Remembering the Valley

Time is a flat circle, right?

Image via Wikipedia

Next month, it’ll be 22 years since I first found myself on the set of an adult movie. The name of the movie was “Flashpoint,” which is fitting. (See Merriam-Webster: “flash point […] 2. : a point at which someone or something bursts suddenly into action or being.”) That moment really changed my life, and it shaped who I am. Today, I’m probably best known for writing about the adult industry. (See: “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”) What a long strange trip it’s been.*

susannahbreslin

I used to go to bukkake movie shoots here. 18, 19 years ago. When North Hollywood was more sleepy than hipster. I remember coming down the street at dusk. The light at the door outlining the oversized guard. The small room into which you stepped that was filled with the bukkake boys. The director’s bukkake hotline by which he procured them. The guys wearing bandanas over their faces to hide their identities. The big main room where the shooting started. The weird silence and mess on the floor. In this building a million years ago and yesterday. In Porn Valley, you have to watch out you don’t slip in the jizz and time is a flat circle 💦 #investigativereporting #journalism

July 10, 2020

Yesterday, I found myself driving around in North Hollywood and realized I was near a shooting location where I’d watched a certain kind of extreme adult movie getting made many years ago. It was a curious place at a curious time, and as I drove down the street, I remembered what it was like to come around the corner at dusk, to see the oversized security guard outlined from the light spilling out from the doorway, to stand on the soundstage and see what men did behind closed doors.

susannahbreslin

🎬 That time I got turned into a comic book character: Filthy Sanchez, porn czar. (Desolation Jones: Made in England) See my Stories for another panel

July 10, 2020

Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d never started writing about the adult industry. Sometimes I wonder if doing so has hurt my career. Sometimes I wonder if doing so has hurt my dating life. To Google me is to see my name associated with adult content. Sometimes the internet thinks I, myself, am adult content. Sometimes I wonder if the internet is right.

Image via The Atlantic

Awhile back, I wrote a story for The Atlantic that took me on a tour of various places in the Valley that I had visited during my years writing about the adult business. It was like going to my own personal X-rated Disneyland, except most of the rides were gone, and the landscape had been transformed. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, and I struggled with writing the piece. At a certain point, I wound up in the back of an adult theater in Hollywood, which, despite the early morning hour, wasn’t empty. It was just me, and the men gathered there, and the nude figures entwined on the screen.

This morning, I watched “The Old Guard.” It’s about a bunch of nearly immortal superheroes who are not entirely invulnerable. The movie was good, although I wouldn’t say it’s great. Charlize Theron is always fun to watch, and there are an abundance of LGBTQ themes, which was delightful to see in an action movie. In one scene, a young recruit to the immortal clan stands in front of a wall that traces how Theron’s character’s history is intertwined with the shape of history itself.

“She’s in it,” the young recruit realizes. “She can’t see it.”

And that is pretty much life.

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