Christie Lake \nATLANTIC CITY, NJ - Those stars who attended this year's East Coast Video Show got lots of smiles from fans and industry professionals and lots of miles promoting their incumbent or forthcoming projects, video and otherwise.
"I get to see and greet my fans, and get them to get the pictures that they never could possibly, with their own cameras," said actress/dancer Christie Lake. "And I increase my own fan base and promote my magazine."
Lake also serves as swing editor for Fox magazine, which she says is the number four adult magazine in terms of subscriptions.
She says there were no untoward or obnoxious incidents with her from fans during the ECVS, even though she was also promoting the next in a series called Fan Fuck, where she has sex with her fans on camera. "So it's kind of hard for the fans to go overboard too much, really, with me," she says. "The fans respect us enough, because they don't want to upset us."
Lake is also working on two new video features, but that is all she will say of them for now. "Well, I don't want to give away the surprise," she grinned. "But that's the business. You have something really special, you have to hold it tight until it's done."
Another adult actress, Patra, said each year's convention means more knowledge and more communication. And, in her case, that means promoting her forthcoming softcore work, as opposed to the hardcore in which she has made most of her film name.
"I've only done fetish films," she says, "so softcore will be a kind of challenge for me."
Patra said fans still show her and her fellow black erotic actors "a lot of love," acknowledging that there is far less aversion to black porn stars and even interracial adult films now than a decade ago.
"People have started seeing that people of all colors can be sexy. And, horny," she said, drawing a knowing laugh from two fans who happened to sidle up to her as she spoke. She even believes the adult industry may well be a groundbreaker in bringing more racial barriers down.
Fetish video producer and publisher Dianne Best said the ECVS helps peel away aversions to fetish product. ""We're getting far more acceptance now than we had five years ago, we're not exactly a purely underground thing anymore," she says.
And her company, Bon-Vue Enterprises, has jumped slowly but surely into the online world, launching and growing www.bondage.org.
Actress Carly Stark was promoting her forthcoming release, The Unlucky Guy, due for November release, and otherwise enjoying chances for photographs with her fans. But she did appreciate one difference between the ECVS and her previous two adult convention appearances.
"There are more actual retailers and store representatives here and fewer fans that are just lookie-lous and not spending any money," she said. But the fans whom she did meet were mostly respectful and genuinely friendly with her.
She also spoke warmly of the growing interest in the cigarette-smoking sexual fetish, concerning which she, too, has done a turn or three on video. She said this is one fetish which could, potentially, return romanticism to adult films.
"It's definitely the sleeper fetish," she said, "and I'm trying to incorporate things like that into the hardcore and other projects I'm doing…and aside from the oral fixation people have, it's a romantic fetish, too, because you also think of how you were introduced to cigarettes…and you can still snuggle and touch each other while you're smoking during an interlude."
