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Jenna Haze 2.0

Jenna Haze, one of porn’s most distinguished performers and most prominent women, announced her retirement from on-camera adult performance on Tuesday, informing her fans via a YouTube video posted on her Tumblr page. In the video, Jenna first thanks her fans for their love and support before announcing her retirement and declaring that, although she won’t be performing anymore (and in fact hasn’t performed on-camera in about a year), she will continue to direct for her Jennaration X Studios company, as well as keeping busy with “a bunch” of non-adult projects that she’s working on, the most immediate of which can be seen in the current issue of FHM – a photo spread in which Ms. Haze appears with her gal-pal Taylor Momsen. She also clarified that she will continue for feature dancing work.

So, what does this mean for the adult industry? Clearly it marks the closing of one era and the opening of another. Jenna Haze wasn’t just consistently popular with fans throughout her ten-year career as a pornstar, she won the approbation of the larger industry bodies, too. Nominated three years in a row for AVN Female Performer of the Year, winning that award in 2009. That same year saw her take home similarly high-falutin awards from XBIZ, XRCO, FAME, Nightmoves, and Hot d’Or. Clearly Jenna Haze was the queen of porn.

Of all current performers, though, who seems most likely to assume Jenna’s former position at the top? Now that Sasha Grey is well and truly finished with performing in adult films, it seems likely that said successor will be either Japanese-American superstar Asa Akira or the winner of 2012 AVN awards for Best Porn Star Website, Best All-Sex Release, Best POV Sex Scene, and, Female Performer of the Year, the insatiable, the relentless Bobbi Starr.

As long as Jenna directs both Asa and Bobbi, who is now also a director, it’s clear that, although we’ll be nostalgic for Jenna’s glory days in front of the camera, we’ll also be extremely happy that she’s still making hardcore porn, just doing it on a new career path.

Remembering Kandi Barbour

Some sad news crossed the Mr. Pink’s desk this week, concerning the apparent loss of another porn heroine of the Golden Age, Kandi Barbour. Star of such XXX films as The Pink Ladies (1980), Bon Appetit (’80), California Gigolo (’79), and Screwples (’79), Barbour (real name Linda Jean Smith) amassed a small but impressive filmography over her nine years as an adult performer, leading her to be inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 2009. To the surprise of many people in porn, the native Kansan was sadly found dead in San Francisco on Thursday January 26th, another victim of the city’s immense homeless problem.

As Golden Age director Carter Stevens recalled to AVN, the last time he had any knowledge of Barbour’s whereabouts and health was 22 years ago when his wife saw her in Hawaii. “She was living above the club [Club Hubba Hubba] and working there… she had a drinking problem. She had gained a lot of weight and was living in a muumuu and never took it off. She did has some mental problems, even at that point.” Suffering from a dysmorphic body image, Barbour believed her nose to be crooked – it wasn’t – and often spoke of having it “fixed.” Very little information about her life between that time and the discovery of her body on a San Francisco street. She was 55-years-old.

Sadly, like so many performers who came both before and after Barbour, she may largely be remembered by her rather modest entry at Wikipedia: “Kandi Barbour was a former American adult models, pornstar and exotic dancer.”

Putting a Cap on Porn

As detailed last month right here at Mr. Pink’s, residents of the City of Los Angeles may soon be voting on a ballot measure that would make it impossible for porn production entities to receive shooting permits without guaranteeing that all performers would be equipped with condoms, dental dams, and other prophylactics. As the proposed initiative gathers steam in the lead-up to July’s elections, arguments for and against mandated condom usage and the enforcement thereof are becoming more and more contentious. AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Associate Director of Communications Lori Yeghiayan has claimed that the recently quoted (LA Times, Dec. 19, 2011) $4.4 Million an “estimate for total city and county costs,” and far exceeds the actual cost to the city of LA, which she suggests is more in the ballpark of $700,000. (An amendment to the Times article published this comment from Yeghiayan and suggested erroneous reporting of the higher figure.)

Last Tuesday, Jan. 3rd, AHF started a petition drive with the goal of placing a similar measure on the forthcoming ballot in the Los Angeles County elections, casting their influence over a far wider area and encompassing far more of the adult entertainment industry than the initial movement had. Now, once again, that $4.4 Million figure has come back into play, this time as the estimated cost of landing the measure on the Los Angeles County ballot. Where would the money go? Why, presumably to AHF, of course. After all, who else is more adequately equipped and motivated to uphold and enforce a proposed law enacted to supposedly protect adult entertainment workers against HIV and AIDS infections than AIDS Healthcare Foundation itself?

A recent editorial in the Times has aligned that new source with AHF’s cause, but with HIV and AIDS infections on the rise within the close by Navajo Nation (as also reported in LA Times; Jan. 4, 2012), it should be clear to the Times’ editorial department that a far more pressing matter requiring AHF’s attention is quite literally just around the corner.

Ken Russell’s Posthumous 3D Porno Masterpiece

The international cinema community was saddened to learn late last month of the sudden death of controversial British filmmaker Ken Russell. Director of such bold cine-sexual experiments as Whore, The Devils, Salome’s Last Dance, and Women in Love, Russell was notoriously obsessed with sexuality and the Roman Catholic church. Passing away at the age of 84, Russell left a number of projects unfinished, one of which was a remake of producer Bill Osco’s 1976 X-rated musical comedy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland… in 3D! The remake was in the final scripting stages and was a collaborative effort by Osco and Russell, but will now go into production as a tribute to the last filmmaker. The original film cost just $500,000 to produce, but ended up raking in more than $100 million in box office sales. With no word on the proposed budget for the 3D remake, we can only assume it would cost substantially more. Russell’s cinematic flamboyance and Osco’s clout as the producer of one of the premiere hits of porn’s Golden Age, make for a uniquely intriguing project and one that will surely be as controversial, exuberant, and salacious as Russell’s memory demands.