INTERVIEW

Alicubi

Tell me about these women. I gather that they act in adult movies: Is that so? And how did you come to make their acquaintence?

Antine

I costume a lot of my movies, so I'm on the set to dress the talent. They all know me as a major writer in the erotic film industry, and working on the set we all become family. I take my portfolio with me to show to the new people, the ones I haven't worked with before. I tell them I do black and white shots of the industry for art exhibits and books, and if I get any good shots of them I'll give them the shots in exchange for a model release. They can do what they want with the photo and I can do what I want with the photo. So I shoot the action as it's happening. I never set up a shot. Every shot I sent you was taken during the course of a sex scene. Most of the girls love to have my shots of them. They're more artistic, moody, dramatic. I'm interested in catching the moment, the passion, the beauty--and the girls like to see themselves that way.

Alicubi

Yes, Vanessa looks as if she's singing an aria. You say they're more dramatic and artistic, but how much more, and how so? I wonder how you relate the two forms to one another--the photos being a comment on or departure from the films. It's like an architect taking fine-art photos of her buildings. Certianly you take your films no less seriously, but what function do they serve, if the photographs are for the porfolios of the actresses, and for journals like this one, and for gallery-goers? I don't mean to be glib with you--but to put it plainly, and risk embarrasing myself, I know I'm supposed to masturbate to your films, but I'm not supposed to approach your photos that way--or am I? At art school, I was trained to approach images of my classmates' anuses with assiduous intellectual rigor--or else. In fact, one afternoon a girl in my perfomance-art studio did an erotic dance in the nude, and a female friend sitting beside me called out, "Hey, baby, nice tits!" The dancer thought the comment had come from me, and after the performance she marched over and socked me in the jaw.

Antine

Go onto any porn site on the internet and you'll see color photos of girls with their legs spread, their manicured pussies and silicone enhanced breasts being the focal point of the photos. The girls are posed specifically to show off their sexual parts in order to stir the loins of the male viewer.

Now look at my photos. The human being, rather than the sex organs, is the focal point of the photo. Her beauty or her passion or her mood. The lighting is different too. Everything is structured to create a vision which provokes thought or emotion. I seek to capture something internal. I don't pose anyone. Something human has to be going on in a photo or I won't bother with it. It's a different approach, a different vision.

The films are made for the sexual stimulation of the viewer. No one watches porn for its great dramatic value. I don't shoot my photos for the sexual stimulation of the viewer. My hope is always to capture something the movie does not--that moment of introspecton, as in the Lola shot, the rest before the loud beat, or the loud beat itself, but its heartbeat, its core.

I don't take most of my films seriously. They're a job, a way to fade the knife and fork, so to speak. Only a few become serious works of erotica. Most are just light sex stories to get a guy's dick stiff. The photographs are not done specifically for the portfolios of the actresses. That's my payment to them for allowing me to use their images. I'm building a body of work which depicts another side of this enormous industry. I love the things I see in those "off" moments. I attempt to capture them on film for the same reason any photogrpaher captures images on film. They're a slice of life. An interesting slice of life. Most people are curious about the erotic film industry. Few ever get to go inside and take a look at it. I'm there. I can preserve some of the wonder of that world.

Yes, certainly you can masturbate to my films if you want to. Or you can have sex with your girlfriend or wife while watching them if you want to. Or if you're some ugly dude in some hick town someplace and can't even get a date, you can pretend you're the guy in the movie and have a moment of fantasy with the beautiful babe onscreen. There are many reasons for watching porn. You can do anything you want to them. It doesn't make any difference to me.

If you wanted to masturbate while looking at one of my photos that would be okay with me. I promise I wouldn't sock you in the jaw. Although they are "my art," you can receive them any way you choose to. They serve a major purpose in my life. How they serve you is your business.

Alicubi

So how did you find your way into the erotic film industry?

Antine

It was a fluke. My roommate got married and I advertised for another. I wound up with a nurse who was breaking up with her doctor lover. I was at the time a starving writer, working on novels and short stories. When she found out I was a writer, she told me she and her doctor/lover had lived next door to a porno director who was looking for good writers. She asked if I'd be interested in such a thing. I said sure, why not? I wouldn't have to use my own name, right? So she put me together with Scotty Fox. She mistakenly thought I was a writer of Harlequin novels. I don't know where she got that idea. I couldn't write that kind of book. So Scotty and I had lunch and talked about a script. He had an idea. I asked for the formula. He told me what was necessary. The next day I put together an outline for him. He liked it a lot. When he asked what I wanted for a 20 page script, I shot him a figure. As it turned out, it was more than any writers had made in porn, but because he thought I was a Harlequin novel writer, he said okay, fine. So I wrote the script. I was called Intimate Couples, and John Holmes was line producer on that one. This was in October of '84. I was going to write erotic screenplays for 10 minutes, take the money and run. But before I knew it, Raven Touchstone had become an entity, and now she has become a legend--and we're still writing erotica, among other things.

I find it interesting that the second movie I wrote, also for Scotty, was Just Another Pretty Face, starring Traci Lords. And the third, also with Scotty, was the first movie with the first contract player in the business, Ginger Lynn. I went on to do all 15 of the Ginger movies for Vivid.

Alicubi

Bridget's Hellions sounds like it'll be a lot of fun. What do you think makes a good script?

Antine

I was just communicating to a friend re: a porno script, and one of your questions popped back into my head: What makes a good porno script? I think I answered: the same as any script, character development, plot, etc.

However, a good porno script is a support system for sex without getting in the way of sex. In other words, the plot holds together and weaves throughout the sex scenes without overpowering them. We don't and can't compete with mainstream films where the whole 120 minutes is plot. Our films and videos run about 90 minutes of which 70 minutes is devoted to sex and the other 20 to story. Consequently, story gets the short end of the stick.