Chapter 5: Savannah

Chapter 5 “Savannah”: The story of Jenna’s porn star inspiration Savannah, and how the mainstream media focused on only tragic stories of adult film stars to create a narrative that the adult film industry is a death trap. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Both my parents know I'm in the business, and my
mom thinks it's great because I make so much money.
Savannah performer.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
My dad subscribed to the Playboy channel, and when I
saw her in a movie one night, she took my
breath away. I couldn't get over the fact that a
woman who was so gorgeous she seemed untouchable, would ever
do adult movies.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Jenna Jamison, Welcome to Jenna World. Welcome back to Jenna World.
I'm your host, Mollie Lambert. This is episode five Savannah.

(01:02):
The San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, nineteen eighty seven, porn
is fully legal in America for the first time. It
no longer has to be shot secretively because it's been
ruled art protected by First Amendment free speech laws. So
the porn business continues to boom unstoppably, raking in an

(01:25):
alleged seven hundred and fifty million dollars a year. There
are thirty seven production companies, major and minor, across the
San Fernando Valley. Despite the hard won legality and constant
demand for new product, the Reagan era crackdown still has
some instant cooling effects. In nineteen eighty eight, a company

(01:47):
called Essex Video is busted by FEDS using these report
tactics that focus on interstate distribution of pornographic materials. Essex
Video has been bringing in ten million dollars a year,
but it's the EO. Jeff Steinmann has been constantly harassed
by the FEDS for shipping porn movies like Flesh Dance
and I Want to Be Teased across state lines from

(02:07):
California to Tennessee, where porn is still restricted. All the
money Essex Video put into extravagant production costs didn't stop
some of its films from flopping anyway. Legal fees from
defending themselves against me's influenced obscenity suits have drained their
coffers and essex Video goes bankrupt. Jeff Steinmann keeps emphasizing

(02:30):
that essex is a film distribution company, not a studio.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
I don't make movies.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
Essex Video was never a production company.

Speaker 6 (02:41):
Jeff Steinmann Essex Video.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Jeff Steinman has also just bought a five bedroom, five
bathroom mansion for almost one million dollars in Santa Clarita's
Canyon Country neighborhood. Worried that they wouldn't sell it to
a porn maven. He lied to the former owners that
he was rich off of construction business. The deal for
the mansion has just closed. When essex video goes belly

(03:08):
up within the adult industry, folks start to worry that
the porn market is becoming oversaturated with content. Adult videotapes
are becoming less valuable because there are so many studios
making them cheaply. Now there are also people making pornography
who truly don't care if the content is any good

(03:28):
at all. They are just trying to constantly flood the
market with new product. Meet Mark Curtis of Video Exclusives.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
My mother used to tell me all women are whores
and sluts, and she was wry. Mark Curtis Video Exclusives.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Mark Curtis aka Mark Carrier is a guy from Alabama
who starts a mail order VHS company in nineteen eighty
that becomes Video Exclusives, which moves into the Valley neighborhood
of Canoga Park. Video Exclusives cuts script lengths and shooting
times in half, shooting scenes fast and dirty at single locations.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
I came up with the idea that instead of shooting
over two or three days, you could just do it
in one day, and instead of a thirty page script,
you'd use a fifteen page script. And if you don't
move to different locations, well, you know that cuts costs tremendously.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
By nineteen ninety one, Curtis's sales figures have risen from
three million to thirty million dollars a year. He invests
the profits back into a West Valley sound stage with
sets for standard porn setups like a hospital, as well
as a styrofoam ice cave. Mark Curtis buys a Bentley,
a Porsche, a Ferrari, and a vintage Corvette. He is

(04:51):
hated within the porn industry for his cost cutting techniques,
which he compares to Japanese car makers undercutting American ones
with cheaper, better cars. While his pornos are cheaper, they
are definitely not better. Flooding the market with shitty but
plentiful content like Mark Curtis is doing, is making the
value of all porn content go down.

Speaker 4 (05:15):
I'm always looking to cut corners to cut people out
of the picture.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
When the technology is brand new, porn videotapes go for
as much as one hundred dollars a pop. By the
late eighties, products like Video Exclusives tapes sell for five bucks.
Mark Curtis is also obsessed with building the perfect girl
to fit his own sexual fantasy. Video Exclusives hires contract

(05:42):
girls like an Australian blonde named Kelly Blue, and pays
for them to have plastic surgery like nose jobs and
breast enlargements. He also pays for professional makeup for his
girlfriends even when they're not on set. People joke about
the girls that Mark built.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
We make the stars instead of waiting on them to
come to us.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
The IRS starts keeping an eye on Mark Curtis, and
in nineteen ninety one they bust him for misreporting his
income to evade taxes. Whenever customers pay for their tapes
in cash, Video Exclusives has been putting that cash into
a secret safe and not reporting that money to the government.

Speaker 7 (06:26):
Right now, isn't a real good time for these people,
Sergeant Donald Smith LAPD.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
By the late eighties, thirty of the San Fernando Valley's
foremost adult companies have been searched by the Los Angeles
Police Department and the FBI. The FEDS are specifically going
to more conservative states and filing obscenity charges against pornographers
in California, a practice called venue shopping. Hoping to rile
up the folks in red states against adult films, The

(07:00):
film companies get lawyers to fight back against the onslaught
of new lawsuits. In nineteen eighty nine, undercover fed set
up a fake video store in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The
Feds order porn tapes for the fake video store from
Calvista Video and Van Nis. They receive four films on
vhs Backdoor, Lust, Awesome, Sorority Pink, and Sorority Pink Too.

(07:25):
Then they try the pornographers on obscenity charges in Oklahoma,
assuming the venue shopping will help get them a conviction
from a more culturally conservative jury than in California. Instead,
they get a hung jury who can't decide if the
tapes are obscene. Sydney Nikerk of Calvista is threatened with
a two million dollar fine for shipping pornographic materials to Oklahoma.

(07:48):
He gets off with one hundred thousand dollars fine after
promising to shut down Calvista and its subsidiaries. He doesn't
have the one hundred thousand dollars left after being bankrupted
by legal fees. The Mese reports suggested tactics are working.
Golden Age porn stars like Nina Hartley and Ron Jeremy
see this as a conservative pushback against the sexual revolution.

Speaker 8 (08:13):
It's a lot safer than a woman who abstains a
month than gets so desperate she goes out to a
bar and picks up a guy. Life is a risk,
Nina Hartley, performer.

Speaker 5 (08:26):
Part of my defense is it's a very honest business.
It's exactly what it is. I don't have a problem
with the Lord above, who do I hurt. I do
the same thing you do, except I do it on film.
Ron Jeremy, performer.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
As the Reagan era tries to put porn back in
the VHS box, the HIV retrovirus that Reagan refuses to
acknowledge is also tearing through the adult industry. John Holmes,
who returns to performing in the eighties and continues to
struggle with drug addiction, contracts HIV in nineteen eighty six.

(09:04):
Holmes then shoots two movies in Italy without telling producers
or co stars about his HIV status while shooting unprotected
sex scenes. Holmes continues to claim his health issues are
colon cancer until nineteen eighty seven, when he finally tells
friends he has AIDS before dying from complications in nineteen
eighty eight at the age of forty six. Two of

(09:26):
seventy's porn's biggest stars, John Holmes and Linda Lovelace from
Deep Throat, are held up as cautionary tales against the
idea that porn can ever be ethical or safe for participants.
After several HIV scares, the porn industry starts to require
monthly STD and AIDS tests from performers. A former adult

(09:47):
performer named Sharon Mitchell starts a nonprofit called Adult Industry
Medical Healthcare Foundation to oversee STD testing. Mitchell has a
PhD in sexology from an unaccredited facility in Sanvardzion that
is not recognized by any university or college. She acted
in a thousand adult movies directed twenty and appears briefly
in The Deer Hunter and Tutsie. The model for STD

(10:12):
testing in the porn community originated from another West Coast tradition, communes.
Because of the free love aspect of communes, group BESTD
testing was first practiced in communes like Resniche Peram. The
Oregon Commune founded by Osho, as well as the Morehouse
Commune in Lafayette, California, and the Korista Commune, a polyamorous

(10:34):
intentional community founded by a World War Two veteran named
John bro Jed Presmont after he heard voices telling him
that he was the founder of the world's next great religion.
Koristans formed fidelitous groups called b f I c's Best
Friend identity clusters rotating sleep arrangements. There was some political

(10:56):
friction at Kurista when bro Jed turned out to be
pro war in the Vietnam era, the adult industry comes
together to debate mandatory condom use. Some think requiring condoms
will ruin the fantasy that porn sells of raw spontaneous sex.
Others think it's not worth the risk of shooting without them.

(11:16):
Everyone has to grapple with the new reality.

Speaker 7 (11:21):
I'm hoping that the talent will band together and look
out for themselves and each other.

Speaker 9 (11:26):
I don't think we've ever had a better.

Speaker 7 (11:28):
Idea Shane performer and a head of Shane Enterprises.

Speaker 10 (11:35):
By incorporating these things, we're making a statement to the public, like, hey,
it's okay to use condoms. I think it's good for everybody.
Deanna Lauren Vivid Video Contract Girl.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
While adult tapes led the way into the video rental revolution,
they are no longer the top sellers. Some think the
novelty of easily being able to watch people have sex
has simply worn off. Maybe it's the influx of amateur
sex tape shot on home camquarders. It's possible the porn
industry has flooded the market with too much easily available content,

(12:12):
and now nothing is appointment viewing. There's also increasing globalization.
You can now watch porn made all over the world.
Between nineteen eighty eight and nineteen eighty nine, porn tape
rental numbers start dropping. In nineteen ninety eight, Ginger Lin
Allen is indicted for two counts of tax fraud, probably

(12:35):
direct retaliation from the FEDS for her refusal to testify
in the Tracy Lord's Fake ID case. Two years earlier,
Charlie Sheen and his father, Martin Sheen, write a letter
to the judge asking for leniency in the case. Ginger's
defense includes a psychologist who brings up her traumatic childhood
and calls her need for sexual validation from men pathological,

(12:58):
which I don't know that there's any other kind. After
a week long trial, Ginger Lynn Allen is convicted on
one count of tax fraud for failing to disclose a
measly eight thousand, five hundred and eighty dollars to the
United States government that she made in nineteen eighty three
during her first few months in porn. In nineteen ninety one,

(13:19):
she's making thirty thousand dollars a year stripping and a
measly twenty five thousand dollars a year from mainstream acting,
much less than she got paid to perform for Vivid.
She stars in Vice Academy three and asks for ten
thousand dollars and a personal trailer, but she shows up
late and hungover to set and then fucks up her lines.

(13:40):
In nineteen ninety two, she fails a court ordered drug
test and is sentenced to forty five days in rehab.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
I love sex, and I love sex with rockets is
more than anything else.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
But even with dark clouds gathering over the San Fernando Valley,
a new starlet arrives to shine brightly in the pornographic firmament.
She's a rocker bad girl for the new decade. The
nineteen nineties She's platinum blonde with blunt betty page bangs,
poudy lips, and a penchant for dating famous rock stars

(14:26):
and comedians. She has dark clouds inside of herself too,
and the media loves to watch a beautiful woman self destruct.
Her stage name is Savannah the Future. Savannah is born

(14:50):
as Shannon Michelle Wilseie in Hawthorne, California, in nineteen seventy
on October ninth, an apple cheeked, dirty blonde libra. Her
mother is Pamela, a seventeen year old teenage runaway who
meets her father, eighteen year old postal clerk Michael Wilsey.
Her parents are hippies who meet in nineteen sixty nine

(15:10):
and have a whirlwind romance that ends after the birth
of their daughter. According to pam when the child is born,
Mike Wilsey says he wanted a boy and that he
doesn't believe he's the father. Nevertheless, Pamela and Mike Wilsey
get married when Shannon is eighteen months old and split
up three months later. Pamela moves to Justin, Texas with

(15:32):
Shannon and gets a job at a grocery store. She
marries a clerk at the store named Joe Longoria, who
has four kids from his first marriage. Shannon, a toddler,
is told by her mom that Joe Longoria is her father,
but she's never formally adopted because Mike Wilsey won't agree
to it. Ham and Joe have three more children, for

(15:53):
a grand total of eight kids, and Shannon figures out
how to get some attention in her big family by dancing.

Speaker 11 (16:02):
I listened to a lot of music, and she did too,
and danced all the time when the music was on
Pam Wilsey.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
The family moves to Haltam City, Texas, and Shannon attends
grade school. Her teachers say she was cute, well liked
by classmates, and an a student. By age twelve, Shannon
is telling everyone she's going to move to Hollywood and
become a movie star. At thirteen, she's told she can't
enroll in middle school as Shannon Longoria because she's not

(16:34):
really a Longoria. This is how Shannon finds out that
the man she thinks is her dad is really her stepdad.
This upsets her entire worldview. Her personality changes from a
bubbly child to an angry teenager. She starts talking back
to her stepfather, skipping school, smoking pot, and climbing out

(16:55):
of her bedroom window at night. Pam Wilsey decides to
ship her daughter off to Mission via Ho, California, to
live with her great grandparents and uncle, a guy named
Mike Winnitt. Mike Winnett becomes Shannon's legal guardian, but she
finds trouble there too and gets sent back to Texas.
She's moved around between homes in Texas and California, where

(17:17):
she experiences a traumatic sexual assault. At age sixteen, she
moves in with her birth father, Mike Wilsey, in Ventura, California,
but he too has other kids and Shannon once again
gets lost in the shuffle. She goes back to her
uncles again and confesses to him about how she was molested.

(17:38):
Her mother steadfastly denies that Shannon was sexually assaulted, possibly
because it was by somebody close to the family. Then,
at thirteen, she goes back to her mom in Texas
until she's allegedly found on her stepfather's lap, then back
to Mission via Ho, where she becomes a high school cheerleader.
She starts dressing provocatively and asks her uncle to walk

(18:01):
six feet behind her She is sixteen years old when
she meets Greg Alman of the Almon Brothers outside his
tour bus at a hotel in San Juan Capistrano. He
is forty years old. She asks him on a date
to a club called the Coach House. He even meets
her uncle, says he plans to take good care of Shannon,

(18:22):
and then offers him coke.

Speaker 12 (18:25):
I was like, well, you know, it's cocaine. It's not
that bad. It's okay, And then we all did some cocaine. Ah,
Mike win it. Savannah's uncle.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Uncle Mike says in retrospect he was not doing a
good job parenting his niece. Next thing, Uncle Mike knows
he's receiving a phone call from his niece with some news.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
I'm on the road with Greg Almon.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Shannon Willseye drops out of high school to joined Greg
Alman on tour from nineteen eighty six to nineteen eighty eight.
Now you know, I'd love to do five hours of
stuff just about Almond Brother's band lore, but I have
to keep it moving. So here are the bullet points.
Greg Almond snitched on his friend during a coke bust
in the seventies and the rest of the Almond Brothers
band stopped talking to him afterwards. He was married to

(19:19):
Share for nine days until he pulled a knife on
her on their honeymoon in Jamaica. When All Men meets Shannon,
he is at the peak of his alcoholism, drinking a
fifth of vodka a day. Greg Alman allegedly introduces his
underage girlfriend to hard drugs, including heroin. Shannon gets an
ankle tattoo that says Greg in all caps, she liked the.

Speaker 11 (19:44):
Fact that he bought her expensive things that we never could.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Isolated in Greg Alman's luxury high rise apartment in Nashville
or on the bus with the band, Shannon starts to
yearn for her old teenage life. Greg dumps her when
she turns eighteen, and she moves back in with her uncle.
Shannon realizes she's pregnant with Greg Alman's child, then has
a miscarriage. She moves back in with her father, Mike Wilsee,

(20:12):
and Ventura and tries to return to a normal California
teenage girl's life. She goes to the beach, gets a
job at a clothing store, and works on getting her ged.
At night school, she subscribes to Guitar Player magazine and
puts posters of her favorite rock stars on her wall
at home.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
My favorite thing in my little life is rock and roll.
My ambition is to marry rock star.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
When Jenna World returns, Shannon Wilsey moves to La and
becomes Savannah Oh my Gosh, Welcome back to Jenna World.

(21:05):
After being a rock star's girlfriend on the road, Shannon
gets easily bored in the small beach town and starts
seeking out local thrills, strolling the strand in song bikinis
and dyeing her hair platinum blonde. She enters a local
bikini contest in Ventura. At the bikini contest, she meets
Racal Darien, a penthouse pet, who wins. Shannon comes in

(21:29):
third place and throws a fit. She meets a photographer
there who takes her first topless shots and becomes her
next boyfriend. She steals his prescriptions and passes out on
his couch. She starts trawling LA's rock clubs with her friends,
dressing sexy and trying to get backstage passes from Rhodie's.

(21:52):
She goes to every show at the Ventura Theater. A
musician named Billy Sheehan spots Shannon from the stage. She
Hann is a road dog bassist who's toured with Post
Van Halen, David Lee Roth. He's now in the band
Mister Big, who are about to tour with Rush. They
have sex.

Speaker 13 (22:14):
Babe, you're a fucking star, Billy she head musician.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Shannon decides to pursue acting and gets cast in some
B movies. She shacks up with Billy Sheehan in La
and speeds around town in his red Corvette while he's
on tour. She seems to have no fear behind the wheel,
even after she gets charged with drunk driving and placed
on probation. A few weeks after her night in jail

(22:43):
for drunk driving, she totals the corvette.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
I need an a to graduate, and I'd be willing
to do anything.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
She gets her first speaking role in a movie called
The Invisible Maniac, where she's credited as Shannon Wilsee. Although
it's a slasher comedy, she is mortified at the movie's
August nineteen ninety premiere when the audience keeps laughing at
her lines. She feels like they're laughing not just at
her character Vicky, but laughing at her personally in her acting.

(23:20):
Feeling ridiculed, she decides to give up on pursuing mainstream acting.
She sends a love letter to Greg Allman with a
picture of herself that's returned to her by another woman.
Out of acting work and low on money, Shannon decides
to do nude modeling and shoots with her photographer X.
She and Billy Shehan reconnected to Denny's after the rush tour.

(23:45):
Sheehan dumps Shannon when he sees her on the cover
of an adult magazine giving a blowjob. She goes out
on the Sunset Strip that night and picks up allegedly
Billy Idle. Ready to fully jump into doing porn, she
gets booked to do her first scene with Raquel Darien
under the name silver Kine and shows up to set

(24:06):
two hours late. She demands somebody find her some heroine,
and when nobody obliges, she settles for five volumes. She
is so wooden that the production has to loop in
sex noises. She isn't very interested in movies or even sex,
but she has one goal. She wants to be a star.

(24:30):
Shannon Wilsey signs a contract with Video Exclusives The Shitty
Low budget porn company run by Mark Curtis. The contract
is for twenty five movies at two hundred and fifty
bucks a scene doubled for box covers. Shannon takes her
stage name Savannah from a nineteen eighty two family comedy
called Savannah Smiles, based on John Renoir's La Grande Delusion,

(24:53):
about a six year old girl who runs away from
her rich father with the help of two escaped convicts.
Men have telling Shannon she's beautiful enough to be a
movie star. Her whole life. Now a Savannah, she will
video exclusives, buys her a Mustang and rents her a cheap,
shitty apartment in Hollywood. She dubs her new place the

(25:16):
hell Hole and leaves it unfurnished. Savannah thinks her boobs
are too small for porn, referring to them as tater tots,
so Mark Curtis, builder of dream Girls, arranges for her
to get decup saline implants from a plastic surgeon in
Beverly Hills. She also gets hooked up with a crooked
dentist who prescribes her unlimited percocets. She moves into a

(25:41):
nice place in the hills of Universal City, overlooking the
San Fernando Valley. The new place is furnished with black
leather couches, a walk through closet, and a glass coffee table.
On the walls, Savannah hangs beautiful, glossy pin up pictures
of herself naked. In nineteen ninety one, Savannah's contract with

(26:03):
Video Exclusives ends, she moves up in the porn world,
joining the more prestigious ranks of the Vivid Girls. By
the early nineties, Vivid Video is signing six Vivid Girls
a year, who each make movies that are budgeted at
one hundred thousand dollars. As a Vivid Girl, Savannah gets
to work less for more money. She only has to

(26:25):
do eight movies for Vivid each year. Just as they
built the Ginger series around Ginger Lynn Allen and the
Brat series around Jamie Summers, Vivid Video builds a film
franchise around Savannah called On Trial. Directed by Paul Thomas.
On Trial is a four part series about a porn

(26:45):
star obscenity trial that cashes in on the popularity of
the new cable TV channel Court TV, which broadcasts trials
live from the courtroom. While Savannah doesn't like to work.
She does like the acting part of her job.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Do you think I should like make my voice catch
right as I'm saying this?

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Having instant access to a lot of money is not
great for Savannah's impulse control. She spends her contract earnings
compulsively on designer clothing, drugs, fancy food from the william
Sonoma store, and a fish tank filled with exotic tropical
fish for her expensive hillside rental. The heroin use Greg

(27:30):
Allman introduced her to as a teenage girl has become
an entrenched habit. She spends two hundred dollars a day
on Mexican tar heroine that she cooks in a spoon.
She carries her junkie gear in a makeup bag and
ties her arm off with a pair of tights.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
I don't want ugly bitches like this. In a scene
with Me, Savannah.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Starts to get a bad reputation for showing up drunk, high,
and late, if at all, carrying her heroin works in
a leather mini backpack. Other girls don't like her because
she's bitchy and unprofessional. She gets nicknamed the ice Queen
behind her back. Her drug use makes her a liability
on set and off Normally porn stars make big bucks

(28:18):
doing feature dancing at clubs, but Savannah is too unreliable
to tour well. She runs out of drugs on the
road and freaks out, sending strip club owners out on
a quest to find them for her locally.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
If that god Nampa doesn't get me my coffee in
two minutes, I want him fired.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Despite the bad word of mouth about her diva behavior,
her constant disrespect for the film crews that made her
into a star, and her refusal to put any work
into getting better at performing on screen, nobody can deny
that Savannah's movies are selling better than any other new starlets.
It makes other performers crazy that Savannah works so much

(29:02):
less hard yet makes so much money. She's a beautiful woman,
but she's a dead fish on screen. During sex, she
refuses to pretend to enjoy it. She just lays there
and waits for it to be over with One time,
she gets so bored while getting pounded doggie style that
she starts playing with a houseplantl.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
Come on, Savannah, say fuck me or something, suck.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Me or something.

Speaker 9 (29:32):
I'll get right away.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Once she becomes Savannah, she flips out if she's addressed
as Shannon, She saves tabloid articles that mention her, but
crosses out any mention of Shannon Wilseie and them with
a pen. Savannah lives hard and fast on screen and off.
She allegedly dates the string of eighties rock stars, including
Billie Idol, David Lee Roth, and Vince Neil from Motley Crue,

(30:00):
all riding out the last dregs of MTV eras success
before Grunge destroys hair Metal. She is also spotted with
Mark Wahlberg, Axel Rose, and Slash, not all at the
same time. She spills to a tabloid that she fucked
both Axel and Slash, and Slash was better. Slash gives

(30:20):
her the pet name Savvy, like Charlie Sheen with Ginger
Lynn Allen, the A listers that Savannah goes out with
dangle the possibility of mainstream fame before her, or at
least her dream of being a rock star's wife. Savannah
lives up to her wild girl image by having public
sexit bars with rock stars and slipping off with them

(30:42):
into their limousines. Mark Marky, Mark Wahlberg takes her to
the Grammys as his date. People Magazine alleges that Savannah
got caught quote engaged in full hilt whoopee with Slash
from Guns N' Roses at a New York club called
the Scrap Bar. Star Tabloid reports that she's engaged to

(31:02):
Slash and wearing a three carrot diamond engagement ring he
gave her, but Slash won't publicly claim Savannah as his girlfriend.

Speaker 14 (31:13):
If she was carrying a torch for Slash, it was
completely one sided.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
I don't know if that's what Rose even knew her.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
It's rumored the engagement ring Savannah wears is a gift
from one of her rich old sugar daddies. Savannah dates
her way through la married strip club owners, noncommittal Hollywood guys,
and a dude from the glam metal band Rat. She
moves in with one boyfriend, only to have him stolen
by her best friend. The rock stars and rich guys

(31:44):
only want Savannah for public sex and as red carpet
arm candy. They aren't interested in getting to know her deeply.
She finds the real emotional connection she's been looking for
with a woman she meets at an adult film convention
in nineteen ninety one, another porn star named Gina Fine.

Speaker 14 (32:04):
I was totally completely in love with her.

Speaker 11 (32:10):
Gena Fine performer performer.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Born Jennifer Payson in New York City, Gena Fine is
a five foot nine libra who starts doing porn at
age twenty one. An eighties punk rock girl with a
bleach blonde, spiked up mullet, she stars in movies like
Dream Genes and a Fatal Attraction parody called Fatal Erection.
Gena Fine is known for her rough, aggressive sex scenes,

(32:36):
part of an influx of punk performers that will become
the genre Nona's alternative porn. In nineteen ninety, she rebrands
into a raven haired pin up wearing latex body con
fetish dresses. She does sex work on the side, charging
one thousand dollars for out calls as a dominatrix. Savannah
and Gena Fine meet on a set and click instantly.

(33:00):
They become the Glimmer twins of porn, partying together NonStop
and showing up to work fucked up and late or
not at all, jeopardizing both of their hot careers. They
have a long on and off romantic relationship and do
a lot of heroin together. Gina Fine knows how to
handle Savannah and her ever changing moods, how to treat

(33:21):
her like a full human being as a fellow woman
in the industry. Gina clocks immediately that Savannah's whole hot
diva bitch persona is masking a traumatized girl who's insecure
about her appearance and just wants to be truly loved.
Gina fine lets Savannah confide in her and validates her feelings.

(33:42):
Gina sees that Savannah is a wounded soul she sees
Shannon wilseye. Gina takes care of her. She makes Savannah
feel comfy and safe, providing her things she really wants,
like pink lace, flowered fabrics, and fuzzy bedroom slipper. She
makes her her favorite meal, Kraft mac and cheese. Gina

(34:05):
sees that Savannah gets fucked and fed. Savannah can be
whiny and moody and irritable, but Gina loves taking care
of her.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Anny I'm getting pissy. Oh feed me, do me buy me?

Speaker 14 (34:24):
Savannah National Anthem.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
Gina and Savannah are each other's red carpet dates for
the ninth annual nineteen ninety two Adult Video News Awards
in Las Vegas on Trial One in Defense of Savannah
is nominated for five awards, including Best Feature. Savannah is
nominated for Best New Starlet.

Speaker 8 (34:49):
As usual, the parade of stars attracted every hot body
in Vegas, much to the approval of a horny audience.

Speaker 11 (35:00):
Hot videos illustrated.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
At Bally's Hotel and Casino where the Avens are taking place.
The mood is tense. Everyone knows Savannah is the favorite
in her categories, including Best New Starlet, but there's a
general feeling among those in the industry that she should
not be rewarded for her bad behavior. It's one thing
to have a bad girl image on screen. It's another

(35:25):
to show up late to a shoot and waste a
film cruise, time in studio, money on stage. Drag Queen
porn director Chee Chi LaRue breaks the tension in the room.

Speaker 11 (35:38):
Where's that bitch, Savannah?

Speaker 2 (35:41):
She needs a spanking.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Chee Chee LaRue.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Director Gina Fine wins Best Actress. On Trial sweeps its categories,
and Savannah wins the most coveted award for a girl
role that recently debuted in the industry, Best News Starlet.
Taking to the podium, Savannah addresses her critics and haters

(36:09):
head on.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
I know a lot of you don't like me, but
that's tough. I got mine award.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
At the Avian Awards. Savannah spots Gina making conversation with
a performer named Amberlin. Amberlin is a blonde from Orange,
California who survived a very hard childhood and moved to
LA where she became part of the bikini modeling scene
on the Sunset Strip. She is a pioneer in the
practice of feature dancing, where porn stars double their money
by touring strip clubs nationally as headlining exotic dancers. Amberlynn

(36:48):
was also one of the performers who unknowingly worked with
John Holmes when he was HIV positive. She tested negative
afterwards and got involved with the Youth Aids Foundation of
Los Angeles, which provides social services to teenagers with HIV.
In nineteen ninety two, Amberlin holds the porn industry's first
official humanitarian fundraiser.

Speaker 11 (37:12):
All of us could take a moment and look within
ourselves and reach out and do anything that we can,
regardless of who we are or what our occupation is.
Not only can we raise awareness, we could make people responsible. Amberlin,
performer for.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Her twenty eighth birthday. Amberlin hosts the benefit at the
Bellage Hotel in West Hollywood to raise money for the
Youth Aids Foundation, whose board members include Tory Spelling. In
a black fishnet catsuit, Amberlin hosts a seventy five dollars
a plate benefit dinner with prominent adult industry figures, including
Larry Flint. The birthday benefit gets press coverage in the

(37:55):
New York and LA Times. Amberlin uses her porn stardom
to draw attention to LA's desperate need for free social services,
particularly for those who are already living on the fringes
of society for various reasons. In nineteen ninety two, LA's
deep issues around class and racism are elevated to an
international media stage because of the LA Riots, also known

(38:19):
as the LA Uprisings. LA's housing crisis and related homelessness
issues have been escalating NonStop since the Reagan presidency. The
coverage of Amberlin's birthday party might be the first time
the mainstream media ever gives the porn industry any positive press.
It's a story that doesn't focus on anyone dying or

(38:40):
suggests that they're being exploited somehow. It's a little shady
in the way of The New York Times writing about
anything deeply Californian, but it focuses on the reality that
women who have fantasy sex on camera for work are
real people who have interests outside of that. But Savannah
doesn't care for Amberlin.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
I don't want to hang out with amber This is
my night.

Speaker 11 (39:06):
What's your name, Shannon, Savannah? Come over here, sit down,
let me talk to you a minute.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Good NINETEENA.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Savannah storms off and goes upstairs to her room at
the Valley's Hotel. She snorts some coke, drinks some whiskey,
and sprawls out on the King Size bad alone.

Speaker 6 (39:31):
She became Savannah. She became her character who was into
drugs and needed reassurance all the time. She forgot who
Shannon was. That's the main thing in this business. Don't
become your character. Polly Shore comedian.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
In nineteen ninety two, Savannah gets into a serious relationship
with comedian Polly Shore. Much like Charlie Sheen, Polly Shore
is a privileged, second generation showbiz kid. His mother, Mitzi Shore,
runs the Comedy Store club on the Sunset Strip, and
he grows up in outrageous comfort. In Beverly Hills. His

(40:10):
stand up persona The Weasel, where he emulates the drawling
surfer dudes from Malibu you meet growing up in la
helps him land a hosting gig on MTV. Polly Shore
is smitten with Savannah as his star briefly rises high.
He takes her on a vacation to Hawaii, to the
MTV Music Video Awards, and to the premiere of Catherine

(40:33):
Bigelow's Point Break As his date. They allegedly make private
sex tapes and discuss marriage. Polly Shore says Savannah used
heroin throughout their relationship and her porn career. He says
he gave her an ultimatum that he would marry her
if she stopped using heroin. While she allegedly did stop

(40:54):
using heroin, she couldn't curb her coke problem. When Jennal
World returns, Savannah goes off the rails. Oh my God,
Welcome back to General World. Polly Shore and Savannah break

(41:23):
up at the end of nineteen ninety two. The same year,
he co stars An Encino Man, a weed free stoner
comedy about unfrozen caveman hunk Brendan Fraser set in the
same valley. Suburbs, where Savannah makes porn. Encino Man is
a surprise hit and helps make Polly Shore a box
office draw for a short stretch in the nineties and
a critical punchline for years after that. While Polly Shore

(41:47):
blames Savannah's drug use for the relationship deteriorating, he also
says he didn't want to commit, especially at the moment
when his career is taking off and he can suddenly
pick up random girls all over the country at his
comedy shows.

Speaker 6 (42:01):
It just gets to a point where they either move
in or you break up. I didn't want to get
any deeper into quicksand.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Savannah collects her fan letters and personally answers her hate mail.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Sticks You don't know me, and you never will. All
you know is what you see on my movies, which
you have obviously taken this time to see in your pathetic,
terrible life. You know you could never be with someone
like me. I am the best, classiest woman to ever
be in this business. You should feel lucky just to

(42:39):
have seen me fuck on film. Get a fucking life, asshole.
Save your hand for jerking off, not writing stupid letters.
You worthless piece of shit, Savannah.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
She sends presents home to her mom in Texas. She
told her mother once about her heroin addiction, but her
mom just dismissed it. Her father writes her letters and prays.

Speaker 13 (43:05):
Please don't think I don't care. I do very much.
I hope you can talk to me more. I'd like
to have your phone number. Mike Woolsey, Savannah's father.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
In nineteen ninety two, Savannah is dropped by Vivid Video
for her erratic behavior, lack of professionalism, and drug use.
Two years into her contract as a Vivid girl, she
often leaves big budget Vivid film shoots halfway through the
day to meet up with her rock and roll boyfriends
and never returns. Savannah's ongoing on and off relationship with

(43:44):
Gina Fine ends once and for all during a disastrous
trip with a rich benefactor where they get in a
huge fight over the thirty bags of heroin and Savannah's possession.
Savannah refuses to give Gina any of the heroin, while
Gina with Savannah sadistically parades another woman past her in
the lobby of their Palm Springs hotel. Gina Fine breaks

(44:07):
up with Savannah because she knows they're toxic and codependent.
She can't let Savannah's self destructive streak destroy them both.
Savannah gets new thirty four double deep breast implants. She
thinks they're botched, they hang weird. She goes back to
Mark Curtis's company Video Exclusives and signs a new contract

(44:31):
with them to do twenty five sex scenes at four
thousand dollars a pop. In nineteen ninety three, Savannah decides
she wants to get off heroin. She goes cold turkey
on heroin, but takes bike it in volume second Hall
in Xanax with a bottle of whiskey. She spends a
week with drawing on the floor and re emerges staying
clean of all substances for the next few months. She

(44:54):
books a feature dancing tour and gets out on the
road again, where she breaks sobriety Cain to get hyped up,
volumed to sleep, and whiskey to loosen her up enough
to strip. She gets offered nine thousand dollars to do
a gang bang scene for Fantastic Pictures in a movie
called Starbangers one without the haze of Heroine. Savannah shows

(45:17):
up on time, is polite to the cast and crew,
and finally turns in a great performance on screen. The
girl who always just laid their complaining is now at
last emotionally present, acting passionately in a movie, and being
kind to the other cast members and film crew, showing
that she does care.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Really.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
She goes to a tattoo parlor to get a cover
up for the Greg Allman Greg tattoo she's had on
her right ankle since she was sixteen. She gets a
new tattoo done over it, an angel.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
I wanted to shock people because I know people would
never ever think that I would do anything like that. Next,
I'm going to do my first anal.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
In January of nineteen ninety four, Savannah appears on the
cover of Adult Video News touting her comeback, but it
is short lived. She doesn't make good on her promise
to do an anal scene. Instead, she tours strip clubs
for five thousand dollars a week and spends the money
as fast as she gets it. She blows it all
on a new two thousand dollars camquarder, thousands of dollars

(46:29):
worth of new stripper costumes, and cocaine, mostly cocaine. She's
also months behind on rent. Savannah is deeply depressed about
her various breakups and in debt from her lavish overspending,
she owes the irs eleven thousand dollars. Two years after

(46:51):
her Vivid Girl contract ended, she's been reduced to mud
wrestling at the Tropicana nightclub in Hollywood for a measly
nine hundred dollars. She punches a guy in the face
at a prize fight for calling her a porno bitch.
She is twenty four years old.

Speaker 7 (47:08):
Just hold on, You'll do the next gig and you'll
have money again. Nancy Nemo para Savanna's manager.

Speaker 3 (47:19):
She has one friend left in the industry, a woman
named Nancy Para, who directs porn films under the name
Nancy Nemo. She also directs under Nancy Fellini, Nancy Scorsese,
and Nancy Animo. I am taking a shot in the
dark hair that she might be Italian. Nancy Nemo is
in her fifties when she meets Savannah, and like many

(47:41):
before her, she feels compelled to both take care of
Savannah and maybe profit a little off of being involved
with her. Nancy Nemo becomes Savannah's new personal handler. She
is willing to take the chance to cash in on
Savannah's name brand, despite her terrible reputation. She calls Savannaanna Savvy,

(48:01):
the same pet name that Slash had for her. Nancy
makes sure Savannah eats and hangs out with her when
she's too depressed to get out of bed. She also
helps her score drugs whenever Savannah needs more money, which
is always. Nancy books a set to shoot with one
of the few male performers who will still shoot with Savannah.

(48:22):
Nancy nemo directs and edits the scenes herself and personally
makes sure Savannah doesn't flake out. Savannah thinks that she
has a stalker. She claims a watch and a hair
brush have disappeared. She finds flowers trampled by her sliding
glass doors. One night, she comes home to find all
the electronics on it full blast. Her cat's Winnie and

(48:44):
Willie didn't help, so she gets a Rottweiler and names
it Daisy May and a Beretta gun that she also
names Daisy and keeps by her bed. Even though she
can still rack up five thousand dollars a night doing
feature dancing, Savannah blows off herd gigs to party in
La Instead. She feels isolated and paranoid in her Universal

(49:06):
City apartment, decorated with all the pictures of herself. Nancy
Nemo is her only friend. Savannah constantly looks for reasons
to go out and party. On the night she's booked
to start doing a week of feature dancing shows at
a strip club called Lace in Nyack, New York, she
goes out partying in Los Angeles instead with a member

(49:27):
of the entourage for the Irish American Pride rap group
House of Pain. House of Pain are confusingly not from
Boston but from LA's West Valley. Savannah's latest crush is
Danny Boy from House of Pain. She has moved on
from rock stars to rappers. She met the rap group

(49:49):
at a music video shoot. Danny Boy, also writing the
peak of his House of Pain fame, is not interested
in commitment either, but Savannah is already so him, and
so she keeps chasing, calling, and coming around. She lurks
him at a club called Hell's Gate, which is allegedly
co owned by Danny Boy and Mickey Rourke. Danny Boy

(50:12):
has a personal assistant named Jason Swing, who answers the
black cordless phone for his bosses and takes messages at
the literal House of Pain, their party house in the valley.
Jason Swing is a twenty two year old club promoter
from Encino. He is part of what Savannah's explaing Mark
Wahlberg's famous television show Entourage will immortalize with the titular Entourage,

(50:36):
a bunch of guys who hang out with famous guys
and get runoff sex. But Jason Swing doesn't need his
famous friends to pick up girls. Girls swoon over him
naturally because he is a rich, six foot tall, dark
haired nineties babe from Encino with sideburns, a goatee, and
a backwards baseball cap. His father is an interior designer

(50:58):
who decorated the Spielberg's house, and his mother is an agent.
He is by all accounts, hot, nice, and well connected,
with a rap obsessed suburban white kid's love of using
black vernacular. Monday Night in Los Angeles on July eleventh,

(51:19):
nineteen ninety four, Savannah is feeling lonely and bored. She
calls around fishing for invitations, but everyone says they're busy
or staying home because it's Monday night. Danny Boy is
her fourth phone call of the night, but the phone
is picked up by Jason Swing.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Hello, it's me.

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Was up.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Is Danny there?

Speaker 9 (51:44):
He's on tour of Europe.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
He's gone already.

Speaker 9 (51:48):
Yeah, he left like a week ago.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Oh what are you doing tonight?

Speaker 3 (51:55):
Jason Swing is going to an actor's birthday party and
says Savannah can come with him a party.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Really.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Savannah shows up to the House of Pain in overalls
and tennis shoes, with her gigantic dog, Daisy May, and
a bunch of her porn merchandise, which she gives to him.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
What are these a little present? It's me.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Jason Swing didn't know Savannah was a porn star. He
just thought she was another one of the many beautiful
women with fake breasts who go out clubbing in Los
Angeles and want a date rich and famous guys.

Speaker 9 (52:37):
I guess we should roll.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
I need to take my dog home first. Want a
cruise with me? Jason.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
She takes him back to her place and shows him
around the gallery of glamour photos of herself.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
My boots look pretty good here. I just had my
second operation. That's when I shave for a film. You're
so cute, You're blessing.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
They end up chilling in her living room talking until
four am, when she tells him she's not actually trying
to seduce him, at least not yet. She's also still
trying to date his friend Danny Boy.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
I wouldn't mind you sleeping over, but it's like our
first night we've actually hung out. I don't think it
would be a good idea. People get the wrong idea.
That's cool, I'll drive you home.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Savannah rings Jason's swing up again on a Sunday night.
He and his friends are getting a stretch limo to
go out clubbing. She shows up drunk on white wine
in a black leather mini skirt, a crop top and heels.
The club is dead that night, so they end up
just going back to the House of Painhouse for a
kickback to listen to music and talk. Savanna really likes Jason.

(54:02):
He's hot and nice, he listens to her. He doesn't
act like he expects sex from her.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
SELI guys I go out with, you know, friends of people.
They always try to get on me and stuff. It's
cool that you're a gentleman. You don't treat me like
a pornostar.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
She asks Jason if he wants to come back to
her place again for a nightcap, he is down. At
twelve thirty am, Savannah is driving herself and Jason Swing
to her Universal City Hills palace. She is whipping around

(54:43):
the winding canyon curves insanely fast in her white Corvette.

Speaker 9 (54:49):
Slow down, Slow down, slow down.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
I'm fine, kids out, crashing into a picket fence and
hitting a tree. She goes through the windshield. The car
is all fucked up, so is her face. Her head
is bleeding. Jason tries to calm her down, but she's

(55:17):
completely flipping out over the lacerations to her face.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Oh god, oh god, hold on, Oh I think my
nose is broken.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
She sees herself in the mirror, covered in blood and tears, unrecognizable,
and nearly faints.

Speaker 15 (55:36):
My face it's ruined.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
How am I gonna do my show?

Speaker 9 (55:41):
Come on, get up? Why don't you take it to Kuzzie.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
I have to call Nancy. Can you please go and
take Daisy out and check the accident. I've just had
a horrible car accident. I wrung my nose, it's bleeding
really bad, and I've been my ass. You have to
think mean it as but.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
All Nancy Nemo says she'll come over and help take
care of Savannah. Jason returns from walking Daisy May. The
jacuzzie tub is bubbling, surrounded by candlelight, but Savannah didn't
get in. He finds her crouched on the concrete in
the garage. It is two thirty in the morning at this.

Speaker 9 (56:29):
Point, Shannon, Savannah, can you hear me? My car?

Speaker 1 (56:36):
My car is ruined.

Speaker 9 (56:39):
Don't worry. You have insurance. You can get another one.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
I was gonna go look at vipers with Danny. Boy.

Speaker 9 (56:48):
Listen, I'm gonna go turn off the jacuzzie so it
doesn't flood. I'll be right back. Okay, everything, okay, I'm
so sorry. Oh she did not just do that. Dude.

(57:10):
This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This isn't happening.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
By the time Nancy gets there, it's too late. She
finds a traumatized Jason Swing out front, throwing up on
the lawn, and Savannah's body lying in a pool of
blood in the garage.

Speaker 7 (57:32):
It looked like she had a big flower on the
side of her head.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Nancy calls nine to one one. When the cops show up,
Jason Swing freaks out and lies at first that he
was still out walking the dog when Savannah shot herself.
He feels incredible guilt for being there and not being
able to stop her. He also doesn't want to implicate himself.
Nancy knew Savannah had bought the gun three weeks earlier

(57:59):
and that she'd been sleeping with it under her pillow.
Savannah survives the gunshot wound to her head somehow, but
falls into a coma. Her dad, Mike Wilsey, sees her
at the Burbank Hospital for the first time in four years.
After eleven hours with no improvement, he's told there's no
chance of recovery and takes her off of life support.

Speaker 7 (58:22):
This hard wild veneer was constructed to cover a very
vulnerable and lonely young woman who never felt pretty.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
The La Times, tabloids, and True Crime TV jump on
Savannah's death to narrativise it into a trend story about
adult stars committing suicide. They bring up Shanna Grant, another
porn star who lived fast and died young after her
drug issues got in the way of her ability to
show up to work, and a performer named Megan Lee,

(58:53):
who committed suicide with a gun at age twenty six
in nineteen ninety, mainstream media still mainly reported on porn
whenever something really bad happened, in order to villainize pornographers
and portray performers as victims. A vivid girl named Tory
Wells gives comment to the press about how the media

(59:14):
only spotlights porn when bad things happen and never talks
about the more mundane reality of the industry's day to
day operations.

Speaker 15 (59:23):
You know, I get pissed off at these talk shows.
Victim victim, victim, abuse, abuse, abuse. They use it to
explain away everything. The real abuse comes when you let
it rule your life. You just have to work through it.
You have to help yourself however you can. Tory Wells.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
Performer Al Goldstein's Screw magazine runs a genuinely offensive story
about Savannah's death with a picture of her with exes
drawn over her eyes.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Dang dong, the bitch is dead.

Speaker 11 (59:56):
Everyone knew that she was an airhead, and now she's
got a hole in her.

Speaker 4 (59:59):
Down to prove it.

Speaker 13 (01:00:01):
Al Goldstein Screw Magazine.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Another performer says the industry bears no culpability for turning
Savannah into a diva.

Speaker 16 (01:00:13):
I don't blame the industry for mistreating her. If anything,
they spoiled her rotten. They put us on such a
high pedestal, the limos are sent out. Anything I want
is pretty much done for me. Sometimes it makes the
real world hard to deal with. Danielle Cheeks performer.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
But it's clear that star treatment doesn't affect everyone the
same way. Savannah's ex girlfriend Gina Fine, is clear headed
about what one needs to survive in porn.

Speaker 14 (01:00:49):
The advice I give to any girl getting in this
business is you better have a real strong family network
around you and have some idea of who you are
before you get involved. You get built up to be
a big star here, but out in the real world
you're a prostitute. And when you get out there and
try to mingle with the regular public and be a start,

(01:01:09):
they'll shut you down pretty quick. It can be an
overwhelming feeling, so you better have your family and real
friends there for you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
After the brief flashbang of porn chic in the nineteen seventies,
mainstream media turns its back on the adult industry again
in the eighties and early nineties, portraying it as sleazy
and morally corrupt. Critical coverage of porn also allows publications
to run pictures of the sexy young women whose deaths
they are making an exploitative buck off of, while claiming

(01:01:43):
porn exploited them. The moral panic over porn is on
some level a panic overgiving young women money. It insists
they don't deserve any money at all, which you see
recycled in recent panics over OnlyFans. Doing porn is portrayed
as a stupid idea for stupid women that can only

(01:02:04):
lead to their ruin. The posthumous Savannah narratives drive people
in the industry crazy because Savannah had been blacklisted out
of porn for her lack of professionalism. The industry may
attract some wild, impulsive girls, but it's hard, mostly dull work,
and requires a high level work ethic. You can never

(01:02:25):
start thinking you're bigger than the apparatus of the porn industry.
You cannot start becoming the fantasy image that they are
selling of you, because it is not real. Don't become
your character. In the early nineties, the media is still
trying to make doing porn out to be a career
that is only for people with serious personality disorders. What

(01:02:46):
line of work doesn't contain people with serious personality disorders.
Have you met surgeons? There are survivors of rape and
abuse in every line of work. There are people with
addiction issues and mental illness in every industry street especially entertainment.
There are plenty of alcoholics, addicts, and mentally ill people
in comedy, but nobody ever says we have to ban comedy,

(01:03:10):
Except for me ban comedy. Painting all sex workers as
victims deprives them of agency for their choices. It enforces
a strict narrative that women who have been sexually abused
are damaged in some way, and that only someone damaged
would show strangers their naked body for money. Women get

(01:03:31):
into the adult industry for all kinds of reasons, to
explore personal fantasies, to process trauma, to make movies, but
also often just to make good money. It's certainly better
than working minimum wage at the mall like ginger Lan Allen,
or having a lung collapse working in a meat freezer
like John Holmes. Putting the blame and focus entirely on

(01:03:54):
porn conveniently allows no further questions to be asked about
why the material can conditions of American life suck so
fucking bad. The mental health risks associated with being a
human being living in the USA are staggering, and everybody
should get free psychological counseling for trying to put up

(01:04:14):
with it. The media shamed Savannah for openly courting sexual attention,
and then shamed her for being affected by their constant
shaming of her. When she takes her own life, she
is fulfilling a narrative they've already written for her that
women who profit off their sexuality must die.

Speaker 13 (01:04:35):
Of course, people ask me if pornography is wrong, I say,
you can judge a tree bites fruit.

Speaker 4 (01:04:45):
Porne didn't do this. Paul Fishbeine Adult video News.

Speaker 7 (01:04:51):
She was very discriminated against because she was so big.
She made big money. She knew her value.

Speaker 5 (01:05:00):
She was a real bitch, a selfish, selfish bitch.

Speaker 9 (01:05:04):
She reveled in putting people down.

Speaker 11 (01:05:06):
She didn't like giving of herself in any way, shape
or form.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
She was irresponsible and flaky and selfish and stupid.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
While he blames porn first, even Shannon Savannah Wilsey's father,
Mike Wilsey, understands on some level that the real villain
here isn't porn. Her family are the ones who let
her drop out of school and get on that tour
bus with Groom and Greg Alman.

Speaker 13 (01:05:34):
Where was I when she was dating Greg Almon when
he was twenty five years older than she was. Where
was I when she was doing Heroin? Where was I
when she started doing porno movies?

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Now, Savannah was a troubled, traumatized person. All she really
wanted was to feel special and be loved. She was
self destructive because she was concers nsumed with self hatred
about her appearance in a culture that makes women feel
worthless unless they fit certain strict beauty ideals, and then
makes them feel worthless for aging out of the youthful

(01:06:10):
beauty ideal. She had people who cared for her unconditionally,
like Gina Fine, and she pushed them away because her
self hatred was so deep and her self destructiveness so
out of control. Gina Fine calls out all the famous
men who dated her friend and talk down on her profession,
all the rock stars who talked trash about the porn industry,

(01:06:32):
as if the music business isn't actually the most disgusting,
exploitative business.

Speaker 17 (01:06:37):
In the world.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
All the men who treated her misunderstood, beautiful, sensitive girlfriend
like a disposable blow up sex doll.

Speaker 14 (01:06:48):
Her famous friends always trash the porn industry, but the
whole reason they were with her was because she was
a porn star.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Savannah's funeral is held two days later for friends and family.
The only one of her famous ex boyfriends to attend
the funeral is Polly Shore.

Speaker 6 (01:07:10):
You know it just went down, don't you. My ex girlfriend,
the porn star, just killed herself. She was the nicest,
most beautiful girl I ever met. It was a very
dramatic thing for me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Savannah's body is cremated and her ashes handed out to family.
Her father places the jar of ashes in his home
on a table surrounded by pictures of her, a makeshift
altar to his daughter.

Speaker 7 (01:07:40):
Savvy would have wanted a Marilyn Monroe funeral. Zillions of
flowers riding in the sky lying in state at Forest Lawn.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Adult industry spokespeople agree that performers need a mental health
support network that understands the specific challenges of the job.
They know that the main stream media will jump on
any opportunity to condemn the porn industry and attempt to
shut it down again.

Speaker 17 (01:08:07):
We recognize the need for a twenty four hour crisis
hotline for performers. So it's going to happen in the
name of Savannah and Shawna and the others. William margled
Free Speech Coalition. The helpline is still in the formative stages,
but it's happening.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Whatever progress performers like ginger linn Allen, and Amberlin might
have made for the idea that porn stars could be
content with their lot in life has been backpedaled by
the tabloid true crime reporting around Savannah's fast life and
sudden death. But the porn industry isn't shutting down no
matter how loud its critics get. There's too much money

(01:08:59):
being made in the sand Fernando Valley, and it's all legal.
As the media is once again writing off the whole
porn industry as a cesspool, a new starlet is entering
the valley who's a disciple of Savannah's work. She will
change the trajectory of media narratives about porn stars forever,

(01:09:20):
make more money than any contract girl who came before her,
help invent Egirls with her website, and become bigger in
the American cultural mainstream than any porn star in history.
Even John Holmes, her name is Jenna Jamison. Next time

(01:09:52):
on Jenna World, episode six, Jenna Jamison goes on Howard
Stern and her adult film career, Rockets Sky High. Jenna
World is an iHeartRadio production executive produced by Anna Hosnier
and Becca Ramos, supervising, produced by by Wang, produced by

(01:10:14):
Victor Wright, script editing by Jonathan Mill, engineered by Graham Gibson,
and edited by Rory Gagan. Today's episode of Jenna World
featured Jesse Mourner Ritt as Savannah, Laurens ser Video as
Jenna Jamison, Hayes Davenport as Jeff Steinman, Whitmer Thomas as

(01:10:35):
Mark Curtis, Andrew T as Sergeant Donald Smith, and Billy
Sheehan Coriina Longworth as Nina Hartley, and Hot Videos Illustrated,
Victor Wright as Ron Jeremy Sriah Subgadia, Shane Dylan Rupert
as Diana Lauren, Anna Hostnier as Pam Wilsey, Rax Will

(01:10:56):
as Mike Winnett, Jason Walliner as Paul Thomas, know Me
Fry as Brynn bridenthal And as Sarah, Gina as Gina
Fine Raft as chie Chi LaRue Kyle Mazzono as Amber, Lynn,
brad Evans as Polly Shore, James Kim as Mike Wilsei

(01:11:16):
Sarasapsi as Nancy Nemo Para, Chris Thayer as Jason Swing,
Aiden Arrata as Tory Wells, Bethy Squires as Danielle Cheeks,
and John Levenstein as Al Goldstein.

Speaker 9 (01:11:31):
Oh my god,