This on-the-set report originally ran in the September 2014 issue of AVN magazine. To see a trailer of BonnieLand: A Gangbang Fantasy, click here.
Bonnie Rotten is pissed.
Her usually smiling and happy demeanor was intact through the morning's shooting, in this hillside house with its vertical backyard. The paved path leading up to the pavilion with the hot tub, gas barbecue and mini-fridge was the setting for the preamble to her sex scene with Remy LaCroix, with both of them in Halloween-costume Native American dresses and Bonnie pulling a rubber prop knife on Remy, binding her wrists together and leading her away.
The pre-sex-scene prep finished, the company re-assembled around a landing on the same path, a smallish wooden platform just large enough for a bench and a small throw rug, with a showerhead in one corner. One camera is at ground level, pointing up, and a second camera is in the hot tub pavilion, pointing down. Rotten, who is also directing, spent some time conferring with the cameraman shooting down: When the shower comes on, she wants the camera to go to slow motion, and they discuss how many frames per second is best to capture detail. A collection of sex toys has been laid out on an out-of-camera-range table, and the scene begins.
Bonnie brandishes the knife at Remy and unties her wrists, then pulls her forward and kisses her. Remy's dress comes off and Bonnie is on her knees, reaching up with her mouth to Remy's breast.
"Break!" Bonnie suddenly says, and points at one cameraman. "You're doing soft, right?" She looks at the other cameraman. "And you're doing hard? Got it. Action!"
Bonnie pulls her own dress off, sitting Remy on the bench and starting to finger-fuck her. "Oh fuck!" Remy squeals as Bonnie's hands thrust into her. Bonnie reaches up to kiss her and BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP The air is shattered by the sound of leaf blowers in the yard next door, right behind the bench. Bonnie and Remy take cover behind the bench, cowering from the noise coming from behind the leafy wall. After a momentary conference, a PA is dispatched to ask the gardeners to take a break. No dice. Another quick discussion. The PA is sent back with cash to bribe them. They refuse. Now, Bonnie Rotten is mad. She stomps in a circle, barefoot, naked, fuming. "I will GO OVER THERE! RIGHT NOW! And ASK THEM to STOP!"
It is called to her attention that leaving the backyard while still naked may not be a good idea.
This is Rotten's fourth directorial effort, and it still has no title. "Actually, we don't have a name for it yet," Rotten told AVN, earlier, during a break. "I figure it'll come to me when I see the footage." It does: Titled BonnieLand, it will be Rotten’s third release from her Mental Beauty studio, to be distributed this month by Girlfriends Films.
As a director, Rotten says, "You have a lot more to think about. It's really challenging, directing and performing. Yesterday, I had to be completely focused to do my gangbang, because I wanted it to be awesome, performance-wise, and I wanted the product to be awesome. And I'm paying for it, so it really needs to be fuckin' great. When you're doing a gangbang for somebody else, you get to focus on your gangbang. I'm focusing on the schedule hour-by-hour, because if I go over, I'm paying more money. And if I have an issue, I'm stopping the whole day.
"It's not easy to be a performer-director if you care about your product. I really care about it coming off as artistic. Not only hardcore sex, but I want it to be visually pretty too. I may not have the most intricate scripts, but I like my ideas. I enjoy what I'm doing and I want to make us all happy with it. There's a lot of pressure: You want to impress the fans, you want to impress the reviewers, you want to make it the best."
One of the ideas she recently shot involves food. "I had been in a couple of scenes where food was used for play, but I haven't ever seen a full release about food play. That's why I did the last one. It's fun and it's colorful—it's not gross, like shoving pizza in a girl's face or something. It's fun and it's different. Adds a fetish element to the film. There's something dirty about eating something out of someone's butt," she adds with a laugh. (This movie, titled Anal Candy Disco Sluts, is also a recent Mental Beauty/Girlfriends Films release.)
The sound of the leaf blowers is not abating, so after a minute of contemplation Rotten decides to start shooting the pretty-girl stills and silent-with-music tease sequence for the next scene, where she plays a mermaid, because the intrusive sound won't interfere. She tugs on hot-pink fishnet stockings, a shell bra, hot-pink net top, and iridescent blue-green hot pants, topping it off with a beaded headpiece with seashells. "I made it myself," she grins as she puts on pink child-size swim fins. "I got kid size so I could spread my legs," she explains as she sizes up her reflection in a glass patio door.
Rotten takes her position at the end of the swimming pool, between two pillars that erupt fire with an audible whoosh, emitting heat if not light into the sunny afternoon. She tells one video camera op to set up in a poolside cabana, ready to shoot through a waterfall, as the stills photographer snaps away, and as soon as the stills are finished she pulls her costume back on and calls "Action!" and starts the tease sequence with one camera close, one shooting through the waterfall.
There is a girl-girl scene to finish once the gardeners stop making noise and only two more hours of sunlight. There's no time to waste.
BonnieLand is scheduled for release September 19 with distribution handled by Girlfriends Films. For more about the movie, click here.
