Tuesday, January 4, 2011

The life of two adult film stars


Sex The Annabel Chong Story (1999)
Sad portrait of Annabel Chong, real name Grace Quek, a student a USC who became briefly famous for sleeping with 251 men in 10 hours. A warts and all portrait this is the tale of a woman who got into porn as a way of empowering herself and then found she was not as in control as she thought. Its not a matter of grand tragedy, more quiet desperation. (Eventually she leaves the business only to return a year later.) Its not a happy film. I know Chong was happy with the film and made appearances when the film played around the country. Is it worth seeing? I don't know. Its not bad, but its not compelling. In its way it cautionary tale is almost cliché. The choice is yours.

Porn Star the Legend of Ron Jeremy
Stumbling upon this late the other night on cable I decided to give it a go. This is the life of one of the longest surviving porn actors in the business.

Two things that struck me was that Ron seems like he's an extremely nice guy. He's the type of guy that you'd want at your party because he's so interested in having fun. The other thing that struck me was that despite the upbeat demeanor it was all terribly sad. Its not that the life is a bad thing, rather its simply that Ron is trying so hard to be "Ron - Superstar" and to break into mainstream movies that he's completely missed the chance of having anything approaching a what is considered a normal life, there is no girlfriend, wife or family, there is only the drive to be famous. You can sense the sadness in him, in talking about his girlfriends, the desire of kids. I also found it telling when he said that he looked for certain things at a party, and mentioned that food rated higher than women.

I liked the film, but was left both liking Ron more than before and being left clueless as to why we should care.

Definitely worth seeing

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