Archives for June 2009

Two decades since winning the Palme d'Or for Sex, Lies and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh returns with another film dissecting the sexual mores of the American middle classes. If you count his recent Che double bill as two separate films, The Girlfriend Experience is his 20th movie in as many years – a remarkable achievement by anyone's standards. Such a prolific output has not always brought stellar results – whether it's the two Ocean's Eleven sequels or the Second World War noir The Good German. Not so The Girlfriend Experience, one of the most engaging and astute works of Soderbergh's career.

Like his earlier film, 2005's Bubble, this is an HD-shot, lo-fi drama made for $1m – with the idea (in the US, at least) to unveil it simultaneously on DVD, cable and in cinemas. But while Bubble never even made it to the UK – its cast of unknowns and story of a murderous small-town factory worker evidently troubling distributors – The Girlfriend Experience is accessible as well as provocative. Written by David Levien and Brian Koppelman, who penned Ocean's Thirteen for Soderbergh, it's the story of call-girl Chelsea, and one of the most cliché-free views of selling sex seen in years.

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According to Sasha Grey’s Twitter feed, the porn actress/star of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (of which I am a big fan) returned from Australia yesterday, where she was promoting the movie at the Sydney Film Festival, to learn that a Los Angeles-based porn actress has tested positive for HIV. The actress, who is being identified as Patient Zero, had two male partners in the industry who are in the process of being tested, and in the meantime, the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation is advising performers who have worked with the infected actress or people she has worked with “not to work.” Sasha Grey is apparently taking the same precaution; last night, she twittered: “I have my partners tested two days before I do a scene with them, but I’m abstaining until our industry hears more about this.” Follow her Twitter feed for further updates.

Award-winning American pornographic actress Sasha Grey's sex scenes in veteran director Steven Soderbergh's movie The Girlfriend Experience were cut after he decided they were not required.

Soderbergh, 46, had discovered Grey, 21, in Los Angeles Magazine, and he was determined to hire her to play the part of a high-class NYC hooker in his new drama.But, oddly enough, even though.

she is an X-rated film star, she did not have to bare much or even do a sex scene. "Steven never really said if there was going to be a sex or scene or not, but in the outline it did say for three different scenes, 'Sex Scene with Chris', 'Sex Scene with Client B',

'Sex Scene with the Hobbyist'. I never really knew," Fox News quoted her as saying."But I knew he (Soderbergh) wouldn't have a sex scene for the sake of sex," she said. According to Soderbergh, he had looked closely at the script, and then decided "it wasn't necessary".

After initially "discovering" Sasha Grey in Los Angeles Magazine, veteran director Steven Soderbergh was determined to hire the X-rated film star to play her first mainstream role: a high-class NYC hooker in his new drama "The Girlfriend Experience." But oddly enough, Gray didn’t have to bare too much of her body or even do a sex scene.

"Steven never really said if there was going to be a sex or scene or not, but in the outline it did say for three different scenes, "Sex Scene with Chris," "Sex Scene with Client B," "Sex Scene with the Hobbyist." I never really knew," Gray recently told us. "But I knew he (Soderbergh) wouldn’t have a sex scene for the sake of sex."

Those of you who’ve seen Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience” will know a little bit about Sasha Grey, who plays the main character. Those of you who are porn enthusiasts will know a hell of a lot more, seeing as Grey has been in more than 160 porn flicks over the past three years.  From “Teenage Whores 3” to “Anal Cavity Search 6,” Sasha’s done it all. (Or at least most of it.)
But while Grey’s been a porn world bad ass for a while, starring in a Soderbergh film has, uh, exposed her to a more mainstream and art house audience. It’s also opened her up to a s**t storm of criticism for participating in what many consider to be an exploitative industry.
But while it’s easy to call Grey deluded for thinking that she’s liberating women instead of promoting oppression, you’d have to ignore a hell of a lot of what she’s saying in order to make the claim. During her 2007 appearance on “The Tyra Banks Show,” an 18-year-old Grey kept it together while a wide-eyed, semi-psychotic looking Tyra essentially implied that Grey must have been abused as a child, even if she didn’t, you know, realize it. There is, after all, no other reason a young lady would ever, ever get into porn.Sasha waxed poetic on how she represents herself, on appreciating porn, and her willingness to do most anything experimental as a means of exploring her sexuality. Meanwhile, Tyra stared, mouth agape, throwing in patronizing one liners and refusing to believe that Sasha could possibly have any idea what she’s talking about. We’re not quite ready to call Grey a feminist liberator, as some have suggested, but the outright condemnation, too, seems a bit rash. Sasha’s 20 now and sticking by her original claim: porn allows her to explore her sexuality and no one has ever forced her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Is it really impossible to be a porn star without being exploited? What do you think?

So we were out at lunch yesterday when we got the call informing us that we were going to have the pleasure of interviewing Sasha Grey aka arguably the World's biggest pornstar at the moment / American Apparel model, in her hotel room... It sure made for an euphoric end to the afternoon.

What's interesting though is how each of our different girlfriends took the news. On one side of the spectrum we had partners who were genuinely happy for us and the opportunity, and lets just say the reaction from the other side of the tunnel was quite the antithesis. ; )

If you've ever watched one of Sasha's (clothed) videos, you would know she's an extremely learned young lady with the World at her feet which is why we've always struggled to understand how this is the same young lady who has played a feature role in film titles such as "Cum Buckets 8"? Rather than spend our life pondering we quizzed her on it, we asked whether she ever cringes at the names of the films she stars in. In short, she answered "Yes" saying that she'd love to make films that her fans could display proudly up on their shelves with the rest of their DVD collection and that it's something that she's actually looking to change with her own directing and production work.

There's no denying she's going to do big things in the industry (pardon the pun,) but today just certified it for myself; she's a woman on a mission with a goal and an ambition to match. She's going to reshape porn forever and she knows it. Her mother should be proud of her.

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Brainy porn star Sasha Grey says she was joking when she told Rolling Stone she wanted to drape herself in a Palestinian flag, go on The Howard Stern Show and confront the shock jock for being (as scribe Vanessa Grigoriadis reported in her story) “a closet racist.” Apparently, Stern didn’t see the humor in her remarks, and ripped Grey a new one on his radio show this week.

Grey Tweeted Thursday that her Stern comment to RS in the current issue was “a joke,” that “he grew up in a black neighborhood and extremists don’t support [the] lib[eration of] women’s rights,” and that the comment was mostly an attempt at self-deprecation. Grigoriadis tells RS, “There were three other people at the dinner where Grey said this, and I don’t think any of them would describe her manner as joking.”

When news of the quote reached Stern, he took to the airwaves to lambaste the star of The Girlfriend Experience.

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Sasha Grey is moving beyond the X rating.The megapopular adult film star -- who gets about 3.5 million hits on Google on any given day - is starring in Steven Soderbergh's latest, The Girlfriend Experience.

OK, so the role isn't such a stretch -- a $2,000-an-hour Manhattan call-girl who offers actual friendship to her clients, much to the dismay of personal trainer boyfriend played by Chris Santos -- but sex isn't the plot. This is a Soderbergh affair, after all.

Starring in the Traffic and Ocean's 11 director's 20th feature film was ''amazing,'' said Grey, from Exxxotica Miami Beach, last month.

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Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience ends with a scene of such raw intimacy that it's difficult to endure: In a back room of a store, an orthodox Jewish diamond vendor disrobes down to his undergarments, embraces high-priced escort Chelsea (adult-film star Sasha Grey), and, while doing little save hugging her, experiences something akin to a sexual climax or emotional breakdown.

It's uncomfortable and sad and weird and intense--and it's also the lone time human emotions are displayed so nakedly onscreen. The Girlfriend Experience--in escort parlance, a service for which the hired woman acts like the client's girlfriend--is Soderbergh's most fragmented, nonlinear story since The Limey, but also his most austere and uninviting. Girlfriend is less about Chelsea's life as an escort--in which she pretends to be for her client while she, perhaps, pretends to be in a real relationship with her boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos), a personal trainer--than it is visual exploration of economics. Set during October 2008, in the run up to the presidential election and the impending economic collapse, money is on everybody's mind: Chelsea's clients offer her financial advice, Chris shops for a better working environment, and Chelsea even meets up with an "escort reviewer"

 (film critic and Some Came Running blogger Glenn Kenny, in the movie's most deliciously seedy role) in hopes of raising her online profile and prices.

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Sacha Baron Cohen failed to seduce Eminem at the recent MTV Movie Awards, so he could learn a thing or two from another Sasha—Sasha Grey, that is.Cohen has Brüno, uh, coming out, but the porn star with Morticia eyebrows already has the legit indie hit The Girlfriend Experience in area theaters. (You can also watch it on-demand now, too.) And while Cohen’s last starring movie may have been the $128 million smash Borat and Grey’s the Beyonce-free Dreamgirlz 2, here are six lessons Sasha could teach Sacha about show-biz seduction.

6. Shine regardless of your cast. Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen appeared with stars like Will Ferrell and Johnny Depp. But Sasha Grey did, well, more with names like Erik Everhard, Arnold Schwarzenpecker and plump ex-Premiere.com critic Glenn Kenny.5. Make it last. Cohen’s Borat went on and on about promising “sexy time.” Grey’s Chelsea takes the longer view by promising a cuddling-included “girlfriend experience.”

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