Vivid Entertainment Group has wrapped Emperor, the latest film from director Paul Thomas, and in spite of a dispute between superstar performers Janine Lindemulder and Rocco Siffredi, it will be one of the most talked-about releases for 2005.
“I think it will be great. I really do,” said Thomas, when shooting was finished. “This one was a real bear. Seven days in Europe and four days here.
"There is so much in it,” he said. “There are a lot of great individual bits. The raw material I have is so good."
The highly anticipated, on-screen coupling between Janine and Rocco was incredibly intense, with the makings of a classic sex scene. But something went horribly wrong and it spilled into the final day of shooting last Sunday, when the bad blood intensified between the movie's principal stars.
While Lindemulder prefaced her comments to AVN.com with, "I admire Rocco a great deal for what he's given to the industry," she admitted, "this one was tough."
"It was like the alpha male and the alpha female meeting, and we clashed heads a little bit. I can handle the best of them," she said.
But when Lindemulder heard that Siffredi had remarked to a writer on Sunday that she couldn't handle the size of his dick, she took exception to it. She said that was not the reason that the scene went haywire.
"It was the roughest I've ever experienced," she said. "I'm a strong girl and I do like my share of rough sex. But at one point in the scene, we were doing stills and I noticed he had no condom on. This is Vivid [which has a condom-only policy]. … He crossed the line. But this is Rocco's m.o."
Lindemulder continued, "When I found out I was going to do my movie with Rocco I was excited. I was looking forward to it. I heard a lot of different things from different girls. I had never seen a Rocco scene, but I was eager, up for the challenge. I had high hopes for this. Rocco and I were talking a lot prior. We said this is going to be epic. We wanted it to be good. I wanted this to be epic. This is his last movie."
Indeed, Siffredi had not been to Los Angeles to shoot a movie since he starred in the Evil Angel runaway hit The Fashionistas, which was shot in 2002. Siffredi, who is retiring from performing in December after 18 years in front of the camera, came to Los Angeles for just the second time in the past eight years to work with Lindemulder and other Vivid Girls. The 40-year-old Italian star lives in Budapest, Hungary, where Vivid shot for seven days in September.
The two met again at the Vivid box cover shoot, where they discussed the scene.
"He asked me if he could cut the tips off the condoms. He said, 'Do I need to wear a condom if we're doing these tests?'" Lindemulder said. "I said, 'I'm very fertile. I'm not on the pill. I'm a mother of two and I just had a baby. The condoms have to stay on."
Lindemulder, whose birthday was last Sunday, maintains that they were in agreement on that point. But the Siffredi disagreed, saying that Lindemulder did not make it clear to him that she didn't want him to cut the tips.
"She never said 'no,'" Siffredi told AVN.com.
"When I wear a rubber, the feeling goes 50 percent down. I don't feel the girl. I'm honestly speaking."
He continued, "I arrive in Los Angeles ready to do the best performance and Janine can't take me. She's in pain. Unfortunately, the scene is not completed. We never get to finish in my way. PT (Paul Thomas) said when she fucks it's like the center of power in Los Angeles is right there. All the energy, it's very powerful. I said, 'I better be ready, this a strong woman.'
Lindemulder said their scene together was "fast and furious out of the gate."
"It was definitely overwhelming. It was something I thought that I could keep up with. This was a scene that brought me to a whole different place sexually," she told AVN.com. "There were elements of, I’m used to being the one in control of the situation. Rocco turned the tables on me. I wanted to be vulnerable, scared a little bit. Yes, he does have a big dick, but that was not the reason I stopped the scene. He only had a ring around his cock. He did tear the tip off the condom. I was betrayed. I felt violated. For some people, this is not a big deal. To me, it's a very big deal.
"I did give him a reason why not to do that,” Janine continued. “It was a slap in my face. This is his thing. He's done this in the past. I was clueless. I had no idea this could happen. I just didn't think this could happen. I thought we had enough respect for each other as human beings. I trusted him in that situation. I was definitely susceptible of getting pregnant. We are not in Budapest."
Lindemulder said her concerns that day had nothing to do with Siffredi's size.
"I've had many big dicks. I would've kept doing the scene until I was black, blue and bloody," she continued. "He showed a disregard for my well being. Wear the fuckin' condom. It was more important for him to have the pleasure. He gave me the big 'fuck you.”
The blonde-haired star said that when she discovered that Siffredi only had a ring around his cock, she immediately stopped the scene and talked to both Thomas and Siffredi.
"We finished scene the best way we could. In Rocco's defense, he's royalty. He's used to having it his way," she allowed. "In Budapest, he's used to it. No girls give him any grief."
Siffredi suggested that there was more at issue than just Lindemulder being worried about pregnancy. He said he didn't understand why Lindemulder opted out of the b/g/g with Dasha and him on Sunday that was in the original script. Dasha and Lindemulder ended up working together, and then Siffredi banged Dasha later without Janine's involvement.
"Let's say I fucked it up," Siffredi said, offering a hypothetical. "Fortunately, I care. So I fucked up, and I say 'sorry' 20 times. Why the rest? What's the reason? I'm a professional. I've had girls shit on my face, shit on me for real — to break my balls and fuck with me. I didn't stop the scene. It's part of being a professional. … I think it was that Rocco is too much. With her running away for the whole scene, in Italian, we call that bullshit. She is not a person who gives. This I see."
Siffredi addressed the issue of safety.
"I understand HIV is a huge problem,” he said. “The day before I arrive I got tested. I test every three weeks. Even when I'm a director, I test because I may step into the scene," he said. "Honestly, the only reason [for not wearing a condom] was I wanted to do a great scene, with power.
"She's beautiful. If she would've been more feminine… She was chewing ice for two hours, eating ice for two hours. I've never seen this. She had this glass of ice for the whole scene. Where is the femininity? I am so disappointed about this. She had a chance to do a great movie."
"They pay a huge amount of money to me for this movie, an enormous amount of money,” he said. “One thing to remember, it doesn't matter who you are, or how good you are if the other half is not there. If the other half is not there, what can I do?
"This is my biggest disappointment in many years. I felt she was jealous of me. She didn't try to help out this movie. I felt like she was competing with me. She was treating me like another girl."
Siffredi said things got hot between them at the box cover shoot.
"I fuck her without rubber, we have a tape. Michael Bisco show the tape to them," he said. Since Vivid always includes the box cover shoots as DVD extras, that sex will likely be included in the release.
"I don't think she's a bad girl. She's a nice girl, incredibly sexy. I don't think she did what a professional performer could do to make the movie better instead of leaving the scene to Dasha. It was a huge disappointment.
"I love PT. He is so much a professional. I am upset that I can't pay them back. I can't pay them back, as much as I did for this movie. I'm living with some frustration."
Siffredi said that Thomas contacted him and asked him to shoot this movie because Lindemulder now is working with men and had a desire to work with him.
"I took this as a big compliment," Siffredi said. "You want the man, you call Rocco. So we decided to do this project and we had so many problems."
Thomas and the Vivid crew shot the first seven days of Emperor in Budapest in September and finished the final four in LA last week. Siffredi met Vivid Girl Tawny Roberts on the first day and ended up with a black eye after she punched him during the anal sex.
He said his best scene was with Dasha Sunday evening, and then new Vivid Girl Monique Alexander on Monday afternoon.
Thomas called the Emperor script "fantastic," adding, "we had to bend it to meet the requirements of the big stars."
"The character acting, the changes and resolutions, it's all an incredible demand to put on an erotic film," the AVN Hall of Fame director said. "I think it'll be great. I really do."
