Above, Misty Stone, jessica drake, Leigh Raven and Isiah Maxwell
LOS ANGELES—A woman’s moans lead me down a graffiti-lined alley and into the back entrance of a warehouse. Inside the darkened interior I join others quietly watching from the shadows. A wall of lights shines through a white, cast-iron gate that opens on a strange scene: what looks like three enormous vultures huddle around a woman splayed on a white pedestal. Fistfuls of feathers fall as these figures jostle for position around the woman. The golden chains that fix their wings in place jingle with each penetrating thrust. Is this a vision of heaven or hell? Are these creatures angels or demons?
I’m on the set of Brad Armstrong’s Fallen 2 for Wicked Pictures. Having not read the film’s script, I’m left to parcel out a story from such fragmented scenes.
“Is that jessica?” I quietly ask Armstrong.
Leigh Raven (center); photos by Shawn Alff
All I can make out of the woman at the center of this halo of wings and loincloths is some scraps of black lingerie and a few morsels of flesh. Armstrong shakes his head and tells me jessica drake is resting in the dressing room. She’s been battling an asthma attack all day.
When the men switch positions, I see that Leigh Raven lies on the pedestal in the center of this foursome like an un-virginal sacrifice. She spreads her legs and licks her lips with her bifurcated tongue. Dark, bold tattoos cover her pale, slender frame: hearts circle her nipples, a dagger slices her cheek, a giant skull covers her stomach. Raven is double penetrated as roving spotlights cross her. The lights cast multi-headed shadows of this unholy union. The trinity of human behavior unified in this visage: the demon, the angel, the woman.
Wildfires started from Fourth of July fireworks rage in the mountains north of Los Angeles as a heat wave consumes the city. The warehouse is a furnace. The floor is littered with condom wrappers, feathers and pools of sweat. Armstrong calls for cut to let everyone cool down. The men remove their wings and the crew strips their shirts. Industrial fans rattled to life and threaten to topple two towering roman pillars that teeter over us.
Armstrong hurries the crew outside to capture a shot before the sun is lost. In the scene drake is to deliver Raven’s lifeless body to angels played by Isiah Maxwell and Misty Stone. When drake emerges from the warehouse, I expect her to show some sign of the heat or the asthma attack that has plagued her all morning. Instead she glides into her role looking every bit the part of a fallen angel: ringlets of blonde hair, skin that seems airbrushed, and cleavage that glistens in the sun with flakes of gold glitter.
Drake carries Raven toward two archangels played by Isiah Maxwell and Misty Stone.
The scene treads a no-man’s land in this alley, in the light lingering between day and night. L.A. exists in this purgatory between mountains and sea, between impending natural disasters and man-made solutions, between deterioration and regeneration. In the distance the lights from the towers of downtown and the homes high in the Hollywood hills flicker on. Here, under the long shadow cast by this iconic view, gather refugees from the mainstream movie machine. Here we toil in abandoned warehouses and the wreckage of obsolete industry, on secret sets and in gray legal areas. Here, we work to capture what is edited out of mainstream productions. We contribute to a cultural conversation that is never discussed in polite company, and we celebrate women others denounce as disgraceful.
drake is the archetypal fallen angel. As one of the last contract stars for one of the last major adult studios, she serves as a kind of queen in this underworld. As such, she has received her share of criticism from religious conservatives who believe she has sold her fleshy soul for fleeting infamy. Her detractors protest when she uses her platform to peddle her “evils”: to protect women and sex workers’ rights, to raise money for AIDS research, and to advocate for those of all sexual orientations.
Stripped of wings, drake is left to navigate the L.A. streets in stilettos. She parades before the cameras, again and again, carrying Raven in her arms. The strain of the scene begins to take its toll on drake as production slows to the speed of L.A. traffic. We wait for the sirens of police cruisers and ambulances, tolling their litany of daily tragedies, to pass us by. We wait for the low growl of the city to swallow the pop of fireworks, the rumble of planes circling LAX, and the buzz of police helicopters. We wait for itinerant preachers on stolen bikes to wheel by as they deliver meth-fueled sermons. We wait for teenage gangsters to drive by and take pictures and cast menacing stares from muscle cars blaring pop music.
Los Angeles is a city of cliqued angels. It’s a palimpsest we wipe clean and remake in our own image. We each contribute to the city’s soundtrack with our shouts of action, our car honks, our gunshots. We set the stage with our ramshackle furniture abandoned on Hollywood sidewalks, with our losing lottery tickets tossed on crosswalks, with our shoes dangling from electric lines, with our sunsets gilded by smog. We are all the authors of this divine comedy, and the audience, the angels and demons. We are the heroes of our own stories, and the villains in others.
A breeze blows in with the night. The crew lugs their gear across the alley for the next setup. The scene requires drake to repeatedly fling herself down on the concrete.
“Do you need me to fall into this shot again?” drake asks Armstrong from her knees after several takes.
Armstrong nods somberly.
Before the crew gets the shot, drake pitches herself on the ground more than twenty times. I count. Over an hour later, after the scene’s final take, drake sits in the middle of the alley. She struggles for breath between fits of coughing. I offer her a chair but she prefers being close to the ground as she feels dizzy and faint. I struggle to suppress the line I had waited all day to deliver, to ask her if it hurt when she fell from heaven.
“Do I need to change into my orgy outfit?” drake asks Armstrong.
The pair discuss the practicality of drake shooting a threesome with Maxwell and Stone while in her condition. They make the correct, and expensive, decision to reschedule the sex scene for another night. Even without filming sex, drake and the entire crew will shoot deep into the night. I have been on set a full work day. In that time, I’ve mostly just sat in the shade, and I’m exhausted. Never mind that drake spent that time carrying Raven’s lifeless body, shouting her lines, and continually dropping to the concrete, all while strapped into constricting clothes, balanced in stilettoes, and battling an asthma attack. What’s more is she did all of this while conserving her composure and sex appeal for the camera, and being ever considerate of the cast and crew.
The filmmakers carry their equipment to the next setup like dutiful penitents. I lift my camera bag and head for my car. In route I pass drake seated on the back of Armstrong’s motorcycle. She and Armstrong are about to ride into the next shot to cut a pimp’s throat.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to see sex,” drake says, genuinely concerned.
“Who even apologizes for that?” I ask.
I assure drake that while I always enjoy watching her have sex, it’s merely a perk of the job.
“I just hope you got enough for a good story,” she says.
“I did.”
I never talked to Armstrong and Drake about the plot of Fallen 2, nor did I discover any divine truth in the dramatic clash between angels and demons. But, I did come away with a simple story that revealed an intimate, and human, side of drake. I found a spark of inspiration in a woman, in an entire crew, suffering in the heat, in the raucous industrial heart of the city, to capture a beautiful side of humanity that is often censored. And while I saw drake fall again and again, I also saw her find her feet and rise just as many times.
