My Special Evening With Candida Royalle, Femme Deluxe

When I heard that former porn actress and now producer/porntreprenuer Candida Royalle would speak last month at the New York City Junto, a libertarian group, I had a major 80s-90s flashback. Between 1987 and 1995, I was East Coast Bureau Chief for Video Store Magazine. Royalle's company, Femme Productions, was a loyal exhibitor at video trade shows, promoting its expanding line of "sensually explicit" woman-friendly erotica to the retail channel. Royalle started Femme in 1984, so it was still the hot new thing when I started attending conventions of the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) for Video Store. I still have a business card handed to me by Femme sales rep (and former actress) Veronica Hart. Our hands almost touched!

Dressed completely in black with striking blonde hair, Royalle arrived at a hotel meeting room that was packed with at least 75 people. As they say, sex sells, although on this night the sex (talk) was free. Her new book, "How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do: Sex Advice From a Woman Who Knows," was for sale.

"This is an unusual group for me to speak before," Royalle conceded, although the philosophical fit between erotica and libertarianism makes sense. Some of the discussion differed from what she usually hears, as when one woman mused, "What would Ayn Rand say about this?" Another audience member observed, "People hate capitalism for the same reason they hate sexuality -- consumer choice."

The book, she said, is "about women taking responsibility for their own needs and desires." The book encourages self-knowledge, acceptance and asking for what you need. Royalle wanted to address men's complaints that women don't ask for what they want when they get "tongue tied." So she created a book that's both fun and serious and walks through couples issues as if they were a movie production, with research, pre-production (music, accessories), and post-production during which couples talk about what went on.

"It's such a difficult thing for women to do, how to ask a man to do something a little different without making him feel inadequate," she explained.

Besides the book, Royalle discussed her career as a performer and producer. As an actress she made 28 movies in five years -- these days, actresses do that many films in a month. Raised a Catholic in New York, Royalle began to feel ambivalent and left the business. A stint in therapy led her to conclude that adults are always going to be curious about explicit images, but that "there was a lot of room for improvement."

By the mid-80s she had identified a market for erotica for women. She thought videos could succeed by showing female and couples sexuality in "a tender, sexy way." Despite a cool reception from adult distributors, Royalle made three simple, vignette-based films in the first year. To date she's made 16 films.

"I put emotional situation in these that are about real people with real lives. I show what people do together," said Royalle. Switching into show-don't-tell mode, she played a clip from the spoof movie "Stud Hunters." The scene showed a long kiss that Royalle loved viewing and editing.

"I got so farklempt from this kiss," she exclaimed, showing her deep New York roots by using a Yiddish word that means "choked up." Her producer thought the scene lasted too long, but women viewers relished it, so it stayed in.

The discussion took a surprising turn when an Iranian asserted that Saudi men are the most depraved in the world, arguing, "The more repressed the society, the more freakish the response. Saudis can see porn. The misogyny is spiraling out of control."

From there, audience members mused whether the 9-11 hijackers knew they were going to die. Here's the adult-entertainment angle on that: evidently some of them had contacted escort services before the fateful day, but refused to meet the price of the services. Would men about to die dicker over a few dollars more to an escort service?

Femme's catalog includes such films as Urban Heat, The Bridal Shower, Christine's Secret, and Three Daughters, which "a friend" of mine saw long ago and liked. My "friend" even has a signed glossy from star Siobhan Hunter, a precious keepsake from VSDA. What's not to like, with a plot summary like this:

THREE DAUGHTERS is a lovely coming of age story about the Claytons and their three beautiful daughters. While Heather experiences her first stirrings of passion and desire, blossoming before our eyes, her parents re-discover the passion between themselves as they watch their daughters grow up and leave home.

No kidding? Does that happen in real life? Could Heather's mom introduce me to some of her cool single friends?

Besides the films, Femme's catalog now includes ergonomically designed thingamajiggies that would be a dandy complement to copies of "How to Tell a Naked Man What To Do." mission2moscow is looking for an appropriate Hanukkah bush under which to leave such items. Calling Heather's mom, stat!