CHRIS NEUMER: There was a film that played at Cannes last year that opened and closed with a full on blowjob, Battle in Heaven. It was a Mexican film and there was actual sex in the middle of it. It, obviously got a lot of press because of that. I was talking to the actress who was the giver and she was talking about where this was cinema was going. She said that you were going to see more and more of that in film.
JESSE JANE: Right.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was joking around with her and said that in 20 years in the future, there’s going to be a time when people say, "Wait, that doesn’t have a blowjob in it? I’m not seeing it then." The exact opposite. I was laughing remembering this conversation because you’ve got mainstream cinema putting sex in and now we’ve got porn that is taking the sex out.
JESSE JANE: You know what it is? There aren’t a lot of porn films that do that, actually.
CHRIS NEUMER: One, probably.
JESSE JANE: There’s a high class film and at Digital Playground we try to make those. Sex is becoming more acceptable and mainstream and you can’t watch regular cable shows without seeing nudity or sexual acts. But it’s becoming more open. We’re just pushing the line. It’s a long thing overdue.
CHRIS NEUMER: What do you mean ‘thing’?
JESSE JANE: It’s a long thing over due. Before Pirates came out, a lot of people have been amazing afraid to tap into the adult side of things, even though they’re curious. They’re scared of opinions. All these people would start preaching that it’s wrong and immoral, but yet, it sells. If you look at a beer ad or a Gatorade ad, it’s sex. Sex sells. People are getting a little more open to it and trying to test out the reaction to it. The response to showing a little bit more nudity and adult content has been great.
CHRIS NEUMER: When you say showing a little bit more nudity, are you talking HBO or Dennis Franz’s ass on NYPD Blue?
JESSE JANE: All these things. It’s more. If you look at the movie ratings now, a PG-13 now shows brief nudity, when it wouldn’t do that before. It used to be rated R. Now you can show some crazy stuff, like in Basic Instinct 2, and that probably should be rated X for what it had.
CHRIS NEUMER: What about the nudity in a project like Titanic?
JESSE JANE: Nudity is an art form. There’s a classy way to show it where it’s not trash and a lot of people know how to tap into that. But then a lot of people want to see trash. When you cut a sex scene in a mainstream movie you’re trying to feel the moment and it’s like "Ugh". There’s a way to shoot it so that you’re not making a porn–if you watch the second Matrix, their sex scene is hot, even though you don’t see much.
CHRIS NEUMER: Is that the one where Keanu and Carrie are going at it and they keep cutting between some kind of rally and the sex scene?
JESSE JANE: Exactly. Then they had Original Sin with Angelina Jolie and Eyes Wide Shut was more like a porno. There are differences to shooting those. Porn’s just trying to show that they can make movies too.
CHRIS NEUMER: Let me ask you this: we talk about sex in the movies–and this may strike you as weird–but I think that sex is distracting. For example, if I’m watching a mainstream movie and I see Bruce Willis’ penis, I’m sort of taken out of the moment.
JESSE JANE: You want to know why? You’re a typical guy that seeing male nudity throws you. If you saw a woman nude, you wouldn’t be so much distracted. It was okay for the women to be nude but they were afraid to tap into the guys. It’s distracting because of the shock value. Now you’re seeing full frontal whereas they used to only show bare butts.
CHRIS NEUMER: Bad example on my part. Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets, there’s a scene where she’s in the bathtub.
JESSE JANE: Okay.
CHRIS NEUMER: And she does this weird thing where her towel is falling as she’s turning and you see like two inches of crack, it’s still distracting. Going back to Battle in Heaven, the director kind of screwed himself because the movie opens with this attractive 19 year old girl going down on a fat, forty year old guy and you’re shocked. It takes you out of the moment.
JESSE JANE: That’s the shock value. I think there’s a line between keeping an adult film an adult film. There’s a way to keep adult film porn from that of an adult film that’s R rated. That film, I personally don’t think a regular movie should have something where you see a whole blowjob.
CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, every once in a while I’ll get in conversations with directors about what they have to do to get certain ratings. It’s like, "We’ll give you an R rating if you only show her head bobbing up and down three times, but if you go to four times, you won’t get it." It’s more than just a compromise, it’s this weird line in the sand and you wonder, how did it get drawn here? I’ll do interviews every once in a while where someone’s publicist and I will be hashing out what I can and can’t talk about with the subject. She’ll tell me, "You can ask about her latest breakup, only if you talk about how much she likes the director." I’ll say, "I don’t care about her latest breakup, I want to ask her about getting snubbed by the Screen Actor’s Guild." The publicist will tell me, "You can do that, but only if you also ask her about being honored with the Berlin Film Festival prize" or something. Do you experience those weird compromises where you wonder how the lines got drawn where they did?
JESSE JANE: My only experience like that comes with my contractual obligations to Digital Playground. I can’t go off and do my own things without Digital Playground’s approval or Playboy’s approval. Where I used to shoot Hustler covers, now that I work for Playboy and have had a Playboy cover, I can’t go and do another Hustler cover even though I’ve been doing it for a while. There’s things I can and can’t do with my contract. It definitely goes through every aspect of the business.
CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t realize I’m in those situations until I start thinking, "Wait, I’m having this conversation?!" I guess if everything is spelled out in your contract there wouldn’t be much room for deliberation. Do you ever encounter things like this on set where a director is asking you to do one thing and you’re thinking, "Nope." Like, he wants you to hold a purse that’s shaped like a duck–something incredibly trivial–and you’re thinking, "There’s not a chance in hell I’m doing this."
JESSE JANE: I’m lucky in that if I think something is stupid I won’t do it… I’ll do some things if I feel that they’re funny or I want to do them for the movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: Can you give me an example?
JESSE JANE: In Pirates, when we were in the little confessional with Janine, I did this raspy voice. It wasn’t a voice over or played with, it was my voice. Even though it does sound stupid, I did it for the movie… but I didn’t have to. I always have the option not to do something if I don’t want to.
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, I hate your kind. I’m so jealous.
JESSE JANE: If I don’t want to do it, I’m not going to.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s precisely the part that gets me jealous. You’ve hit it on the head.
JESSE JANE: (laughs)
CHRIS NEUMER: I’ve been working on this up and coming actress story. I’ve talked to about ten rising stars–women you’d recognize, but not necessarily know their names until I mention what they’re in. So I talked to them about their lives and one of the things they said was really hard was dating. They said that they’re surrounded everyday by actors and they find that dating actors is tough to do for them because there’s the potential for jealousy, not only about working with members of the opposite sex, but if one person’s career blows up and the other’s doesn’t. To a woman they said, "I do not date actors." Have you found that since both of you [Jesse and Rick] are in the industry that it’s effected your relationship in anyway?
RICK ROGERS: I don’t think there’s the jealousy that there is in the mainstream world because we’re not equals. The girls are the stars. No matter what a guy does, he’s not a star. With Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, if her movie makes $60 million and his makes 100 million, she might feel a little less significant than him, or he might be getting more attention than her. In our industry, the girls get all the attention no matter what.
CHRIS NEUMER: From here on out, I’m referring to Pirates as Evan Stone’s movie.
JESSE JANE: (laughs)
RICK ROGERS: So, there’s no jealousy. Maybe where the problems come in relationships in our business is when the guys start thinking that they’re a star and that’s when a lot of relationships dissolve; when the guys want the limelight.
CHRIS NEUMER: Is there a difference because of the nature of the business? It seems as though people in the adult film industry have an understanding about what it’s like to be in that industry that might preclude them to only dating people in the industry. Do that play a part?
JESSE JANE: You kind of have to not think about what anyone else thinks about you and your business. People will always throw mixed opinions at you–you’ll have people, especially in the adult world than in the mainstream world, who will purposely try to wreck your relationship because they’re jealous that you can maintain a healthy relationship. You’re comfortable with yourself and what your partner’s doing . Even though [the other person] might be dating someone else in the business and they can handle it… You have people who will try to tear your relationship up because they’re jealous. Some girls who are jealous of other girls who are moving up will do everything in their power to sabotage her relationship and her career. You’ll have more of that than a Lindsay Lohan/Hilary Duff kind of thing. It’s a whole different level.
RICK ROGERS: But more what you were asking, when she goes off to work, I’ve been in the business so long I understand that she’s not going off and sleeping with some other guy. If you guys were dating and she went off to work, the whole time she was gone, you’d be thinking, "Oh my God, she’s having sex with somebody else." That’s where I think you might have to be with somebody in the business to understand that it’s not, she’s not really sleeping with someone else. She’s going to work.
CHRIS NEUMER: It’s an interesting footnote on that situation. I read an interesting quote from someone called Crystal Steele. I don’t know if she’s big or not… I’m so out of touch with the porn world, I actually feel bad. I don’t know who any of these girls are! I know I’d seen the poster for Pirates when I was in New York last year, but I feel bad. It’s a weird world where I have to depressingly confess that I don’t know a lot about porn. Most people are [facetiously], "Um, no… I’ve never heard of that… Pornography, you say? Hmmm…" Anyway, I don’t know if Crystal Steele is big or not, but she had said, "Single guys tend to love their job a little bit too much. We’re not here to pleasure each other, we’re here to work." It seemed like the exact opposite of what so many porn stars say about the excitement they feel for going to work and being on set. You don’t often see people commenting on the actual work, the nuts and bolts of the porn world acting, pardon the pun. So I wanted to find out, you have girls who say they can’t wait to work and you have Crystal Steele, which sentiment is more accurate?
JESSE JANE: I think it goes both hand in hand, depending on which situation you’re put in. If you’re a contract girl, you’re choosing who you’re working with, you can have chemistry and you don’t work a lot. You make a lot more money and you get marketed to be a star. If not a contract girl, you have to work, work, work and maybe do scenes that you don’t want to do, but–nobody makes you do them, but you choose to do them because you think they’ll help you get a contract and be a star–so those girls sleep with people they’re not attracted to and do people they don’t want to do, and they do scenes they don’t want to do with more than one person at a time and they hate it. They’re like, "I’m here to work." They’re doing it to get a quick buck or whatever, and to hopefully become a star. If you’re a contract girl, maybe you feel that way as well, but you’re like, "I can choose who I want to work with, I get to go to exotic locations, I don’t work often and I get to be a star."
CHRIS NEUMER: Paraphrasing what you’re saying: Eric Roberts, or some equally crappy actor, might say, "I don’t want to do Final Executive Force 7, but I need to pay the mortgage, so I’m going to do it," versus George Clooney shifting through script to find out what projects tickle his interest and he says, "I am so excited about this movie."
JESSE JANE: Exactly. Very good analogy.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’ll attribute it to you in print.
JESSE JANE: Thank you.
CHRIS NEUMER: I did this thing with Ron Jeremy a long time ago. He’s the only interview subject I’ve ever had to keep kicking awake. I don’t know if you’ve worked with him–
JESSE JANE: I know him, I will never work with him. He’s not my type.
CHRIS NEUMER: Fat and hairy isn’t your type?
JESSE JANE: And old.
RICK ROGERS: You should just have put food in front of him, he’d never have fallen asleep then.
JESSE JANE: (laughs) Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: Nice guy though. I couldn’t ask him this, nor could I ask Rick this because the men are–what’s the term?–props?
JESSE JANE: A tool.
CHRIS NEUMER: Or that, I think prop was the term Ron used. But for you, in something like Pirates, that was more about plot and acting than other porn films, how do you prepare for a role?
JESSE JANE: In movies other than Pirates? Um…
CHRIS NEUMER: No, let’s talk Pirates. If there’s a huge gap between it and everything else, then we’ll get into that too.
JESSE JANE: There’s not really a big difference. You have read your role. A lot of people in the adult business think, "I’m just showing up on set and having sex, it’s a porno, I don’t care." But if you really care about the project and want it to do well, like I did with Pirates, you have to study your character, you have to get into that character. You’ve got to feel the acting; you do a lot of takes. You prepare yourself to get into that mode, you can’t think, "Oh, I’m just doing a porno." Okay, I’m doing this acting thing.
CHRIS NEUMER: Once you have that it’s-just-a-porno mindset, it spells disaster?
JESSE JANE: Exactly. You won’t do your best, you won’t care, because you’re like, "This is stupid. I’m doing a porno." It’s like, "This isn’t a movie." You have to look at it like a movie and try to make it better. I want to make it better than all the other adult movies, so I have to sit there and do my research and watch other pirate flicks. I want to get into that time period and into that setting so I can be that character.
CHRIS NEUMER: Let me ask you this, and I have no idea if there’s an answer to it or not. I’m assuming that there are certain days where you know in advance that you’re going to show up and have sex.
JESSE JANE: Yup.
CHRIS NEUMER: And on other days, you know that you’re not. I was thinking that you’d prepare differently for the sex than the non sex, and then I started thinking, "Is being in a porn film the ultimate method acting? Just another thing her character is doing?" Then I wondered whether you could disassociate yourself that far. I think there’s a question in there. Pick and choose from that mess what topic you want to respond to.
JESSE JANE: (laughs) Well…
CHRIS NEUMER: Are you familiar with the tenets of method acting? Nic Cage is a great example of a method actor. If Nic Cage is playing an alcoholic, he’s going to go out binge drinking before shooting. If he’s playing a guy who stays up all night, he might stay up all night before that day on set. I think he also rented hookers to try and figure out what that world was like. Method acting is basically acting by doing. Some actors look like they’re doing something because they’re pretending, some actors look like they’re doing something because they’re actually doing it. They are their characters.
JESSE JANE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I use a combination of the two. It’s–you just do it. I’m into it. I’m a very sexual person. [In that realm] I don’t have to get into my character, that’s just me. If I’m getting into a character role, then I have tell myself, "Be that person." I don’t think that’s method acting, because I’m very sexual, so for that part, I’m just myself.
CHRIS NEUMER: So the sex is actually easier for you.
JESSE JANE: Yes.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’d assume that they exact opposite is true for you, Rick?
RICK ROGERS: What do you mean?
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, if you’re doing something in your personal life and the phone rings and your mom leaves you a message that can ruin everything.
RICK ROGERS: Or dogs barking.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m multiplying that a couple of times to create the environs of a porn set with fat guys in sweat pants standing around in a house that’s hotter than hell with somebody telling you, "Get off now."
RICK ROGERS: You got to a dark place in your mind.
CHRIS NEUMER: Dark place, like a horrific place filled with violence? With images of dead dogs and grandparents around?
RICK ROGERS: (laughs) No, no. Just wherever you need to go.
JESSE JANE: It’s harder for guys than girls though because guys don’t chose the girls they get to work with so you might get a girl you’re not attracted to.
CHRIS NEUMER: We don’t care. Frankly, that might make it better in certain circumstances.
RICK ROGERS: You go to a sexual place. Every guy in the business has something on their mind, no matter what. A lot of times you’re not even looking at the girl in front of you.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now you’ve got me curious. What is your place?
RICK ROGERS: I don’t really have a place anymore.
CHRIS NEUMER: Where was your place?
RICK ROGERS: Where was my place? A lot of different stuff. I don’t know.
CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t want to get you in trouble, I’m just curious.
JESSE JANE: I don’t care.
CHRIS NEUMER: Can you give me one example?
RICK ROGERS: Um…
JESSE JANE: Two girls?
RICK ROGERS: What you used fantasized about. Or a sex thing that you used to do. Something like that. You go somewhere that works for you. It’s always different. Mentally you go somewhere else, I should have explained that before. I only work with her now, so I don’t have to go anywhere now.
CHRIS NEUMER: You didn’t get in the business through her, though, right?
RICK ROGERS: No.
JESSE JANE: No.
CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t know if I’m talking out of turn by this, or insulting your close friends, but every time I hear about guys who ride their girls’ coattails into the business, I don’t react well to that, for some reason. Maybe because it’s not on their own merits.
RICK ROGERS: Hmm… Now that I just work with her, I just look at her. I haven’t had to go to that place in over a year now, so I don’t know where it is now.
CHRIS NEUMER: So you’re both in good places now. I’m disgusted and jealous at the lot of you.
JESSE JANE: (laughs)
RICK ROGERS: That’s why I can’t remember anymore.
CHRIS NEUMER: So the sex for you, Jesse, is a lot easier than the acting.
JESSE JANE: It’s just sex.
CHRIS NEUMER: I understand that you say that it’s just sex, but I’m also assuming that there’s a sort of technical proficiency that isn’t talked about. How many cameras do you usually work with?
JESSE JANE: People shoot with a lot of cameras.
CHRIS NEUMER: Two motion pictures cameras? When you were shooting the sex scenes for Pirates, how many motion pictures cameras were there?
JESSE JANE: I don’t know. There were sometimes two and three cameras going.
CHRIS NEUMER: Is that easier than shooting with just one camera. You don’t have to play to one lens. Now I’m free to do whatever.
JESSE JANE: My thing is that I always try to be in control. They would want certain shots. I just don’t listen anymore. I do my thing and you just have to catch it.
CHRIS NEUMER: More disgusted and more jealous. I told that to an editor a long time ago and they laughed at me and then fired me.
JESSE JANE: (laughs)
CHRIS NEUMER: So if you have cameras on either side of you and their filming, you don’t worry about shadows or lighting or what your best angles are?
JESSE JANE: Yeah.
CHRIS NEUMER: That’s what the DP and lighting guys are for?
JESSE JANE: Uh huh.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was there a point in time early on in your career before you got superstar big that you’d have to worry about that kind of thing?
JESSE JANE: There was a point in time where they’d try control me because they’d want certain shots to make it easier for them, but then it looked like staged sex. I can’t be controlled. I don’t like to be controlled. I think it makes for a bad performance. I’m a good performer because I don’t look at the camera, I don’t pose for the camera and I don’t sit there and have staged sex. It’s raw. It’s crazy.
CHRIS NEUMER: Is there a choreography that you work out with the guy ahead of time? Anything from "Don’t touch my feet," to "My left side is my good side,"?
JESSE JANE: No. That’s would be awkward. Hey, how do you want to have sex? I’m going to do you this way and then that way and then I’m going to cum. You can’t do that.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’ve been on regular film sets and I think they’re some of the most boring places in the universe.
JESSE JANE: Right.
CHRIS NEUMER: If I meet people who express extreme jealousy over the fact that I got to go on a movie set, I know they’re not in the industry. It’s an interesting delineation. That’s my defining line: if you complain about how boring it is on set, you’re in. I’ve never been on a porn set because I–well, I try never to go in to Van Nuys to begin with.
RICK ROGERS: (laughs) Good advice.
CHRIS NEUMER: I’m assuming that the way you shoot porn is the way you shoot main stream film and that’s why I never have gone. Now, I’m realizing that’s apparently not true. Sharon Stone always talks about the choreography of her sex scenes and how her directors yell at people to switch positions etc. I’m kind of surprised to hear that you’re saying no to that.
JESSE JANE: Yeah… no. (laughs) The difference in that is that it looks staged in the mainstream movies or it can be staged. You don’t have to capture real moments. The people might not have any kind of chemistry together, they’re just acting. In our business, you have to have a chemistry and when it’s not there and you’re just faking it, you can tell and people make fun of you.
