This
interview originally appeared in the pages
of Carbon
14 magazine.
How did you get involved
with the adult film business? Was it a result
of being a GLOW Girl?
That has nothing to do with me getting into
porn. People all the time ask me in interviews,
"How did you decide to make the transition
from wrestling to pornography?" Well,
there was no transition. I left GLOW in
February or March of 1989 and I started
doing X-rated movies in 1992.
What was your "character"
in GLOW?
Tiffany Mellon – I was one of the "Park
Avenue Knockouts," and I opened every
show with a gossip column kind of comedy
sketch.
What did you do between
those gigs?
Before I did GLOW I did B-movies
and tv shows. I was in regular movies and
tv, then I did GLOW – which is also
regular tv – left GLOW and started
doing B-movies and television again.
What were some of
the movies you did?
One called BODY OF INFLUENCE that's on HBO
all the time. CAGED FURY, THE SLEEPING CAR,
PRIME TARGET with Tony Curtis, AMERICAN
ANGELS which is a woman's wrestling movie.
KILL, KILL, OVERKILL. DEMON WIND...there's
some real winners in there. I think the
best things to see me in would be CAGED
FURY and BODY OF INFLUENCE. Other than that
I did a movie with Eric Estrada called SPIRITS
which is out all the time. It has the B-movie
queen, not Linnea Quigley, but the dark-haired
one.
Michelle Bauer?
No, not Michelle Bauer, the other one. There's
three of them...anyway.
Did you ever work
with Fred Olen Ray?
I know Fred. [He] has a very, very good
friend named Don Jackson, and Don did HELL
COMES TO FROGTOWN and he did GRUNT! THE
WRESTLING MOVIE. Well, Don's a very close
friend of mine, too and he did KILL, KILL,
OVERKILL which is where we met. In fact,
the movie SPIRITS is a Fred Olen Ray movie.
Anyway, so I left GLOW and
I went back to making B-movies and stuff.
It's kind of a funny thing how it happened.
When I was doing B-movies before GLOW I
was not doing too well because I had just
started. GLOW really bumped me up –
my notoriety. Then, after I got out of GLOW
and I started doing B-movies [again], I
was making a good living. And I had a car
accident that summer, and financially it
was going to just wipe me out. I didn't
know what to do, I didn't have that kind
of money saved. So I called some old wrestling
contacts and said, "Look, I've got
to make some fast money. Do you have any
wrestling gigs?"
Well, my girlfriend who was
from GLOW said, "Well, there's this
guy that's doing these mud wrestling shows."
And I used to do mud wrestling before I
was in GLOW – at night time I'd be
a mud wrestler and I stripped in lesbian
bars. And I said, "Well, I used to
do it years ago, I could just do it for
a month, pay off my insurance bill and I
won't do it anymore."
While I was doing that I met
a guy who was like the MC/referee of the
mud wrestling shows and we kinda fell in
love. And I was sick of doing B-movies and
the money was actually better doing mud
wrestling. So I said, I'll take a break
and this guy did a traveling show and he
asked me if I wanted to go with him. I said,
"What the hell, I'll take a couple
months and go with you and we'll do mud
wrestling – it'll be great."
So I took off on the road
– this is about November of 1989. March
to November I was doing B-movies. We took
off, did some mud wrestling, went on the
road for a while. I got back around April
or May and we decided that we really wanted
to be together and were eventually going
to get married. So, we saved all our money
while we were on the road to put a down-payment
on a house in Bakersfield, which is an hour
and ten minutes north of LA. I was going
to work with him in the business, just give
up acting.
We
moved up there, and I got pregnant about
4 months later. And I figured, well, I'm
pregnant now, I can't mud wrestle, I can't
strip, what else can I do. I'm smart, I
know, I'll get my real estate license. So
I got my real estate license, sold real
estate for a while, had the baby.
During the course of the pregnancy,
he turned from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. He
just flipped on me, started doing drugs,
started cheating on me, was abusive...it
got real ugly. When the baby was six months
old – this is December of 1991 –
I left him and came back to LA and I started
making contact with all my old contacts.But,
it'd been so long that I'd been out of B-movies
that it just wasn't happening for me. It
was going to take a long time, so I needed
to do something in the meantime.
Years ago – before I
moved to LA – I used to work at the
World Famous Mitchell Brother's O'Farrell
Theatre in San Francisco. One of my girlfriends
was working there. I worked there from 1985
to 1989 off and on; I used to tell her about
it – she was a secretary [at the time]
– and now she was working there. After
I left Ted and I moved back to LA I was
having money woes, stripping here and there
and doing little bit parts.
My girlfriend said, "Why
don't you come back to work here? We can
be a team – we could do the girl-girl
shows together. And my babysitter could
watch your daughter." That'd be great,
that'd pull me out of my financial hole.
So I do the O'Farrell a couple months and
while I was there I met a girl who also
flew up from LA to work. She said,
"You know, there's a new club opening
down there, near where you live. If you're
going to dance here on the weekends, you
could dance there during the week."
I started dancing there and met a guy who
became a really good friend of mine. I've
always tended to make really good friend
with guys. We started buddying around; he
wanted to be with me, but I just wanted
to be friends with him. It was kind of causing
friction.
This whole time – when
I was with my daughter's father all the
way until I met this guy – I had started
to become a fan of porno movies. My daughter's
father worked in a strip club and had a
store. On the weekends, we would rent porn
movies and have sex. And I thought, "these
girls don't take care of their bodies and
they can't act." I said, "If I
did this I'd be a fucking superstar."
And he said, "You're not doing that
shit!" and I kind of put it out of
my mind.
All of a sudden, it occurred
to me for some reason. I'm sitting with
this guy Steve, I'm working one night at
this club and I thought, "Wait a minute!
I'm in LA, I'm not with any guys, I could
do porn movies." I said, "Hey
Steve, do you know anybody in the porn business?"
And where the club was located was porn
central – Chadsworth, CA – so
he must know somebody. So he says, "Yeah,
I know some people in the business. Are
you thinking about doing that?" I said,
"Yeah, it's always been a fantasy to
do it, and I could be way better than any
of those chicks. Do you think I'm too
old?" At the time I was 25. He said,
"Oh no, you take good care of yourself."
Steve introduced me to a few
people – this is about February or
March of 1992 – and the rest is history.
I went straight to the pros, I didn't make
any amateurs at all. Most of the girls start
off [that way]. Because I came from GLOW
I had a name, something to build on, and
from that I built a name so quickly [that]
I just shot right to the top.
That was in 1992 and
you just finished up your last adult feature?
About six months ago.
And you've done how
many films in four years?
A little over 100 if you include my foreign
releases. I've done about 90 domestic and
15 or 20 foreign that aren't shown here.
And all the compilations and everything...about
100.
That's quite a career.
Now that you're retired or semi-retired
from adult films...
I am completely retired from films.
The information on
your last film said you might do some girl-girl
stuff in the future.
Possibly, but it's looking pretty slim right
now because my mainstream career is pretty
much taking off.
Are you doing a lot
of dancing?
I'm not dancing much. I'm doing one gig
a month, probably just for the summer. I'll
probably just do one or two clubs a month
because in August I'm doing a film shooting
in Vancouver. It's a crossover vehicle for
me and I hope I won't have to dance anymore.
It's a sexy murder mystery.
Let me ask you something.
There's a lot of turnover in the female
adult film star ranks, but lots of men seem
to stay around forever. What's the story
there?
These are really two separate issues. The
reason that the guys stay around is actually
pretty simple. Every guy in the world thinks
he can do what these guys do on-screen.
But I'm telling you – 99 out of 100,
we get 'em out there in front of the cameras
and they can't perform. There's a lot of
anxiety on the sets for the guys...there
are a lot of people watching you, and the
temperature isn't really comfortable, the
girl doesn't really want to be there, the
director's in a bad mood, people are talking,
people are walking around...it's hard to
do what they do.
So, when we finally find a
guy that can do it and perform regularly
and is halfway decent looking like John
Doe or Stephen St. Croix, Tom Byron –
depending on how big his tummy is these
days. You're seeing a lot of good guys these
days who are really, really handsome.
That's one reason why you
see the same guys all the time – it's
a performance issue. It's a really hard
thing to do and it's a special guy that
can do what they do. Also, the movies aren't
about the guy. If you think about it, when
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers do their
thing – who are your eyes glued to?
Ginger Rogers – even the women are
watching [her]. He's just there to make
her look good – he's a prop.
Sex is – and I'm sure
a lot of men would argue with me about this
– is about the woman's experience.
I think it's because a woman's sexuality
is a much more mysterious thing than a man's.
We all know that men, when the wind blows
the right way on their pee-pee, can spew.
Women are very complex creatures, their
sexuality is complex, their organs are a
mystery because they're both internal and
external.
The reason that there's a
high turnover for the females? Do you notice
in mainstream movies that the more movies
Demi Moore does, the more the public wants
them, the more money they make? In our business
it's the complete opposite. The more movies
you do, eventually the less you're worth
and the more the business doesn't want you
anymore – and I'll tell you why.
In mainstream movies, you
make a connection with the person. You get
to know their whole being. You get to know
who they are inside, and I mean the character
they're playing. You feel compassion, you're
empathetic to the character, you identify
with this character.
In pornographic movies, the
purpose s to focus on the genital pleasure,
the giving and receiving. So you never get
a feeling for these people. All they are
is the sum of their parts. If all you're
doing is focusing on the parts and you have
no feeling for the person involved - it's
like a one-night stand after another, after
another, after another. And that's exactly
what it is -- once the guys have seen Jenna
Jameson's pussy six or seven times, they're
going to want to see a different pussy.
'Cause they could care less about Jenna
Jameson. All they care about is looking
at her snatch. But that's okay -- that's
what we're here for. There is room for that.
But, I think a lot of the girls, as well
as the guys, as well as the viewing audience
fail to realize this. They fault the industry
for that. "Well, you know, all it's
about is fucking, and how come nobody make
any movies that have emotion?" You
know what? We try and they don't sell, because
that's not what pornography is about. Pornography
is about the stimulation of the genitals.
It's purely about the sexual experience.
Are you concerned
about government involvement in the censorship
of web sites?
Absolutely. In fact, I have a very good
friend who's going to be working as the
producer on my radio show. She's working
right now for a temporary job on the "Montel
Williams Show." They were going to
have Donna Rice go head-to-head with me
a few weeks ago and do a whole show on this
Decency on the 'Net Act. [She] is the one
that lobbied to get this bill passed and
I'm the owner of the type of web site that
she's attacking. I really wanted to go head-to-head
with this fucking broad, and then she backed
out. [Tyffany's web site can be found @
www.tyffany.com]
So is Donna a big
feminist and activist these days, trying
to "protect the children of America"?
I think Donna Rice is feeling a lot of shame
and guilt over what she did with Gary Hart.
It's her way of...
Clearing her name?
Exactly. It's a personal issue for her,
she has a hidden agenda. I don't think that
anybody has the right to be the gate keeper
to morality for anybody else. I think that
anything that is consensual activity between
two human beings – whether one is a
child and one is an adult, or both of 'em
are adults – is nobody else's business.
That includes sexual activity, that includes
drugs, whatever it may be – sadomasochism,
I don't care.
You spoke earlier
about your Catholic upbringing. Were you
an ugly duckling that blossomed later in
life?
Right around seven or eight years old I
started to get really ugly. I was really
homely. My two front teeth grew in with
a gap in between them, my nose was kinda
thick, and I have puppy-dog eyes. They're
tilted down, so they look kind of sad.
I think I went through an
ugly phase for many years until I got to
be about 14, and then I started getting
really pretty. I started developing into
a woman. And then when I was about 17 or
18, zoom, right back into homely.
When I was about 19 I had
a really bad nervous breakdown...anxiety
attacks and all that. I decided I needed
something to lift me out of that. So, I
chose working out as a focus, 'cause I knew
I needed to survive and have something to
focus on other than my problems. So I started
working out and getting really tight and
really lean. At that point, I figured out
that I could not only take control of the
way that my body looked, but I could take
control of the rest of my life.
When I was a little kid –
8, 9, 10 years old we had this little school
magazine that came out once a month. And
there was an article on Cher. And [she]
talked about how she was a homely kid and
her mother always used to tell her that
you can make yourself more beautiful, you
can be what you want to be. You don't have
to be the way you are – with hair and
makeup and costumes you can make yourself
prettier.
So, I thought about that –
started getting the boobs done, I'm working
out out, I'm looking good. Got my nose done
– I started saying, "Wow, this
is great!" Since then I've had a lot
of plastic surgery. If I don't like something,
I just change it. It's done wonders for
my confidence.
Is there any guy who
rejected you back in high school?
Only one – I've only been left by a
guy once in my life. I've always been the
dump-er; I've only been the dump-ee once.
And it hurt.
What was the reason?
He didn't give me a reason, but the girl
he started dating after [me], she went to
my school, too. She came up to me in the
schoolyard one day and she said, "You
just better stay away from my Billy. You
know, he told me the reason he broke up
with you is because you're really weird!"
My entire growing up years,
I was the one that everybody – in public
– wouldn't claim to be friends with,
but all wanted to be friends with behind
everyone else's back. They all wanted to
know me and hang out with me, but they didn't
want anybody else to know.
I was always very different
and kind of – ahead of my time.
