Ona Zee's back in the production/distribution game. The distribution arm is Ona Zee Presents. The manufacturing arm is Ona Zee Pictures.
Zee: "I have a reality-based line, bondage, some German movies, some features, some amateurs. It's not necessarily stuff that I'm making at this point. But it's wild and good. I'm overseeing production. And I'm excited about it. Nov. 18 is my first street date. It will be a bondage movie and probably a Canadian movie that I really like, a feature. In December, I'll do four titles - two bondage, a Canadian and a German movie."
Zee says she made a "great movie" in New York but her former business associate whom she refers to as "the motherfucker," threatened to kill her. "He took the film back," she said. "This was such a horrible deal. This is a guy who came to me to make a movie, and I consulted with him for several months. He wanted to put up a live sex room. I helped him get his web room together and his girls. I was working bi-coastally and getting into New York quite a bit. In the end, he really wanted to make movies. I said great. That's my passion. That's what I want to do. We were supposed to be partners on the movie. I bring my talent. He brought his talent. We made the movie. I brought Jane Waters, Ernie Roebuck, Tabitha Stevens…so many people. It was really a great piece of work. The next day after the shoot, he gets on the phone and says, 'I want all my masters, all my materials…it's mine. It's my movie. I want it.' I said to him I got to edit it so we can put it in wide release. He went beserk. 'I'm going to fucking kill you.' He says in a Russian accent, 'You don't geeve me mine materials, you not see light of day.' Once he threatened my life I called hotel security. They actually gave us a police escort to the airlines and put us on the plane.
" Then he calls my boyfriend in California. 'You control you girlfrent, you tell her she not see light of day.' My boyfriend say, 'You expect me to control Ona? It's not happening.'
"In the end, I kept half of the masters as a negotiating tool because I hadn't been paid. We worked out some financial arrangement, but he still doesn't have my model release, and I was in the movie. I don't know what model releases he has. The guy he gave the material to edit doesn't have edit notes. I don't know what the fuck he's doing but if he tries to put the movie out, I'm going to slam him."
Ona says the working title of the movie was Ona Zee's Private Pussies and was supposed to come out under the Net Entertainment and Ona Zee banner. "It was one of the most wild experiences I've ever had," she says.
"It's a great story for my book," she adds. "It's about the industry, but it's really the story of someone who's been courageous enough to become a performer and then become an owner as a woman and had to go through all my sexual recovery work and be able to do that and stay conscious, and in the business, and go through a divorce, and lose a lot of money. I went through hell. I love the industry, but I'm not writing a book that will take me out of the industry. I'm going to New York to close my deal. They're a large publisher and they're happy to have the material. I'm pretty excited about it."
Zee says the title she likes, the publisher doesn't like: An Angel Rests in Here.
"I don't think they're going to let me use it," she says. "But it's the dream I've had, and I have a lot of energy for it. I don't think anyone's ever written a book about our industry from that perspective. It's not slamming it. 'Oh he made me fuck her and he made me get fucked in the ass and he threatened to kill me.'
"I love what I've done. I've had some hard times with owners. They've had some hard times with me. But that's not it. That's not what it's about. It's about the business. We could be making paper clips, we just happen to be doing sex. There's a level of integrity that's here."
Zee says she'll be celebrating 14 years in the business next month. "I started doing bondage then I did features,"she says. "Whatever you come in with first, that's how people identify you. I decided to stick with the bondage and fetish. Things are good. I have a lot of stuff going on. I don't have a lot of complaints. I'm glad to be through the worst of it. I think I learned a lot the last couple of years."
