Inside Seka - The Platinum Princess of Porn (35 page)

Being a woman, I wanted to make the film a little more romantic than standard adult fare, but for commercial purposes I realized I had to appeal to the hardcore audience and make it hot as well.

Mike Horner played my husband because he looked like the airline pilot-type — very Superman-ish and extremely clean cut. He was a nice guy and I wanted to work with him. What was great about running my own show was I didn’t have to reject anyone. I just cast people I liked and respected on a personal level. And those who I knew could do the job.

Shanna McCullough was also in the movie and I loved her. She was very pretty and lollipop sweet. But when you needed her to be nasty, she could be a hot little girl. I think it gave a lot of depth to her character — to appear one way and be able to completely turn it around.

There’s also a scene where Shanna plays an airline stewardess and one of the passengers is Whoopi Goldberg’s mother. Howie knew Whoopi very well and he made the introduction. Whoopi was a complete unknown at the time. She asked me to send her demo tape to my agent friend, Sy Sussman, to get her started. A week later, Mike Nichols signed her to her one-woman show on Broadway and the rest is history.

Since I helped her out, Whoopi even let me stay in her home once her career got going. She’s nutty as a fruitcake, but in a good way. She’s naturally funny, but intense. The lady’s extremely well read and well-spoken. I don’t think you can be a really good comedian unless you’re an intelligent person.

When Whoopi bought herself a red Porsche and pointed to the car she asked me, “Can you believe that? I can’t believe that car is all mine. And it’s all paid for!” She was just so excited she finally made the big time after struggling for years. God bless her.

I was invited to opening night of her show on Broadway. Ironically, the Kennedys, James Earl Jones, and other celebs were dressed to the nines and sitting behind us, while I was in the front row with jeans and cowboy boots. Whoopi actually said we were sitting up front because we were the ones who helped her on the way up. That’s loyalty, and I’ll never forget her class and pure heart.

Whoopi had a tour bus and asked me for my posters because she wanted to put them on the inside of the vehicle. She thought it was funny when they took it for a wash that people would think it was my bus and not hers.

Once she was sick and hospitalized in Chicago. I don’t recall exactly what was wrong at the time, but she had to cancel her run. I visited her in the hospital like a good friend. I told a pal of mine who ran a great restaurant to bring her and the hospital staff some food. I made sure everyone was well fed. Even in L.A. we’d pass each other in our cars and pull over and chat. She never once ignored me. I think she’s a super comedian, an excellent actress, and a good human being.

Anyway, I told Whoopi I needed some extras for the movie and she said, “Hey Mom, you want to be in a movie?”

Just like that. She simply sat on the plane. It was a non-speaking role where she was supposed to react to the pilot and the stewardess having sex, which they weren’t actually doing at the time. You just saw her and the rest of the extras rubbernecking to watch the action that was supposedly going on.

Kay Parker was also in the film and I always loved Kay. She is just a wonderful woman — very kind and sincere and extremely thoughtful to everyone. I’ve never heard or seen her be unkind to anyone. She’s also quite graceful — just a class act.

I hired Ronnie Webber, my hairdresser at the time (I went through a lot of hair and makeup people over the years), to do my hair. And I put him in the movie as a hairdresser, too. He’s a funny, funny man.

It was a pleasure to have a cast where I liked every single person on a personal level without having to compromise on quality. With all the pressure on my shoulders, it was nonetheless exhilarating. I even raised the money for the movie in a week. Watching it all come together felt like a triumph.

This isn’t to say there aren’t some bitches and bastards in the industry. In my previous films, there were some people behind the camera I couldn’t stand. One boom guy, in fact, purposely cracked me on the head one day just to get my attention and tell me something. I almost ripped his throat out. I refused to go back to work until they got another guy. They pleaded with me. It was some guy who did legitimate films and thought we weren’t real people, we were just porno actors. But here I could pick and choose my dream cast and crew.

Or so I thought.

I had extreme confidence in everyone I personally hired from the lighting people to the camera people to the directors. This wasn’t one of those cheapo weekend shoots. But on a project this big, you still had tech people who came on the recommendation of others.

Everything was going pretty smoothly but then came a bump in the road. A lot of the crew was union. From their work in “legit” films, they were used to overtime, double time, triple time, and golden time, which is a lot of bucks. I respect unions, but the problem in any situation is when only one set of workers is unionized. I would have died and gone to heaven if we porn actors had ever formed a union. A hell of a lot would have been different. But we weren’t, so to treat certain people one way and the rest of us another just wasn’t going to fly. This came up on every XXX feature ever filmed and the tech guys knew or should have known the score. This wasn’t a union gig; get used to it. If you don’t like it, leave.

But since I was a woman, these guys thought they were going to outsmart me. I told them I’d take care of them and they’d be paid for some overtime, but we don’t do triple time, golden time, and all that stuff. It’s not a three or four million dollar movie. But they figured they would hold me up.

I knew this was going to happen. I don’t know why, but I had an innate sense or something. So I had a couple of people hired as gophers keeping an eye on the reels of film. Nobody else knew about it but me, nor did anyone even know who my spies were.

Even though I was in front of the camera trying to perform and make it all look as hot as possible, I was simultaneously thinking about who was trying to rip me off and how. Not an easy gig.

When I wrote the checks, the crew told me the overtime pay wasn’t enough. “We have two rolls of your film,” a pair of men exclaimed, thinking they had me over a barrel.

I smirked and said. “You think so? Open it.’”

“If we open it, it’ll expose it.”

When I insisted, they were shocked to see it was blank. At my insistence, my posse kept their eyes glued to the real reels and hid them in my car every time there was a break. It was like a scene out of a caper movie.

Careful
did really well, and was even nominated and won some industry awards, but I never saw a dime because I kept getting told it didn’t make any money. Although I knew that was bull, I didn’t have the means to prove it. They made money on it for over twenty years. I was just plain ripped off. Screwed if you will, on camera and off.

When the smoke cleared, I had some investors who needed a write-off and they certainly got one. But not being able to pay some people their money back was painful for all of us involved.

It took years of fighting to get my movie back, and now I own the rights and have re-released it. We re-mastered it, added some new footage that had never been seen before, and it’s doing fairly well. Video-X-Pix is doing the distribution. It’s the same people that did
Inside Seka
and I trust these folks very much.

Some people may find it odd that creating a porn flick is something one would take pride in. But from where I’m sitting,
Careful, He May Be Watching
was an accomplishment. To me, the film was better than most X-rated flicks out there. I don’t know whether I’d call it art, but it was certainly professional and entertaining.

Completing a project on that scale showed me I could do anything I set my mind to. But getting ripped off like I did ultimately made it all bittersweet.

Careful, He May Be Watching,
my next-to-last film, which I wrote, produced, and co-directed …as a redhead!

…And as a blonde.

About to get down with my favorite lady, Kay Parker.

Making out with co-star Shanna McCullough.

One of my favorite woodsmen, Mike Horner.