Tuesday, October 19
Frank Martin of Playboy: "In a place like this, virginity is a valuable commodity."
The Tuesday Morning Bombshell
Now a blond, RayVeness in her two piece yellow swimsuit looked like the prototype bombshell, but dropped one of another variety when she announced that she was leaving the adult business after her week in Mexico.
RayVeness: "A lot of people have no idea that I've been in the business for nine years. I was watching Sally Jesse Raphael on TV and saw Tim Lake. My ex [Redbone], who we don't want to even talk about, sent out for a package to Homegrown. He said let's do a movie. Okay, I said, since you don't have a job, we'll do it for extra cash. Why not. I was too young to make the decision of it being career. Then, he found an ad in the paper about amateur videos. We thought it was like 900 commercials where the girls talk sexy. We ended up making 7 or 8 movies. Then I moved to North Carolina and started dancing and started featuring. People told me I should feature because I had movie credits.
"I met [dance agent] Steve Chase, and he told me I had to go out to California. I said how do I know they're going to hire me? He said drive out there. Me and my $300 drove out there and I've been in the business ever since. I didn't work with any guys in the beginning out of respect to my marriage. I was willing to do whatever it took to be a star, but he was more important. Because your love in your life is more important than your career. If you find true love, it will be there forever. Jobs come and go. So I tried to respect him as long as I could. Finally, we separated. The marriage went downhill. It had nothing to do with the business. I decided to go out and make a couple more movies. I got a call from Video Team to do a boxcover. Chris Mann flew me out, and I didn't have a place to stay. This guy picked me up at the airport and said you can stay with us at the house. Then I met Tod [Tod Alexander, the former Dizzy Blond].
"I was there for ten days, and he asked me to move in with him. I had fallen in love with him, even in ten days. I said I've been thinking about doing guys in my movies, this big career change, now I've met you and fallen in love, I don't know what to do. We talked about it. I said I'll make a deal with you. If I start doing guys and get back in the business again, you get back in the business and start doing girls. We made a little deal and it worked out beautifully. But there are things I've wanted from the business. First of all everybody wanted me to do guys for so long. 'Do guys, do guys, do guys. That's the only reason you're not a star.' When I started doing guys nobody cared.
"I can't get a contract. I've had Elegant offer me a contract, I've had Zane offer me a contract. The other companies didn't want to touch me at all. They said I wasn't new enough or too old. After trying for six years to get in Penthouse, nobody will shoot me no matter what color my hair is. And I see all these girls with fake boobs getting in, and I look at myself and can't understand. I just wanted so much from the business, and it's not giving it back to me. If you put 100% into something for nine years..."
G. Ross: "Is that why you went blond? To shake up the image?
RayVeness: "I want people to like me for who I am. I only went blond because, one reason, Suze Randall loves blonds. She shoots a lot of blonds for Penthouse. I was going to try it for a month, see all the photographers and see if they liked it. If they didn't I was going to dye it back and give up. So, at this point, I've never quit or retired or made a comeback movie. Whatever in my opinion is a gimmick or a publicity stunt. I've never done that. I stuck through it, I've never given up, but at this point in my life, it's time for me to move on to something that intrigues me more."
G. Ross: "When did your marriage break up?"
RayVeness: "It was like May or April of '97. That's when I had met Amber Jean, my little Jenna Jameson lookalike in Ohio. By the time I had met her, Red and I had been through a lot. Red raised me. We had been together from the time I turned 15. I had such a hard childhood that he raised me. When you have a husband, you want to have a husband, not a husband and a father. You can't have the same. He liked to drink a lot, and occasionally he liked to get high. That was fine, but sometimes it got out of hand. We both went to counseling, but he couldn't stand when I was in the limelight. And I always defended him. People hated me for it. I would go, 'I won't do this job unless you include Red.' He made me feel like, if I didn't include me, he was going to drag me down.
"I always included him, but sometimes I jeopardized my jobs and my publicity to include him. I kind of felt like he was using me there for awhile. There was two years of abuse and after we got counseling, that stopped. After that he was just so afraid that somebody in the business, like if he was performing a scene with me and couldn't get wood, that somebody else was going to step in and take his place. He never understood that my love was true enough that it didn't matter whether he could get it up or not. It didn't matter if I lost the job or not. I was going to be true to him. He didn't believe that, so he verbally abused me. He told me, 'You're just going to be a whore and I know you just want to fuck all these guys. That's all that matters to you.'
"And he just kind of downgraded me and told me no one would ever love me. Nobody would ever put up with my shit, and that's a quote. If we ever split up, all the business would do is use me and abuse me. I believed him. I think that he's a good person and has a good heart but he has some problems. I have some problems, too. I think that when I got with him I was afraid to be alone. I was young, still growing up and looking for someone to say I'm going to love you no matter what you do, where you go or how you dress. I didn't get that from my parents. So that's what he did for me."
G. Ross: "You and Tod were kind of on-again, off-again."
RayVeness: "After we were together for ten days he asked me to move in with him. I said yes because I was totally in love with him. This time I knew the difference between lust and love; between Red and Tod. Then Tod asked me to marry him. I said yes. We were together for maybe six months. I had signed with Lucky [Smith]. That made it really hard on our relationship because Lucky doesn't like to deal with husbands/boyfriends. He doesn't like guys interfering with the girls' careers. Although Tod never told me you can't do this or do that. Tod said I want you to do what makes you happy because that's the only way you're going to stay with me. There was a time where I went away with Lucky to Nashville. Tod got a little frisky with a girl. I got upset and left him. He didn't really cheat on me. He just got a little frisky.
"I had so much going on in my life at the time. I had so many people pulling me in different directions. I think when people saw that I was happy with Tod, they did everything they could to split us up, maybe thinking it was going to be like with Red. But we worked it out and everything's been beautiful. We got married September, '98. I think he's going to stay in the business.
"I'm going to dance. I've been writing country music, singing country music. Tod put out a CD a long time ago. It was a great CD, he just put it out at the wrong time when the music era changed from glamrock to alternative. He put out a glamrock CD. His timing was bad, that's all it was. It was a great CD. He gave up. I've encouraged him to get back in. We're working on a album right now called Second Chances.
"I've done a lot of Hollywood movies. I've got a movie called Best Laid Plans where I was a body double for Reese Witherspoon. I'm also in a Bruce Willis movie that comes up before Christmas called Breakfast of Champions where I'm Bruce Willis' brain. It's going to be kind of weird. I can't wait to see it. I'm SAG eligible now. I'm extremely good at makeup, great at massages. There's a lot of avenues I can focus on. I want to be a country music singer. I've wanted to do that since the third grade. But when I was with Red all those years he was in a band, he discouraged me. He made me feel I was just horrible at it. I believed him. I believed everything he said. So I'm going to pursue the country music career but I have to make money somehow.
"I will say something else funny about the business - something Lucky told me. I said, Lucky when I work with other guys, I want to see what these guys look like. I want a picture of them. I want to meet them. I have to be attracted to the guy. Lucky and about 30 other people told me, it's just a job. Lucky said, 'It's a job; not a dating service.' If I felt like I was doing it for the money, for the dollars, I would really feel like a whore. But if I'm attracted to the guy, the charisma, the karma, the scene's going to be the hottest thing.
"I've been nominated a few times but have never won anything. I was sitting behind Dyanna Lauren one year at the AVN show. And she was nominated for a lot of things and a lot of things she should have won. I was sitting behind her and I was like, 'I'm actually nominated for something this year. This is my first time!' Well, she said, 'Didn't win that one.' The next award comes up. 'Didn't win that one.' Then she finally gave up because she didn't win anything. She got aggravated. She said, 'Know what? It didn't really matter to me, anyway.' I was like I'm so sorry. You earned that. You deserved that. You should have won something. She said, 'I'm not worried about it. Because you know what? When I'm old and I got little grandkids running around, when they look up at the mantle that's got all these trophies on them, and my granddaughter asks me, grandmom, what's the best anal scene of the year? I don't think I want to explain.'
"I kind of take her advice. Whether I win or not is not important. I guess I just wanted to feel important, that I was the best at what I did. Every boy/girl scene that I've done in the last two years I've put 100% into. I don't just lay there. I'm the one who's the aggressor. I want people to see that. Anybody can lay there and have a dick put in them. But you have to be into the person, not just doing it for the money. My opinion is that so many girls are getting in at 18 to 21. I think between those ages, even myself, I don't think I was mature enough to decide that it's what I wanted to do. Now that I'm serious about the music, I don't think I'm going to get a record deal. I'm very doubtful about it.
"You can always get into porn, but you can't get out. I can't go in and say, 'I've 250 movies, and I've been in the porno business 9 years. Now I want to be a country music singer in the Bible Belt.' They're going to laugh at me. So, if I had started the music career first, and they all turned me down and it wasn't right where it didn't work out, I could get into porn. I think porn is something people should do later in life when they're mature enough to make that decision. Because when you're 18, you have no idea what you want to be. You want to be everything. I'm 27 now, and I know I want to sing country music. I want to write about peoples' lives. I want to write songs that will make you cry and songs that will make you happy. And songs that you want to turn on and make you feel good inside. It's not about the money, always. I will survive. I've survived this long. People told me I would never make it in the business just doing one guy. I made it for seven years, and I proved everybody wrong, and I'm still here. But it's my time to go. Let everyone else come in and take over."
"A long time ago when there were legends and there were 100 movies a year being made, and they were all on film, you had Amber Lynn in 75 of those films. Of course you're going to know who Amber Lynn is. But when you have 7,000 movies being made, unless RayVeness is a contract girl or RayVeness did a movie a day, it still wouldn't be a third or a fourth or a fifth of what's out there. The only way to be a big star is to get everything on Playboy or Spice or to be under contract. Or you get lost. You're just one of many. You're a dime-a-dozen. And if you say, 'Sweetheart, the sheets are dirty. I need clean sheets or I'll have to leave, they'll say see ya later. I have about 30 other girls I can call.' It used to be not like that. Now that it's like that, it's my time to go."
