Thank You, Holly Randall, Kylie Ireland And Sarah Garlits! How The Adult Industry Can Help You.

Lots I could whinge about, especially about Québec.

But I am in a rare benign, if sombre, mood.

You see, I have been listening a lot to Holly Randall's Unfiltered podcast as of late, and there is lots there that is a change. A pleasant change? Not entirely, but enough so to get my mind on things other than the mudhole I live in, geographically, health- and family-wise.

Holly Randall, for those who do not know, is a photographer extraordinaire. She is also a director and producer for the San Fernando/Chatsworth side of the Mountain, as opposed to the Hollywood side of the Mountain. The direct-to-video, direct-to-dvd, direct-to-Internet, side of the Mountain. Holly Randall, in other words, is a producer and director in the adult entertainment industry. Like many people in the industry, Holly Randall is a thoroughly magnetic, charming and interesting person.

I have been in contact with Ms. Randall on and off during the years, more off than on, admittedly. A decade ago, there was this now defunct social media platform that was like Twitter without the spacing constraints. The first time I contacted Ms. Randall, it was to tell her that said now defunct social media platform had killed Melissa Lauren's account. Even back then, social media had a jihad against the adult industry. Ms. Randall replied to me. "Thanks. I'm filming her today. I just showed this to her."

The second time I was in contact with Ms. Randall on that now defunct platform was shortly after she had announced she had entered recovery. It was a brief exchange of messages. I offered her support. She acknowledged my message and thanked me for it. I doubt she would remember it today.

It is this second contact with Ms. Randall a decade ago that now has me writing. I remember Ms. Randall going into recovery. There was a brutal betrayal involved by an extremely scumbaginous person she took to be a friend. Ms. Randall also talks about her recovery in the following Unfilteredepisode with Seth Gamble.

A significant portion of the above episode deals with recovery. And here is where the mere end-users of adult entertainment tune out, while people like me who are interested in the adult industry quaan industry and the people within it quapeople perk up and listen more than we did before.

As I have said multiple times before, I was, until about a decade ago, a mere end-user of adult industry work product. Then, in a rather dark time in my life, I came across Kylie Ireland and Eli Cross doing The Kylie Ireland Show Podcast. Their liveliness and inimitably hilarious turn-of-phrase put a smile on my face during a time  when I did not think that smiling would have been possible. They did thus merely by talking, merely by discussing things in the industry, not one square inch of naughty bits being shown in the process. This is what told me that adult industry people were, more than just merely being lubriciously fun to look at, also thoroughly engaging people who knew a lot about life, especially its hard knocks. In this manner there are commonalities between Holly Randall, Kylie Ireland and Sarah Garlits. More on this later.

In the video above, Ms. Randall and Mr. Gamble talk about recovery. I am not as familiar with Mr. Gamble as I am with Ms. Randall. From what I know of Ms. Randall, her recovery was initially very hard, beginning as it did with that savage betrayal.

But the thing is, even though she says she was "wild" before recovery, there is an essence to Holly Randall that was there during her "wild" days, and that persisted through her recovery and is still there today. You see, a decade ago, there were several disreputable adult industry forums that were basically flame war platforms. Ms. Randall regularly posted on one of these forums...and was themost liked--if not the ONLYliked--person there. It is not as if forum posters were all Internet tough guys who said all kinds of shit to people who were not around and then turned pussy the moment someone asked them to say that shit to their face. Melissa Lauren was also a regular at the same forum and she got all kinds of shit. In this regard, Mel role-modeled the exact way to handle trolls online. You see, Mel famously took Belladonna's baseball bat up her lower rear exit port. It was such an experience that Belladonna let her keep the bat as a memento of the glorious occasion. Whenever Internet tough guys on that now-defunct forum talked shit about Mel, she inquired as to whether or not they would be man enough to have an intimate, real-world, encounter with her Louisville Slugger. That put the trolls in their place real quick.

So, back to Ms. Randall. As I said, she was the most liked person on this shit-flinging site. She was the most respected person there. She had the exact same charm that she does today on Unfiltered. Her signature line was "I keep a respectful distance from my models, even when I am lubing up their pussies." She posted pictures of herself there. Same warm eyes that made you feel comfortable. EXACT same genre of goofy BTS candids that made you laugh as she now has on her Instagram. When she posted, she also had the same wit that cracks you up on Unfiltered. Sure, she knew her way around the "F" word, but she never threw it about with a nonchalance bordering on trashiness that you see eternally on display by the $20 hookers of Real Housewives Of [Insert Name of City here] and of MTV's Da Joizey Shore. In one exchange, posters asked her if she would ever do it with another woman. Ms. Randall's response was along the lines of "I don't know...Aria [Giovanni] is like a sister to me...maybe I'd do it with Mel, but I am afraid she would be too rough with me," to which Mel replied "How will you know unless you try?" This necessitates a segue into what the adult industry was like a decade ago.

Ms. Randall was entirely within reason to be unsure of what a girl-girl encounter with Melissa Lauren would have turned out to be. Mel, you see--as she said on her own profile--is REALFrench, not French-Canadian. What is more, there are some people who think that Kink.com is the horror of horrors. People like Gail Dines for example. This shows how shallow and ignorant people like Dines are. I heard a story that, when Gore Vidalset out to write Myra Breckinridge, he aimed to make Peyton Place look like Little House on the Prairie. If this was indeed his intention, he succeeded beyond anyone's reasonable expectations. Likewise, although CyberNet Entertainment (as Kink.com was then known) sure wasn't your daddy's Playboy, it was quite tame and whitebread compared to this gentleman named Khan Tusion and his franchises Meatholes, Pissmopsand Hellfire Sex. Mel was a switch on CNE/Kink, and a domme on Hellfire Sex. Now she is back in the European Union, doing camshows while being happily married. Mel's has been a beautiful evolution over a decade.

So has Ms. Randall's evolution. A decade ago, she was unsure if she would try g/g. Now, she is firmly straight, something she has said across several Unfilteredpodcasts. Ms. Randall has evolved without becoming something entirely different. The partying may be gone and some curiosities satisfied, but Ms. Randall did not become jaded and heartless for her learning experience. She is still as warm, open and approachable as she was a decade ago. What is more, she retains these beautiful powers even though she and the industry as a whole are in a far more precarious and uncertain place today than they were ten years ago. That has to do with their work ethic and ingenutiy, something Holly Randall and Kylie Ireland taught me, and that has to do with their personal bravery, something Holly Randall and Kylie Ireland and Sarah Garlits taught me. These are qualities I found some of on the San Fernando Valley/Chatsworth side of the Mountain, and which are nowhere to be seen in the aimless Hollywood side of the Mountain which, thanks to the disruption called streaming, is in equal disarray. Unlike the SFV/Chatsworth side of the Mountain, however, the Hollywood side does not know what to do. Many Hollywood actors have become YouTubes mope-style professionally outraged-at-everything-protestors.

I do have something in common with Ms. Randall, Ms. Ireland and Mr. Gamble in that, until recently, I was a lover of Ye Olde Buckfast. Part of that is tradition. The "until recently" part did not come about as a result of an intervention or me hitting rock bottom. Rather, it came about as a result of a drastic change in family situation, a change that requires me to have my head and my ass wired together for extended periods of time, something to which an intimate relationship with the Bucky's is most inconducive.It has been like this for several months now. To my surprise, I do not miss the Bucky's one bit. On my revictualising runs, I pass by the liquor sto' quite a bit, and never once in these several months have I felt the temptation to go in, even though I am under a not inconsiderable amount of stress.

Part of the reason for that is that I now have a mission, a familial one. There is nothing worse than a Landsknechtwithout a mission, but there is nothing more furiously determined than a Landsknecht witha mission. I am descended from Landsknechts in the service of France who were deployed to New France (which is today as the anything-BUT-French shithole known as Québec) in the 1640's.

Another part of that reason is the examples I have had. This would be  Holly Randall and Kylie Ireland and Sarah Garlits. Let me start with Kylie Ireland. The second entry of this blog is my review ofThe 8th Day, a movie Ms. Ireland and Mr. Cross (and Lexi Lamouran Ethan Cage) worked very hard on, a movie for which the late Amber Rayne--it still hurts to say "late"--was nominated for an AVN Best Supporting Actress. A movie for which, if I am not mistaken, Holly Randall did stills. The 8th Dayis a SUPERBfilim, infinitely superior to anything Michael Bay shits out, classes above the standard-issue non-Axel Braun Avengers abortions. I am proud to own it and several other superb adult industry features. But The 8th Day was pure hell for Kylie Ireland. Budget that made shoestring budgets pity it. Get up at the crack of crack. Put the finishing touches on the set components. Get the set components into the vehicles whilst hoping to fuck to beat the DTLA traffic. Getting stuck in DTLA traffic till noon. Hauling out to the motherfucking desert. Park vehicle a thousand yards from the site. Haul every bit and morsel of set from vehicle to the site. Set up. Then, if you are really lucky, get in an hour of shooting. Then reverse the process, only to start all over again the next day.

That was the hell that was the production of The 8th Day for Kylie Ireland. This was circa the financial collapse. Most other people were just chilling. Not Kylie Ireland. No, Kylie Ireland was doing the kind of things that United States Air Force pilots and Joint Air Terminal Controllers who pass SEREtraining are able to do, which is find it within themselves to put in thirty-six hour days when every nerve fibre in them is screaming "STOP!" Ms. Ireland did all of this sober. It took at terrible toll on her. Her BTS segment in The 8th Day is very painful to watch. The words coming from her are painful, and rendered even more so by the few tears that stream her face.

But I am happy I did watch it. I am happy I did watch it because it reinforced for me the fact that Kylie Ireland is an extraordinary human being. Many times since, especially in recent months, I have asked myself, what would Kylie Ireland do? If the answer is not immediately tactically applicable, it at least mitigates my angst. I am happy to say that, today, in 2018, nearly a decade after the production of The 8th Day, Kylie Ireland has not only survived the experience, she has also incorporated the hell she went through as a sine qua non of her everyday life. Since she and her husband Andy Appleton are, for all intents and purposes, the only set design crew in the industry, Kylie Ireland is a 2018 version of 1940 Royal Air Force Spitfire pilot, always outnumbered and fatigued, yet always rising and flying up to meet the next contestant. Part of that is pure Ms. Ireland, part of that is related to the state of the industry, which I will get to in a bit.

(First, here is Ms. Randall's Unfilteredepisode wherein Ms. Ireland and Mr. Appleton are guests)

First, though, I want to talk about Sarah Garlits. Sarah Garlits is the former adult performer formerly known as Sarah Blake. Ms. Garlits lives with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as the result of childhood and partner rape. She came forward in late 2015/early 2016 and documented her oftentimes daily struggle with CPTSD on YouTube, on Twitter and on her blog. I am sympathetic to Ms. Garlits. I too live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, albeit resulting from having to identify the remains of loved ones rather from sexual abuse. A lot of what Ms. Garlits goes through and shares I also go through. Ms. Garlits, however, is stronger than me. She is strong enough to say what is going on. I just have the feeling that people will not understand what I say, so there is no point. I handle PTSD in a way that differs from the way Sarah Garlits handles PTSD. But Sarah Garlits posting about her struggle, about her fight to live life despite PTSD, remains a source of inspiration. Always. When she was Sarah Blake, there was always a warmth, a kindness to Sarah Garlits' eyes. Sarah Blake's performances, especially with Charlie Laine, were always superb, but it was always the warmth in her eyes that caught me. Guess what? That warmth in her eyes never went away, not in late 2015 when she opened up about living with CPTSD, and not once since. Do not get me wrong, Sarah Garlits is no pushover, and I would not recommend anyone tangle with her. She is one tough and scrappy lady. But she is tough without being heartless, she is tough but she is kind and caring at the same time. This is something extraordinary, this is something that can only be done by someone with exceptional strength and exceptional character. It is as if  Sarah Garlits' drive to be kind is in daily combat with PTSD...and winning. What is more, she is parlaying the skills she learned in the adult industry into a new career direction.

In this regard,Sarah Garlits exemplifies the extraordinary ability of adult industry people to do like Formula 1's legendary Bruce McLaren did and put what The Harvard Business Review calls their transferable skills to full use. Bruce McLaren raced for Coopers, Briggs-Cunningham and others, took what he learned during these paid apprenticeships and set up his own shingle, which is still around today. In this decade, successful adult industry performers, whether knowingly or not, follow Bruce McLaren's career path. They "apprentice" under Kink.com or another company to get their brand noticed, then they set up their own shingle via Onlyfans, Niteflirt or private Skype shows and custom videos. Adult performers today personify Ayn Rand's "John Gault."

Some, like Kylie Ireland and Melissa Lauren, branched out into areas such as directing, filiming and, in the case of Ms. Ireland, set design. This is a further refinement of the Bruce McLaren model. Bruce was not only a racer. He also built his own cars, even when he was racing for Coopers. For Bruce, this branching out allowed him to have a car he more fully understood and out of which he could get more precisely what he wanted during a Grand Prix. For Ms. Ireland, this branching out, this fully utilising her transferable skills, has helped her survive an industry disrupted by an evil Dutchman who pirated adult industry product and made it all available for free on the Intar-Webs. The very same thing can be said for Holly Randall. She started out as a photographer. Then she became a filmmaker. Then, she did her own shows, first on Playboy TV, and now Unfiltered. As with Ms. Ireland, but unlike anyone on the Hollywood side of the Mountain, Ms. Randall is a jack of all trades. She is her own producer, director and PA, as well as her talent coach and shoulder to cry on.

She has to be. That evil Dutchman has, in the opinion of Casey Calvert, destroyed the adult entertainment industry. Why would end-users be motivated to buy what they can get for free. EVERYONEin the industry is hurting as a result. Ironically, the erosion of net neutrality could be the industry's lifeboat. Banishing the industry from the Intar-Webs will not end the demand for industry products. End-users would simply have to do what we did back in the day and BUYvideos and magazines again.

That, however, remains to be seen. In the meantime, Holly Randall, like everyone else in the industry, is clawing to stay alive. This is one of the things that makes Unfilteredso unique. Ms. Randall has had Mike Quasar, Axel Braun and Kayden Kross on Unfiltered, all three of them also being filmmakers--all three of them, in other words, being Ms. Randall's competitors in a severely disrupted industry. Let me put this another way. Do you see the head honcho of Sears hosting a podcast with the head honcho of J.C. Penney's to discuss how much Amazon and Alibaba have fucked them over and ponder openly about how to counter the effect of the latter two? That is one thing that makes Holly Randall special. She cares for this industry enough to promote even her competitors. This special caring for her industry has been a constant with Holly Randall over the decade or so during which I have known of, and been in intermittent contact with, her. As Bruce McLaren recounts, once Sir Jack Brabham took what Coopers taught him and set up his own shop, Coopers were wary of letting Bruce or any other driver near the garage. Holly Randall, unlike Coopers, either has the self-confidence enough, or the kindness enough, to be and act community-minded instead of looking out only for number one.

In at least one other regard, Holly Randall stands out even within the industry. You see, there have been some industry types who have fallen on hard times and used this as an excuse to become embittered has-beens shitting on the industry that allowed them become has-beens in the first place. The names Rob Black , Phyllisha Anne, and Donkey Long come most readily to mind. Holly Randall went through a very hard time a decade ago and she is living through hard times now. Recently, she tweeted that things were especially rough financially. So, what did she do about it? Did she open a dis site and dish out all kinds of dirt on everyone she knew in the hopes of getting traffic? No. She acted like what we used to call back in the day, before the fucking Beta Max killed off the Grindhouse, leaving us with Andy-fucking-Sidaris--promoter par excellence of bad 80's hairstyles and even worse '80s wardrobe choices--as an ersatz, an ADULT. Instead of profiting out of making a bitchfest on the industry or exploiting the industry, Holly Randall simply stopped getting her hair straightened in order to save money. THATis responsibility, THATis professionalism, two things you rarely see in any sector of any industry today.

What is more, Holly Randall openly promotes responsibility and professionalism in Unfiltered. In the following installment with Charlotte Stokely, she asks "If I see you bitching on social media, I have to wonder what you are  going to do when the shoot goes longer than expected."

This is the kind of thing that The Harvard Business Review, The Economistand The Financial Times talk about all the time. The difference is that the former three charge you big bucks for the same advice, while subscriptions to Holly Randall's Patreonare far more cost effective. This is also something that has been a persistent theme in Dwayne Johnson's and Dany Garcia's superb HBO series Ballers. The difference is that Ballers, superb as it is (I would even go so far to say that it is THEbest show currently on TV) is scripted off of someone else's experience, whereas, when Holly Randall speaks on these issues, she is speaking first hand as an employer who has had to deal with less-than-reliable employees/contractors, and who is thus giving you tips on what NOTto do if you want to be regarded as a valuable employee/contractor whose name will be retained in her Rolodex (or whatever the 2018 smatphone/dumbpeople equivalent thereof is.)

So long story--less long--if you want to observe an industry coping with disruption, listen to Holly Randall. If you want to be liked by employers, listen to Holly Randall. If you want to be a good person when times are bad and its much easier to be a nasty piece of shit, listen to Holly Randall.