Page 52 - AVN June 2015

As a sexual
adventurer and
exhibitionist,
I’d found an
amazing playland.
—Veronica Vera
“I think it was very noticeable
that people were leaving New York
and moving out to California, where
production companies were just setting
up shop like crazy, and people were
picking up video cameras and suddenly
they were filmmakers,” continues
Royalle. “Los Angeles became the go-
to place because there were so many
beautiful young women flocking to
Los Angeles to get into the straight
movies. So that was very noticeable, but
I personally didn’t mind. In fact I kind
of liked it, because other than the fact
that it made it a little more difficult to
cast people, I liked that I was one of the
few production companies that stayed
in New York. I think it really helped set
me apart from the mainstream of adult
porn, and it helped me establish how
different Femme was in terms of look,
style, and concept.”
Royalle shot eight movies in New
York between 1984 and 1992. When
Adam and Eve became Femme’s
distributor, she shot some of the movies
in L.A. as well.
“So we kind of mixed it up then. I did
some in New York and some in L.A. But
again, there is a danger—when you shot
in L.A. you really ran the danger of your
movies looking just like all the other
L.A. porn movies.”
Veronica Vera’s story appears to have
taken a dramatic turn after the adult
industry left the city. But reading Vera’s
book Miss Vera’s Finishing School for Boys
Who Want To Be Girls—titled after the
cross-dressing academy of the same
name that she founded in the early
1990s—and in written correspondence
to me, Vera describes her evolution as
a natural next step in her New York-
based voyage of sexual discovery.
Describing her school on
MissVera.com as “the world’s first
FEATURE
CineKink Moment Club 90 members Veronica
Hart, Veronica Vera, Candida Royalle and Annie
Sprinkle on the festival red carpet, holding a photo of
the late Gloria Leonard.
52 | AVN.com | 6.15
transgender academy and foremost crossdressing service, located in New York City and known across the globe,” Vera
writes to me, “There would be no Miss Vera’s Finishing School if I had not had my earlier career as a porn star.” Not
only did her career in adult film liberate her from a strict Catholic upbringing; it also led her to meet “others who were
committed to exploring sex not simply as a way to make money, but for idealistic reasons, promoting sexual knowledge
over sexual ignorance; dedication to sexual freedom.” And it also was the impetus for starting the school, which began as “a
sideline to finance a memoir about my work in porn.”
Vera writes, “New York’s rich underground sex scene was a great incubator. The print publications: magazines and
newspapers Screw and Transvestian (where I placed my first Academy ad) were on newsstands and connected people prior to
the internet, and perhaps in an even more personal way.”
And finally, she explains, “New York is a very ‘live and let live’ city. The streets are so crowded, the pace so fast, people
come to this city and feel free. A lot of my students visit from out of town and feel safe going out and about en femme
because nobody knows them. Plus, New York is a great city in which to walk and feel the wind up your skirts.”
Meanwhile, across the East River in Brooklyn, a new studio was born on the rooftops of Williamsburg at the turn of the
new millennium. Joanna Angel writes, “Burning Angel originated in a loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It was full of hipsters
back then—now it’s more full of yuppies. When we were there, there were lots of coffee shops, vintage clothing stores, little
restaurants, and a mix of dive bars along with a few ‘gastro pubs’ or mixology bars, which at the time wasn’t even a real
category yet.”
Even though all of Burning Angel’s films are now shot in Los Angeles, Angel believes the company’s New York roots
contribute to its style. She writes, “We shot on a lot of roof tops because we didn’t have much of a budget for locations back
then and it gave Burning Angel this real ‘Brooklyn’ feel. Our talent was different, our crew was different, and just not being
part of Porn Valley in our early days helped us establish our own style without knowing or caring about what anyone else
was doing. I loved New York then and I still love it now.”
Today
The Anthology Film Archives is an imposing building. Sitting on the corner of Second Avenue and 2nd Street in lower
Manhattan’s Bowery district, its brick edifice is made even more stern by its frowning Romanesque-arched windows and
front door covered with a metal grate. But walk inside, climb the winding staircase up two flights, and enter the large movie
theater, and all is warm and full of excitement on this cold February night.
The 2015 CineKink Festival has begun.
New York-based CineKink’s origins are deeply rooted in New York’s ever-changing BDSM community. Founder Lisa
Vandever moved to New York from the West Coast in 1996, with a background in film and a growing interest in the BDSM
sex world.
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