Did you make any personal discoveries while working on it?
Not really. Thanks to years of therapy I was pretty keen and aware of everything. It just really confirmed that I’m totally fine with my past, and that I have no regrets, and that it was fun overall.
How do you feel about the stereotype that only damaged girls enter porn?
I think many people have a damaged past to some degree, but the industry probably does tend to lure girls in that have had an abused past in some way. For me, it was my way of rebelling. My sister and I grew up in the same household, and yet she had no rebellion in her. She’d die before she ever got into porn, and for me it was so easy.
Why was that?
I was down to like, five dollars, and I didn’t want to go home, and I wanted to do things on my own.
And apparently you truly enjoyed what you were doing.
I really did. It sounds so stupid, but it was such a learning experience. I always wanted to know what it was like to be in a threesome, or with a girl, and it was just fun. And it paid my bills. I didn’t really have any negatives about it. And there was good food on the set.
What’s the biggest misconception about the women in porn?
I’m so out of touch with what’s going on today, but back then, a lot of the girls were just doing it, and that was it. Now I think a lot of the girls turn it into prostitution on the side. Back then, we weren’t loose girls, we weren’t hookers, we weren’t really into drugs. Out of my whole career, only one producer ever offered me drugs. It wasn’t orgies going on outside of the sex scenes, and bowls of drugs. They really didn’t like people to do drugs. It messed everything up. We had a lot of heart. People don’t realize that we’re just normal girls. Now they like’em young and willing to do anything. In the ‘80s, they were lucky just to get girls at all. There were so few of us.
The porn of twenty years ago seems almost innocent compared to what we see now.
I agree. We had some girl on Playboy Radio the other day, and she said that her first scene was a double anal. Her first scene! And it took ten hours to film. I never even did one in a movie. It really had class back then, there was no shock value. I mean, just seeing a girl have sex was like, wow! I feel badly for the girls that get into it now, but they certainly don’t have to do it. No one’s putting a gun to their heads.
Is that a result of jaded audience demands or the industry pushing things?
I think people are jaded, but it’s a bit of both. In the ’80s, the owners of the companies--there were very few back then, like six or eight--they would show up on the set in a nice suit and the tasseled loafers and the hanky in the jacket. Nice older gentlemen. Now you’ve got these twenty-year-old punk kids owning companies, so it’s a different mentality. Now they invest $3,000 in some shitty company, get a camera, and shoot the grossest stuff they can. They have no respect, I guess.
Did you think of yourself as an actual “actress”?
No way, I’m the worst actress in the world. And I’ve never had any desire. Ron Jeremy would call me and say, “I’m friends with straight directors, do you want to be in the new John Frankenheimer movie?” They would want me to be the babe on the beach in the bikini, and I’d think, oh dear, no. That’s so not me. I might as well just make a porn.
Which mainstream actresses do you like?
I love movies, and I like a lot of traditional actresses like Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz. But for some reason I can’t stand Minnie Driver. I don’t get her at all.
In your book you talk about your relationship with Max Baer, who played Jethro Beaudine on The Beverly Hillbillies. That seems almost surreal.
I know! His whole thing, I think, was he loved big-titted porn girls. I think it’s just a fetish, there’s a bunch of guys that love porn girls. Pauly Shore was like that, and Vince Neil. Max was very nice and so attractive, but he wasn’t my cup of tea. He’s such a Jethro!
Besides your next book, what are you working on?
My next big project is I want to be a mom. I feel like the last two decades it’s been so centered around the porn business, which has been great, but now I really want to try my hand at motherhood.
And if you have a daughter who wants to get into the business . . . ?
If she was curious about getting into it, I’d have to look at myself and wonder what I did wrong as a mother. I don’t think someone who grew up in a healthy household would get into it.
But it’s so glamorized now. A porn girl can be on Stern, host E! shows; it seems like a viable entertainment career.
I agree. I can see a fifteen-year-old girl going, “Oh, that’s so cool! I wanna be like Jenna!” but in reality, can she really get on a set, take off her clothes, and have sex?
Christy Canyon has retired on several occasions. These retirements never seem to last to long. And when Christy returns, we are treated to a great new performance by this award winning lady. She began her career, in the Xbiz in 1984 fresh out of high school, She have worked with some of the greatest actors like Peter North, T.T. Boy, and Ron Jeremy. She have has the pleasure of being with actresses as; Ginger Lynn, Traci Lords and Racquel Darrian and the list are endless! Christy have been known as one of the few girls in the adult business who is 100% natural. In 1990 she signed an exclusive contract with Vivid until she quit in 2000. After she took a break, she penned her new autobiography Lights, Camera, Sex! She won the hearts of critics and fans alike with her dark beauty, great body and powerful orgasmic scenes that are filled with such wanton abandon that one female critic described them as almost a personal embarrassment to watch.
