Since the days of Marilyn Chambers in Behind The Green Door ['72], there has always existed a glass ceiling (or K-Y floor) for those that attempt to transition from adult to mainstream cinema. After her porn debut, Chambers starred in Rabid ['77] from noted auteur David Cronenberg (A History Of Violence, Videodrome, Dead Ringers) but never had a mainstream role again, if one could call Rabid mainstream. A few months ago, Chambers was found dead in her trailer park home at the age of 56, the former Ivory Snow girl as the most famous victim of a soulless industry, a cautionary tale for all to heed. [For more cautionary tales than you can shake a dick at, read The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History Of The Porn Film Industry by Legs McNeil & Jennifer Osborne.]
And then there's Sasha Grey.
Grey is the star of the newest film from Oscar-winning writer-director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, The Limey, Ocean's Eleven) entitled The Girlfriend Experience, the story of the economic and emotional adventures of a NYC $2K-per-hour escort filmed entirely with non-professional actors and semi-improvised dialogue. In the adult world, Grey is a whirlwind of energy and assertive vision with over 150 films to her name (such as the cleverly-named Sasha Grey's Anatomy and the medical-sounding Anal Cavity Search #6), at the age of 21 the youngest performer to win the AVN '08 female performer of the year. She is as meta as they come, branding herself as a "performance artist" who multitasks like a mofo -- photographer, documentary filmmaker, author of a treatise on sexual philosophy -- under her Grey Art umbrella.
But does that make her successful in Soderbergh's film? [To his credit, Soderbergh readily admits that the casting of Grey is stunt casting based upon her performing persona, much like the drafting of Julia Roberts for Erin Brokovich, or for that matter any filmmaker looking for a "name" to tentpole a film.] The Girlfriend Experience most resembles Bubble ['05], another quick-and-dirty Soderbergh film involving non-actors. However, TGE is shooting for something deeper, as it repeatedly references the election and the economic downturn, with most of the high-SES characters squarely in the McCain camp.
But the preoccupation with the language of business and commodity -- a language that Grey habitually adopts during interviews, with the repetitions of "name" and "brand" in reference to herself -- conflated with romance and intimacy is the main thrust of Soderbergh's 77-minute sojourn, with a clear conclusion: When the body is the only commodity left, human emotions are the first things to be excised and removed, often to the highest bidder. To this end, the flattened affect of Grey works perfectly; there are a few scenes where Grey reads the laundry list of designer names her wealth entitles her to, a mirror of the superficial infatuations expressed by Patrick Bateman from American Psycho ['00]. And when raw emotion does enter, it often veers from catatonic to histrionic in ways that wouldn't even be "genuine" in the adult world. There are a few glimpses here and there of Grey's potential, but that's on full display in her adult body of work as well. The Girlfriend Experience is a solid contrapuntal to the perceived glamour and opulence of Grey's world, as good as the real thing only if you pretend it is, much like the film itself.
[The Girlfriend Experience opens in selected theaters on Friday. As one of my favorite jokes from David Letterman goes, "I just pray to God that your city has been selected."]
And then there's Sasha Grey.
Grey is the star of the newest film from Oscar-winning writer-director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, The Limey, Ocean's Eleven) entitled The Girlfriend Experience, the story of the economic and emotional adventures of a NYC $2K-per-hour escort filmed entirely with non-professional actors and semi-improvised dialogue. In the adult world, Grey is a whirlwind of energy and assertive vision with over 150 films to her name (such as the cleverly-named Sasha Grey's Anatomy and the medical-sounding Anal Cavity Search #6), at the age of 21 the youngest performer to win the AVN '08 female performer of the year. She is as meta as they come, branding herself as a "performance artist" who multitasks like a mofo -- photographer, documentary filmmaker, author of a treatise on sexual philosophy -- under her Grey Art umbrella.But does that make her successful in Soderbergh's film? [To his credit, Soderbergh readily admits that the casting of Grey is stunt casting based upon her performing persona, much like the drafting of Julia Roberts for Erin Brokovich, or for that matter any filmmaker looking for a "name" to tentpole a film.] The Girlfriend Experience most resembles Bubble ['05], another quick-and-dirty Soderbergh film involving non-actors. However, TGE is shooting for something deeper, as it repeatedly references the election and the economic downturn, with most of the high-SES characters squarely in the McCain camp.
But the preoccupation with the language of business and commodity -- a language that Grey habitually adopts during interviews, with the repetitions of "name" and "brand" in reference to herself -- conflated with romance and intimacy is the main thrust of Soderbergh's 77-minute sojourn, with a clear conclusion: When the body is the only commodity left, human emotions are the first things to be excised and removed, often to the highest bidder. To this end, the flattened affect of Grey works perfectly; there are a few scenes where Grey reads the laundry list of designer names her wealth entitles her to, a mirror of the superficial infatuations expressed by Patrick Bateman from American Psycho ['00]. And when raw emotion does enter, it often veers from catatonic to histrionic in ways that wouldn't even be "genuine" in the adult world. There are a few glimpses here and there of Grey's potential, but that's on full display in her adult body of work as well. The Girlfriend Experience is a solid contrapuntal to the perceived glamour and opulence of Grey's world, as good as the real thing only if you pretend it is, much like the film itself.
[The Girlfriend Experience opens in selected theaters on Friday. As one of my favorite jokes from David Letterman goes, "I just pray to God that your city has been selected."]
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