Page 25 - AVN July 2025

While the audience was presented with a softcore cut, there was enough full-frontal nudity and sexy
moments to keep the plot coherent and spicy, at around two hours. With eight additional sex scenes that
will drop over the summer and will be included in the full, final cut, it’s a marathon and a memento of the
business before the Internet changed everything.
Michael Vegas does a wild take on hyper-masculine, loud, obnoxious male star Rick Strokes, Ameena
Green plays a savvy social-climbing starlet, Sinatra Monroe plays Python’s long-suffering girlfriend, and
Gal Ritchie brings the bitch out for her turn as a competitive gonzo queen.
Drone footage of Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, and dialogue scenes shot at an overlook on
Mulholland Drive give the movie a familiar La La Land feel. The camerawork of Siren Obscura is unobtrusive
and makes good use of natural light, which enhances the retro aesthetic. A scene featuring White dancing
onstage recalls dimly-lit Hollywood strip clubs, like The Seventh Veil and Jumbo’s.
Advocating adult entertainment as a stand-alone genre, with its independent filmmakers like Gamble and
adult actors who attract a loyal fanbase of followers to the movies, Professor of Film and Media Studies at
UC Santa Barbara Constance Penley was in attendance, after welcoming Gamble into her class on adult
films to preview Once Upon a Time in The Valley. Several members of the class also came to see the movie.
“Because we do a comparative history—we are studying, in my class, adult film, but we’re also comparing
it to what we call ‘non-adult film.’ That’s what we call Hollywood. It’s like, oh, ‘that’s non-adult,’” Penley
explained.
“Isn’t it odd that Hollywood films don’t seem to have any sexuality at all anymore?” Penley said further.
“I love the films made by the adult industry, like a lot of the porn parodies, but [also] other films that mock
Hollywood. You know, send it up for its pretensions, its hypocrisies for promising sex, but never delivering—
and substituting violence for the sex it can’t show.”
“[Gamble] described this film as Boogie Nights meets Once Upon a Time in America and Once Upon a
Time in Hollywood,” Penley said. “Wow, that’s amazing.”
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