Asian Hair Stories: A Director's Notes

In my early 20s I was a gaffer on the set of a pornographic video shoot in Los Angeles. I remember the room in the house where we set up was a sea of beige: beige carpet, beige couch, beige art on the wall. One of the men had worked with the actress, a blonde, before. They chatted over coffee while the other man stood to the side, manipulating his Sidekick. I was young, I didn’t know anything. When the director figured he had enough footage of one position, he would call ‘Cut’ and the actors would disengage and wait to be told which position to assume next.

In one scene the woman was giving one of the men a blow job. He arched his back slightly and placed his hand on her bobbing head, at which point the wig she had been wearing shifted back, exposing a fragment of dark hair just above her ear. The actors did not stop – it’s likely none of them realized what had happened. I thought the director would stop the shoot, but he did not. The scene continued with the wig shifting back and forth in place.

To this day I don’t know if the director did not stop the scene because he figured the movie was a low-budget affair that didn’t afford him the time and logistics to reshoot the entire scene. Perhaps it was simple laziness. Or, it could be he allowed the camera to roll because he realized the scene became more -- not less -- charged at the instant the sliver of her natural hair emerged, a layer more bare than the naked bodies thrusting in the frame.