Joanna Angel: The Girl With the Burning Wings
By IFQ Critic Todd Konrad
Multiple AVN award-winner and adult entrepreneur Joanna Angel has emerged as one of the more intriguing figures in porn, no small feat for an industry that’s always been oversaturated with performers constantly competing for the attention and dollars of fans worldwide. With her production company, Burning Angel, she has been a key figure in porn’s widening inclusion of alternative subcultures, i.e. punk, tattoo enthusiasts, etc. leading to the small but growing subgenre of ‘alt-porn’.
Moreover, Burning Angel itself has grown from a simple production company to a fully-blown pop culture brand as Angel and associates include interviews, music and game reviews, and other assorted material in addition to the bevy of tattooed and pierced performers she has dubbed her ‘Burning Angels’. Think of them as Charlie’s Angels from Hell or, perhaps more to the point, Suicide Girls who don’t tease but deliver. IFQ spoke with Joanna in Las Vegas, where she took part in a Jason Ellis-sponsored MMA event to discuss her recent forays into mainstream indie film, the release of her latest feature LA Pink, and the ins and outs of the brand she has built from the ground up.
IFQ: I noticed that you are starring in two new indie horror films, as listed on iMDB, including one with Jason Mewes, I was wondering if you could briefly discuss those projects to kick things off.
Joanna Angel: Sure, so Breath of Hate is the movie I did with Jason Mewes, directed by Sean Cain; I don’t know too much about it because I was only on set for a day and they had already been shooting for a couple weeks, so I only know what happened on the particular day I was working. And on that particular day no horror stuff was being shot, no death or anything like that, so I didn’t even realize it was a horror movie at first. I thought it was just an independent movie but then I saw afterwards all the stills from days I wasn’t there and said “Oh! This is a horror movie! This is cool” (laughs). I couldn’t tell what was going on from just the day I was there because I hadn’t had a chance to read the whole script; I only got to read the part that they sent me because I don’t think they thought that I’d care, which I did.
It was really exciting though to be in a movie though with Jason Mewes, I mean I get excited when people ask me to do independent films anyway but coming from New Jersey and Sean telling me that Jason Mewes was going to be in it, I was like “Yes! I don’t care what it is, I don’t care if it ends up on YouTube, I don’t care where it goes. I want to do it because I want to meet him.” I’m not sure when it’s coming out right now but I still talk to Sean and he tells me that he’s still editing it right now so we’ll see. I did another very, very, small movie called Warning!!! Pedophile Released, I wouldn’t even really call it a horror movie; it was more of an indie, artsy sort of film. I met the director on that through Sean as well. So those are two interesting fun projects I got to do, I wasn’t playing anything so far off since I was playing a stripper in both of them but it was a lot of fun to do. Plus it’s always fun to meet new people, get exposed to a different crowd and work on something that you normally don’t do.
IFQ: Besides those two upcoming films, I’d like to ask you about a film of your own that just got released, LA Pink, a send up of the Kat Von D reality show LA Ink. I’m especially curious to learn more about it since you yourself were a guest on the show early on so now it’s come full circle.
JA: Yeah, actually if you look at Burning Angel, we have a new scene that goes up every week, we have a bunch of different websites, we put out a new movie every month, but you know most of our movies are kind of simple. I try to do the most that I can with the 2-3 minute plot that happens before the sex but there’s only so much you can do. So LA Pink is our first big feature that we produced entirely on our own. I’ve directed other features for Hustler and Adam & Eve, like Joanna’s Angels and Joanna’s Angels 2, which I won an award for Best Sex Comedy. We made Not Another Porn Movie which also was nominated for a bunch of awards but those were all produced for Hustler, they just hired me to direct the movie but with LA Pink I was like “we’re going to make a big, fancy, crazy porno movie all on our own, we’re not going to get anyone’s help”. It’s getting a really good response so far, it’s a really fun movie.
The whole parody thing is really big in porn right now, I feel like every TV show has already been done from Scrubs to The Brady Bunch, 30 Rock, True Blood, The Office, The X-Files, any TV show that you can possibly think of either has been done or is being done now. And with LA Ink, I mean the whole marketing of the show is so sexual; everything’s about a bunch of hot girls in tattoos standing there in very little clothing. Every advertisement Kat Von D has done has been very sexy and looks very close to a Burning Angel advertisement. So it was a way for us to make a parody, which is a good profitable thing in porn right now and still keep within our brand, that’s the thing. A lot of companies right now are doing parodies and dressing people up and stuff and we didn’t have to dress up really, we just had to act like ourselves and ended up making something a bit bigger than what we normally do. Again, we really had a lot of fun making it and it’s getting a really, great response.
IFQ: It’s interesting that you touched on the notion of branding since one of the biggest differences I’ve found in your career as opposed to many other actresses in the industry is that you came onto the scene with your own specific brand, rather than starting off as a day player and then moving into that arena. Could you touch on how the process has been for you in terms of continuously building Burning Angel and what future plans you have in store for it?
JA: You know sometimes, it’s really amazing having your own brand and watching it grow, everything you do you put into it, it’s like a plant where you have to do everything to make it grow. It’s like a weird, exotic plant that’s never been grown before so you can’t look at other people’s plants and see what they’re doing and apply it to your own situation because it’s its own unique thing. And then again sometimes it’s really frustrating, where you feel so defeated and other times you feel like a hero. It’s really weird having your own business and having your own thing in porn because it’s such a saturated market and you see so much of the same thing. And the reason you see so much of the same thing is because it does particularly well and is very traditionally sexy, not just in porn but everywhere and is such an easy pill to swallow. So to do something that is not only new but also reaching out to a brand new demographic of people who aren’t used to buying porn is sometimes really hard and yet really amazing; I wouldn’t have it any other way.
There are definitely times though where I have so many friends in the industry now who are actresses that work for different companies and I’ll think “oh wow, it must be nice to come home at the end of the day and not care about what you did that day or not have to worry so much about where that thing that you did is going to go, how it’s going to sell, who’s going to buy it.” And also it can be frustrating in that mainstream porn has such a mainstream appeal and these movies go out there; I feel like it’s just so easy to get so many people to look at them or buy them. And then I feel like with every little thing we do, I have to work 20 times as hard to get half as far as everyone else, but at the end of the day it’s really gratifying to have something that I’m really proud of. It’s something that I’ll show my friends even though I’ll say “Ok, just close your eyes at the part where I’m having sex but look at this movie we just made it’s so cool!” Even with the websites, even if you aren’t looking at them at work or something, it’s not nearly as bad as looking at other things. I’m proud of what we do, I really want to make it, and take this as far as we can go just doing what we do and not do what we don’t do.
IFQ: That leads fortunately enough to my next question in that both you and Burning Angel have long been synonymous with the sub-genre of “alt porn”, which I quote because it’s a term that feels almost overused now. The idea of it being a specific strain of adult entertainment that has crossed over with other elements of underground pop culture, i.e. punk music, various artists, etc. which the mainstream has never quite done to the same degree. I’m curious to know what your perspective on it is since you’ve been involved with it from beginning and watched it develop over the past few years.
JA: You know, I was just doing my thing and suddenly everyone in the press was saying, “oh, you’re the Queen of Alt Porn”. I never coined the term, everything has to go into a category and I understand that but I wish we could just do what we do and it didn’t have to fall into any category. Considering alt-porn is really small to be a full-blown genre, we fall into a really, strange category even in the alt porn world because I think a lot of people in the whole alt community think we’re so mainstream and everyone in the mainstream porn world thinks we’re so alt. There are only a few people in the entire alt scene and I think we all have very different ideas of what alt is; maybe because we’re all so creatively driven we’re all a little stubborn as to thinking that our idea is the right one.
I personally think alt porn is more about the community than it is about the aesthetic. I think a lot of people think alt porn means you have to use really dark, dramatic lighting and is a bit more artsy. I didn’t really come from that school of thought; a lot of our lighting schemes and even the style of sex we shoot is similar to a lot of the gonzo porn out there, it’s not mimicking anything from the 70’s or even David Lynch films, etc. Our movies are very colorful, they’re very bright, happy, and I come from more of a place of wanting to do stuff that’s more female empowering and filming intense, hot sex. I didn’t go to art school though I did study film in college, but I guess my vision doesn’t necessarily equate with doing something obnoxiously weird in the films.
Again going back to the community aspect, we have members and girls that meet each other on the website and talk and hangout outside of it, which just doesn’t happen as far as I know with other sites. We really break the glass wall. Also, not every girl but with a lot of the girls on Burning Angel, working with us is not just another day of work. We’ve started to now shoot with porn girls as we’re branching out but most of the girls on Burning Angel have other jobs and lives and things that they do. They’re almost taking a vacation from their other lives to shoot with Burning Angel a couple of times a year. So it’s not like other actresses who are like “ok, today I’m doing a scene with this company, and tomorrow I’m doing a scene with this company”. For most of the girls we use, it’s a special thing and that affects the scene. It’s not really a performance, it’s real and they’re excited about it and of course everyone gets paid but we don’t offer girls full-time jobs. No one has a contract with Burning Angel but me (laughs), no one can make a full-time living working just for us. So a lot of the girls work just for us and they don’t do other movies; they’re really doing it for fun, it’s not seen as just a job. It’s a very strange thing I’ve realized in porn, that there are girls out there that just want to do porn for fun, not because they’re trying to make as much money as possible and buy a car, pay off a loan, or this or that. To them, it just seems like a fun thing to do.
And again, I know a lot of girls in mainstream porn who love it even though it’s all about the money, they still love their jobs. You can only last so long in this industry if you don’t love having sex on camera but it is a little different when it’s like “ok, I’m going to have sex on camera for a few days and then go back to school, go see my boyfriend, go back to work at the comic book store”, or whatever it is. It’s a lot different than “ok, I’m going to go back to my house in the Valley and do this again tomorrow”. It just adds a very different vibe to the site. As we go on, getting back to your question of the future, we’re been adding more and more interactive functions to the site. Our chat function is going online soon where people can hang out and talk in the chat room, a lot of different live web-cam activities, more community functions so the website can really feel like a place to hangout.
It’s the age we live in now where people literally hang out at certain pages on the internet and that’s what we’re working towards. And you know, with the economy it’s been a little hard for us because our members were never CEOs; they were younger kids with entry-level jobs who are normally the first ones to go when companies lay people off or a lot of people in college. It was hard for us to see because we’d write to them just to ask why they’d canceled and the response was always “I just don’t have any money” which I know a lot of people are dealing with but it’s really very rare for us. We’re not fighting the same battle everyone else is (in the industry) right now; I don’t think the tube sites are such a big issue for us because we have such loyal fans. As far as people not paying for memberships, it’s simply down to them not having the money to do so right now, not that they’re trying to download it for free. There’s so much more to Burning Angel that just content.
IFQ: It really is a kind of brand loyalty that doesn’t really exist to the same extent for other companies in the industry from what I’ve seen.
JA: And I appreciate that so much, which is why whenever I do signings or whatnot, I try to really give everyone everything I possibly can. We are not a company that does well because we have crazy meetings with sales people and affiliates and buyers, stuff like that. Our business is very guerilla-style. It’s more like we do stuff, people hear about it, and then sign up for the website and then they tell their friends, which leads to more people signing up, which is why I like to try and do everything I can for my fans. I would be nothing without them and have to thank them for everything I have and people a lot of times in interviews ask if it’s hard if fans get creepy or this and that. People who buy my porn can do no wrong by me (laughs), there’s nothing they could possibly say that’ll offend me that much because they’re contributing to something that’s so special to me.
IFQ: My final question for you, although it is probably a bit redundant at this point, is being in this overly saturated industry where so many girls come and go every year, you have lasted and grown within it for some time now and I’m wondering if you could crystallize what separates you from the pack and makes you unique in this industry.
JA: I think obviously everyone’s different, but I’d say the biggest difference as far as I’m concerned is that I’m a porn star who owns the company. The very traditional porn model for the girl who own companies, and there are a lot of girls that have their own production companies in porn, is to get into the industry, do a lot of movies everyday for a bunch of different companies and then start your own company. I’ve been with my own company from the very beginning, it was actually after a few years of having my own that I thought “maybe I should get out there and work for a few other people just to see what it’s like” and I’ve done a handful of movies for other companies. When I directed for Hustler, I did some other movies with them. In the past three years, I’ve done maybe four movies for other people. It’s not very often that I work for someone else. So it’s not like other people gave me my name and I’m just cashing in on it now by starting my own company.
I started my name; I made my name and then other people when they hired me wanted to cash in a little bit on what I created. I’m the one behind the scenes as well as in front of them for everything at all times. I setup the signings, I build the booth and break it down, and I don’t take anything for granted. I can’t exactly show up on set and complain because I am the set, I made it happen. I can’t just be on set and be on my phone the whole time; I have to focus on every aspect. I can’t just do a movie, I have to think of a movie, make the movie happen, budget it, be in the movie, then make sure it gets edited, make sure it gets authored, make sure it gets out on time, make sure it sells, if it doesn’t sell look at it and figure out why it’s not selling and then hate myself for it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I have to be there every step of the way, there’s nothing I can just ignore, that I cannot care about. I think a lot of people see that with me. I have a lot of fans who even if they don’t necessarily love masturbating to me they’ll still want to buy the movies to support the cause (laughs), which a lot of porn girls just don’t have. So I know that separates me a lot from the rest besides the tattoos and all that. I took a strange route in this industry; I didn’t even realize how weird it was with what I was doing. It’s just so rare for a girl to come into this business with her own company, especially when it’s so small where I’m then building up my company and myself at the same time.
To learn more, go to www.burningangel.com and www.joannaangel.com
*Photos courtesy of BurningAngel.com