to the world for the first time! Jill Nelson has painstakingly researched this fascinating period with a scholar's eye for detail and has given us a serious and significant historical document to be enjoyed, cherished and treasured.’ -- Bob Chinn

Spotlight on Barbara Mills

     As a well respected sexploitation actress, in 2010 Barbara Mills reflected on her history in adult pictures with an air of indifference and bemusement. She is best known for her exceptional thespian work in The Love Garden (1971), Blue Money (1972), and Gabriella, Gabriella, first released in 1972.     Shortly after turning seventeen, Barbara left her home in Massachusetts and ventured to Venice Beach, California. In the late sixties, she eventually established permanent roots there, along with her husband of more than forty years, Frank Mills. Drawn to its bohemian vibe and idiosyncratic lifestyle, Mills flourished in the relaxed beach community and continued to develop her artistic skills while accepting occasional work doing nude modeling and acting. Augmented by her long brunette mane and classic appeal, beautiful Barbara considered her employment in adult films a stepping stone that enabled her to pay the bills so she could focus on her primary love, painting.      On December 15, 2010, at fifty-nine years old, Barbara Caron Mills passed away peacefully at her “spa” home in Koh Samui surrounded by Frank and her loved ones. I interviewed Barbara in the summer of 2010 while she and Frank were visiting their daughter Carly in Venice.     With beguiling charm, Barbara fondly reminisced about her life and years in adult entertainment and valued the charm of the era in which she worked. The following is a short excerpt from our interview.     “Venice Beach has really always been an artistic community ever since its conception. Being that most of the streets were canals when they first built the city and then it was the Gay nineties and the Roaring twenties, and bathing beauties and muscle beaches started. It was crazy. There were a lot of poets: Ginsberg and Laura Lee Zanghetti lived down here and it evolved, but it has always stayed bohemian. So it’s a very comfortable place to live. It’s cold sometimes with the wind coming in off of the Pacific, but other than that, it’s a good place to be.”      “In the beginning, I worked at Woolworth’s behind the soda fountain. It was horrible. I was just a messed up kid and I knew I had to go back to Massachusetts. I told my mother I wanted to come back. She was worried about me even though she let me go and we decided I was going to go to hairdressing school, so that’s what I did.”      I was back at home until my mother died in March. At that point, things got crazy. My grandparents were too old to take care of us. We were very close to my grandparents [my mother’s parents]. My father’s parents died young, when I was a baby, so I never really got to know them. My aunt and uncle were almost at the point of being too old to take care of us at the time, so they hired a housekeeper.       “I met my husband Frank in 1969. Shortly after my mother died, I came out here and met him. He tried to meet me in Massachusetts; he was from Massachusetts too. He came back to Massachusetts to his brother’s high school reunion. Our mutual friend thought we’d be perfect together so Frank called me on the phone, and he sounded so pompous, you know. He did imbue me for a few years with ideas and some lofty intentions, but now he was in California trying to get into the film business. I didn’t want him to come to my dinky little town just to meet me. I ended up moving in next door to him three months later.       I looked at him and I said, ‘God damn, he looks like John Lennon.’       “Frank got me work and he got me an agent. One of his neighbors, I forget her name, got me into modeling. I did quite well strictly modeling – and then came the Sexploitation films. It all started when the United States was allowed to show X-rated films, which was around 1968; right when I started. Hal Guthu was my agent’s name. He was a sweetheart. The last time I actually saw Hal was in 1972.”       “I thought Chain Gang Women (1971) was really funny because it’s not my voice. They dubbed it.  It was Christmas time and we had plans to go back to Massachusetts to visit our families so it has someone else’s voice and it’s really funny.”     “Actually, sometimes I can remember things from back then and sometimes I can’t. I didn’t willingly hold onto any memories. There are some things in my past where I say, ‘I’ve got to remember this and I do.’ It was a job, after all. It wasn’t a career move; it wasn’t an art form per se. It was a job and it paid well and it left time for living. I enjoyed the people. And it wasn’t sexual.       I wasn’t crazy – I was completely nude in my film appearances but no penetration, no genitalia and no oral sex. That would have been stupid. If you’re going to sell it, you might as well keep your anonymity.  They never tried to get me to do more.”     “When I remember my former work in films, I believe we left behind a really free spirit. We weren’t condemned for what we did. We were sometimes greatly appreciated for our work. It was interesting. It was an innocent time, it wasn’t considered real.”      

Spotlight on Kay Parker

The following text is excerpted from my chapter on Kay Parker:
     Born and raised in Britain during post World War 11, Kay Parker’s memories of her formative years in Birmingham are at times grim.  As an asthmatic sufferer, Parker welcomed the occasional reprieve when her father, a Navy man, brought his family to the lush islands of Malta (meaning “honey sweet” because of its diverse bee population), where he was periodically stationed during her school days.  At age twenty-one, Parker transplanted to New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment,” where she was hired to work in an upscale boutique at the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe.  Although Kay had excelled during her previous work experience as an au pair in Germany, and was fluent in the German language, she was ready to broaden her horizons.  After remaining in New Mexico for a couple of years, Parker eventually found herself living in San Francisco at the height of the sixties revolution, and continued to expand her employment options which included managing a small rock band.   In 1976, at age thirty two, the curvaceous natural beauty appeared in her first film depicting sex, and later gained notoriety for portraying a woman who embarked upon a sexual relationship with her adult son (played by Mike Ranger) in Taboo (1980).  Kay believes that her sensitive approach to the subject of incest, in a highly acclaimed performance, was an empowering experience that has helped to facilitate immense personal spiritual growth and development.  She does not subscribe to coincidence or accidents.  
     Taboo is the one film I am best known for which makes it ironic that it was an incestuous role.  Again, obviously, I pondered deeply and looked at the prospect of playing that character from many different facets, and I had to deeply reckon within myself when I took the role because I had known women who had experienced incest.  I knew how prevalent it was and that it is a very sensitive issue.  First of all, we should make the statement, and this is the feedback that I have received from many individuals, is that people don’t take the storylines of these films seriously.  However, for me it was a serious issue, and I looked inside and I talked to my guides and I said, ‘Why would I even consider this?’  And then I realized that somebody was going to do it so why not me?  I could at least bring some consciousness and sensitivity to it.  Now, a lot of individuals who have an issue, and who have the scars would say, ‘That’s a fine excuse'.  All I would say is that I was guided to do it, and because of that I have an even bigger platform today to do my spiritual work and healing, so that was just a path that my destiny took me down.  I’m totally responsible for it, and yet, that movie was a very defining point in time for a lot of reasons.  I wrote about it in a chapter of my own book, TABOO: Sacred, Don't Touch (An Autobiographical Journey Spanning Six-Thousand Years).       My guidance for anyone considering entering the adult entertainment business has always been, ‘Think very carefully.’  It’s like with children; they’re going to do what they’re going to do.  The more you tell them not to do something it’s more than likely their impetus to do it.  It’s not an easy industry.  Filmmaking is filmmaking.  It’s grueling and it’s long and it’s tedious.  If you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it, but women need to thing doubly or triply about it because it takes its toll on the emotional body.  This is where a lot of people have that idea about women being objectified and abused.  That’s where it comes from because if you take a young lady, a little babe, who has been scarred in some way, and put her in front of a camera, and you pump her full of ideas of success and stardom, it can be extremely damaging, in addition to the damage that’s already there.  We have seen that and I think we still see it, but I think it is part of any industry.  It happens in Hollywood. 
     The career was a piece of my past that brought me to this point with wisdom and understanding.  In terms of sharing it with neighbors that don’t know about that – it’s not necessary.  Sometimes it comes up, but it’s like with my family in a sense.  At that time, they would not have understood, and it wasn’t necessary to expose them to that.  It was my path to go down and for me to deal with, not for them to deal with.   I didn’t want to impose that upon them and would not impose it upon certain people.  Then there are other people – a lot of individuals that I’ve counseled, and I’m speaking in terms of the male populous -- have known about the past.  For some reason it has been a plus and I’m absolutely clear with people that my work is strictly spiritual counseling.  If they have an issue and they want to heal and they’re willing to do the inner work, then certainly, I’ll do the work with them.  If they’re coming to me thinking that we’re going to do some kind of hands on work, sorry.  That’s not what I do.  But there are times when just because of my past and because they know I’ve gone down that road, it somehow gives me an opening, that other therapists wouldn’t be able to attain.       What I’m doing today is assisting in the uplifting of consciousness on the planet.  That’s it, in a nutshell; anything that I can do and anyway that I can do it.  God’s already using me to do this.  I’m here to join the ranks of the other amazing souls on the planet who are working towards this end.  I interact with some very profound individuals who are involved in global consciousness.  I don’t believe that this planet, third dimensionally, will ever attain peace because the collective ego is still too involved.  But, we’re moving toward a time of planetary ascension, meaning a dimensional shift, and, at that point, those who are spiritually ready and equipped will move forward and they will experience peace.  It’s a good time to be alive – it’s not an easy time but it’s what we came to do.

Cover Girl & Update

Misty Dawn/Laurie Holmes  Golden Goddesses continues to progress along nicely.  I am nearing the end of my film reviews to be incorporated within the body of each chapter, to hopefully enhance the individual portraits.  If everything goes according to schedule, I will have the manuscript ready for my publisher, BearManor Media, at the end of June 2012. 
After much deliberation and consultation, I have decided that the 1977 photograph of Serena, observed at the top of this blog, will be utilized on the front cover of the book.  Serene Serena's career began approximately in the mid-1970s ─almost half way through my timeline marking the Golden Era of classic adult films.  With her lush golden hair and inviting, provocative eyes complemented by sultry red lips, it is my belief that Serena is the ideal composite of all of the ladies to be included within the book's pages.  This image is also special to me because friend and photographer extraordinaire, Joel Sussman, captured Serena in her glorious splendor.  The talented photographer, Kenji, will assist in putting his finishing touches on the front and back covers, in conjunction with contributions from another friend and designer.  The back cover of the book will feature a mosaic of all twenty-five ladies. 
More information and news will be shared as I work toward the completion of this project.  Thank you for your interest and for taking the time to read this blog.
Peace and Love,
~Jill ~

Spotlight on Roberta Findlay

    
Roberta Findlay claims that her life has consisted of a series of random acts – and that she moved whichever way the wind happened to blow, without a specific direction in mind.  It would be a challenge to attempt to contradict the dogged and refreshingly blunt Findlay, who happens to be the first female cinematographer in America – and maneuvered a 20 lb, 35 millimeter camera on her small frame to boot.  Around age four, Roberta began to play classical piano which she continued to do over the next twelve years.  Her father and mother had presumed their believed prodigy would surely gain fame and fortune as a world class concert pianist, but at age sixteen while attending New York City College in the mid-late 1960s, Roberta met her first husband, Michael Findlay, an avid movie buff and budding filmmaker.  He was ten years her senior.  After becoming Michael’s arranger and accompanist for his silent film screenings, the two soon took their act to local coffee houses in the East Village.  Michael began directing cult sexploitation films that centered around rape, torture and bondage, and often featured Roberta in small acting roles.  When Roberta left Michael in the mid-seventies for another man, she was considered a virtuoso camera operator with a flair for lighting technique, and accepted the capital offered to produce, direct and shoot her own films. Unflinchingly, Findlay speaks her mind with a sparkle in her eyes.     "Unfortunately, I was about fifteen when I finished high school, so at fifteen I entered The City College of New York, which, at that time, was a very good school -- not its Music Department, but it was considered a fine Engineering school.  So I went to College and graduated from City at age nineteen – nineteen and a half."       "I met my husband [Michael Findlay] when I was at school, but I was too young to get married at sixteen, and then finally, we were married when I was eighteen.  I was unconscious.  I didn’t think.  I’m not very emotionally grounded.  I just do what comes along and I was sort of in love for a few weeks and he wanted to get married.  His parents insisted and my parents thought the world had ended – that marriage would end my career.  My career had ended long before that.  So we got married and I was a teenage bride."       "I thought he was the only one who was that demented.  He made about a dozen titles of that nature, but he was generally the director/cameraman.  Somehow, through osmosis I learned how to shoot.  I don’t know.  He didn’t teach me and I wasn’t particularly interested, but when I started making really cheap movies in New York for distributors that were hardcore – actually they were soft core in the beginning – somehow I learned how to shoot and edit.  I don’t know how.  It was for money.  I had no skills.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I should have gone to a normal type of job or something but I never did."     "As I said, he made a series of demented – crazy – they’re psychotic movies.  I mean, they should have been locked up.  He took out his frustrations or whatever in the films.  He was a sweet gentle soul.  I grew to hate him but it had nothing to do with the work.  We were together for about seven years, I guess."       "I had no moral compunctions about any of this stuff, but I just found the whole thing disgusting – shooting sex scenes!  I probably shot fifty hardcore films and we owned twenty six of them, but I was always disgusted by the sex scenes.  So I’d say, ‘Okay, everybody screw.’ And that would be it.  I directed the scenes through the camera. I wandered around holding a thirty-five millimeter camera. New York City Woman (1980) was my idea.  It’s a free film.  We’d shot Holmes probably in five pictures so we had a fair amount of outtakes, so I took all the outtakes -- there are a thousand cuts in that film, which is a lot.  And we shot Holmes reading his memoirs in New York City Woman.  Anyone but My Husband Tony Perez had been in which got busted, and I took all of the outtakes and put them in [New York City Woman]."      "Eric Edwards got incensed because we had a habit of saving money to shoot two or three films at the same time with different scripts, of course, but the location and the actors were there.  So we’d use those actors in the same location for different films.  Anyone but My Husband was busted all over the country."   

Mr. Skin Interview - "Goddesses" & "Inches"

The following link is to an interview I gave recently to Mr. Skin about our biography, John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches, and about my upcoming release, Golden Goddesses:








Jill C. Nelson: The Mr. Skin Skinterview

Spotlight on Ginger Lynn

Ginger Lynn Allen bubbles with childlike exuberance and a zest for life, that is palpable and contagious.  Her kinetic energy, in tandem with soft curves and a sultry coquettish sex appeal, turned the erotic film industry on its ear when she splashed onto the adult entertainment scene in 1983.  A Rockford, Illinois native, Allen is candid about her dysfunctional family history, yet, she has not allowed adversity she suffered as a child to impede or impact her life in a negative way.  Always one to make the best of circumstances and opportunities, Ginger welcomed the move to her grandparents’ home at the age of thirteen after bearing a difficult relationship with her mother.  In 1982, Allen moved to Southern California to accept a job offer at Musicland and was joined by her boyfriend a short time afterwards.  In order to supplement her income, Ginger answered an ad as a stripper for a Bachelor party.  When she subsequently followed up on an advertisement for the World Modeling Agency in Van Nuys, Allen immediately recognized the potential for financial security and stardom. 
As the excepts show, Ginger did not hold back when we spoke during the latter part of 2009 and early 2010, in a three-part interview:“My parents met in Illinois – got pregnant and had me.  My father is a recovering alcoholic.  Now somehow, when I hear myself saying these words, it sounds like your stereotypical porn star upbringing or background, but I believe that any and every family has their colors, and mine just happens to have a few more colors than most people’s do.  After my parents married they began to have difficulties.  My father was much too young and my mother was way too nuts.  My sister was born five years after I was.  I believe I was probably about eight or nine when my parents separated for the first time, and that continued off and on - back together apart again - until I was eleven when they finally divorced.  My mother, being raised by a southern Baptist minister and his wife, was taught to believe in hell and damnation, and God would punish you for everything you did.  The Baptist minister had the philosophy that you spare the rod and spoil the child.  I remember my mother telling me stories that she wore burlap sacks to school.  They were very, very, poor.  Being that she was punished in a physical way growing up, she continued the cycle.  My mother was not only mentally ill but she had tendencies toward physical and verbal violence.”  “I learned to knit when I was five from my grandmother.  I did a lot of sewing; I did a lot of art projects.  My grandfather used to take me to a shooting range where we would line bottles and cans, whatever we could find, along what was left of the walls of the camp and just shoot.  I grew up riding on the back of my grandfather’s police Harley, and then moved onto my father’s Harley.  We go to Sturgis, South Dakota every year for the bike rally.““I always knew that I didn’t belong in Illinois.  I wanted to leave and I always wanted to go to California.  I had bigger hopes; I had bigger dreams.  I wanted everything that there was to have in life.  I wanted something really big and I didn’t know what that really big thing was.  I always said that I would never get married until I was at least thirty.  I wanted to have a career, and even though I didn’t know what that was I knew I wanted it.”  “1984/1985 is right after my parents found out I had started doing adult films.  I was disowned.  My grandfather was allegedly rolling over in his grave.  My father took my grandmother down to watch my porn.  It was brutal, it was very difficult.  It took a couple of years for us to re-establish our relationship which became stronger, but it was a tough couple of years.  The whole trauma, the drama, the tragedy of my family discovering what I did was brutal.  I love my family, and they basically disowned me.  I wrote a fourteen page letter to my father.  He cried and I cried, and not long after that, I did my very first AVN show – my very first Consumers Electronics Show.  One of my favorite photos is of me wearing my Sears dress in Rockford, Illinois, where I was selling donuts, and here I’m signing autographs wearing the same dress with my dad standing next to me.”“The most difficult part about the choice that I’ve made in my career is relationships with men.  Those who are completely and absolutely accepting are not the ones you really want to be with.  I meet men who want a relationship but they’re swingers.  When I’m in a relationship, I want to be monogamous.  I want it to be one-on-one.  So for the most part, the ones who are accepting of my career live a lifestyle that I don’t.  My career and my life are two completely different things.  I’m not a swinger and I’m not the sexually free woman that you would think that I am.  I don’t live up to my reputation off camera - as far as my lifestyle.  The civilians that I’ve dated - I’ve been engaged nine times – I just can’t go through with it.  You know, they’ll ask me to change my name, ‘Dye your hair, pretend that you’re somebody else.’  It’s made relationships very difficult.  I’ve had some long term relationships.  I’ve had some fabulous ones, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get married.  I don’t know if the kind of man who would be able to accept me without any hang-ups is the type of man that I would want to be with.”

Spotlight on Nina Hartley

 
Throughout her twenty-seven years in the X-rated film industry, Nina Hartley comprehensively epitomizes the term “Golden Goddess”.  Leading by example as a health professional turned sex worker - turned authoritative sex educator and theorist – the tireless fifty-three year old self-titled MILF, openly advocates for women and men to own, understand, and embrace their sexuality fearlessly and without shame.  Free of religious indoctrinations that she feels create a complex of guilt about an individual’s inherent need to seek, explore and provide sexual nourishment, Nina admits that she got into the pornographic film trade, in part, so that she could live out her own sexual fantasies without emotional commitment.  At seventeen Hartley watched the Mitchell Brothers’ pornographic adaptation of the French erotica novel, The Autobiography of a Flea (1976) on the big screen and was transformed.  She graduated magna cum laude in 1985 – a year after she made her show stopping debut as “Aunt Peg’s” over eager protégé in Educating Nina (1984), produced and directed by Juliet Anderson. 
In June of 2010, Nina Hartley addressed a wide array of topics pertaining to her field of expertise when I interviewed her for “Goddesses”.
"My father asked me, ‘Why sex, why not the violin?’  I clearly was designed to study one thing my whole life.  It could have been studying bacterium in a laboratory; it could have been studying gorillas in the Congo; it could have been pottery in Japan; it could have been anything for all of these years.  It turned out for me to be sexuality, both as an interest for my own needs, and also as a health professional.  I tend to say I’m a scientist and that is a constant.  Pornography is my laboratory and I’ve had a steady stream of subjects.
There are a lot of people who get into porn who don’t have these ideas.  They are needy and aren’t all positively affected by their experiences in porn, but there are also people coming into porn who are victims of American culture.  They are usually Gentile and Christian denomination, so they’re not only coming into porn with their own issues, but they have that entire cultural guilt, sin, shame, damnation, hell, element that has them conflicted about their sexuality."
"I grew up in the ‘70s and I don’t have a conflict about my sexuality because the ‘70s manifesto told women that we have the right to live our lives the way we wanted it; to do it in a responsible manner and take responsibility for your orgasms.  There is no Knight in Shining Armor.  Learn how to give yourself orgasms – learn how to give one-self pelvic exams -- you know, consciousness raising groups. 
"I wasn’t so bold as to want to become a lay mid-wife, but I wanted the letters after my name to be a nurse/mid-wife.  Then I realized that in our culture, sexuality is sick and sick people needed nurse’s care.  I also went into pornography to heal my own sexual issues so I just needed to go and study it a lot.  Being a professional performer helped me because I could compartmentalize it.  I didn’t have to pretend to be in a relationship.  I didn’t have to care what you think about me tomorrow.""I’d say twenty-five percent of the producers and directors have healthy relationships or are able to have relationships, and the rest are in some form of pain and discomfort over the state of their lives.  They’d rather be making action movies; they’d rather be making cable with exploding cars and men with machine guns.  Porn ends up being plan B.  But you can’t put porn on your resume.  My husband is a fabulous editor, he could edit any number of mainstream magazines, but what do you put on that resume for the last twenty-six years?  The skill sets are the same: spread sheets and budgets.  Again, because the subject matter is what it is, and pornography enjoys the status that it enjoys, they watch you on Saturday, but they won’t hire you on Monday.  That has not changed."

Spotlight on Serena

During the era in which she worked, Serena, a Southern California born Joni-Mitchell/Mia Farrow hybrid, believed that she was helping to change minds about sexual taboos and the right to personal freedom when she decided to enter adult movies.  Money was not the motivator; for her it was the opportunity to rally against conventionalism and spread the word about sexual liberation and an attainable “paradise” where people could be free to manifest their fantasies in demonstrative symbolic expression.  Contemplative at heart, Serena developed a sensibility to the human condition by osmosis, through the painful process of adolescence and teen years, due to a misdiagnosed mental health condition.  Today she has not strayed far from her hippie roots and philosophies.  Serena is soulful and works as an artist in multiple mediums, depending upon inspiration and the season.  "Getting into baring my body was no 'moral choice'.  I was completely at ease in my nakedness; nudes were in abundance in etchings and prints about the house.  They were a part of my mother’s collection.  The figures on the walls of my childhood are nude women by the seashore in the moonlight.  And, having modeled for my father – who was a phenomenal photographer that raised a professional photographer - I was completely natural in front of a still camera." "When I first started working in the Bay area, John Seeman was around and he was very gentle - this was all before Jamie [Gillis], who was the worst/best influence.  When I first got into films it was because I was a hippie and, like Alfred Kinsey, believed that people should be out fucking in the streets; walking around naked and on the grounds of Berkeley California and whatever.  Since I’ve moved to Northern California, it’s too cold up here to always be doing that.  But in the northern part of the state, it was pretty laid back and I was making films for all of the right reasons.  Bill [Margold] always calls me 'The last flowerchild'."   "I know that I have a lot of power: 'Every man and every women is a Star'.  I used to write that out when autographing.  Unfortunately, because I didn’t have a lot of control over that power, it had a lot of control over me; it did make me almost insatiable as far as my sexual drive.  Luckily for all, most of my sexual drive was on camera.  That’s a double edge for me, because I hurt myself physically, but it also prolonged me getting more balance."  "This group of women that are included in this book; we were all very special and we were special as a group, as a community of artists.   Like the 'Hudson River' school of porn.  I still have the taste of glamour that it gave me, and I’ve actually started to appreciate it more because at that time I was treated with stardom and deference, which is delightful and delicious.  You can eat it up, and as a young woman, that’s the really good part.  That’s why you put on lipstick and wear high heels.  You can get back to that if you look in the mirror every day and like what you see.  I felt I was an instrument of the message 'Peace, Love and Happiness'.  And still do."