Page 46 - AVN May 2018

FEATURE | By Dan Miller
FEATURE
Tommy Pistol plays a man who restricts his wife’s food intake while encouraging his mistress (Karla Lane) to eat her fill—and beyond—in “The Weight of Infidelity.”
experience and a fun experience; and certainly, I left
that feeling very confident and eager to work with
her again.
… I myself went through an interesting process in
coming to a point where I really decided that it was
something very important to do. Initially I took the
idea and thought OK, this is a great opportunity to
collaborate. I would much rather collaborate on this
than anything else. And I had some mixed reactions
when I took it back to my sales and marketing team
who are looking at the data points and the sales
figures; and one of the convictions that Angela was
very strong about, which I really, really applauded,
was that she wanted to make sure we cast a plus-size
model within this story.
And that was something that was part of how
she wanted to tell it. And I had a little bit of back
and forth with my teams back home [in Montreal]
because that was going to take us to a place that was
not the core or sort of stereotypical model type or
body type that our audience is looking for. And it
kind of came to a point where we even went back a
little bit and Angela challenged me on that where she
said, “In all respect if it’s not going to work it’s no
problem, but this is something that’s very important
to me to this story.” And I said, “Yeah, you’re right,
it is important.” In a way what I’m all about is
challenging the status quo. So yeah, let’s do this. And
I very much want to give credit to Angela for really
driving this to happen and also challenging me a bit
to challenge the status quo.
So when we agreed to do it, it was to really do it
the way it should be done with who we wanted to
cast and the story that we wanted to tell and how we
wanted to tell it and the result is so powerful. It’s one
of the most powerful episodes we’ve ever done, so
much so that I’ve decided that it isn’t just going to be
a regular update for us. It’s actually something that
we’re going to offer to everybody to watch for free.
There are regular updates and then there are
scenes that are really important to show. And the
whole motivation behind this was to make this
statement and to start this conversation. And so it’s
only right to empower as many people to be able to
see it to facilitate that discussion.
… I think I was so moved by the opportunity
to look at this as more than just being a piece
of commercial content because we do have a
responsibility as producers and content creators to
leave people thinking and to drive the needle so I
think this is a good opportunity to do that.
AW: We’ve been working on this for a while
because it was November I sent that first email to
[Bree] with my script idea and it was in that first
email that I said that I wanted Karla and Tommy.
Obviously, Karla being a BBW, plus-size model I
thought that could be an issue for Pure Taboo and
Pure Taboo’s target audience and a similar story may
have been able to be told with a slimmer model. But
when we did have discussions about the casting and
changing the casting I just felt that writing Karla out
of the script or choosing someone else wouldn’t tell
the story how it was initially supposed to be told.
And the fact that casting was even questioned
shows that fat is taboo, in and of itself. Just the
idea of being fat and having a story where we talk
explicitly about fat and becoming fat and sexualizing
fat. That’s taboo in and of itself. And Pure Taboo
is all about addressing taboos and breaking taboos
and breaking stereotypes. I wanted Karla from the
beginning and we went back and forth and Bree
agreed with me and we came to the conclusion that
Karla was the one.
It turned out to be an incredible scene, aside from
the story itself, the actual sex scene for me I think
is powerful and beautiful and sexy in a dark way as
well.
It’s a little fucked up but it’s also sexy. I use the
fetish of feederism as a vehicle for exploring Tommy’s
character’s abuse. He force-feeds Karla, while
basically underfeeding me. I wanted this piece to not
be fat-shaming. I wanted to be able to talk about fat
and talk about food intake without shaming anybody.
And one thing I did want to make clear is even
though I use the fetish of feederism in this piece
to talk about abuse, feederism in and of itself isn’t
abusive. It’s a fetish that can be safe, sane and
consensual. It often has a dominant and submissive
power structure. But it can also be just about the joy
of food in a sexual or intimate context. So I hope that
comes across that the feederism in the scene is an
abusive use of that fetish. It’s not the way that fetish
is usually experienced in the real world.
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It’s quite powerful because in the beginning you
see where John is using food as a way to control my
actions. He criticizes what I eat; he controls my workout
schedule; he takes my food away from me; he watches
my weekly weigh-ins, consistently criticizes my body. So
in the beginning you get this feeling that John obviously
wants a skinnier wife. He likes skinnier women. And
then we completely flip that and break the stereotype
that men always cheat with someone who’s slimmer
and he’s cheating on me with Karla, who plays Karen.
But in his relationship with Karen he’s coercing her to
gain weight. So he’s force-feeding her cupcakes and even
though it’s sort of consensual in the beginning you get
the sense at a certain point that Karla is like, “No, I’ve
had enough cupcakes.” And he’s very coercive in making
her continue to consume.
And I believe this to be true in society that weight has
nothing to do with what John wants. It’s about power;
it’s about control. And he’s controlling us in different
ways and using weight and food as a weapon against us.
And both the women come to recognize this and we
take our revenge.
BM: What was wonderful about the choice to bring
Karla in is that Karla—within the BBW market, within
the plus-size model community—she’s a very well-
known performer, a very popular performer. So she’s
been around and certainly has built a name for herself
within that niche, but has never been in a mainstream
adult product before, has never been in an acting role
before.
She is a self-described gonzo girl, so it was a challenge
for her to come in and play 0 to 60—a pretty serious
role—and she nailed it. She has one part in the episode
where she’s got a real kind of heartfelt confession and
it’s the Karla Show in that sequence. It’s essentially a
monologue. And I think we shot it in two or three takes
but we could’ve taken the first one. She was a natural.
And that’s not even to hit the important social
message here, but even just for the inclusiveness. I
walked away from that experience with a renewed sense
of interest in being able to—whether it’s on Pure Taboo
or another platform—offer these types of opportunities
to different types of models that are often shunned from
that just because of the way they look or the particular
niche they serve. When clearly there’s such amazing
talent across the spectrum.
So I really hope to that her fans and fans of BBW
content are going to be able to enjoy something that’s
not just marginalized or a low-quality production
because there isn’t enough overall interest. I was really
happy to see that, too. It makes me want to go create an
amazing premium BBW series, seriously. It’s now on my
radar.
AVN: Before that first take with Karla’s dramatic
sequence, what was your direction for Karla? What kind
of conversation did you have before you started rolling?
BM: The way that we do Pure Taboo episodes, I guess
the approach that I take to all of them is and this was
very much the same, was we do my Porn Script Theater.
We start the day with a discussion and actually what was
really wonderful about was we all sat around the dining
room table and had a really good conversation before
we shot anything, about our motivations and respect
and how we wanted to go about telling this story. So we
kind of set the tone for the day that we were all doing
something important and we all took that challenge and
kind of carried that through. And the way that we don’t