“She’s perfect,” sighed lovestruck stud Tom Byron. “I mean, every girl in this business has some kind of flaw. Like she might be a bitch, or does too much coke, or has a saggy ass—something. But Traci… she doesn’t have a single fault. She’s perfect in every way.”
Except two. For one thing, she didn’t have a smile. Something in her cheek lines made it almost a sneer—a “snile.” Traci Lords’ second flaw was much worse; it nearly destroyed an industry. It caused busts, bankruptcies and losses in the millions. It brought a Federal push to throw most of America’s adult movie producers in prison.
It was commercial pornography’s worst scandal and it came at the worst possible time: with Attorney General Ed Meese urging anti-porn activism and the industry mired in the “Smut Glut.”
The news that porn’s top star was underaged “went through the industry like a plague through the Middle Ages,” said Adult Film and Video Association attorney John Weston. There was a scramble to remove hundreds of thousands of videotapes, films and magazines from circulation before the police could pounce on them.
“Coming as it does on the heels of the Meese Report,” Weston said,“it’s hard to believe the two are not related.”
“Talk about timing,” wrote Mitchell Brothers star Missy Manners in her Spectator column, “I’m not so sure it’s just a coincidence.”
For the Meese Commission, it was “proof” of their contention that child porn was a major part of the commercial industry.
Under Federal law, anyone connected with a Traci Lords shoot was guilty of a felony. Hundreds of grips, gofers and gaffers, as well as producers, directors, agents, writers, make-up artists and caterers faced long prison terms, loss of assets, and fines guaranteed to keep them poor for life.
“If the Traci Lords case is lost,” Weston said, “with the strictest liability of the law enforced, the government would then have the power to wipe out the industry.”
Was the industry at fault? Could a fifteen-year-old girl rise to the top of the porn world without anyone suspecting her true age? Was she sophisticated enough to bamboozle Penthouse, the U.S. Government, and the entire porn industry? To spend two years dashing from set to set, yet find time to invest her earnings wisely enough to be “set for life?” To beat alleged IRS and forged passport felony violations? And, finally, to parlay the age fiasco into Hollywood success?
Questions about adult “advisors” knowingly promoting a minor in porn went unanswered. Was she really a runaway from Ohio whose mother turned her in after seeing her picture in a TV special on the Meese Report? Or did she live in Redondo Beach with her mother who secretly managed her career?
Industry skeptics, including her agent Jim South, didn’t believe she was really underaged. They saw the whole thing as a ploy to prevent all existing Traci Lords tapes from competing with the products of her new company (shot after she supposedly turned eighteen).
I caught a glimpse of it: my experience directing Lords and my trade with her business partners reveal a saga of mutual exploitation, of a driven, ambitious beauty hell-bent on getting rich, and of those who misused her and forced a devastating showdown.
x x x x x x
Traci started at the top. Her first job: Penthouse centerfold (September, 1984). But unlike women who use these “high class” spreads to launch legitimate modeling and acting careers, Traci went in another direction. Blame Tom Byron. His meeting with her became a legend.
It happened on the set of Richard Mailer’s What Gets Me Hot. Traci was “testing” porn work as a “nude extra,” a woman who provides window dressing but doesn’t perform sex.
Mailer hadn’t needed her but “Traci was so beautiful I just had to have her in the picture.”
Byron first saw her in the kitchen, away from the cameras. “I felt like I’d been hit by a ton of bricks,” he said. “I’ve worked with a lot of beauties, but when I saw Traci… it was like a wet dream come true.”
Mailer came upon the two of them writhing on a butcher block. The veteran pornographer wasted no time; Traci lost her “screen cherry” but gained a boyfriend and a new career—one she plunged into.
As one of the first stars to capitalize on the enormous volume of videos shot in the mid-’80s, Traci Lords worked in 105 movies in less than 20 months. Her presence made hits of Those Young Girls,
Battle of the Stars, Sex Fifth Avenue, Aroused, Talk Dirty to Me, Part III, Educating Mandy, Bad Girls III, and my own Physical II. The Dark Brothers’ punk rock epic New Wave Hookers, with its
flash-trash cover photo of Traci, became the number one renting adult video of all time. It stayed in the top ten for 52 weeks—until the scandal hit.
There were good reasons for her popularity: creamy skin, a perfect 36-23-36 figure, large hazel eyes, and waves of hair that were light chestnut or dark blonde, depending on the light or hairdresser’s tint. The nipples on her “balloon breasts”—as Jerry Butler called them in his autobiography Raw Talent—puffed up when she was aroused. “It’s like her tits have tits,” panted my attorney, who traded $300 in legal fees for copies of my two Lords titles Physical II and Dirty
Pictures.
Traci’s trademark feature was The Pout, a full, lower-lipped challenge to all red-blooded American men (and to plastic surgeons whose clients wanted the look too).
Along with her beauty, Traci brought to the screen a genuine enthusiasm. This child of the Sexual Revolution took pride in her work, free of the martyred shame that haunted so many porn women in the past.
“They represent a new breed of performer in our industry,” said Harry Reems in an AVN interview after working with both Traci and her leading rival Ginger Lynn. “They walk in without all these inhibitions that we all grew up with and to them it’s a celebration of life that sex is supposed to be. I found that when I got into films, most performers wouldn’t even tell their parents what they were doing. Today, the parents are their agents and managers.”
x x x x x x
Curiosity about this sensational new star brought me to the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater early in 1985 to see their film The Grafenberg Spot. What I saw convinced me that my career in
erotic movies wouldn’t be complete without shooting a Traci Lords picture.
A porno theater is the last place you’d expect to see male bonding. The men sit as far away from each other as possible, ashamed of their masturbatory intentions. They don’t dare draw attention to themselves with vocalizations—only a few heavy breaths now and then. But for one brief moment, Traci Lords created a bond among these lonely men.
The scene was on a cabin cruiser that rocked to a three-some of Traci, Rick Savage and Harry Reems. The first ripple of response from the audience came with the sheer delight Traci took in slapping Rick’s erection around between her breasts.
Then, while Reems and Savage performed double vaginal penetration, something that was as much a Traci trademark as The Pout rang through the theater: the hyperventilating Traci Lords Love Call.
This seesaw of whistling inhalations and exhalations was best—if unflatteringly—described by my audio engineer. “It’s the sound of a Missouri mule on fast forward,” he said. As proof, he slowed the tape. Everyone in the mix studio burst into laughter. The alternating squeals and brays could have come out of the stables of a Sam Peckinpah western.
To the theater audience it was a Mozart concerto. I had just seen the movie Amadeus and had the weird notion that—like Mozart’s rival Salieri—I was listening to “the Lord’s music.”
Traci claimed her on-screen orgasms were real. In AVN, she said, “If the guys have to go through the job of getting a hard-on, I feel that in a sense the girl should get a hard-on too… I try to have a come-shot just like the guy.”
Porn queens’ claims of real screen orgasms are mostly hype but Traci’s climax in The Grafenberg
Spot made a believer out of me.
My seat was moving. I thought it was an earthquake. Then I realized that the fault-line ran from the knee to the crotch of the guy behind me. He wasn’t the only one masturbating. Though they tried to be quiet, the men were given away by the ancient seats, squawking like censorious old prudes.
When the scene ended, the audience lapsed into a silence deeper than usual. Then someone breathed, “Wow!” Followed by “Yeah!” “Woooh!” Someone called out, “Encore!” And the men actually laughed.
x x x x x x
“You’ve never seen anyone like her, Dave,” drawled porn’s super-agent Jim South. “She’ll know all her lines and everyone else’s too. She’ll hit her marks perfectly every time.” The lanky Kentuckian leaned back in his swivel chair, momentarily ignoring the flashing phone lines in front of him. As usual, South’s cramped suite of offices above Van Nuys Boulevard was a madhouse of harried producers, naked starlets and eager studs, all vying with the phone lines for his attention. South was in his element. “And when you’re done with the dialogue, she’ll fuck like a mink in heat.”
South went back to his phones and Rick Savage took over. “When she comes, you better have extra sound blankets,” he said into my face. (I was scrunched on a couch between Rick and the bare bottom of a lady who was seeking work despite her stretch marks.) “She’s such a screamer they’ll hear her six blocks away.”
“Sometimes it’s so intense she starts crying,” added Tony Martino, another of the studs South kept on hand in case a “field unit” malfunctioned.
In South’s kitchen, the only spot available for my casting session, Tom Byron tugged on his penis to lengthen it before I took a Polaroid of his skinny body. “If she’s still horny after a scene is finished,” he said, “she might grab a crew guy, slam him on his back and start in on him.”
“Shit!” South exclaimed. “I fucked up! I forgot I already had Traci booked on the 28th.”
I’d planned on starring Traci in two movies, shooting her footage on March 28th and 29th (1985). “How about April?” I asked. “Can I get two days in there?”
South shook his head. “She’s booked solid. And May is closing fast too.” “May’s too late anyway. I need at least one of these titles in time for CES.” “Dave, can you shoot everything you need on the 29th alone?”
“Well, maybe if it’s a long marathon day…”
“Wait a minute,” interjected a producer I called Ferrari Mike. (His prized 308GTB was always parked near World Modeling’s front door where nobody could miss it.) “I got Traci on the 30th and I’m shooting down here.”
“Shit, that’s right.” South ran his long fingers through his slicked-back hair. “Dave, could you possibly move your shoot to L.A.?”
“No way!” With pornographers shooting in Los Angeles again to save lodging and travel expenses, the LAPD was cracking down. I did all my shooting up north, where I felt safe.
While we puzzled over the schedule, Traci herself called from Hawaii where she was taking a needed vacation. She always wanted to meet in advance those she’d be working for. But by the time she returned to L.A., I’d be back home in Marin County. South handed me the phone; this was our meeting. I had to persuade her to fly 400 miles to have sex for a director she never heard of.
“Hi,” I began. “How’s your vacation?”
“Wonderful! All I’ve been doing is lying in the sun, and when I get back I’m gonna be so nice and tan and rested. I’m gonna look great! All my fans are gonna be so pleased…”
As Traci went on, I had the weird feeling that this star who was in such demand was actually trying to sell me on hiring her. She wasn’t. It was just her way of coming off as eager to please.
I wondered how eager she’d be when she saw the schedule we concocted. It was—as Tony Martino observed—“tighter than a gnat’s asshole.” After working a full day on March 28th, Traci would fly up to San Francisco, work a full day on my set on the 29th, then fly back down to L.A. to work a third straight full day for Ferrari Mike on the 30th. A “full day” in the sex film business was 12 hours; most days ran longer.
“It’s a good thing Traci likes to screw,” said South. x x x x x x
Tom Byron pursued Traci’s naked rear over a snake orgy of black power cables. “Traci, for the last time, will you marry me?”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Not again…”
Byron’s unabashed pining for his ex-girlfriend was an industry chuckle. But he was also one of her favorites to work with. So I hired him. With my impossible schedule, I couldn’t risk unpredictable cast chemistry.
I was sticking with my original plan to shoot the main footage of two features, even though I now had only one day to shoot in. And Traci absolutely, positively had to leave for San Francisco Airport by 10 PM.
Traci had only the script for Physical II. I hadn’t told her about Dirty Pictures; I was afraid the total amount of sex indicated on paper would scare her off or have her demanding much more than her $1,200 day rate. “I put a lot of energy into a sex scene,” Traci said in her AVN interview. “So I don’t like to do two in a day. I don’t want to be called a dead fuck.”
I wanted Traci to do two elaborate sex scenes. Only Tom Byron knew how the couplings and switchings would be chopped up to look like six full scenes in the two movies but he wasn’t telling— three of the sexual permutations put him together with Traci.
Pleased that I’d teamed her with her two favorite men—Byron and Marc Wallice (sic)—Traci agreed to the “two” scenes. She also liked working with the second woman, Cara Lott.
I prayed that the video gods would take mercy on my cramped schedule and hold back those dreaded Murphy’s Laws. But of course they didn’t.
x x x x x x
Marc Wallice sabotaged his own brain. While Traci posed for box cover stills (shot first, while make-up is fresh), the vacuous blond actor—kind of a Dan Quayle of porn studs—snuck off to an unused room in the spacious Mill Valley house to smoke pot. By the time we were ready to roll tape, Wallice was in no shape to remember his name, much less his lines.
Sitting in front of a blue backdrop—a “bluescreen” that could be electronically replaced with bodies in action, Lords and Wallice played emcees at an event called The Erotic Olympics. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Wallice began, “and welcome to the second annual… ah… ah…”
I’d wanted to start the sex after lunch. Instead, we stayed mired in dialogue. “Our next event is… is…”
“‘Masturbation,’ Marc.” And so on.
Juggling the usual barrage of details, I couldn’t give Wallice the attention he needed. Thank God for Traci’s diligence.
Though she’d picked up her script from South’s gofer at the airport and read it for the first time on the plane, she knew her lines perfectly. And Wallice’s too.
She coached and coddled him through the dialogue with a patience she didn’t extend to herself. When she finally muffed a line—“‘All our finalists will now be competing for’…” Traci snatched up her script, glowered at it and slammed it down. “‘For the grand prize of fifty thousand dollars.’ See how easy that was?”
She had the ability to snap into character on “Action.” When her bitch-queen role required her to rebuff Wallice’s pass at her, Traci did it so viciously that after the take, Wallice was still looking confused. She patted his arm. “What a bitch, huh?”
She always strove to be perfect. Told that the next scene involved cunnilingus, she dashed into the bathroom. Ten minutes passed. I glanced at my watch; we were running three hours late. “What’s she doing in there? Fixing the plumbing?”
Byron laughed. “Yeah. Hers. When she comes out, she’ll be clean enough to eat off of.” “And I have often done so,” Wallice announced, missing Byron’s sour glance.
x x x x x x Was it my deceiving Traci that displeased the video gods? Was that why Murphy did his worst?
Wallice couldn’t follow directions for a “sim” (softcore) cunnilingus shot. Traci tried to help. “You’ve got to hide my pussy with your head.” She grabbed his hair and pulled his face into her crotch. “Oww!” Wallice sprang back, grabbing his nose. Blood seeped between his fingers.
“Shit.” My watch read 6:36.
Then came the problem of Traci’s dress, a red mini covered with sequins that went everywhere. As director, responsible for visual details, I assigned myself the task of picking them out of her pubes, enduring taunts of “Tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.” Lying on the bed with her legs spread wide, Traci went into her press-release bio: She was 22 years old. She was from Las Vegas. Her stepfather had introduced her to the business.
The spiel seemed rehearsed but that didn’t strike me as odd. Everything about this young woman was prepared and polished. Except for her work schedule.
“This business really burns you out,” Traci said. “You don’t have any kind of life for yourself. All I’ve been doing is movie after movie after movie. I find myself going, like, ‘Oh God, do I have to fuck again?’ And I really like sex.” She added that in the past year she’d caught VD three times.
But then there was the bottom line. “I’ve been clearing over twenty thousand a month. This year I’ll make over 250 grand!” Traci wanted to know if I personally made that much. I said I didn’t. She seemed satisfied.
7:18 PM. Less than three hours to shoot all that sex. No dinner break tonight. Just cold cuts between takes.
x x x x x x Whap! Whap! Whap!
Traci had slammed Marc Wallice on his back and was slapping his face. “Come on, bigmouth!” she taunted. “Come on, bigmouth!”
I’d protested that even mild S and M was now legally risky but Traci said Wallice needed this to get turned on. I hoped she’d miss those weakened nasal membranes.
Wallice’s erection showed why he was the ladies’ choice for anal sex; it was slim and curved. South’s rival, Reb Sawitz of the Pretty Girl International modeling agency, made sure women working with Wallice knew they were choosing comfort over safety. Reb would reach his beefy arm