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June 2008: PAUL'S PIECE - Harmony Films' Young Harlots shoot in Greenwich. It's about time... - Issue 58.
The sign on the door said come inside, which I reckoned sounded like the least cinematic sort of cum shot. Thinking this was a pretty, innocuous spot for a porn shoot, I gave the door an experimental push.
I was in Greenwich for the middle of a three day shoot for Harmony Films. The seventh instalment of their popular Young Harlots range has the working title 'Young Harlots Seven' and stars pixie-like Susana Abril from Barcelona, American Carmen McCarthy, Sandy Cage (Dutch), new Brit Robyn Truelove and Eve Angel from Hungary, amongst others.
Inside I was met by Big Dave and a hall awash with camera gear, lighting stuff and the literal nuts-n-bolts of filmmaking. Dave attended to the paperwork that says Harmony can use my immortal soul anyway they see fit (in case I end up in any behind the scenes material) and then got back to his 'making sure everything runs smoothly' role.
The film's male talent includes Czech George Uhl, JJ and Jazz Duro. He's been in the industry eight years and was massaging an antibacterial cream into his old fella, which I learned was a trick-of-the trade after a scene. I asked, "What do your parents think you do?" He said, "Security".
The film's director/producer was gripping a phone 'til his knuckles went white. I learned an actress had dropped out because of a car accident- furthering my belief porn stars are the unluckiest people in the world. Gazzman was trying to find a suitable replacement at short notice. He has another, grown-up name but because he also makes grown-up TV programmes -well, grown-up in a different way- I won't be using it. Before forming a very successful relationship with Harmony he'd worked for Private in the late 90s.
Adding to his woes, I knocked a precariously balanced carry-case over and one of the girls' heath paperwork needed to be faxed... Sensing he'd rather be alone I went to explore the amazing house.
In the withdrawing room, manning a lighting rig draped in, well, a drape, was Paul, Gazzman's regular lighting-cameraman. The reason for the drape was the room had more mirrors than you'd want and it hid the out-of-place bright metal nicely, in case the reflection got in shot. Meanwhile a man enjoying the fake name of Pablo Ricci was photographing Susana. He had a full flash-tent and fill-in light setup, reiterating the seriousness with which these pros take their work.
Leaving Susana to slowly strip her uniform off for Pablo and his camera (frankly a strain) I went up the magnificent staircase to find Helen, the hair and make-up lady who also works on fashion shoots, and a familiar looking woman doing ironing. Poppy Morgan introduced herself and apologised for the mess as she added another school blouse to a pile on the bed. I confided my mild unease to Poppy; in the current media climate of 'rampant paedophilia' did she think the youthful themes of Young Harlots were appropriate? She did, but admitted she'd found wearing the uniform a bit odd when she'd done it. Then we were asked to be quiet as Susana was going to be doing a solo scene in the bedroom next door, which was overflowing with cuddly toys.
"I can't find a glass buttplug", said a flustered looking Big Dave in his Production Co-ordinator guise. As wrangler of the 'Porn box', Dave was in charge of the toys, lube, tissues and wet wipes. Through the course of the day I discovered Big Dave had joined the award-winning Gazzman porn factory after meeting him at a PornWeek(.com) holiday.
I wanted to know what investment was being made in Young Harlots Seven. During a snatched tea break I found out. With international travel for performers, fancy location hire, hotel for cast and crew and professional touches like Helen the makeup and hair lady, I wasn't expecting a low budget, but it was still a surprise when Gazzman told me Harmony spend around £30k-£40k on each feature. Sitting down with him, I probed for more information.
"This one is Young Harlots: Dirty Secrets, due for release in the summer. That's the title as it stands now, anyway, but these things can change. We've Young Harlots Summer Holiday coming up. Young Harlots in Love, Young Harlots on Holiday… We've got lots of ideas ready. In Love is too romantic as a title though. In Lust is too British-"
I suggested 'Young Harlots Go Wild' and Gazzman counted with, "Young Harlots: Filthy Fuckers is more the style. The series is based on an idea from the owners of Harmony who wanted me to shoot a teenage themed line. I said ok, I've not done that before. I personally like my women a bit more experienced, but we've had some amazingly hot 18, 19 and even 20 year-old girls work for us, and my eyes have been opened to the amazing women we've filmed from America and Europe. And of course the British girls. We want more of them though- we're sadly lacking in new faces. Some try it for a month or two and go and do something else, or go off to the States."
"We work with a tight team- You've met Jazz; he's a great guy, who's an Evil Angel director too. I've worked with George for quite a few years. JJ's new to us but he's been around a long time too. Steve Hooper, Dirty Dog… Harmony moved away from 'acting' anyway- Dialogue here is minimal. Porn actors can't act. Now, there's a surprising statement! They're very good at fucking but generally, not so good at acting, and a lot of them will admit it."
Asking who Harmony's films are for, Gazzman said, "I direct for men. I'm a guy. I don't understand how a woman's mind works- even my wife's. It's nice that there's a female following for Harmony films, but personally I don't shoot with them in mind. There's a lot of low-end gonzo shit out there, and I won't shoot shit. We tend to put the same production values I learned in television into what we do here. Perhaps that's the appeal."
Alongside me covering the shoot were three guys from Hot Video magazine in France. One was the photographer, one the journalist and a third was never seen without a camcorder. Like me they were covering events at the shoot and once they'd finished interviewing Jason Maskell, Harmony's new -ish- he replaced David Girow who left last year- Sales & Marketing Manager, I grabbed my chance with him while wondering why they'd skipped the Noddies.
"In May we launch our new director, 'Strangelove', which is an erotic, non-fetish line and we're shooting the second one of those shortly, even before the first is released. It looks really nice- It's shot and edited in a rather different style, so we're expecting that to do well. Good locations, good girls… Stylish is the word. We're also launching our new website with VOD/IPTV channel and we're starting some new mobile services as well, where users will have their own 'Harmony Player' on their phone. We're looking very closely at new technologies now- including Blu-ray. We've been shooting in Hi-Def for a while so there won't be any problem releasing Blu-ray titles later this year. The good thing for us at the moment is we're developing new territories; we've broken into South Africa and some other European countries and we're looking to expand on those, but over-all, DVD sales are slowing within the UK. We're finding it is getting harder, so we're responding with new technology to give the customers what they want, how they want it. No one can afford to dictate what format their consumers get- We have to say, 'tell us what you want' and make sure we give it to them how they want it. Porn isn't vanishing, it's evolving and we're going wherever the consumers go- Trying to get there ahead of them, in fact. Consumer choice means we look at pin-locked free discs, VOD, Internet and mobile services."
Speaking about their nominations for the ETO Awards, Jason said, "It's nice to know that we're being appreciated by other people in the industry. They like the product and the brand, which is always great to know- It's always good to pick up nominations, and hopefully a few more awards."
Looking at Harmony's catalogue, Jason hinted at a possible future gay brand and finished, "There are nine Fuck Mes so far, and there's a Fuck Me II range out in June with Kiesha Kane's very first anal scene, shot in LA. That was nice of her, to do that for us. There's over ten Slam It!s and they've moved to Dave West in America now. He's producing them out there, and has just finished Slam It in Young Pussy- which went very well. We're very pleased with that. Harmony have gone down the route of structured lines with Young Harlots, Fuck Me, Slam It, Tanya Hyde and 'feature' movies, which vary from time to time. We've kept the packaging consistent, the strength being people recognise each brand line and I think consistency of ideas means they've got a following. Of the five, Young Harlots and Tanya Hyde are our most successful sellers."
When I heard a replacement girl was on her way but didn't know how to find the house, I volunteered to go and collect her. I was feeling a little like a fifth wheel, and because of the clutter of equipment and crowds of people, rather in the way.
A girl with ugg boots and suspiciously enhanced breast was smiling at me, and as this hardly ever happens (ugg boots aren't all that popular, are they?) I knew Robyn had found me. I was going to ask her how she got into modelling on the walk to the house, but she was only off of her phone for moments at a time so I only learned she'd been working for a few months and had worked with TVX and Phil Barry.
Sliding along on anther slippery rug at the top of the stairs, I changed my mind about this house. It was still a remarkable treasure-trove, but like the Titanic beauty didn't stop it being a potential death-trap. I looked in on Helen the makeup lady who was touching up Robyn in the nicest possible way before carefully returning to the drawing room.
There was a hiccup when one of the foreign male performers struggled with some dialogue while finger-fucking Susana. His mind may have been elsewhere. After the fourth fluffed take Gazzman amended the script to something simpler, and the actor nailed it, before nailing Susana. Explaining that he wanted a pile-driver DP setup, Gazzman was down on the rug, bottom in the air to demonstrate how it should be done.
Later, in the garden, Robyn jiggled her ass on demand as Paul got a mixture of wide shots and close ups of her personal Meridian Line. Helicopters, passing traffic, some sort of political rally (this was just before London's Mayoral Elections), jets, barking dogs and even a peacock had all been sent to try them, but the production was about to take a strange new twist- a potentially disastrous one. While Robyn knocked some croquet balls about with a mallet noise was starting to drift over the fence. The neighbouring garden was filling up- it seemed the nice weather had triggered a BBQ. This had Gazzman and the crew shaking their heads in disbelief. They found a corner of the garden 'mostly' hidden by bushes and a tree, but the murmur from next door was still pretty loud. The problem for Robyn, who'd be being bonked by George, was she needed to be quiet enough not to alert the neighbours but loud enough to drown their noise out on the soundtrack. I kept glancing at the fence, expecting to see a quizzical head pop over it at any time. When I wasn't looking at the fence, I was scanning the windows of the house on the other side where, theoretically, someone could hang out and see something they shouldn't.
"Money shot time!" called Gazzman a while later, clutching a fancy wireless widescreen video monitor. Paul was repositioning the heavy Hi-Def tape camera with its ring-lamp when suddenly-
Ting-ting-ting-ting! drifted over the fence and in a flash the bow ties I thought I'd spotted through the sparse undergrowth made sense. It wasn't a barbecue, it was a wedding reception! More than that, as the music died I realised it was time for the speeches. By now Robyn was in full flow, bouncing like a Space Hopper on Red Bull and George was hanging on for grim death. I looked at Gazzman, who had half his hand in his mouth to stifle his laughs and the French guys also seemed to be struggling. I was gnawing at my own knuckles to keep from laughing. Perhaps it was the threat of exposure making us dizzy with tension, or the sheer comic ridiculousness of the situation, but we were seconds from hysterics.
Before any of us popped, George did and Robyn dutifully drizzled his spunk onto her breasts. A few quickly faked shots through the bushes (nice use of pull-focus) and some sticky stills later and the day's work was almost done. Gazzman shot a quick DVD bonus with Robyn being spanked by George on the sofa before everyone collapsed onto it.
Munching pizza, Robyn explained she was going to have her four front teeth removed and replaced with screwed-in inserts, much to the horror of the rest of us. "But they're cute!" we all protested, but her mind was made up. It was either the teeth or another boob job ("Don't go bigger", we chorused) and she'd settled on the gnashers. She wants teeth like Jordan's and extraction is the only way.
Gazzman said, "We were lucky. There were no biting insects this time. Years ago, on my first film, Private's The Scottish Loveknot, on the side of Loch Ness. It was ten o'clock at night and midges were biting Tony DeSergio's testicles. I thought 'just get in there' and rubbed the old insect repellent into his bollocks as he was fucking. Baptism by fire!"
It was almost 8pm, light was fading and it was time for me to go. The cast and crew seemed delighted they'd got their day's work done- The previous day's shoot had rolled on to 10.30pm. Yet it was no time to relax. Carmel Moore and Freddy Flava would be doing their scenes tomorrow, and there was a lot of work to do to clear the house of props, costumes and equipment before another crew arrived in Greenwich to shoot something -presumably with fewer schoolgirls- at 8am on Monday morning. That's 0700 GMT. More so there than most places.
This was originally rather longer. Think of this as the Director's Cut, if you like:
Harmony Films' Young Harlots shoot in Greenwich. It's about time...
The sign on the door said come inside, which I reckoned sounded like the least cinematic sort of cum shot. I looked up and down the smart London road, thinking this was a pretty, innocuous spot for a porn shoot before I gave the door an experimental push.
I was in Greenwich to see the middle day of a three day shoot for Harmony Films. The seventh instalment of their popular Young Harlots range has the working title 'Young Harlots Seven' and stars pixie-like Susana Abril from Barcelona, American Carmen McCarthy, Sandy Cage (Dutch), new Brit Robyn Truelove and Eve Angel from Hungary, amongst others.
Inside I was met by Big Dave, a man who got his nickname exactly the way you'd expect, and a hall awash with camera gear, lighting stuff and the literal nuts-n-bolts of filmmaking; I could imagine the BBC were here shooting porn. Or Tipping the Velvet, as it was called. I looked around in mute awe- I'd never seen a house like this. Stuffed to overflowing with an eclectic collection of things, it's a real temple of delights- dedicated to the owner's eye for a quirky antique bargain. Dave attended to the paperwork that says Harmony can use my immortal soul anyway they see fit (in case I end up in any behind the scenes material) and then got back to his 'making sure everything runs smoothly' role.
The film's male talent includes Czech George Uhl, JJ and Jazz Duro, who thinks he's Italian, but who I think is Irish because of his accent. But if he wants to be Italian, that's fine by me; he's a tough looking bloke. "Buongiorno Jazz", I started, before asking him about his porn career. He's been in the industry eight years and was massaging an antibacterial cream into his old fella, which I learned was a trick-of-the trade after a scene. Also to avoid STI trouble, wait until the scene's finished to have a pee. I asked, "What do your parents think you do?" He said, "Security".
I told you he looks tough.
In a side room the film's director/producer was gripping a phone 'til his knuckles went white. The stresses of shooting porn can manifest themselves that way, I know. I later learned an actress had dropped out because her sister had been involved in a car accident- furthering my belief porn stars are the unluckiest people in the world. Gazzman, for it was he, was trying to find a suitable replacement at short notice. He has another, proper, grown-up name but because he also makes proper, grown-up TV programmes -well, grown-up in a different way- I won't be using it. I asked if I'd have seen any of his shows and he said yes. I said I only had five terrestrial channels, and he still said yes. Before forming a very successful relationship with Harmony he'd worked for Private in the late 90s and once had a run in with a motorcycle manufacturer when a tiny logo was seen in a film with a bike theme. I didn't find out what it was called, but I'm guessing Sukzuki, Ramherhar'd or Kumasuki. They settled out of court.
Adding to his woes, I knocked a precariously balanced carry-case over and one of the girls' heath paperwork needed to be faxed to the hotel... Sensing he'd rather be alone with a punch bag or well stocked mini-bar, I went to explore this amazing house.
In the drawing room, manning a lighting rig draped in, well, a drape, was Paul, Gazzman's regular lighting-cameraman. The reason for the drape was the room had more mirrors than you'd ideally want and it hid the out-of-place bright metal nicely, in case the reflection got in shot. Meanwhile a man enjoying the colourful (and wholly made-up) name of Pablo Ricci was photographing Susana. He had a full flash-tent and fill-in light setup, reiterating the seriousness with which they take their art. Yes it's porn, but it's still shot with the same passion for quality these professionals apply to their vanilla work.
Susana Abril, so-called Pablo's subject, was also a pro when I showed off my Spanish for her. "Hola", I said, and she smiled and said "Hola" back. This carried on for the rest of the day. "Hola", I'd say, and "Hola!" she'd chirp back. We were a regular Morecombe and Wise.
Leaving Susana to slowly strip her schoolgirl uniform off for Pablo and his stills camera (yes, it was a strain) I was introduced to Ann, who seemed to be used to the awe I was in of her home. She soon produced a fat scrapbook of cuttings dating back to the 50s, all showing photographs taken at the house, even if it was sometimes hard to tell. "That one", Ann told me, pointing at a lingerie advert from the late 60s I'd say, "That one was in Vogue." She flicked through some more pages and I saw ads for coal tar soap and Fortnum & Masons in amongst soft porn from the early 70s (the big orange hats are a giveaway) and lots of spanking. "Those are from a specialist magazine", Ann explained. "A family friend publishes it. It's very exclusive". I believed her.
As we chatted about Portmeirion and Snowshill, I picked at the high-calorie feast laid out on the kitchen table. Fun-sized Mars bars, Milky-Way and Maltesers (all BOGOF at Tesco, I note. Still, you can't throw money away on a porn shoot- even one with the budget the size of this one's) fought for space with fizzy drinks and crisps. With no diet option, it was clear sugar and carbs would be getting us all through the day.
While sitting with Ann I learned the house had been built around 1715, gardening turns up bits of brass bomb casings dropped by the Luftwaffe and she moved here in 1957, when the house was a princely £4,500. With views across Greenwich Park (but I'm not saying which hemisphere it's in) towards the Royal Observatory and more than enough bedrooms, I'd hate to take a stab at what's it's worth now. You could safely add two-and-a-half more zeros, I'm sure. Towards the back of the book I saw Dempsey and Makepeace shot here in the mid 80s; four days which made back the purchase price of her home.
Thinking about the possibilities of using the location for a follow-up to my Cum Fly With Me! film (available in all good and many bad sex shops now) I asked how much hiring her home would cost me. "What do you think it's worth?", Ann replied, and that's about as much as I was able to learn about that. Most of her bookings come via an agency but she said she's keen for more shoots, including adult. She's more open-minded than most multi-millionaires- I imagine.
Up the magnificent staircase I passed two giraffes (echoing a display from the Natural History Museum, Ann informed me. I've since checked; they were there in October 1903) before finding Helen, the hair and make-up lady who also works on fashion shoots, and a familiar looking woman doing ironing. Poppy Morgan introduced herself and apologised for the mess as she added another white school blouse to a pile on the bed. I confided my mild unease to Poppy; in the current media climate of 'rampant paedophilia' did she think the youthful themes of Young Harlots were appropriate? She did, but admitted she'd found wearing the uniform a bit odd when she'd done it.
In return, she bemoaned Harmony's decision to use her talents beyond ironing less -apparently she's the most heavily featured actress they've shot- and confessed she was greedy; she wants more g/b/b/b/b/b+ gangbang scenes, especially in Tanya Hyde films. Then we were asked to be quiet as Susana was going to be doing a solo scene in the bedroom next door, which was overflowing with cuddly toys.
"I can't find a glass buttplug", said a flustered looking Big Dave in his Production Co-ordinator guise. Gazzman looked up. "I didn't say glass, I said crystal. It's metal- it's got a crystal in the end", he said in a soft Scots accent. In a very multinational shoot for a multinational industry, I mentally added 'Scottish' to the long list of nationalities involved. As wrangler of the 'Porn box', Dave was in charge of the toys, lube, tissues and wet wipes. He also seemed to have bottled water on hand at all times. Through the course of the day I discovered Big Dave had joined the award-winning Gazzman porn factory after meeting him at a PornWeek(.com) holiday.
Being shallow and shameless, I wanted to know what sort of investment was being made in Young Harlots Seven. During a brief tea break just after 2pm I found out. With international travel for performers, fancy location hire, hotel for cast and crew and professional touches like Helen the makeup and hair lady, I wasn't expecting budgets to be anything less than considerable, but it was still a surprise when Gazzman told me Harmony spend around £30k-£40k on each feature. Sitting down with him, I probed for even more information.
"This one is Young Harlots: Dirty Secrets, due for release in the summer. That's the title as it stands now, anyway, but these things can change. We've Young Harlots: Sports Star [or could be Car? Gazzman talks fast] and Summer Holiday coming up. Young Harlots in Love, Young Harlots on Holiday… We've got lots of ideas ready. In Love is too romantic as a title though. In Lust is too British-"
I suggested 'Young Harlots Go Wild and Gazzman counted with, "Young Harlots: Filthy Fuckers is more the style. The series is based on an idea from the owners of Harmony who wanted me to shoot a teenage themed line. I said ok, I've not done that before. I personally like my women a bit more experienced, but we've had some amazingly hot 18, 19 and even 20 year-old girls work for us, and my eyes have been opened to the amazing women we've filmed from America and Europe. And of course the British girls. We want more of them though- we're sadly lacking in new faces. Some try it for a month or two and go and do something else, or go off to the States."
As a familiar face appeared at the door, he changed direction. "Poppy's great. We've shot her so much we've giving her a bit of a rest but she'd due to get some more scenes with us. I've got a ten guy scene planned for her, if she's up for it. She can dominate the men. She's one of the few women anywhere who can control a scene- so much so that sometimes the guys don't know what to do. We're perilously short of good guys in the UK anyway, with some retiring and others signing up to contract work. We work with a tight team- You've met Jazz; he's a great guy, who's an Evil Angel director too. I've worked with George for quite a few years. JJ's new to us but he's been around a long time too. Steve Hooper, Dirty Dog… Harmony moved away from 'acting' anyway- Dialogue here is minimal. Porn actors can't act. Now, there's a surprising statement! They're very good at fucking but generally, not so good at acting, and a lot of them will admit it. In Hollywood you hire an actor because he's good at acting. But you couldn't automatically expect him to be any good at porn."
Asking who Harmony's films are for, Gazzman said, "I direct for men. I'm a guy. I don't understand how a woman's mind works- even my wife's. It's nice that there's a female following for Harmony films, but personally I don't shoot with them in mind. There's a lot of low-end gonzo shit out there, and I won't shoot shit. We tend to put the same production values I learned in television into what we do here. Perhaps that's the appeal."
While we were at the house, a crew was out getting footage of London landmarks, I was told.
Alongside me covering the shoot were three guys from Hot Video magazine in France. One was the photographer, one the journalist and a third was never seen without a camcorder. Like me they were covering events at the shoot and once they'd finished interviewing Jason Maskell, Harmony's new -ish- he replaced David Girow who left last year- Sales & Marketing Manager, I grabbed my chance with him while wondering why they'd skipped the Noddies.
"In May we launch our new director, 'Strangelove', which is an erotic, non-fetish line and we're shooting the second one of those shortly, even before the first is released. It looks really nice- It's shot and edited in a rather different style, so we're expecting that to do well. Good locations, good girls… Stylish is the word. We're also launching our new website with VOD/IPTV channel and we're starting some new mobile services as well, where users will have their own 'Harmony Player' on their phone. We're looking very closely at new technologies now- including Blu-ray. We've been shooting in Hi-Def for a while so there won't be any problem releasing Blu-ray titles later this year. The good thing for us at the moment is we're developing new territories; we've broken into South Africa and some other European countries and we're looking to expand on those, but over-all, DVD sales are slowing within the UK. We're finding it is getting harder, so we're responding with new technology to give the customers what they want, how they want it. No one can afford to dictate what format their consumers get- We have to say, 'tell us what you want' and make sure we give it to them how they want it. Porn isn't vanishing, it's evolving and we're going wherever the consumers go- Trying to get there ahead of them, in fact. Consumer choice means we look at pin-locked free discs, VOD, Internet and mobile services."
Speaking about their nominations for the ETO Awards, Jason said, "It's nice to know that we're being appreciated by other people in the industry. They like the product and the brand, which is always great to know- It's always good to pick up nominations, and hopefully a few more awards."
Looking at Harmony's brand values, Jason hinted at a possible new gay brand and finished, "There are nine Fuck Mes so far, and there's a Fuck Me II range out in June with Kiesha Kane's very first anal scene, shot in LA. That was nice of her, to do that for us. There's over ten Slam It!s and they've moved to Dave West in America now. He's producing them out there, and has just finished Slam It in Young Pussy- which went very well. We're very pleased with that. Harmony have gone down the route of structured lines with Young Harlots, Fuck Me, Slam It, Tanya Hyde and 'feature' movies, which vary from time to time. We've kept the packaging consistent, the strength being people recognise each brand line and I think consistency of ideas means they've got a following. Of the five, Young Harlots and Tanya Hyde are our most successful sellers."
When I heard a replacement girl was on her way but didn't know how to find the house, I volunteered to go and collect her. I was feeling a little like a fifth wheel, and because of the clutter of equipment and crowds of people, rather in the way. While waiting for Robyn Truelove I watched people coming up the escalator at Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich tube station. I was watching for the ugg boots and black leggings she'd said she was wearing but until the people reached the top of the escalator I only had their top half to work from. Thus I played a game of 'Porn-Star/Below-Par' to pass the time. On a sunny day, there were more Maybes than Nevers, and even one Skeksis from Dark Crystal.
Suddenly a girl with ugg boots and suspiciously enhanced breast was smiling at me, and as this hardly ever happens (ugg boots aren't all that popular, are they?) I knew Robyn had found me. I was going to ask her how she got into modelling on the walk to the house, but she was only off of her phone for moments at a time so I only learned she'd been working for a few months and had done some stuff with TVX and Phil Barry among others.
Sliding along on anther slippery rug at the top of the stairs, I changed my mind about this house. It was still a remarkable treasure-trove, but like the Titanic and the worse sort of Femme Fatale, beauty didn't stop it being a potential death-trap. I looked in on Helen the makeup lady who was touching up Robyn in the nicest possible way before carefully returning to the drawing room.
There was a hiccup when one of the foreign male performers struggled with some dialogue while finger-fucking Susana. His mind may have been elsewhere. After the fourth fluffed take Gazzman amended the script to something simpler, and the actor nailed it, before nailing Susana. Explaining that he wanted a pile-driver DP setup, Gazzman was down on the rug, bottom in the air to demonstrate how it should be done. In the room next door, Pablo was going through some earlier stills on a laptop, picking out the better shots for the cover and promotional material.
Later, in the garden, things were hotting up. Robyn jiggled her ass on demand as Paul got a mixture of wide shots and close ups of her personal Meridian Line. Helicopters, passing traffic, some sort of political rally (this was just before London's Mayoral Elections), jets, barking dogs and even a peacock had all been sent to try them, but the production was about to take a strange new twist- one which potentially spelt disaster. While Robyn knocked some balls about with a mallet (I've seen this on the Internet before- except these were croquet balls and a croquet mallet) noise was starting to drift over the fence. The neighbouring garden was filling up- it seemed the nice weather had triggered a BBQ. This had Gazzman and the crew shaking their heads in disbelief. They found a corner of the garden 'mostly' hidden by bushes and a tree, but the murmur from next door was still pretty loud. The problem for Robyn, who'd be being bonked by George, was not only did she need to be quiet enough not to alert the neighbours, she needed to be loud enough to drown their noise out on the soundtrack. She did her best to walk the fine line but I kept glancing at the fence, expecting to see a quizzical head pop over it at any time. When I wasn't looking at the fence, I was scanning the windows of the house on the other side where, theoretically, someone could hang out and see something they shouldn't.
"Money shot time!" called Gazzman a while later, clutching a fancy wireless widescreen video monitor while Paul repositioned the heavy High-Definition tape camera with its ring-lamp. There was some rearranging of flesh when suddenly-
Ting-ting-ting-ting! drifted over the fence and in a flash the bow ties I thought I'd spotted through the sparse undergrowth made sense. It wasn't a barbeque, it was a wedding reception! More than that, as the music died I realised it was time for the speeches. By now Robyn was in full flow, bouncing like a Space Hopper on Red Bull and George was hanging on for grim death. I looked at Gazzman, who had half his hand in his mouth to stifle his laughs and the French guys also seemed to be struggling. I was gnawing at my own knuckles to keep from laughing and lips were being bitten all around me. Perhaps it was the threat of an, "Excuse me, what are you doing?" coming over the fence making us dizzy with tension, or the sheer comic ridiculousness of the situation, but we were seconds from hysterics.
Before any of us popped, George did and Robyn dutifully drizzled his spunk onto her extra-perky-nippled breasts- it had got cooler as the evening wore on, and now she wasn't bouncing she was feeling it. A few quickly faked shots through the bushes (nice use of pull-focus) and some sticky stills later and the day's work was done. There was a time I'd have said 'work' but I've learned just how punishing a porn shoot can be and seen it again here, with Harmony. To make the point even more clearly, Gazzman shot a quick DVD bonus with Robyn being spanked by George on the sofa before everyone collapsed onto it.
Munching pizza (I took a picture. Naked girl with pizza? That's as erotic as it gets for me as a t-total vegetarian) Robyn explained she was going to have her four front teeth removed and replaced with screwed-in inserts, much to the horror of the rest of us. "But they're cute!" we all protested, but her mind was made up. It was either the teeth or another boob job ("Don't go bigger", we chorused) and she'd settled on the gnashers. She wants teeth like Jordan's and extraction is the only way, apparently. £14,000 for generic teeth? I'd rather buy a Daihatsu Terios.
She told me, "It's been a busy day but I've loved it. It was fun- I really enjoyed myself. The time went fast, which is a good sign. I weren't bored at all. I got warm- I was sweating and George was sweating all over me!"
Gazzman interrupted. "We were lucky. There were no biting insects this time. Years ago, on my first film, Private's The Scottish Loveknot, on the side of Loch Ness. It was ten o'clock at night and midges were biting Tony DeSergio's testicles. I thought 'just get in there' and rubbed the old insect repellent into his bollocks as he was fucking. Baptism by fire!"
Robyn jumped back in. "I think we discovered some new positions for what you can do on a short flight of steps, in a little corner and a pathway. I'm going to do something with Tanya Hyde and hopefully I'm going to LA with Gazzman to do an anal scene- my first!"
It was almost 8pm, light was fading and it was time for me to go. The cast and crew seemed delighted they'd got their day's work done- The previous day's shoot had rolled on to 10.30pm. Yet it was no time to relax. Carmel Moore and Freddy Flava would be doing their scenes tomorrow, and there was a lot of work to do to clear the house of props, costumes and equipment before another crew arrived in Greenwich to shoot something with less schoolgirls -presumably- at 8am on Monday morning. That's 0700 GMT. More so there than most places.