A quick note: I started this blog a few years ago, and I was gonna write some more about The Actor and me, but I kinda lost interest. Today I was looking for an old blog to repost and call a “Worst of”, and when I ran across this entry, I decided to clean it up a bit and finish off the second (and maybe third) parts. Just do me a favor and don’t try and guess who it is. That really doesn’t matter. Trust me when I tell you all actors are jackasses; the level of which is directly related upon their current popularity. But you know that already, don’t you?

It all started with Kitty.

The first time I shot her — back in the summer of ’03 — I remember being totally freaked out when she showed up at the cheesy motel I shot at back then. When I opened the door, I thought I was looking at a 7th grader.

I booked Kitty through her agent; she was one of the first crop of girl coming out of a new agency called LA Direct. I knew when I booked her she was a barely-legal Asian, cause I saw her pictures, and she looked really cute, and I know barely-legal Asians are a big hit with pervy porno surfers. But I had no idea how young she really looked until we met at the door.

“Um, hi. So…you’re…Kitty.”

She smiled, said hello, and walked in. My heart skipped a beat, and if I hadn’t have booked her through an legitimate agency, I wouldn’t have gone through with the shoot…even though all her ID’s were legit.

But this isn’t really about Kitty, but I’ll say the shoot went great; I made a new friend in Kitty, and after the scene wrapped, we went along our merry way, and since then she’s shot hundreds of scenes…and so have I. And we’ve maintained a friendship to this day.

Fast forward to the fall of ’05. A fan e-mails me about Kitty. Actually, I get all sorts of porno-related e-mails, most of which are from dudes who don’t read any of the ads I’ve posted looking for hot chicks who wanna bang on camera, or they’ve read the ad and the part about how I’m not looking for single dudes, but they don’t give a fuck: each and every day a dozen or so dopes write to me, “Hey I’m a dude and I can fuck those girls good! Gimme a chance. Please! I’m the best ever! No one can fuck like me! Here’s my phone number! Call me OK!?!?!”

But I digress.

The e-mail for Kitty is from a fan, and he’s claiming to be an amateur photographer, and he wants to shoot pictures of Kitty, and was there any way I could set it up?

I get silly e-mails like this all the time, too; fans wanna meet some girl I’ve shot, and they really think I’m gonna hand over phone numbers and e-mails. I delete these…most of the time. But this was different. I took a look at the person claiming to send it, and his name was familiar. It looked familiar because it was an actor’s name, and I knew the actor’s work.

You might, too.

This wasn’t an A-List guy or anything, but he’s been in enough stuff that you would know him.

If you don’t know him, your wife does for sure. That’s not meant to be some sort of silly joke; said actor had a recurring role in a cable TV series your wife, or your girlfriend, or your sister used to watch all the time. They made a movie from the series, and then they made a second movie, too. But I knew his work from a super cool indie film a favorite director of mine made a while ago.

And even though he didn’t say he was an actor in the e-mail, I spotted him right away. And I thought — for a split second — that maybe it was a fake. But if you’re gonna fake being an actor, wouldn’t you fake being someone with a big name? George Clooney or Ed Norton or Tom Cruise?

I was curious, so I did something I never do when I get e-mails like this: I replied. I said Kitty might be available for work, and then I just asked if he was who he said he was.

And almost immediately he replied; it was The Actor. Or at least someone who claimed to be The Actor. I asked a few friends if I should meet The Actor, cause I was dying to know if it really was The Actor, and even if it was a crank, I’d like to at least see a jerk that claims to be a relatively obscure actor in order to take a few naked pics of a Porno Princess…which would make a good blog.

All my pals suggested meeting in a public place, which went without saying; I set it up at (where else?) Starbucks — my very favorite Lowest Common Denominator Corporate Entity.

Sure enough, The Actor showed up.

I didn’t want to admit this to him, but in this weird, kinda freaky way I had been following his career since I saw his first big movie in the late 70’s. I had to sneak in the movie, cause it was rated R, and I loved the character he played. I remember walking out then and wondering what he might show up in next. Sure enough, a few years later, I’m at the movie that made Eddie Murphy huge, and there he is. He starred in a movie one of the all-time great directors made, which came out a year or two after, which was right around the time he fell from grace in Hollywood and started working in low budget and indie stuff.

So it was kinda weird to meet The Actor, I’ll admit, especially when it’s in this sort of circumstance. Besides, since we hold up celebrities so ridiculously high in our society (any society, really) that unless you’re in the movie-making business, I’d imagine most anyone would be kinda freaked out and/or excited to meet an actor…especially if you’re a fan of the work.

And I was a fan. But I couldn’t let him know that, right?

I’ll be the first to admit nothing gets me giddy like a celebrity sighting…giddy like a little girl: once Kevin Spacey and Sean Penn walked right by me while I was in one of my very favorite used bookstores in Berkeley. I was combing through the stack of new arrivals, and I got so excited I thought I was gonna make boom-boom in my pants; once I was at James Frey’s book reading, and I sat near Kirsten Dunst, and I got so excited I thought I was gonna make boom-boom in my pants; once I watched Forest Whittaker sitting in his director’s chair when he was shooting a movie on the street near my studio, and I got so excited I thought I was gonna make boom-boom in my pants; when Dennis Rodman visited my studio while he was shooting his latest movie about a bunch of midgets that play basketball (he’s their coach) I didn’t get very excited at all cause Dennis Rodman doesn’t do much for me; and, in fact, he didn’t even let me take his picture in my studio cause he thought it wouldn’t be “good for his image” to be in a porno studio, which is about the dumbest thing he could have ever said.

Oh yea. The Actor. I was — and still am — a fan of his work. Over the next few months we became fast friends. We talked about the movies he’s been in, and the people he’s worked with, and the actresses he’s banged, and all his substance abuse issues; we talked about the stuff we have in common, and the stuff we don’t have in common, and for the first six months or so we got along quite splendidly.

I’ve only surfed once in my life, but to me, friendships are kinda like surfing. Friendships are waves, and eventually you’re gonna fall, and then it’s over. Some rides are really long and fun, some are short and sweet, sometimes you fall right away, and sometimes you don’t even make it up on the board to ride the wave at all.