JAMES DEEN & TORI BLACK

On my last day in the Valley, I drive to Canoga Park. Past Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, where rocket engines are built and in front of which a giant rocket engine sits like a piece of spaceship that has fallen out of the clear blue sky, I park in front of a brown shingle-and-clapboard building. Inside, open rooms line the stage: a locker room, a bedroom, and a dungeon. The day’s shoot will take place on a set the color of pea soup with a leather sofa the color of diarrhea and a 12-by-12 fake wood floor. Shortly, a poorly rendered seascape hung on one wall will be knocked askew.

On an unmade bed near the back, the same adult magazine photographer who had the gokkun issue is interviewing adult star Tori Black, a remarkably beautiful 20-year-old brunette.

“It was an honor just to be nominated,” she says into his tape recorder. “Of course, my first anal is going to be a big thing,” she promises, inspecting her manicure. She spells out the URL of her website several times.

The director, Mike Quasar, known as Quasarman, materializes.

“Do we just fuck and just leave?” Black wants to know. James Deen, the hipster-generation version of a woodsman, wanders around in a wrinkled shirt and blue jeans, awaiting his instructions.

The scene is for “Interactive Sex with Tori Black.” The idea is that so-called “interactive movies,” in which viewers can “control” the action through scene selection and other tools, will push consumers to purchase the DVD for the interactive experience rather than watch another crappy clip on the Internet.

“We were going to go with ‘Existential Musings of a Porn Star,’ but we thought we’d dumb it down,” the director says of the title. He continues his elevator pitch: “If you want to have sex with Tori Black and don’t have chloroform, this is your next best option.”

Black retreats into the makeup room. Eventually, she reappears, her white sweatpants and Uggs discarded. She parades fancily past the half-dozen male crewmembers lingering on the sidelines, who are gazing appreciatively at her perfect figure gliding past in a pink bra, pink thong, and pink high heels with straps around the ankles.

“And here we go,” Black says to nobody. “Off to work.” In the blink of an eye, the shoot gets underway. Within minutes, Black is naked but for her shoes and riding Deen in the reverse cowgirl position. Quasarman videotapes a few feet away. “Oh, fuck me,” Black demands lustily, bouncing up and down. “Don’t fucking stop.”

Deen plows away at his costar like the man whose assigned task is to dismantle the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner. Oral. Missionary. Girl-on-top. Boy-on-top. Doggie. They pant and growl, emitting a simulacrum of heat. Even when Quasarman stops videotaping, they keep going like feral dogs unable to contain their primal urges.

Half an hour later, Black and Deen are sweating and have exhausted the book on sexual positions. Quasarman calls for the money shot.

“Actually, he can’t pop until sundown,” a crewmember cracks. It’s Passover, and Deen is Jewish. Everybody laughs, except for Deen, who is too busy having sex with Tori to care.

As the money shot lands on Black’s face, the crew maintains a respectful silence. The director calls the scene, and the crew bursts out in a rousing, rendition of “Hava Nagila,” clapping all the while.

 

Since she got into porn a year and a half ago, Black has done between 200 and 250 scenes. In the makeup room, she leans towards the mirror and checks her skin. The makeup makes her face break out. I ask her if she was really having orgasms the half-dozen or so times she appeared to during the scene. She looks around to see if anybody is within earshot. Deen is in the shower. She cups her hand next to her lips and mouths: No.

Deen, a 23-year-old from Pasadena, California, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Dirk Diggler, has performed in approximately 2,000 scenes over the last five years. A product of the porn generation, he saw his first adult movie at six, was inspired to become a porn star while watching Jenna Jameson on MTV’s “Loveline,” and shot his first scene at 18. His girlfriend is “alt-porn” adult actress and director Joanna Angel. When I ask him if he has had sex with, say, 1,000 women in his lifetime thus far, he considers and suggests, “More than that.”

Typically, he makes between $300 and $500 a scene, far less than his female costars, who oftentimes earn four to five times as much. A year ago, he was shooting two or three scenes a day. Now? Not so much. Thankfully, women frequently request to work with him, and he is not lacking for opportunities. He may screw for work, but it’s a job, nevertheless.

“My job is contingent upon my dick working,” he notes, pondering his career trajectory. “Yes, my job is different, but it’s still a job.” The idea of a world without porn is unfathomable. “I can’t imagine a life where I wouldn’t do porn, if I had a big penis or a small penis,” he asserts. “I don’t really do this for money,” he confesses. “If I was a billionaire, I would still do porn.”

9/10

EIGHT TEN