Pornstar Video Interview: Dana DeArmond

I will still think fondly of Dana DeArmond when all this porn stuff is over and we go back to an agrarian society with dragons. She’s fun to talk with and up for anything even having her sacred post-bathroom time interrupted in the name of a porn interview. At this month’s Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, thousands of fans and porn personnel compete for oxygen amid the haze of cigar smoke and Essence of Lube.

Porn stars like the irrepressible, seen-everything, world-weary-but-with-nipples DeArmond doesn’t have the benefit of a bodyguard or personal assistant so she must dress in everyday drag in order to get to the goddamn public restroom. The first mistake she made was saying hello to me on the way in. Why was I hanging around the women’s restroom? I don’t know. “Oh Hi Gram,” she said. “Could I do a little iPhone video of me accosting you outside the bathroom?” I said, filled with creative zeal. “Just let me go to the bathroom first,” she said.

I filmed DeArmond coming out of the bathroom twice. (The first time I had dropped my phone.) What follows is pure cinematic glory: the shakiness of the camera represents not the fact that I held it in portrait rather than landscape, but instead the eagerness of the fan encountering his beloved, slatternly idol outside a women’s lavatory.

Watching this video, you may wonder why the camerawork is so jerky, or perhaps why I am so jerky. Indeed, the filming style is a metaphor for the mental states of both narrator and viewer. You’re welcome. DeArmond straightaway proves to be accessible while still maintaining boundaries. “Can I touch your junk (and stuff)?” she is asked. “Good God, No,” she says. “What’s the matter with you?”

Later DeArmond tells us that she doesn’t drink urine, that she encourages new performers to save their money, and that she will never wrestle again. But I was most impressed to learn that she doesn’t drink urine. People are so faddish these days and it takes real bravery to admit that you’re not on the urine bus.

We walked through the teeming masses gathered for the second full Fan day of the Expo, strolling past strippers and well-wishers, but mostly people who likely didn’t recognize DeArmond at all. She’s one of those porn stars who could disappear if she wanted to she doesn’t have a Resting Porny Face or Body and go to Trader Joe’s unmolested.

We made it most of the way to her autograph obligation at the Girlfriends Films booth before a random woman hugged her. If you don’t know the frank joy of watching the unflappable DeArmond in a scene (she denies selling her soul to the devil in the above video but next month she will celebrate her first decade as a porn star, something very few performers achieve), take your pick: Gamelink has more than 500 of them. Forced to pick one, I recommend her awkward/not awkward tryst with AVN 2014 Best Actor Tommy Pistol in Bobbi Starr‘s “Shut Up And Fuck” it’s very much like our interview, only naked.