You know what’s really fucked up?

I was reading an interview with Jacqueline Lovell, and since this was at the height of #metoo the casting couch inevitably came up. She worked for Playboy, Penthouse, Zalman King, Charles Band, and did a bunch of other porn, erotica and horror shoots. None of them gave her any trouble. A couple even treated her like family, and looked after her when she had taken on a pretty sketchy project. She didn’t go further into it, but if really pressed I’d put money on it being Black Sea 213, Here’s the synopsis from Letterboxd:

They Live the Way They Love… Close to the Edge.
Mercenaries selling nuclear arms on the black market pose as models so they can set up an innocent photographer to take the blame.

Look, I didn’t say she was freaking Marlon Brando or Brad Pitt, alright? The comments on IMDB are pretty funny, and accurate. But this aside is already overlong so I can’t delve into them, or the movie itself. But if that doesn’t tell you what you’re in for, check the cast and production list, and remember that this film was made in the late ’90s.

Actually, that makes my point hit all the harder. She didn’t even have trouble on that set.

You know where she encountered the casting couch? Hollywood, when she was just starting to go mainstream. Not the “degenerates” and post-soviets, but establishment Hollywood producers, directors and in at least one case a fellow actor.

Everyone says it’s her porn background that kept her from breaking through, but what if it was Jacqueline Lovell’s refusal to trade sex for roles that killed her career? As a devotee of the God of Theater I hate what these predators and педерасты have done to, and in the name of, Dionysos’ sacred art.

For fuck’s sake, just hire a prostitute. But I suppose it’s not really about the sex but the control, manipulation, and degradation. (Totally not going to touch on the occult angle. Nope. That is one fucked up rabbit hole, and even sticking to the documented evidence makes you sound completely crazy if you connect the dots in certain ways. So we are sticking to moral outrage.)

A pox upon you, Hollywood! A pox, I say!

I’m glad that streaming has made it possible for artists like Jacqueline Lovell and Edward Nyahay to release passion projects like Krush the Serpent and Forest Bathing: Friends W/Benefits directly to the audience, bypassing the Hollywood studios. Without giving up all the money. Without compromising their vision. Without having to lick Robert De Niro’s hairy, saggy nutsack to get a speaking part on a movie no one’s gonna watch anyway because the studios are acting like all the good ideas dried up in 2012 and so have been churning out formulaic slop or endless sequels, prequels, reboots, copies, etc. and movie-lovers are just staying home. Except when an interesting, original idea slips through. Because they do still fucking exist. And as long as there are Gods of art, and Muses to inspire people, they will continue to exist.