Interview: Sasha Grey turns 21 in Vegas on Saturday 08:35 AM PT, Mar 13 2009 Only covering Las Vegas can I plan to run an interview with Marie Osmond one morning, and instead wake up to offer you an interview with adult star Sasha Grey. Osmond and I were supposed to meet last night, but she had to reschedule due to a last-minute rehearsal put in for a new dancer at her show at Flamingo. We are meeting tonight for the interview. So, I will have the Q&A with Osmond here for you Monday. I strongly advise Marie Osmond fans to stop reading now!
Sasha Grey overnight has become perhaps the biggest crossover name in adult at this time. Seemingly out of nowhere Grey made Tera Patrick yesterday's news.
In addition to working in porn, Grey is the star of Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming film “The Girlfriend Experience” and will soon have her own reality show. She has appeared in too many mainstream magazines to name. And, even mainstream press are starting to take her celebrity seriously. This morning, for example, though you cannot tell from the online version, Las Vegas Review-Journal has a wrap on top of the newspaper’s front page that includes an entire interview with Grey.
The occasion for the Review-Journal interview and this interview is that for all her success Grey is only now turning 21. So, Grey will be playing celebrity host at Tao this Saturday night to celebrate her birthday. And, unlike Paris Hilton, who last weekend celebrated her birthday in Vegas a month late, Saturday is Grey's actual birthday. Keeping it real is a theme that runs through talking with Grey.
I interviewed her earlier this year for the Buffet, at the Adult Entertainment Expo/ AVN Awards at the Venetian. In that item I recapped my history, such as it was, with Sasha Grey. It mostly involved every source I had in adult calling to tell me I had to meet this teenager, who was 18 at the time, and that she was going to be the sort of star the likes of which the adult industry had never seen.
I should say I am in an interesting position when covering the adult film industry. My focus is only the adult conventions that pass through Vegas, of which there are now at least two annually. I refuse to watch adult movies. I know too many of the people (I have been covering the conventions for a decade) who could be in them to risk a viewing. But I also don’t watch a lot of movies in the first place and have never really seen a porn film as an adult. I have developed friendships with people who work various jobs in the adult industry. Indeed, a handful of my closest friends would include three people with connections to the adult industry. But we rarely discuss their work. I am drawn to them because of their individuality, and their openness to playing with ideas combined with a willingness to sit outside the comforts of careers society approves in order to doggedly pursue their own vision. And, in Las Vegas, a porn star might be the closest thing to an artistic intellectual the town has to offer. I enjoy the company of certain adult entertainers in much the same way I liked arguing with academic theorists in graduate school. The analogy may seem odd, but to the generation Sasha Grey belongs to, for better and worse, adult is far less taboo, and this allows her, for one, to see herself as a performance artist. Her porn is not so different to her than her other pursuits, which include poetry and painting.
This is a long way to get at the point: I have been really aware of Sasha Grey’s rise in adult even as I had no clue what distinguished her from the hundreds of young women who make adult films. So, I was surprised at how outraged readers were when I ran that interview with her in January on the Buffet. Most of the comments are not on the blog because they were too laced with obscenity to post. And, many of the notes came from people who professed to be fans of adult movies. It was the movies that Sasha Grey chose to make that upset these readers so much. And, so the questions raised by those readers is where I started this phone interview with her this week:
Abowitz: In our last interview, I was overwhelmed by the visceral reaction and rage people had to you and the movies you make. They described some staggering things you have done on camera, all of which, I would say, fall into the category of things degrading to women in the extreme. Do you think that your films degrade women? Or, does the popularity of your films disturb you, the idea that so many people want to see these things done to you?
Grey: The last part of your question cut out [on the cellphone] so I will take the first part. I do not think what I do is degrading to women. What is degrading to one person is liberating and empowering to another such as myself. Everyone has a different perception of sex. Some people believe in God and some people don’t. At the end of the day, you can’t make it so black and white. It really comes down to a meeting of taste and what your personal opinions are.
I recently wrote an op-ed piece to a college newspaper in response to something that paper wrote about me. A fan sent it to me. I usually don’t respond to stuff, because I don’t have the time. But this struck a nerve with me. A student wrote this whole story on how she thinks I am being forced to perform the acts I perform or I am just mimicking things. And, that triggered something in me and I just really felt obligated to write something to speak out against that.
Abowitz: Why is that? Is it important that to you that people know you are choosing to do whatever scenes viewers find degrading, and, in fact, to you they would be degrading if you were being forced to do them, but it is liberating because you are not?
Grey: Yes, I make the movies I want to make. I enjoy what I am doing. The things I do on camera, I also do in my personal life. I am a firm believer in that. You need to be comfortable with those things on your own so you are not just doing it for an audience or for a camera. But there is also a side of me that knows I am doing this for consumers so I have to appeal to everybody. And, so there are other films I am in that are more couple-friendly. But what is couple-friendly? To one couple what can be really romantic can seem to another couple really extreme.
Abowitz: Well, considering how extreme your work is seen are you surprised at how popular your films have become?
Grey: I am surprised at how popular my work has become and it happening very early in my career. It was really bizarre for me and I really did not know quite how to take it. But I don’t think it is just my performances. I think it is also because I am so outspoken. I think those two things go together.
Abowitz: Could that be why that article got you upset? To you the things that others see as degrading in your films are balanced by your public presentation of yourself as someone very aware of what you do, and also very much in charge of your world. The article upset you by attacking one of those pillars.
Grey: Exactly. It is rooted down to who you are as a person and your interests. And, I want that to carry to my audience. I consider myself a performance artist. There are other performers who just like hard-core sex. I know people sometimes hate me talking about my performances and my goals. And, I used to not be comfortable with it. But I enjoy doing it now. I think that it is important and not just for women but for men as well to understand.
Abowitz: Well, are you surprised that even without much of your crossover work even having been released yet you have been invited to host a party at a major nightclub on the Las Vegas Strip?
Grey: No, I am not surprised. Mostly, because I have had other offers before from people who did not know I was not 21 yet.
Abowitz: Will you be gambling and drinking?
Grey: Yes. I want to play blackjack and craps.
Photo: Sarah Gerke
WT 24 III 2009
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