Elvis has Graceland and I have the Pepper Palace," declares Jeannie Pepper, star of such cult classics as Black Taboo, Black Baby Dolls, Strange Bedfellows, and Honeywood. The film legend recently made a comeback into the adult arena with the launch of her official Website, www.jeanniepepper.com.
"There's nothing juicy enough to do, and they're not writing movies for me, so I'm pretty much retired," is how she now describes her film career, which ironically nosedived after her 1997 induction into both the AVN Hall of Fame and the Legends of Erotica. "After you get inducted into both of those, your price goes up and nobody calls you. But now, if they don't call me, I'm not going to cry."
In 1998, the Chicago native and former resident of Compton, Calif. moved to Europe for a year before returning for sporadic on-camera gigs and feature spots on the dance circuit, and she still works on both continents. The latter club appearances will now promote her Website, which contains her biography, personal diary entries, and photo galleries featuring both high-resolution stills and video clips.
"My plan is to have the whole Jeannie Pepper encyclopedia, what I call the 'Pepper Palace archives,' up within a year," says producer John Dragon, who was formerly married to Pepper and collaborated with her on creating the site. "It's going to be a lot of work, but it will include photos and videos I shot myself in Europe that nobody else has ever seen."
"I'm the only African-American woman in the AVN Hall of Fame," Pepper says, "but I realize I can't keep doing movies forever. I've been in the business 19 years so I think it's time to give the crown to somebody else and let them have all the fun. The site is really for the fans who have been crying for years for a fan club. I am still around because of my fans and I am doing this Website because of them. I've got fans that call me from everywhere, who want to know what I'm doing and where I'm playing, so it's really for them. Because they drive me crazy with all these questions!"
Since the site went public in late June, she has been receiving e-mails from rabid fans keen to befriend her. "I've noticed that the ones that write by snail mail, they just want a picture back. But the ones who e-mail, they really want to correspond with you and do the pen pal thing," she discloses. "It's okay for me to interact that way, but I wouldn't want to do it 24/7. I do have a life beyond sitting in front of a computer, which took a while for me to get used to.
"Everyone has been trying to drag me into this, because I'm a product of the '70s and I was freaking out over all this computer stuff," she admits, laughing. "I'm getting used to the e-mail thing, and I'm also going to be doing some live chats." By fall, she was hoping to have opened her online store section, which will sell an array of memorabilia including some of her stage costumes ("which I've kept over the years that I want to auction off") and even Jeannie Pepper watches ("I had some watches made in Germany with my body on it!"), as well as t-shirts and new movies custom-made for the site.
Presently, the site's main draws are the photo gallery, which includes commentary from Pepper accompanying JPEGs of such momentous events as the "German Gangbang" (a group sex shoot she did in Germany) and "Dick Drost's Nude Ranch" ("an anything-goes sexy hideaway" where she gets together with friends for a romp in the hay). The video section features the sexually voracious Pepper in action, in both hardcore and softcore versions - the former shot in Paris and Hamburg, the latter shot in France, Switzerland, and Tahiti.
Why the distinction of hardcore and softcore, in all those exotic locations? "Some people want to see the hardcore and some of them don't," Pepper replies. "Everybody's complaining about how some Websites are too raunchy, and some women freak out over hardcore. Also, those areas - France, Switzerland, Tahiti - are places where you want to be romantic. Those are romantic spots where people go to honeymoon, and they don't necessarily want to see me there in a raunchy movie."
Currently, video is only available for Windows Media users, but plans are afoot for other formats. "We're trying to arrange for streaming services to [provide] RealMedia and QuickTime," says Lord Kwll, the site's designer and Webmaster, "but because of the occasional difficulty that can be had getting video quickly, we are holding off for a bit until we can put up a large enough concentration of video to justify the added cost. I know that sounds really cheap, but since the site is just starting out, we'd like to fill out all sections as quickly as possible. We already had all the components in place to encode Windows Media-formatted video and get it online right away, so we started with that to give the fans something to look at immediately."
For fans who join the members-only section, "Jeannie's Diary" offers some juicy first-person prose. In the inaugural entry, she recounts a tryst with a basketball player, set within the context of the NBA playoffs. "Yes, it's all true and I write all my stories myself," she admits. "My upcoming diary entries will be about how I got into the business and about 'the boyfriend that got away'; and about who I would have been if I hadn't been Jeannie Pepper. I probably would have been somebody's wife with two kids.
"Right now, I have a daughter, who is 22," reveals Pepper, who recently turned 43. "No, she's not going to go into the business. She's met all my friends and a lot of my colleagues and she's not interested. And I'm glad, because she's not that type of girl anyway."
Explaining her limited video output of late, she says: "I only do things that are really good, as far as working with the best people. I did a movie with Candida Royalle, and just a few select things for Jim Malibu and a few other directors." She also performed in My Baby Got Back! 20 for Video Team's Afro-Centric series and two projects for Metro - Women on Top, featuring Jill Kelly (shot for Metro's Cal Vista Pictures), and Black Taboo 2, featuring Midori (shot for Metro Blue Movies).
"I also made a couple of movies just to help launch the site, like Off the Hook with Evil Angel," she adds. "I'm excited now, because it's about time I get some attention again. I feel like some people have forgotten about me just because I don't make movies anymore. I have a Website with variety - I have glamorous stuff, I have kinky stuff, everything you could ask for. We have Webmasters to maintain the site. People link up and tell me things. We have spies everywhere.
"They put me in the Hall of Fame and they pretty much buried me," she says. "But I keep coming back."
Jeannie Pepper can be reached via e-mail, at [email protected].
