Australian Penthouse

Is that what Laid Bare is about?
That’s essentially what Laid Bare is about. It’s not about sex; it’s a book about trying to figure out what love is and where to find it, and how to make it last. It started out as an article I wrote for marie claire magazine about how it feels when your wife leaves. I got a lot of letters from women around Australia thanking me for writing a candid story from the male perspective on how difficult divorce is.

How tough was it for you to actually write the book?
I took the approach that if you’re going to write a memoir, you have to write it as authentically as possible. My dark personal moments were very much a part of that story. It’s important that people understand that men—though outwardly we may appear to have no emotions at all—are actually deeply emotional, as much as any woman. We just very rarely show it.

How common is your experience among other men?
I found that my situation wasn’t that uncommon and there were a lot of guys suffering in silence and not really having anyone to talk to about what they were going through internally. I felt that it was important for me to show that it’s okay to be vulnerable and to break down and have emotions. I think it’s really important that men also be more open about the times when they are struggling, particularly with mental illness.

Mental illness?
A lot of guys I know are going through similar sorts of things to what I went through, particularly with anxiety and depression and even OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder].

You mention OCD in Laid Bare. What was your particular subset?
My subset of OCD is called ‘Pure-O’, which is short for ‘Pure Obsessional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’. Essentially, what was happening is I would be getting intrusive and disturbing thoughts at the most inappropriate times. It’s not something you can really understand. It’s brought about by anxiety. I think OCD is an incredibly misunderstood disorder.

How so?
In the media, the impression we get of it is crazy people washing their hands 50 times a day, but it’s much more than that. The thing that most don’t understand is that people are driven to these sorts of compulsive behaviours because they’re trying to shut out thoughts and images coming into their head that they don’t want. People are killing themselves because of OCD because they don’t know who to talk to about it.

On the topic of sex, what kind of dating websites were you signed up to?
I never went on an adult personals site that was strictly geared for sex. I put a profile on one of the adult sites here in Australia, just to see what the deal was, but it didn’t strike me as something that was for me. I met most of the women I dated through more traditional online dating sites, such as RSVP.com.au.

In your experience, was RSVP more geared towards relationships or sex?
People are saying they want relationships, but it’s a meat market. If you’re in good shape, have decent looks and a bit of money, it’s very easy to fall into the player lifestyle by putting yourself online. And it’s not just men, it’s women as well. I found myself getting hundreds of emails from very desirable women. All of a sudden, it’s like being in an American supermarket where you’re overburdened with choice.

So these women were chasing you?
Oh, much more so than I was approaching them. I was frankly surprised because the woman I was deeply in love with—my ex-wife—didn’t want a bar of me. But I put myself online and hundreds of women were sending me emails and they all looked bloody fantastic. It’s great for your ego, but it’s not necessarily good for settling on one person because I think men go on there and become rock stars. We get a bit carried away with the attention. That’s certainly what happened to me.

What is the perfect middle ground for online dating?
To be honest, I have met a lot of women through online dating who have become very good friends of mine. I think online dating is fantastic for making friends, for networking, for building your social circle; I just don’t necessarily think it’s fantastic for relationships.

How did you get into the adult industry?
I wanted to do porn for as long as I could remember. When I turned 16, I realised that I had no idea how I was going to get involved, I just knew it was what I wanted to do. For some reason, I figured if I went to parties in Hollywood, I would meet someone who could help me out. I started doing just that and, sure enough, when I was 17, I met a girl who knew someone who knew someone who gave me a shot in a movie.

How important is cock size in becoming a porn star?
Not very. A giant cock is impressive and all and will get you more attention, but every producer I know will take a hard, average-sized dick over a floppy, huge penis.

What’s the most difficult or annoying part about being a dude in the industry?
Nothing. My job is pretty amazing in every way.

Who are your favourite adult actresses to work with?
I couldn’t choose favourites. There are so many great performers who I adore.

What have you learned about women during your career?
I don’t really feel like adult films necessarily teach guys anything more about women than any other profession.

What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you on set?
I never know how to answer this. Funny is subjective and there are a lot of goofy things that happen on set. Usually the most hilarious stuff is just people telling jokes.

Is it tough to keep it up and blow your load on command?
Not really. Kind of just what I do.

You’re cast alongside Lindsay Lohan in upcoming feature film The Canyons. How did you land the part and would you like to do more mainstream acting?
Bret Easton Ellis was writing this movie and started to post on Twitter that I was his ideal casting for it. We emailed back and forth, then I went through the process of meeting the producer and director and eventually it was decided that I would be best for the role. I had a great time on the mainstream set. I used to say I never wanted to do any acting and I still don’t see huge mainstream things in my future, but I’m not as opposed to it as I was before.

What’s your advice to guys who want to get into the business?
Do it! Porno is awesome.

What’s the biggest misconception about being a male porn star?
Fluffers. They do not exist.

How would you like to be remembered as a performer?
I would like to be remembered as a nice dude who was fun to be around. That applies to performing and just life in general.

Did you always want to be a porn star?
I never set out to become a porn star. In fact, I never really watched that much porn prior to my first scene. When the opportunity was presented to me, it felt pretty natural since I’ve always been an exhibitionist and very sexual. I enjoy se and knowing people get off while watching me have sex.

Why do you think alt porn is so popular right now?
Because tattooed girls are fucking hot! It just took the world some time to realise it.

Do you have a favourite tattoo?
My favourite tattoo is the roses that are on my waist and go up my right side. It was the most painful tattoo I’ve had so far, but it’s beautiful, so it was worth the pain.

Who do you most enjoy working with on camera?
My favourite guy to work with is Danny Wylde. Every time we’ve been paired up for a scene, I’ve had so much fun. My first scene with him for Burning Angel was just amazing. He didn’t know I was into anal, so when I told him to put his cock in my ass, he was very surprised! Veruca James is my favourite girl to work with; I have a huge girl crush on her and she has been the only girl, so far, who’s made me squirt.

What’s so special about Burning Angel?
The company is more like a family. I feel like an individual and not just a body. I’ve got to have sex with some really amazing guys and girls, as well as play roles in movies where I learned new and exciting things. For example, when we filmed Kung Fu Pussy, I learned fighting techniques and how to do stunts.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in your career so far?
I recently shot for a new movie called Evil Head, a parody of The Evil Dead. Besides getting re-animated as a demon, I was in the famous tree rape scene. If you’ve seen The Evil Dead, you know what I’m talking about; if not, I basically get gang-banged by possessed trees. The tree branches had dildos ‘growing’ off them and I ended up with one in my mouth, one in my pussy and the last one in my ass, all at once!

Woah! What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I enjoy exercising and running. I also love to cook for people—it makes me happy when I see people enjoying something I have made.

Which mainstream celebrity would you most like to bonk?
I have a list of a few I would love to bang! Definitely Johnny Depp (but who doesn’t want to bang him?), Christian Bale and Adrien Brody.

Finally, do you genuinely enjoy the taste of man-mayo?
Haha! The more loads I can swallow, the better.

Ross Clarke-Jones, 46, is 100 percent nuts; the leader of Australian big-wave surfing for 20 years, his craziness is so dyed-in-the-wool that unshorn sheep go insane when he puts on a jumper. Together, the pair make big-wave surfing documentaries that drop more jaws than an earthquake in a graveyard. Their moniker: The Storm Surfers.

Their hit movie, Storm Surfers 3D, was selected for the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival—the largest film festival in North America and second only to Cannes; an unprecedented, deserved achievement for a surf doco. It sees Carroll and RCJ pitting themselves against multi-storey waves across the world. While taunting each other. And facing their—and especially Tom’s—mortality.

Tom, you almost killed Ross with a jet ski during filming in Western Australia. Tell us about it.
Ross Clarke-Jones: Ha! That was just an accident, really. That was a big wave, the first good one we had seen. That place was wild. It’s out off the continental shelf. Real deep water.
Tom Carroll: I towed Ross onto a wave with the jet ski, and I was commentating: “This looks like a good one, it’s real smooth…” And I’m talking, but then as I go over the back of the wave, I’m still looking down at him—and then this big lump of whitewater hits me…
RCJ: And pushes him back over the ledge…
TC: …on a 600kg jet ski! And I’m 75kg, so I’ve got no say. And it just goes, BOOM! I can see it now, clearly, how slow it was going—in slow-mo, I’m going over. It felt like ages that I was at the top of the wave going, “Oh, no!” because I couldn’t punch the throttle—because that would have squirted me across the face and down in front of it, into the trough. So I just watched Ross. And instead of him going past me, he actually turned back underneath me! I saw him and I was yelling, “Argh! Ross!”
RCJ: I can’t believe it. I went straight underneath him. I was just ahead of the wave, where the lip landed.
TC: It was real close. There was a camera set up on the front of his board, angled back, and you can see me going over the falls on the back of it.

Wow. Over the falls on a 20-foot wave… on a jet ski. What was that like?
TC: I got rearranged. Every bone, all my spine, everything. Even when you try to pull your limbs in close to your body, you still get torn and ripped apart.
RCJ: He came up all angry! Haha! I’ve never seen him so angry.
TC: I was totally out of breath. I was down there for a while, too.

Do you still get scared?
RCJ: I really don’t like being scared. I don’t get scared.

Tom, didn’t your surfboard once ram you up the arse?
TC: Yeah… just north of there. I got a double date. It was in Japan in really small surf, when I was practicing like crazy before a World Tour event in 1987, on an island an eight-hour ferry ride from Tokyo. My board’s nose hit the sand and I landed on the tail with my arse. The bottom sheet of fibreglass broke away and went straight through my wetsuit and into the flesh. Oh, mate, I was crying so hard my eyes hurt. And, ah, I had some… complications after it. I was almost colostomy bag material. Another time I ruptured my stomach against my spine.

You should wear body armour.
TC: I’ve been known to wear a helmet. I split my helmet at Teahupoo, in Tahiti. My board went through it and tore into my ear, busted my eardrum, and I almost got knocked out. When you do that, you lose your balance. It sucks.
RCJ: It sucks. I did that at Reunion [Island]. I was dead-set paddling around in circles.
TC: It’s like you’ve had a whole bottle of scotch. I also had a really bad one when I was 16. I’m still suffering from that. It pulled my knee out of place up at big Umina Point. I tried to pull out at the last minute because it wasn’t tubing and this thing just landed on me, tore my whole right knee out of joint.

You’re 45 and 50, respectively. Does anyone tell either of you to maybe slow down a bit?
RCJ: I’m still frothing. I’m like a grommet.
TC: If you’re going to do something, give it all you’ve got. Fuck it. Do it with everything you’ve got.

American Rick Baker is a legend in the world of special effects make-up. Since winning the first-ever Best Make-up Academy Award for An American Werewolf in London (1981), Baker has been at the forefront of innovation in the field. Penthouse spoke with the make-up master about creating 127 original aliens for Men In Black 3 and staying relevant in Hollywood.

Interview: Drew Turney

How do you keep raising the bar after such a long and lauded career?
It really is hard, especially when you’re as fucking good as I am! [Laughs] A lot of times, the script sparks ideas, and what I like about the Men in Black films is that I’m a real collaborator. Barry [Sonnenfeld, director] and I come up with ideas I might not be able to conceive on my own. Barry wants that collaboration and appreciates it. It’s not always appreciated.

What was your inspiration for the alien designs in the Men In Black movies?
Pretty much every 1950s and 60s alien movie there ever was, but there was one in particular called Invasion of the Saucer Men. It was a ´50s B movie and this guy called Paul Blaisdell made these big-brained, bug-eyed alien masks that little people wore. And we got to do a saucer man for Men In Black. It’s not an exact duplicate—we made it a little cooler—but it was very much inspired by that.

In describing your work, do you think of yourself as more of a make-up artist, designer or sculptor?
I’d always just called myself a make-up artist, but then I realised I was taking it to another level and started doing stuff a normal make-up person wouldn’t do. I didn’t like the limitations of make-up. When you’re working on an actor’s face, that’s the armature for your sculpture. If you’re putting a new nose on someone and they have a bump, you can’t really get rid of it. Or if their eyes are a certain distance apart, you can’t really make the distance any wider.

So that’s when I starting getting into animatronics and puppetry. In the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London, we did what we could with standard make-up and then we had two fake heads containing animatronics so they could transform on camera. That was the only way we could do it. I actually got a lot of flack from make-up artists because that stuff wasn’t make-up but, to me, it was a natural evolution.

Is staying aware of the technology a way of staying relevant?
You bet. I’ve kept learning because I’ve been a fan of this stuff for as long as I can remember. Jack Pierce, the make-up artist at Universal who did Frankenstein’s Monster and The Wolf Man and The Mummy and all these classic films, didn’t progress with the times. Other people were using foam rubber appliances and he was still using cotton and spirit gum. I took note of that as a kid and told myself I was going to stay on top of what’s new. But doing that’s easy because it’s just more fun.

“What’s hard when it comes to aliens is trying to come up with something nobody’s seen before”

What make-up work has really impressed you lately?
I was really impressed by the work in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I so wanted to hate that movie because I did the make-up for Tim Burton’s 2001 Planet of the Apes, which isn’t very fondly remembered, but I think most people think the make-up is really good. To me, Planet of the Apes was actors in make-up, and that’s where I’ve come from. But they did Rise… on computers and I thought it looked great. I was very impressed.

I worked with the digital guys on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We made real-world silicone heads, which they scanned and made the computer models from. In the ´90s, CGI was kind of crappy. It was neat that they could do it, but I thought the stuff we were making still looked more real. But CGI’s come a long way.

You’re known for monsters and creatures, but are human make-up effects like those you did on Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor a whole different ball game?
They are, and I like doing both of them. Aliens are easier in a lot of ways because you don’t see aliens every day. Human make-up is the hardest to pull off. What’s hard when it comes to aliens is trying to come up with something nobody’s seen before, but if you have a defect in the rubber, you can leave it because nobody would know the alien isn’t supposed to look like that.

Do you prefer monster effects because they’re a little more visible and you can get more recognition?
I just like mixing it up, I always have. Sometimes I’ll do an alien, then I’ll do the fat suit for The Nutty Professor where the characters are all human, then I’ll do a big ape suit or The Grinch. I just don’t like doing the same thing over and over again.

What do you enjoy most about workingin the adult industry?
When I started out, I identified as a straight woman. Working with both men and women with a variety of sexual identities has taught me that my own sexuality is fluid. My favourite thing is [that] I have the opportunity to represent a non-stereotypical body type in porn. One of my main goals with my work is to use my body to make the statement that fat women can be desirable and sexy.

What’s the response been to your work?
I am very blessed because 99.99 percent of the feedback I get is positive. I have received many emails from women and men telling me how seeing my work has helped them feel better about themselves and made them realise they can be just as sexy as someone who is a much thinner body type.

How did you personally find confidence as a plus-size model?
For me, confidence came once I stopped basing my happiness on my weight. I idealised being thin. In my early 20s, I lost a huge amount of weight and suddenly I was a thin person, but I was a thin person who was still unhappy. I realised that happiness is a choice and my enjoyment of life was a decision I had to make in my head not based on my weight or my clothing size.

You have your own sex toy: the CyberSkin Voluptuous Vagina…
I was a little hungover that day and was relieved when they told me all I’d have to do was lay down! There were three people working on the moulding and they worked quickly and efficiently. They have developed a top-secret method that involves layers of goop and other materials that harden and become the negative of what they mould: in this case, my pussy.

SEE MORE OF APRIL FLORES at: http://fattyd.com/

How do you get on set?
It was a rocky road in the beginning. A shoot that had been set up for me and Paige fell through, so I called an agency that was looking for new male studs. They didn’t make it easy! I had to fork out the money for a motel room and meet this woman and her husband there, who brought the camera equipment. I’d driven three hours straight from my day job and was exhausted.

My head was completely in the wrong space and I couldn’t perform properly. By the time I got home, I was ready to give up but [my wife] would not let it go. She was like a dog with a bone!
Not long after that, I was lucky enough to get an audition with Anna Span, the UK’s best (and sole female) porn director. It went really well and I was invited back for the rest of the shoot.

It was Anna who nominated me for Best Male Newcomer at the 2007 UK Adult Film and TV Awards, which I won. She also got me signed up to Elle Brook’s Blue Diamond Agency, and from there the work poured in.

I was considering working in the industry full-time when my visa was approved and my wife and I moved to Australia.

I spent the next year contacting every company that produced, distributed and sold porn. I went to sex shops and SEXPO, and just as I was about to give up, I logged on to the Eros website (www.eros.org.au) and there was a link for producers and up came Adult Voyeur (www.adultvoyeur.com.au)—a completely Australian porn production company.

I spoke to them on a Wednesday, and by Friday I was doing a test shoot. I thought it had gone terribly! It was outside at 3:00am in the middle of June. It was freezing and I had a cold wind blowing up my arse. I was up and down like a yo-yo but, considering the conditions, they were impressed and took me on. I’ve been in almost every scene since.

Where do you want porn to take you?
At the moment, I’m just along for the ride and enjoying where it’s taking me, but I would like to be involved in porn in some way for the rest of my life, maybe as a producer or opening an agency. I really want to see the Australian porn industry succeed and for Adult Voyeur to become as big and as successful as I truly believe it can be.

I would be very proud if I could say that I came to Australia when there was virtually no porn industry at all and I helped create it.

How much contact do you have with your contract stars?
I’m a bit like a motherly figure to the DP contract stars. I talk to them whenever they need advice. I support them 100 per cent, and I’m lucky that they feel comfortable enough to come to me anytime for absolutely anything.

What do you look for in a contract girl?
Our exclusive contract girls are one of the most important aspects of our company. The first thing I look for is their attitude towards the industry. I want to make sure that any girl getting involved in the adult entertainment industry is doing it for the right reasons. I am very strict about this. Just because you’re pretty and like the idea of being a porn star, it doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy or be able to handle the reality of it. Before we sign any girl, I like to sit them down and explain the benefits and ramifications of becoming an adult film star. Because once their face is on the cover of our movies, it never goes away. If the girl has what I call the ‘wow’ factor and wants to do this because she embraces her sexuality and wants to show the world that she is a sex symbol, then we go full steam ahead. If not, I won’t even entertain the idea of them being a part of Digital Playground. I don’t want anybody to ever live with regrets, so I try my best to make everyone aware of what our industry entails.

So someone like Jesse Jane, then…
Jesse definitely has that ‘wow’ factor. She knew exactly what she wanted when she contacted us. She came into this saying, “I want to be the biggest porn star ever!” She was ready to do the work and she understood exactly what it entailed, and we’re so proud she’s such a big part of our company.

We have all been raised in such a puritanical society that it almost condemns sex and makes it something dirty or wrong, especially in America. I am proud to be a part of our industry because, in my opinion, people, particularly women, should embrace their sexuality and enjoy it fully.

I think you should always be comfortable and happy with the choices that you make. I enjoy the fact that I am creating a pathway for couples—for everyone to explore what society has taken away from them.

Many of the adult actresses we interview mention the scrutiny they receive from mainstream society, in general.

How does that scrutiny affect you?
I believe the mainstream will always scrutinise the adult industry, although it has been getting better the past few years; it’s not so taboo now. I’ve been in this industry for so long that such scrutiny doesn’t really bother me.

What does your office look like?
It’s comfortable yet modern, streamlined and clutter-free. I have framed posters from all of our great movies on the walls, pictures of my loved ones, and a wonderful couch. And windows! I could never work in an office without sunshine.

What’s on the horizon for you and DP?
We are currently working on something huge. It’s something no-one has done before and it’s going to be amazing. I can’t say anything just yet, but trust me, it will be worth the wait.