If the human body is obscene, complain to the manufacturer…

Jesse Jane is a porn star. In fact, at the moment, there is an argument for her being The Porn Star. She is one of the main talents in the most well respected porn producers in the world, Digital Playground. She has the curious distinction of being the main star of the biggest budget porn movies of all time, Pirates 2 stagnettis revenge. She has become the poster girl for porn’s move towards higher production values and resurgence of full length movies.

Know to her friends as Cindy Taylor, Jesse Jane really is one of the big players in the porn industry at the moment. Being a pornstar is such a weird career and is so remote from what most people can imagine that a lot of preconceptions exist around being a porn star. What better a person to address these assumptions than Cindy Taylor. Had I spoke to her character Jesse Jane on the phone it probably would have been the greatest half hour of my life but would have contained nothing suitable for your delicate eyes. Sacrifices.

The interview

So you probably want to know how someone gets into porn? It does seem like a vocation rather than something someone does occasionally as a hobby. Well in Jesse’s case:

“I used to do Bikini modelling for Hawaian Tropic and Hooters but that wasn’t sexy enough. So I contacted Digital Playground and sent them pictures and they flew me to LA the next day and I had a contract.

“I had to convince one of the owners of Digital Playground that I would be a good porn star. They said ‘Oh I don’t want you into porn, you could do mainstream.’I had to convince her I would be good at it.

“Porn is what I wanted to do. I’ve been in it for seven years now and I’m still having the time of my life.”

But wait, if she could have done mainstream movie, why do porn? Isn’t porn for people who can’t make it?

“I’m a very sexual person. I’ve always wanted to be known as a sex symbol and all of the jobs I have had have just gotten a little sexier and a little sexier. Also people having sex really turns me on.

“A lot of girls say they got into porn cause they want to cross over. I got into porn cause I love porn. I do do some mainstream crossover projects and I love doing them. I don’t seek them out though.”

As you’ve just read Cindy signed to Digital Playground. One of the biggest porn high end producers in the world. I wondered what the advantage of this was compared to going freelance.

“To be signed right away was great because I was nobody and I hadn’t done anything. They’re world-wide so having them backing me pushed me all over the world. I don’t do my own company but I love Digital Playground so much, the product speaks for itself. Also it is so hard to start a company in this climate with DVD sales and piracy being so common that being part of Digital Playground is the best thing for me.

“I get treated very well, I wouldn’t say other companies treat their girls bad. I’m sure other contract girls in other companies get treated really well. Being with DP I have an advantage. It’s anything I want to do. They listen to me if I have movie ideas and they put it out there for me. I get to act out my fantasies. They want the girls to be happy. They realise the girls have to be happy on the film to sell the films.

“This is the worst time the industry has had ever. Believe it or not Digital Playground hasn’t been suffering because of movies like Pirates and Nurses that people happen to love. Digital Playground markets their stuff so well so people tend to follow certain stars. They also spend a lot of time making sure their stuff doesn’t show up on free sites.”

Even the idea of being filmed nude, let alone having sex, is excruciating for most. When I asked Cindy about how tough her first scene must have been, she didn’t see to share such reservations.

“My very first scene was a girl girl scene in a movie called No Limits. I actually had two camera crews there because a HBO show called Family Business wanted to see what it’s like on a girl doing her first scene. ‘Everyone was trying to pep talk me to making sure I wanted to do it. I wasn’t nervous at all, I was like ‘Let’s hurry up and go, I don’t need a pep talk at all, let’s go!’”

As Jesse Jane, Cindy Taylor is one of the most famous figures in the porn world, this is not the thing that happens by accident. I asked her if it was simply a case of turning up and having sex (I had “fucking” in my notes but chickened out) or is there is more involved?

“There’s thousands and thousands of girls in this industry and you might be able to name five. Some people don’t treat it as a career. Some people are lazy and don’t put the work in doing radio interviews and TV interviews. There’s a lot more to the industry than just being a star. Like with Pirates and Pirates 2 we went all over the world doing signings and promoting the movies.”

Unusually for a someone in the porn world, Cindy lives in Oklahoma. I assumed that this movie was to get her away from the backbiting and pressures of the scene. However there seems to be another even more important reason…

“It’s not even just that. I’m a Mom. Oklahoma is one of the states where you can’t buy porn. I’m not a ashamed of what I do but it is nice to know my son can’t walk into a store and see his mom [on a magazine] because he’s too young to know it yet. ”

But people have to notice she’s a porn star; she doesn’t really look like a taxi driver or a dentist. So how do Oklahomans act when confronted with her profession?

“If people don’t like it they, mostly women, might give me dirty looks. But more people are curious about it and a lot of people are very accepting. It surprised me, I thought there’d be more negativity but people seem to be curious and interested in it. Everyone, even if they dodge sex, have sex. They all have their own kinky little thing, their fetish, they just don’t want to admit it because they think society will judge them for liking that.”

Despite pornography not being sold in Oklahoma, porn icons tend to get recognised an awful lot. I asked Cindy if it was creepy meeting fans considering her chosen profession.

“I get recognised a lot now. At first it was weird when people called me ‘Jesse”’ I just ignored it ’cause I forgot my porn name was Jesse. I’m used to it now. The only time it still bothers me is when people call me Jesse in front of my kid. He’s still too young to understand about sex, when it’s time for him to know I’ll have that talk with him. That’s when I go ‘Really, you really think my name is Jesse? You don’t see my little kid?’ But when people call me Jesse in front of him I still have to go “Oh there must be this girl called Jesse that looks exactly like me, she seems pretty crazy.

“The only time it makes me angry is when they do it at Toys R Us. Everywhere else I kind of blow it off. It’s happened more than once that I’ll be in Toys R Us with my kid and people with their kids will come up to me. I’m like ‘Are you serious? Do you know where you are dude?’”

Blimey. And speaking of kids, how does Cindy deal and intend to deal with being a parent and doing what she does for a living?

“I talk about him, I just don’t say his name. Everyone knows I’m a mom. If you know me, you know me. Unless you see me with him when he’s playing football or baseball. I never say his name on the interview ’cause he’s just my baby.”

Cindy is married to a fellow porn star Rich Taylor. But when you have sex in front of a camera for a living it has to affect your sex life at home, right? Seeing as they both do porn for a living, they probably can’t summon the will to have sex a lot in their private lives right?

“You know what, I’m not like most girls. I shoot about five or six movies a year. I’m shooting maybe every other month. I shoot all my web stuff with Rich, my husband. Because he’s been in porn longer than I have he’s very accepting. We have sex every day and we’ve been together for five years. Unless I go out of the country without him, that’s the only time we go without sex. We still have such great chemistry. If you’re sleeping with other people it’s just a job. Everybody’s always going to be attracted to other people so it’s good we do it this way. We get it out and we don’t cheat each other. I’m really into girls so I like bringing them home for my husband and I. This way we know everyone’s clean. You build a great trust because you know what everyone is doing. You get it out of you so you don’t have the temptation to cheat.

“If I was working every day, or every other day, my sex life wouldn’t be as great. Sometimes I’ve done two or three scenes a day, which is easy for me. But sometimes I have to do three, when a girl doesn’t show up or whatever, that’s when I get really tired. That’s the only time I’ll come home and be like ‘Not tonight… I don’t even think I can move it’.”

When you are interviewing a porn star, you kind of have to ask them what the craziest thing they’ve done is. I’ve heard they throw you of out journalism if you don’t.

“In the first Pirates I did a scene with Geneena. I don’t normally do anal or anything like that but we were both so into it and both such dominant girls. We were both so into our scene and we had these candles on set so she put two into me end to end. They were both lit too. It’s not something I had to do, we just did it. They don’t really tell me what to do on camera, they just let me go. The wax was so hot and it was dripping onto my body and hardening. Everybody on set about dropped their mouth. I just don’t do anal. It’s something I choose not to do on film. For them to see that, everyone was silent. They were like What made you do that? You don’t even do that.’ My thing we were both so dominant. I didn’t want to be the wussy, I didn’t want to be outdone. I was like ‘I’ll show you, I’ll take it!’”

It is good to see someone enjoying their job. Speaking of employment, with all the free sites like Motherless and RedTube, I asked Cindy how mainstream porn was going to compete in the future and whether she thought she would still have a job in a few years?

“I definitely think that porn is going to be turning back to big budget productions. That’s what porn used to be, not to the scale of Pirates, but they had story lines. People needed something to get into. People needed something pretty. For the last ten years it’s been about ‘What object can I stick in you or how many guys can I put on you.’ It’s the shock factor. That’s not my thing, I would never do that. I would never do that, that’s not sexy to me. I think people are getting tired of it too. It was fun to watch at first because of the shock value just to see what people would do. But now people want porn to come back to stories and be more sensual and that’s what the mainstream is going to start providing. That’s something you can’t get on shock sites.”

But the porn industry has been subject to some big scares with STDs and even a few Aids scares in the past. A health crisis of that magnitude would be cause for massive concern in other industries. Because of how porn is viewed do people take threats like this less seriously?

“I don’t think people take it less seriously. I think it just makes people hate the industry more. Those are the scumbag guys who go to Brazil. Girls there will have sex for fifty bucks on film and do anything. And those guys don’t make people get tests and worse, they bring something back. There’s more Aids scares in regular life than there is in porn. People want to pin-point porn ’cause you do it on film but peoples’ daughters or themselves go and have one night stands. They don’t know anything about it them but they sleep with them because they’re drunk. They’re more at risk than people in the porn industry where everyone has to get tested.”

Speaking of safe sex I asked Cindy how she can promote it but yet never let men wear condoms in any of her scenes. Was she worried young men watching porn would see this and think it was the norm?

“Well I can’t get pregnant anymore…”

Cindy Taylor had a hysterectomy in 2004 due to now dormant cervical cancer.

“…but if I was having sex in porn and I could get pregnant. My guys, because I don’t shoot that often, get tested four days before we do the scene so it’s very current. I know the result to the day so they’re clean before before they sleep with me. I always promote safe sex. I always say that even though I choose not to, you should. I can only choose to not to use a condom because of how careful I am.”

When I told people I was going to interview a porn star they told me to ask the most rude and horrible questions. There seems to be a perception that all porn stars have a horrible past and have been sexually abused. I asked if porn stars could do anything to dispel this image.

“Honestly I don’t think so. People are going to think what they want to think. But honestly there are a lot of girls in this business who like sex and like porn. It turns them on to know people are watching them having sex. There’s people who like travelling the world and having hot sex with hot people.

“People think all porn stars have been abused, I’ve never been abused. No poor me victim here. I don’t have low self esteem. I’m very confident. People who say we have low self confidence are people who are uncomfortable with their bodies and their sexuality. They’re girls who most likely have never had an orgasm cause they’re afraid to tell guys to explore their sexuality because it’s embarrassing. They let the guys get off and they’ve never had any pleasure from it. Girls in porn have confidence and that’s why we don’t care about being naked in front of the camera. We just like to have a good time and we’re not the closet people. We’re not afraid to hide it.

“Or it’s wives who are mad cause their husbands cheated on them ’cause their miserable.”

With Intra places down, could it be the career for you? Jesse’s advice on getting into porn yourself…

1. You need to make sure you are comfortable on film and it’s something you want to do. You need to be comfortable with someone you know - I don’t care if it’s a family member or a friend - seeing it. Because even if you just do two movies and don’t like it they will see it.

2. Never do anything you don’t you don’t want to do. A lot of directors will tell you that you won’t be successful if you don’t do anal or gangbangs. Guess what, you don’t have to do it. They’re just trying to make you do it.

3. You have to do way more than just sitting in front of a camera and having sex. You have to do radio and TV interviews. You have to get on your Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. You promote everts. There’s signings. You have to talk to your fans.

If you can do those three things though, do it. I’ve got to meet the coolest people, visit the coolest places, act out the coolest movies. I’ve had the time of my life.

For more on Jesse Jane, visit JesseJane.com or DigitalPlayground.com