I should back up a little. While George and Emily were shooting their scene, and as the Agent worried about the "backup" of performers, I went into the reception area, where, evidently our next two performers were hanging out.

I say 'evidently' because the office seemed, invariably, to be a place where all manner of people came and went, hung out, were waiting, or just killing time. Two gentlemen who appeared to be supermarket managers on holiday were looking through "The Book" meaningfully, evidently casting girls for an upcoming shoot. They exuded an air of importance that seemed to belie their obvious discomfort. What was making them uncomfortable?

I can't say. I got the feeling that they, like us, were engaged in a new enterprise -- perhaps it was their first video, I don't know. But that's the Biz, again. I remember during the shooting of "Cobra" that Ron Jeremy kept bragging about how Frank Stallone (Sylvester's brother) was utterly mesmerized by the Biz and how Ron was tutoring him in its arcane mysteries. I don't know if that's true -- The Hedgehog has been known to exaggerate -- but it falls in line with the reality I've experienced.

Straight Hollywood loves their aura of demigodhood, of celebrity, but the number of porn groupies from within their ranks has been staggering. Why? I think perhaps it's the mystery. Everyone who knows zero about the Biz knows `everything' about it: that's one of the reasons that the reviews of "Boogie Nights" have been so laughable. Invariably, the critic in question ends up reviewing HIS conception of what porn is -- and from the evidence, the critics don't know a goddamned thing about it.

I got the feeling that our two supermarket managers were uncomfortable with their own conception of porn, and were making a big show of being "important money men" to cover for it. Certainly looking through a book of tastefully posed nudes is not the rarest occurrence in that office -- indeed, it's more or less the REASON for that office.

Still, I was taken with just how jaded I've become over the years. I had a pretty good idea of who our next two actors MIGHT be. Better, at least, than the first time I met Seka on the set of "Plato's -- The Movie." Dottie was dressed in a fairly conservative dress, behind the bar, checking something in her purse.

I naturally assumed that she was one of the crew. I didn't give it another thought. Ten minutes later, she came back, shucked her dress casually, pulled on a robe, and went back into makeup for a touchup.

WHAT!!?! I thought. She didn't LOOK like a porn star. There was no "mark of Cain" on her forehead to distinguish her from a normal human being. Well, those supermarket managers seemed to be experiencing just that.

"Are you here for the shoot?" I asked the actors on the opposite couch. The girl -- Cassidy -- nodded. "Hart Williams," I said, offering my hand. "We'll be through fairly soon. You might want to get into makeup." She nodded. Fairly professional. Blonde S.I.B. I noticed. ("Standard Issue Body" -- from a private term in vogue in my old Hollywood circles. There are so many pretty girls of such and such proportions that we simply started calling them SIBs. Beautiful, trim, nothing different than a thousand other Hollywood hopefuls.)

I offered my hand (to shake) to the male. "Hart Williams. And you are ...?" The kid seemed to have an attitude problem. Stared at my hand. "Does it matter?" he wisecracked.

Oy, I thought, groaning inwardly. A porn star with airs. God help us. "Well," I said, keeping the hand right there, "I've got to call you something." My inner monologue was: I am holding my hand here so that it won't be as far to rip out your snotty throat as if I moved it back to my side. He seemed to sense this and shook my hand.

The Agent called from the other room: "He'll answer to anything!"

"Good," I said. "From now on, you're `Onomatopoeia.'"

"Sure," he said.

I made a mental note to have Camera-Man make his life a living hell while we were shooting.

With George and Emily out of the way, I went into the Agent's office and paid them, got signatures on receipts, etc.

By the time I got back into the studio, Camera-Man was shooting pretty girl stills (for magazines and box covers) of Cassidy, and I learned that Onomatopoeia's name is "Red."

"Little Red," said Camera-Man.

I misjudged the kid, though. He was a good kid. Took direction, didn't have an attitude, was what they call a trouper.

Perhaps he was just bummed out by the weird supermarket managers. I don't know. The snot-nosed punk from the reception room was now a likable kid who did what we needed him to do.

Watching the rushes, I can tell you the moment it changed. We'd slated in, run color bars, and were starting out with Red going down on Cassidy. We started out like that on most of the scenes, simply because it put the girl a) at ease and b) got her juices flowing, so to speak. It gave the actor some time to do something OTHER than worry about his erection, and it worked fine for us, while we got usable footage and the room heated up a bit.

We blew out the room with the air-conditioner between performances, and, while the cool was appreciated, it was still a bit chilly to the unclothed for a couple of minutes into the shoot.

We'd been going through the usual litany of: "Move your arm. Turn your head a little this way. Just let your legs dangle off the bed," and the rest of the mechanical instructions that are necessary to get the PICTURE correct in the monitor.

The moment came when Camera-Man said, in his best directorial voice: "All right, Cassidy. Now I want you to take your right thumbnail and jam it into his eye."

They stopped and stared at us like they'd been shot.

I said: "It's all right, Cassidy. You can use whatever finger's convenient."

Then everyone cracked up.

That was what I'd been missing, I realized: on the best shoots I've been on, there has been a laughter, a sense of camaraderie -- not that deadly Grim Sex of the Eastern Bloc, but good old American horsing around.

If it's light and breezy, the sex is relaxed, the shots are good. But when that terrible Puritan Grimness overtakes a set it's not a pleasant experience. We know what we're there for: we're not there to get our jollies; we're not there to drool while the actors rut and hump uncontrollably.

We're there to make the paying customers happy -- that's YOU, kiddies. And, don't let anyone tell you that making a film is a bowl of cherries. It's tough work for everybody. It's tough on the actors, starting and stopping, and often going long after the muscles have started to protest and the lubrication's dried up three or four times and the lights are too hot and it's not FUN.

It had already been a long day for all of us. Red and Cassidy had been waiting a couple of hours, and Cassidy had spent another half-hour getting her face painted -- an experience, some have told me, slightly more pleasurable than a visit to a good dentist.

So the humor was necessary and welcomed.

Then, Cassidy started getting ... er, you KNOW. She was getting ready to come, and she turned her face AWAY from the camera.

"Turn your face this way," Camera-Man said.

"I'm embarrassed," quoth she.

"Embarrassed?" we asked. "You're doing this and you're EMBARRASSED?!?"

She covered her face with her arm. Cassidy was blushing. "It's too PERSONAL!" she said, laughing.

It WAS funny. You had to be there, of course, but the absurdity of a porn actress blushing because she was embarrassed that she was on the verge of coming was just loonski-toonski, and she was fully aware of it.

We teased her good-naturedly, as did Red, and the ice was broken. From that moment forward, shooting was not so much a chore as a get-together with friends.

Thereafter, we proceeded in pretty much that vein. Cassidy is a FUNNY girl. And Red's a good sport. And we laughed our way through the third tape.

It's so nice when everyone speaks the same language.

At one point, after they'd switched from cunnilingus to fellatio to missionary to spoon to doggie, I whispered to Pard'ner: "Damn. Her boob job is so bloody obvious."

"What?!?!" Pard'ner whispered back. "She's got a boob job?"

"Sure," I said. "When that gel pack expands downwards you got `column' ripples and you can see them plain as day when she's on her hands and knees."

Pard'ner stared into the monitor. "Jesus Christ," he said. "You're right. What can we do?"

"Not a goddamned thing we CAN do," I said. "I hate `em, but everybody's got fake tits now. What can you do?"

"Will it be a problem?" he asked.

"Naw," I said. "It's just a fact of life. Shaved pussies and boob jobs. Jesus." I thought of my old friend Anthony Spinelli, who used to call them `Bionic Bimbos.' I understand that Sam is not well. Such a damned shame. I miss him. Bionic Bimbos indeed: we'd hoped to avoid boob jobs, piercing, tattoos and shaved snatches, but we were doomed to get all of the above. It's only a personal thing, I suppose: Cassidy is a beautiful girl, and I'd much prefer her with her REAL tits and pubic hair, but she looks fine, bionically augmented though she is.

I was looking forward, at least, to Candi the next day, who had normal, smallish-sized NATURAL breasts and great legs, from the photo. We'd at least have ONE real woman on the shoot. (My personal bias is away from the milk-cow approach. I LIKE small tits, but I'm not making movies for ME, so it really didn't matter. Still, could we maybe, just ONCE, see a real live woman and not some Beverly Hills surgeon's idea of a woman?)

As I write this, US NEWS & WORLD REPORT [12/15/97 p. 15] relates that a "soft-porn publisher" named Norm Zadeh is launching a magazine "that refuses to use models who have had breast implants or other obvious plastic surgery." Unfortunately, he can't get national distributors to carry it because, says Zadeh, "they think the average American male likes something a bit more perverse."

Ah well.

There is nothing mechanical which is much different from the mechanics I've described before: insert Tab A into Slot B; in, out, repeat as necessary.

Cassidy is a superb fellatrix -- full deep throat technique with tongue on the scrotum. Ten years ago, this would have been a major THING. These daze, who can say? I've been away for awhile. Still, it is a pleasure to witness the performance of a woman who has taken the time to hone her craft. You might think I'm being facetious. No: it is the conceit of the overactive libido that sex comes `naturally.' To the contrary, like every other sport, skill is acquired with practice and attention. Mere practice is not sufficient.

Finally, there is the spasmodic clenching of the prostate, and the vas deferens earns its keep for another day, and, after handing Cassidy some paper toweling, we're finished.

Everyone has left the office, again. We're alone and night has descended on Santa Monica Boulevard, below.

We conclude the day's shooting pretty well zoned. We'd planned to shoot two couples on the first day, and we're well ahead of the game. I pay off the performers

I'd like to take Camera-Man to dinner, but we're expected at our hosts' home for dinner. I give him the meal-allowance cash that's in the budget. Somehow, during all of the usual madness that is a shoot, we've forgotten to eat lunch again.

It's only about 7 pm. Unless traffic is insane, we'll be back in plenty of time. We lock the equipment in the studio and trek back down the endless staircase to La Bomba, and thence, a relatively easy drive over the hill to North Hollywood. I've been gone long enough that I inadvertently miss the normal entrance to the Hollywood freeway at Highland, and we cut under the freeway, instead, past where the old John Anson Ford Theater used to be (I don't see it) and get on the freeway there instead.

We get back to the room, and slog the comforter upstairs in its black trash bag. All of our stuff is still there. And they haven't bothered to make the beds or otherwise service the room, thankfully. I consider putting the comforter back on my bed, but a whiff of the somewhat acrid perfumerie within causes me to think again.

But I've managed to make a mental spoonerism in my budget, and I've been half-freaked for the last two hours. Certain of the budgetary considerations turned out to be higher than I'd budgeted for. The Agent had told me the agency fee was such and so. But -- I wasn't thinking, I guess -- it was that PER performer. And, even though I've paid it (after a short freaking out) I don't know whether we've got the cash for tomorrow. I know I've got another thousand in a line of credit I can draw on, but I need to check my stash.

I count out tomorrow's paychecks, bill by bill.

I shouldn't have worried -- my prudent wife sent me with more cash than I needed, knowing my penchant for budgeting too tightly. We're OK. You know how they say that a weight lifted from someone's shoulders? Well, the description was exact in this case. Whew! Clear sailing from now on, thought I. My concerns turned to other necessities.

We're expected for dinner in a couple of minutes. There is something a bit surreal in all of this: the Observer in me can't help but noticing that we've spent all day shooting that evil, satanic porno that causes hair to sprout on the hands of the Elect, and now we are going over to the house of two porn veterans of times gone by, as though it were as normal as a visit to Aunt Phoebe's. For the vast majority of the Great American Public, this would seem well nigh impossible. But we're doing it, nonetheless.

"Should we bring a bottle of wine?" Pard'ner asks.

There he's got me.

Our hosts used to enjoy their spirits quite a bit. Unfortunately, modern usage has shown me that everyone who ever used to drink, or smoke pot or whatever is now in full recovery, and the odds are that they're teetotalers, and I can't imagine the horror of showing up at the door of a "reformed" friend with a bottle of wine.

Reluctantly, I decide that discretion is the better part of valor. We run downstairs, grab a six-pack of Budweiser and chug a couple. Then, dressed in fresh clothing (don't EVER let anyone tell you that there isn't a smell involved with shooting porn films) we walk the pleasant block and a half to our hosts' house.

The neighborhood has changed, of course. It's now filled with cheaply-built new apartment buildings -- what neighborhood in LA isn't? It's upscaled, although when the apartment buildings begin to fall apart in a few years, rents will plummet, which is why we used to call them pre-fab slums.

But the house is not at all as I remembered it. When I spent much time there, there were two growing boys, and our hosts -- let's call them Frank and Marsha -- had given up on any idea that they could fight the natural chaos of two pre-teens. Now, the boys are grown, and that extra energy all seemed to have been channeled into landscaping, house-painting, and general sprucing. For a moment, I wasn't sure it was the same house.

Marsha came to the door -- still the same, remarkably unchanged by the years between. Indeed, she looks much as she did in 1979 when I sat in this living room and met Laurien Dominique -- Leilani to her friends -- for the first time.

Frank came padding out of the kitchen, slimmed down, dressed in black, down to the socks and sandals. Very much the successful middle-aged Hollywood veteran. The walls of the living room are still covered in paintings, but before, most were prints. Now they're all originals. One painting is still there from years ago -- an impressionist painting of a boat. The fireplace is now functional, and the hardwood floors have been refinished with loving care.

So, there is life after porn, after all.

Was it eighteen years ago that a little slip of a girl sat on another couch in this living room in an oversized turtleneck and a floppy hat, looking for all the world like one of Fagin's urchins? That Frank and I mock dueled in the dining-room with epees?

I see that the plaster on the ceiling has been replaced. We get the nickel tour of the house: the boys' bedroom is now a high-tech exercise room with a treadmill and various exercise equipment that you usually only see on late-night infomercials. The back yard is now a garden, complete with the hot tub they always promised to build. Frank offers us some exceptional California wine, and shows me his office in the old garage, now filled with high-tech video and audio mixing gear. He's done all right.

Marsha is still recovering from carpal tunnel surgery, and wears forearm-to-bicep elastic bracing. Too many years of being the accountant: they put together thirty-two 35 mm feature films back in the Golden Age of the Seventies. Ever since, she's been accounting for Hollywood equipment houses. We talk about Quick Books -- the program of choice for my wife and for her.

Pard'ner and Frank hit it off immediately. Frank and Pard'ner both speak the arcane language of film and photography and cinema. Marsha and I catch up on a lot of old history with people and places and faces that used to mean a lot in the Business, but that wouldn't tell you anything.

And then we eat -- pasta and exceptional salad. True to their Marin County roots, it's all wonderful. More wine and stories. About the time John Holmes lived in the back room for six months.

"Didn't he die of colon cancer?" Frank asks.

"Yeah. That was the OFFICIAL story," I tell him. "But I got it straight from the horse's mouth only about six months ago. John died of AIDS."

"No."

"I guess his partner was worried about word leaking out -- that was what I heard -- and the official story that we were all told, you and I and everyone else, was that John had colon cancer. They kept it pretty well secret until after he died."

"That sounds like John," Frank says, and we move on to happier times. We don't mention Leilani.

They bought a boat, and they spend their weekends sailing.

And then, dinner over, we head back for the motel room. Pard'ner has learned that there is life after porn, and, more importantly, that we're people with dreams and hobbies, and interests that are much like anyone else's. Perhaps this is the point that he understands -- if he didn't before -- that people in porn tend to walk around in clothes, don't spend all their time in wild orgies, and have kids, mortgages and alimony payments just like anyone else. We're not from Mars or Jupiter. We're human beings.

You'd be surprised at how many people don't believe that.

Pard'ner has passed his baptism in fire. He's one of US now. I do not detect the telltale sprouting of horns on his forehead, nor do I note the unsightly bulge on the back of his Levis as his incipient tail begins to extend from the base of his spine.

We could have been visiting Aunt Phoebe.

Now, a good night's sleep and once more into the breech, dear friends. We watch the local news to get a look at the satellite picture. Bad news: a mutha of a storm is blowing in from the Gulf of Alaska. Shooting tomorrow may well be a piece of cake, but getting home could well turn out to be a nightmare.

Hart Williams wrote and worked in the "Business" from 1977 to 1987. He wrote for, among others, HUSTLER, ADAM, FILM WORLD REPORTS, VIDEO X, OUI, VELVET and many others. His film credits include "Caught From Behind III." His video credits include "The Other Side of Lianna," which was, in 1985, the runner-up to "New Wave Hookers" for XRCO's "Video of the Year." After ten years "away" from the business, Williams suddenly found himself doing what he'd sworn he'd never do again: writing, producing and directing an XXX video. c 1997 Hart Williams. All rights reserved.