Stacy Valentine, star of the mainstream documentary, "The Girl Next Door" will be styling and profiling tonight at a private party held in her honor. The party's being held to celebrate the premier of the Valentine bio-doc which opens this Friday at the Nuart Theatre. As part of a promotional tour for the film, Stacy will also be doing a promotional stop at the Hustler Hollywood store May 19th where she will be signing her movie poster from the movie. Tonight she hosts a private party on hehalf of the film's L.A. release Adam Berns, the film's producer has this to say - Berns: "The documentary opens at the Nuart on Friday, then it's moving to the Sunset 5 after that. We've already opened in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. We'll probably be getting 40 cities on it. We're having a premier party tonight. A lot of celebs are going to be there, and a lot of girls from the business, too. Stacy's starting a new line of clothing [Good Girl/Bad Girl clothing], and she's going to have 15 of her friends including Dyanna Lauren and Lexus Locklear modeling her new clothing line." This is what geneross.com ran on 3/29 - The Girl Next Door Opening In 40 Cities Starting April 14 The Girl Next Door, a documentary about Stacy Valentine's journey from Midwestern housewife to porn favorite, will receive a 40-city theatrical release beginning April 14 at the Screening Room in New York. GND Productions producer Adam Berns says this means a "huge" release for a documentary. "It'll be one of the biggest releases of a documentary since Hoop Dreams," he told AVN On The Net. "In fact, you could call the film itself kind of the Hoop Dreams of the adult film business." The Landmark theater chain has agreed to the theatrical release, a deal Berns and director Christine Fugate have spent three years trying to bring off. The Girl Next Door has already had showings at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals, among others. "She put the bulk of the time into the deal," Berns said of Fugate, a PBS-style documentary director. The film was edited by Kate Amende, whose work on The Long Way Home helped that film win an Academy Award two years ago for Best Feature Documentary. "Christine has always had an interest in this area, she's always been attracted to observing women and why they do what they do," Berns said. "Three years ago, more than that, she went around interviewing women just starting in the (porn) business, women who hadn't had a film out yet and were just starting. Maybe 40-50 women. And she decided she wanted to pick Stacy." Berns admitted, though, that he balked at first on producing a documentary concentrating on a single individual. "I was wary," he said. "But Christine was quite insistent on just following one woman. She said she really wanted to make this a personal story, and she felt that by following just one woman, she could build up the kind of trust to get beneath the fa�ade that many women put on when they're in front of their fans or the press. She wanted to see the world through this one woman's eyes, and she didn't think she could do that if she was following multiple women. "Christine has taken a middle of the road view about what it is that Stacy does, and there are both ups and downs to it. I think she realistically covers both very well." This past February, Valentine wrapped up her final features for VCA Pictures, Cold Feet and Stupid Cupid, both shot, ironically, on Valentine's Day. VCA said earlier this month Valentine's parting from the company appeared amicable, though VCA didn't know whether Valentine was going to leave the porn business entirely or merely look for new directions in the business. The Girl Next Door will open in Los Angeles at the New Art on May 12. For more information on details and dates of the theatrical release, and other information on the film itself, visit www.gndmovie.com. Valentine's website includes a number of reviews about the film, one of which is found on AboutFilm.com. Here are some exerpts: "Two years in the life of a porn star-a titillating premise for a documentary. Even the prudish or censorial would probably confess to some curiosity about the lives of people who have sex in front of cameras. Do they enjoy it, or are they only doing it for the money? How can they let themselves be so exploited? How can they sustain relationships, romantic or otherwise? How can they maintain any semblance of normalcy in their lives? .....The average consumer probably forgets the adult video as soon as he-or she-is through with it, and prefers not to think too hard about why he or she uses pornography. Purveyors of porn do have their rabid fans, but for the most part, they exist on the fringes of society, dehumanized and forgotten by those who consume their products. Societal acceptance is the casualty of a double-standard that holds that, even if you enjoy the product, you don't have to esteem the people that make it. The Girl Next Door redresses that imbalance by humanizing a single porn star. It comes to us from director and co-producer Christine Fugate... Christine Fugate obviously has an interest in the lives of women. Thus, you might expect her documentary to be skewed by a pre-defined point of view, either pushing the idea that the multi-billion dollar porn industry victimizes women or the reverse-i.e., the notion that women in porn are somehow empowered by what they do....Certainly, The Girl Next Door has a point of view. But Fugate never pushes that view. Except for the ill-advised use of a handful of songs with too-obvious lyrics, Fugate never tells you anything. You only hear her voice once or twice during the entire film. There is no narrator; captions introduce each segment of the film. By staying behind the camera exclusively and allowing her subjects to do all the talking, Fugate allows you to develop a point of view on your own....The Girl Next Door follows two years in the life of Stacy Valentine, who rose meteorically in the adult film industry in 1997 and 1998, appearing in dozens of features and magazines and winning numerous awards. Fugate opens the film by establishing that Valentine, n�e Stacy Baker, really is "the girl next door." She hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she was a young housewife until, in 1995, her abusive husband pushed her into competing in an adult magazine's amateur model contest. He got more than he bargained for, however, when Valentine won the competition and then modeled in her first professional photo shoot. When Fugate first finds her, Valentine is quite happy. Her attitude toward her work, which has provided an escape from her bad marriage and "suck-ass" life in Oklahoma, is grateful and enthusiastic. "I've never been good at anything," she confides, "except sex." Valentine admonishes women not to enter the porn industry for the money, but only if they love sex. The sex itself, however, doesn't seem to be that enjoyable. The performers have sex in front of a large crew, assuming unnatural and probably uncomfortable positions so that the camera can get a good look at "the action." Budgets are tiny, male stars fail to show up or get it up, colonies of ants interrupt poolside shoots, other outdoor scenes are shot in the freezing cold, naked stars contrasting sharply with parka-clad crews. The first half hour of The Girl Next Door... is interesting but spotty. In her enthusiasm and ebullience, Valentine comes across as naive and a bit vapid, as does her boyfriend Julian, who is also in the adult film industry. Seemingly confirming all the worst assumptions about the intelligence and wisdom of people who make porn, Valentine gives you little reason to care about her as a person. That soon changes when The Girl Next Door begins to delve into the details of Valentine and Julian's relationship. Porn stars, we learn, must live by different standards of faithfulness and commitment. "It would hurt me more," says Valentine, "to see him holding hands with someone-just holding hands. I'd rather see him banging a girl, 'cause that's physical.... His heart-that's what I'm concerned about." Although Julian and Valentine profess to subscribe to this idea, Valentine has difficulty trusting Julian at all and soon leaves him. The real problem proves to be Valentine's low self-esteem. It's interesting how much importance she puts into being nominated for five Adult Video News Awards in January 1998, including Performer of the Year. Losing to fellow starlet Stephanie Swift sends her into one of several depressive tailspins. During these phases, Valentine rarely leaves her house except to work and copes with her depression and growing loneliness with wholly unnecessary trips to the plastic surgeon. She has her lips augmented, her breasts excessively enlarged and reduced (to a still-excessively large size), and fat suctioned. These surgeries, shown in unsettling detail, are not for the squeamish. It's practically guaranteed that anyone who has ever found augmented breasts to be attractive will be unable to see them the same way again. The cosmetic surgeries are high points in The Girl Next Door....Another high point comes when Stacy and Julian, who have reunited, agree to shoot a three-way sex scene with another man. Despite previous pronouncements about trust, Julian can't cope. Watching Valentine fellate another man renders him unable to perform. He just sits beside them, watching, with a stricken look on his face and a pillow in his lap to hide his inadequacy. In yet another memorable episode, Valentine returns from a "visit" to a "French fan" (so says the caption) with a fistful of hundred dollar bills, and then rationalizes having sex for money. You might argue that prostitution is no different from shooting an adult film-in both cases you perform sex for money, but to Valentine there clearly is a distinction, and so the fact that she has prostituted herself to a fan feels like a major fall. Her efforts to dismiss what she's done reveal how much she's disturbed by it. Simply by showing the life of one of its biggest stars, Fugate paints an arresting portrait of the maladies of the adult film industry. Interestingly, however, Fugate doesn't seem to argue that the industry is exploitative per se. Rather, the industry seems to be more like an otherwise surprisingly normal group of people, both men and women, who encourage and feed off each other's dysfunctions
All models were at least 18 years old at the time of their performance. 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement.
