THINKING WITH TWO HEADS

I'm so fed up with my hospital job and sheer disappointment, being forced to make a living doing anything other than my calling, that I've thrown myself into the porno pool, hoping to attract sharks who'll chew me up and spit me out.

I don't care, as long as I get the fuck outta here and somewhere I can write full-time.

I've been pushing hard this past week, inquiring with every porn magazine, looking for a writing position or any position I can find. I got a bite from one publisher who asked for a writing sample, a porno review.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually watch a porno, not masturbate, and then critic it objectively?

Being "Charlie Brown", it was my luck that the movie I chose was horrible and I found myself trying to decide if I should fake a positive review or be honest and justifiably trash the movie. I picked up a copy of the magazine to get a feel for their style and see how they handle negative criticism. But I couldn't find one, not all of the reviews were good, but they all had some positive spin.

So what did I do?

I figured I'd be honest because I don't know how to write any other way. I also decided if adult films want mainstream acceptance from Hollywood, they have to live up to those standards.

This was the result...

JINX

Wicked Pictures, D: FJ Lincoln, Jenna Jameson, Nico Treasures, Caressa Savage, Julie Rage, Roxanne Hall, Jacklyn Lick, Colt Steele, John Decker, Alex Sanders and Special Appearance by Big T (Non-Sex Role), 86 Mins.

Extras: Audio Bios (limited), Behind the Scenes Stills, Wicked Casino (DVD-Rom game), Wicked Web Hyperlink, Motion Menus, Photo Gallery, AVN Award Winners and Nominations (list), Company Profile and Trailers.

Maybe it’s a coincidence that two days before writing this review, I saw an E! True Hollywood Story on Jenna Jameson and the movie I’d pick at random would be the worst in her filmography.

Jinx suffers on several levels, poor sound quality, jagged editing, bad acting with no characterization, no attempt at a story, and the worst crime – bad sex choreography. The only saving grace is snippets from each sex scene that if strung together, make a decent sexual interlude.

The movie opens with Jenna, a hard working prostitute (the only way I know she’s a prostitute is from the box cover) who drops into a local bar. She invites her co-star, Colt Steele, to a game of billiards and we’re bored with moving “snap shots” until John Decker shows up as “The Pimp” (the only actor with even a generic name) who tries pulling Jenna away, resulting in a muted punch across the face from Steele who takes Jenna home with him.

John Decker and Roxanne Hall give us the first sex scene that begins well. Hall sucks dick better than Jenna, but the scene falls from there. From oral, they go straight to anal and end with vaginal. Reversing the usual sex format may seem experimental and new, but makes the overall scene anticlimactic, leaving Roxanne way too calm after having her ass plowed. The energy level plummets and the audience go limp.

The rest of the “film” is a mishmash of characters that lack the charm of being cliché or stereotypical. Colt’s character decides to play poker with friends instead of bedding a naked Jenna, but she rebounds into a lesbian scene with Caressa Savage who appears from nowhere. Usually a high point in her films, Jenna’s performance is equal to an accessory whose only purpose is providing motor function to the horse hung dildo, and Caressa’s sex screams are so overdone you hit the mute button.

After Caressa, our happy hooker jumps into a threesome with Nico Treasures and Alex Sanders, the two saving graces in the entire production. Alex Sanders never fails to impress, while Nico Treasures plays a better “hot blonde” than Jenna. You’re actually moved by their performance of a husband and wife more concerned about the other’s enjoyment than their own, creating a scene that is believable on two levels – characterization and Jenna’s arousal.

But even this suffers at the editor’s hands because it’s interrupted early by foreshadowing the next scene with Julie Rage. And Jenna’s upstaged again, as Julie pulls double duty portraying masculine and feminine roles with Colt who’s deadpan acting carries over into his sexual performance. If the actor spent as much energy in his performances as he does flipping his hair, he could be someone of note.

Not even the ending scene between Decker and Jenna can save this movie that ends on a total downer, with Jenna forced to tease customers and fuck her pimp in the same public bar where he was humiliated. You expect our hero to come rushing in to save his damsel, but not likely. He’s too busy flipping his hair and looking unemotional with Jacklyn Lick who’d get more interaction from a statue. Thank goodness for Decker, who comes through in the clinch, dumping his “hard ass pimp” persona for his nice guy looks and pussy eating chops that make Jenna squirm.

Despite all this, and sex scenes so dry they look painful, Jinx does get you off more than once. Just keep the remote handy for fast forwarding.

Marketing: Jenna Jameson’s on the box, but Nico Treasure, Alex Sanders, Julie Rage and John Decker are the stars that make this a jerk-off fest.

_________

Porn is one of those weird topics with no straight answers for or against it. Looking at Jenna Jameson's True Hollywood story on Tuesday, I found myself bouncing between liking, disliking, and just feeling sorry for her.

On one hand you have to admire everything she's done in business, she's a millionaire and has done what many others have failed at, crossing back and forth from porn to mainstream without giving up her day job. Tracy Lords couldn't do it, not without pissing all over the industry that made her famous and her biggest payday to date was a bit part in Blade.

But you can't turn away from what Jenna represents, she's a teen "runaway" who abandoned her dreams of legitimate stardom to make easy money on her back. She freely admitted to giving up her quest to be a Vegas showgirl because it was too much work, but being a stripper landed her $2K a night for doing nothing. Her father allowed her, a teenager, to leave home and live with a man in his twenties, strip at 17, and then left her alone in Vegas while he moved to California (yeah, he's father of the year material - NOT). She got hooked on speed (I never knew you could snort it), went back to her father who cleaned her up, only to let her go back into the adult biz, doing nude pictorials and moving in with Nikki Tyler (who was against Jenna getting into porn at such a young age – integrity comes from unexpected places).

I'm watching this and feeling sad that Jenna’s gone through so much, only amounting to a living sex doll when she could have been much more. And then, I'm pissed at her too, because she knows her past, knows the roads she's travels are dark and dangerous, but still holds herself up as the symbol of feminine power and control in an industry that is and will always be controlled by men (it’s entire reason for being is visualizing male sex fantasies and the women who dominate it do so by embracing masculine qualities in front and behind the cameras).

I have much more respect for actresses like Janine (who just did her first boy/girl movie), who admit what they do is not the best way to make a living and tries to get out, but can't. The money, the power, it's too enticing. And who can blame them, if I wasn't married, I'd be at Bally's pumping up to star in the next Analbolic DVD.

But Jenna, who has the potential to really be different, kowtows to the adult industries propaganda machine, repeating the same rhetoric about how there's nothing wrong with what they do. And there isn't really, not from a moral standpoint...

Sex is whatever you make it. It can be hot and sweaty or slow and romantic. Any married couple will tell you there are times when they want to make love, and others when they just want to fuck. That pornography focuses on only one aspect 90% of the time doesn't make it wrong. It's more honest than Hollywood's stupefying us to believing the opposite, that it's some "holier than thou" romantic act. The most romantic sex my wife and I ever had was more like a Seymore Butts compilation than some Anthony Minghella directed love scene (and it gave us two kids).

So I moved from feeling sorry to disliking her (Jenna), not just because she's part of the reason so many girls are trading college diplomas for HIV test certificates and flooding the industry with the lack luster starlets, but mostly because she's the nemesisof any father trying to keep his daughter off the pole.

And I'm just about to announce these "thought bytes" to my wife when I'm hit with a dose of reality - she's fucking gorgeous, rich, and I'm jealous of her and every man that gets to fuck her.

That shut me up.

There you have the fine line, everything about porn being a symptom of our own depravity is true, but you can't deny "the beautiful ones" are living a better life than the rest of us. They party, they fuck, and they make millions before dying.

And some of them die young, at their own hands or something/someone else's, but so do rock stars, actors, directors, and anyone else who hand rapes the cock of life. Leaving the rest of us wallowing in their shadows, trashing them in public, but lusting for them at 3am when cyber sex doesn't deliver the goods.

Still, it doesn't change the fact that JINX was a crappy movie...

And I need to buy better porn.

JPG.