Page 48 - AVN May 2018

FEATURE | By Dan Miller
FEATURE
Angela White (left) wrote “The Weight of Infidelity” with 2016 BBW Performer of the Year Karla Lane (right) in mind and pitched it to producer/director Bree Mills.
to do is … you can easily write off like, “Oh, what
is a collaboration, how involved is each party in it?”
But it’s really amazing to see what my collaborators
are bringing me. … I received two last week. They’re
full scripts! From people that I’ve shot enough times
that they know how we write. It’s really lovely to see,
even when the ideas are all out there and it doesn’t
take much to translate them into a scene treatment,
which is essentially all that I did, so …
AVN: What is it about Tommy that you felt he
could really lift this story to where you wanted it to
be?
AW: Tommy was absolutely incredible. I knew
that he would be good. Obviously he’s won so many
acting awards and everybody knows that Tommy’s
one of the best actors in the business and I’ve seen
that he’s been able to play those creepy characters
for Pure Taboo before. So I knew he’d do a great job
but he even surpassed my expectations. I know the
story affected him a lot, but I think he found the
character to be quite disturbing. Because even while
we were doing takes, there’s a part in the kitchen
where he’s taking the spoon away from me as I’m
trying to have a couple of mouthfuls of ice cream.
The things he is saying to me are quite insulting,
the way he’s speaking about my body and how it’s
not good enough. And when there were breaks and
between takes, he would apologize to me for the
things that he was saying to me.
Even he knew that the things that he was saying,
even though it’s in a role, that you don’t say that
to women. You don’t say that to anybody, but
particularly when someone’s standing in the kitchen
naked and vulnerable. And he felt bad even saying
that to someone in an acting context. I assured him
that whatever he wanted to say, go harder. This is
what I wanted for the story. I wanted to make the
audience feel uncomfortable, but it even made the
actor feel uncomfortable. I knew at that point that
it was going to be quite a powerful story that would
make people think. I’m sure that most people will
not enjoy it. It’s not an enjoyable thing to watch, but
it certainly has a powerful message and a powerful
meaning and it shows just how manipulative John is
as a character in the scene.
BM: I’ve spoken to him about this and Tommy is
certainly one of the greatest actors in the history
of this business, an absolute joy to work with. I
would work with him every time I worked if I had
the opportunity. And he said, “Of all the things that
I’ve ever done this was one of the toughest roles for
me to play because it was so uncomfortable to lose
myself in somebody so manipulative. And I found
it to be an extremely powerful and distributing
experience to go there but as an actor I really think
it’s a landmark scene and it’s certainly one of the
most memorable scenes I’ve ever done.” So coming
from Tommy, who’s done a huge library of different
performances, I think that echoes the overall feeling
I think all of us have about it.
AW: But I think it’s uncomfortable because it’s so
real as well. I’m sure a lot of the characters that he’s
played in Pure Taboo are so unreal—incest—these
things that are not something you’re doing in your
real life. Not that he’s saying these things to women
in real life but it’s a real experience. Most people at
some point in their lives have felt like they’re not
good enough.
And most people, men and women, have looked
in the mirror and thought that their body doesn’t
measure up to an idealized body image. So most
people can relate to that and so when he’s saying
those things it’s something that he can relate to as a
person. I know that must’ve been difficult.
BM: It’s one of those things. It’s definitely a no-
no. And he did it in a brilliant way of just being a
real condescending jerk, where you hear what he’s
saying and it’s just like, “Oh, ohhh.” It does provoke
a feeling of—because you know that’s taboo. That’s
not permissible behavior. And that’s how the scene
opens.
AW: Then it’s even more devastating for her to
discover that he’s cheating on her with someone
that’s larger than her. Because she has spent so many
hours throughout her day, weeks, months, trying
to lose weight, and agonizing over the fact that
her body isn’t good enough only to find out that it
has nothing to do with how she looks because he’s
clearly attracted to women that are much larger.
And you see throughout the scene just how negative his
comments are and how she is. She spends her whole day
obsessing about food and obsessing about exercise and
trying to live up to these expectations both of John but
of society.
John’s really standing in for societal pressures; he’s
standing in for patriarchal values; he’s standing in for
that pressure that we all feel to live up to something
that we’re never going to achieve. And Angie’s lost her
self worth. Even in the beginning you can see when he’s
saying things that should shock her, she’s accepting it—
that she’s not good enough. That she needs to do better
and she understands that.
AVN: Given the tone of the story you were telling,
what went into your decision for the production design,
the lighting and the shots?
BM: We shot it with the same look, feel and
cinematography style that we do for all of our Pure
Taboo episodes, so there wasn’t too much of a contrast
there. I will say this story—even as real as it was in its
subject matter—did involve some fantastical elements
in the sense there was some dream sequences in it and
a lot of inside Angie’s head as a character. So that was a
little bit of a departure from a lot of the stuff that we do,
which is very straight up, one-act play in a room. Real
time. So the final product has a slightly different feel
from some of our other scenes because it incorporated
some dreamscape elements and moments that weren’t
totally rooted in reality.
But in terms of the set design, we wanted it to feel
real conventional. So we used a location that provided
us those looks and sets. And apart from having a lot of
cupcakes involved in the production directly—I mean
they should have a credit—but it wasn’t too far past how
we traditionally shoot and edit our content.
AVN: So all the sex is in the same episode?
BM: I love breaking sex scenes up. I don’t know why
we have to stick to having an intro and then a certain
number of minutes of sex with a minimum number
of positions. … So what we did is we took a boy/girl/
girl pairing and we deconstructed it. So there’s three
sex sequences throughout the scene and three unique
pairings. So you had Angela and Tommy; Tommy and
Karla; and Angela and Karla.
So within the context of the single story and the
situation within the story, we have three separate sex
scenes.
What we’re going to do is we are going to release it on
April 20, but we’re going to do it as a free release. So it
will be offered as an update for our members. But then
we’re also going to offer it on the tour as a full-length
scene for anybody to come in and watch. So that will be
on April 20. Happy 4/20. We will release this as a DVD
that will probably come a couple months after.
AVN: What were the occasions when you did this
before?
BM: The only time I have ever done that before was
when we launched. In the weeks leading up to the
launch of Pure Taboo I put a scene on a “Coming Soon”
page. There was a full-length scene for people to get a
taste of what was coming. That was the only other time
I’ve released a free scene. Obviously, when I did that
initially there was a commercial reason. I wanted to get
eyeballs on what we were doing. This is a bit different.
I want to get eyeballs on what we’re doing, but for me
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