Because she's the one building it, they will come. Sexually, too, of course.
That's the new modus operandi of Ginger Lynn, who now sallies forth into the great unknown by casting talent for her production company, the deliciously-named Gingerbred Productions, via the irresistibly piquant process of Internet voting - on a new "reality porn" series, believe it or not, called Ginger Picks.
"Is it real or is it surreal?" you might well ask, since Lynn's current obsession is a novel twist on today's mainstream fixation with "reality entertainment." Ginger Picks is a talent contest, loosely akin to Star Search except that it's all about porn. Any excitable Joe Schmoe or exhibitionistic Jane Doe can be a porn star, if only for a day (or just a few hours).
The basic idea is to discover amateurs who can be groomed into bona fide porn stars. Amateurs can apply on the Ginger Picks Website and offer to be filmed having sex. Successful entrants, who must fly to Los Angeles at their own expense, will get to star in two Ginger Picks amateur movies per month, and will also receive two free copies of the final edited film and take meetings with the top adult casting agencies, should they wish to further parlay their on-camera antics into actual careers.
Meantime, scenes from the Ginger Picks series will be uploaded to the site for viewers to vote on; the top two performers voted from each video in the series will then be flown to Los Angeles (this time at Lynn's expense) and offered a feature role in a big-budget, star-salaried Gingerbred Productions movie. Introductions will then be made to the top adult film companies, with the possibility of an exclusive contract paying anything from $25,000 to $100,000 a year.
Some of the aspiring contestants are surely those who have salivated and stroked to Lynn's many performances, from her recent "comeback" films (New Wave Hookers 6, Torn, Taken, White Lightning, Sunset Stripped, Devon Stripped, Crime and Passion) to her earlier porn classics (Henri Pachard's Blame It on Ginger, her onscreen debut Surrender in Paradise, her own personal favorite The Grafenberg Spot, or any of 65 others, all done during the pre-Internet age).
"I believe the Internet is the future of porn in many more ways than we can even imagine today," Lynn declares. "My audience decides who they want to see on film, and inevitably who will star in each of the four feature adult films that Gingerbred Productions will be producing each year. My contestants are for the most part women and men who think they have what it takes to be a porn star." The voting system is programmed so that only one vote per person can be registered, and is not restricted to the loyal members of Lynn's popular personal Website, GingerLynn.com [see "Porn Again," AVN Online, June '02 - Ed. ].
"Since Ginger Picks is so new, we wanted to give anyone and everyone the opportunity to look at, enter and vote, not just GingerLynn.com members," the 34B-24-34 adult legend and 2002 AVN "Best Actress" Award winner explains, of her emphatically democratic concept. "I believe a 'real' Internet audience and panel of judges is much more apt to be honest in their choices. People will vote on who they want to see more of and who turns them on."
Gingerbred has already produced six softcore adult videos, several adult infomercials, and a dozen adult vignettes for other adult companies. But an Internet adjunct like Ginger Picks lifts Lynn into the limelight as a pioneer - she is the first A-list adult actress to helm a company that marries the "reality television" concept with the boundless potential of the World Wide Web.
Hmm, American Porn Star Idol, anyone?
"I don't mind the comparison," says Beth Ann Rafael, Lynn's producing and writing partner, who admits she is sometimes baffled by the "wannabe singers" on the Fox Television American Idol series. "Fame by humiliation is not my thing, but it makes for great entertainment. Society revels in seeing people fail and in the end actually make something out of it. We know that some people won't have what it takes, but at least they can say that they tried and with an industry legend who is highly respected. We're actually giving men and women the opportunity to follow a dream."
Rafael, a Los Angeles native, co-wrote two of Lynn's critically acclaimed "comeback" films (Torn and White Lightning, both for VCA Pictures), as well as projects for Vivid Video and Digital Playground. She'd first met Lynn when she was 17, while working on the set of the B-movie Vice Academy 3, during Lynn's early-'90s "crossover" period (as Ginger Lynn Allen). Rafael and Lynn now lead a company comprised of six permanent staff members - all women. "A sheer coincidence," Rafael says, laughing. "It does make for great chemistry, but beware if we're all on the same feminine cycle! Just kidding... sort of."
The idea of an amateur line was Lynn's, she reveals, but "it started looking a lot more like fun if it had that reality twist." Granted, quite a few "reality porn" sites already exist - witness those intrepid dudes videotaping many willing, wailing girls across America on their Bang Bus, or the enterprising young man renting rooms to women in exchange for on-camera sex in Mike's Apartment, or the gonzo-style trysts of the anally-adventurous nubiles filmed on board the yacht of that seafaring horndog named Captain Stabbin. However, numerous porn sites professing to be "reality" are not; it's no secret that many "amateur" girls actually get paid for their "spontaneous" efforts.
And, however conceptually interesting all of these may be, they arguably lack the singular critical element that confers Lynn's project a real edge over the competition: namely, Lynn herself. Her role in the company, as she herself cheekily puts it, is "Director, producer, executive producer, executive chef, and professional fluffer. Oh, and talent when necessary."
Lest anyone misunderstand her methodology, she posted this missive on the Ginger Picks homepage: "Each person, couple, or group of performers will have one hour to complete your scene. You will be given condoms, lube, toys, towels, a 'theme'; and anything else within reason you believe will help you to shine. You and the camera will be alone with your partner or partners in your 'sex room' for as long as things are going well. I will be watching on a monitor, and if and when necessary I will 'cum' in and coach as well as demonstrate various techniques."
Lynn now elaborates, "I'll be there to help anyone who has them get over any first-time jitters. I have a few tricks I've learned over the years that I'm sure will put everyone at ease and allow them to be comfortable. I can't guarantee an orgasm - unless I'm involved in the scene, of course! And I can't guarantee a hard-on. But, then again, unlike in the '80s, we have a little blue pill that almost guarantees that anyone can perform. As for myself, I will cum when needed, and I won't let the judges dictate whose dick I take."
Ah, that's Ginger, blunt-spoken and, as ever, the philosophical Sagittarius. "With my return to the adult film industry in 1999," she recalls, "I had the opportunity to work with many of the newer adult performers, as well as see the changes that have taken place in the industry over the last two decades. Many of these changes have been for the better. However, I feel that the new 'business' is sometimes just that - business.
"Call me old-fashioned, but I think that sex should be fun, and that performing should be pleasurable. Ginger Picks was inspired my belief that there is more to porn than just beautiful women, hard-body men, and great box covers. Don't misunderstand me; I love beautiful women, hard-body men, and great box covers as much as the next porn viewer. But there's nothing more real than passionate 'real' sex between one, two, three, or more people getting it on, unscripted and unrehearsed. I'm inspired by passion and honesty."
Rafael agrees: "Ginger Picks was inspired by the need for real people having real sex. The amazing thing about amateur is that it's raw and real. I don't necessarily like watching porn anymore. It's a little strange to me to watch my friends engaged in sexual scenarios. Amateur gives you new, fresh faces and the feeling that these people really want to be there for the action and not the paycheck."
"Personally," Lynn says, "I've always been much more turned on by amateur video and film, versus most professional productions - simply because of the fact that most of what I see is genuine and spontaneous. Orgasms are real. Screams and moans are actually generated from the groin. Lipstick is transferred from lips to cock and doesn't magically reappear on a porn star's lips each time the camera returns to her face. After everyone in the scene has cum, including the girl, everyone looks fresh-fucked, not porn-star perfect."
While some of the more sexually repressed Web surfers out there might gasp with horror, those willing to shed their inhibitions for the action certainly do exist. Following the launch of the Ginger Picks Website in February 2003, some 200 submissions were received within the first few weeks, averaging five to 10 per day. The inaugural Ginger Picks video shoots, done over two days in late May, featured 14 women coupling with nine men.
"The good thing about a site like this is competition really doesn't hurt," says its Webmaster Christian Amico, vice president of Atlas Multimedia, the Woodland Hills, CA-based company behind GingerLynn.com. "Amateurs can submit their info here and to 100 other places and they still may get picked to be in a movie. This is such a different idea and the fact that Ginger is backing it makes it stand out above the rest.
"Ginger's personal site gets about 5,000 to 10,000 unique users a day on average, and sometimes it's over 30,000," Amico reveals. "Her official site has always gotten a lot of traffic. The recent E! channel's E! True Hollywood Story on Ginger has taken the site to a whole new level, easily bumping up the traffic tenfold. Since we have both of the sites linked together now, they share all the traffic. About 25 percent are finding their way over to the Ginger Picks site, which is a big help, a nice jump start."
Amico, as system administrator, oversees myriad areas, from video compression to voting procedures. "Once Ginger has shot the scenes with the new talent," he explains, "we will be encoding them for Web playback in a few different formats: a high bandwidth clip in 300k with full screen capabilities, and a low bandwidth clip in 100k for slower connections. Then the voting process starts all over again, but this time the site visitors will be watching video and voting on who will be cast in a Ginger Lynn feature movie. We do limit one vote per unique IP address." Atlas has four in-house employees covering its day-to-day operations and four others who come in for, as Amico notes, "specific duties, such as programming, design, and server-side admin."
Amico himself moved to Los Angeles from Long Island, New York, when Atlas Multimedia owner Don Osterholt offered him a position to run the online arm of the company (Atlas is also involved in film production and distribution). He now oversees a division that works on more than 200 Websites, many for video production companies.
In the past year alone, Amico launched new sites for Simon Wolf, Red Light District Video (www.clubredlight.com and www.redlightinterracial.com), Digital Underground in conjunction with Metro Studios, and a totally revamped site for former Vivid Girl and Asian-American adult star Kobe Tai. Still in the works are new personal sites for Renee LaRue and Lesley Zen as well as, Amico discloses, "some new projects with Legend Video, Zero Tolerance Entertainment, and Platinum X Pictures.
"Getting more talent," in Amico's view, is Ginger Picks' biggest challenge. "This is kind of out of our control. Getting people to the site is the easy part, since we have a huge network of porn star traffic; but getting people to submit their photos is another thing. Most people say they would love to be in porn, but when it comes down to actually doing it, that number is cut drastically."
On the video production end, Rafael is nothing but sanguine. "The only challenge will be calming the talent down when they finally realize that this is for real," she drolly quips. "The lights, the camera, and the crew might freak them out a little, but we're working on ways to minimize any distraction that might get in the way of producing great product for a wide demographic.
"Ginger also has an amazing calming effect on people. She will be interacting in some of the scenes, and almost every single person we've cast for the project has already met her personally. The number one answer to the question, 'Do you have a preferred partner?' is 'Ginger Lynn.'"
The videos will be sold on the site's online store and while plans were not finalized at time of press, Rafael hinted that "we also have several distribution deals in the works." (For more information, contact publicist Lisa Raphael at Ginger Picks, phone 818.594.5075; e-mail [email protected])
All contestants have to fill out a questionnaire and read a five-page booklet so they know what they're in for, including the distinct possibility that they might one day be seen, nude and nimble and humping away on video, for the viewing pleasure of bug-eyed relatives from Maine to Montana. "And their grandchildren too," Rafael says, giggling, though she herself is something of a "reality" naysayer.
"I happen to think that a lot of the 'reality' shows out there today are just asinine," she declares. "Who in their right mind would commit to marrying someone they've never met before on national television - or anywhere else for that matter?" Which begs the obvious question: Who in their right mind would commit to having sex with someone they don't know for the voyeuristic pleasure of a World Wide Web audience?
From a business standpoint, how should one compete for "reality" mindshare with the likes of American Idol (given its 20-million-strong television audience) or even Playboy and its "Women of Starbucks" pictorial (and other "reality-based" ideas)? And, from a metaphysical standpoint, are we clamoring for just one more new thing, perhaps, merely to feed our already tremulously short collective attention spans? Are we so culturally jaded that we subconsciously crave that certain built-in suspense, that frantically edgy Fear Factor feel, the crazysexycool frisson, upon which all reality shows live and die by?
None of these questions, of course, will be answered anytime soon. Lynn, however, has a riposte for anyone wondering if Ginger Picks might be a deliberate effort on her part to blur the oftentimes fine line between amateur and professional porn. "'Blend' might be a better term," she says. "Gingerbred has two lines of films we will be producing: 'amateur' and 'professional.' If an amateur becomes a professional, they won't be cast in amateurs anymore. Besides, you cannot be an amateur more than once now, can you?"
So, one might then ask, is she paying homage to the studio-driven "contract girl" idea or is she, by utilizing an Internet audience (rather than company executives) to discover new porn talent, slyly parodying it?
"Contract Schmontract!!! "Lynn hoots. "If you're hot, we want to see ya! And if you're steamin', we want to see you more and more!" After all, she insists, why pigeonhole that most pleasurable of human activities into some boring old category? "Real people, having real sex," that's the real deal, she says. "Reality is a turn-on to me."
Gerrie Lim has written for numerous publications, including Billboard, Playboy, Details, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, the South China Morning Post, and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Gerrie now divides his time between his hometown of Singapore and his adopted city of Los Angeles. The latter features greatly in his next book, due in 2004, about the adult film industry in America.
