Fleshbot: straight, daisy tanks

Rotten, Runaway, Tanks, And Tattoos

Gram Ponante — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:30:01 EST

Night vision didn't work in the Paris Hilton sex tape, and it doesn't work for Rob Rotten. But at least Rotten figured it out eventually and we, the consumer, can rest assured that "Rotten Home Videos" was made with love.

Rob Rotten is the kind of maverick whose roguery I heartily endorse now or in 2012. This casually-produced (read: ultra low budget) collection of trysts with hookers, porn drifters, and other intriguing types might not win any awards whatsoever, but it does underline the fact that Rotten has the type of friends who have sex with him if he pays them, and who like him enough to not upstage his tattoos.

Ruby Knox and Daisy Tanks are both Rotten standbys from previous movies, and these scenes appear to have been shot around the time these women were working with Rotten already. India Summer and Faye Runaway both have impressive tattoos of their own, and Rotten's interlude with the latter (now out of the porn business), with his ink explosion and her lace up work on both of her pale legs, looks just about artful.

Maybe that wasn't the intention (in fact, I'm sure of it), but we have to find something to enjoy in other people's home movies, don't we?

· Punx Productions (punxproductions.com)
· Buy "Rotten Home Videos 1" (gamelink.com)

"Bong Load Girls" Are 420 (And Fellatio)-Friendly

Gram Ponante — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:30:01 EDT

Not into stoner humor, stoner coughing, stoner politics, stoner carpets, stoner music, or even John Denver? No matter. The squarest among you will coax a "Load" of your own when encountering the delicious Scarlett Pain.

Rob Rotten's years-in-the-making, self-financed homage to Humboldt County's Greatest Natural Resource is pungent with girls that are just as into pot culture as he is. "Bong Load Girls" plays like a mix tape jammed in your dealer's Pinto, except with, you know, pictures.

We meet back-to-nature masturbating girls, girls you can eat pizza with, girls that do themselves with dildos that double as bongs, and trippy girls that can't say no to Trustafarians. Rotten's movie was filmed over three years ("Is that Gia Paloma?") and is as silly and disjointed as any pothead's ramblings - but in the same way it also makes complete sense.

For the person who will fast forward through the dancing pot leaf imagery and cut right to the sex, take heart: Rotten might have required that all the female performers be 420-friendly, but you don't have to be stoned to appreciate them.

Speaking of 420, the DVD is available on that date but the VOD is ready now.

· Punx Productions (punxproductions.com)
· Buy "Bong Load Girls 1" (gamelink.com)

DVD Review: "Little Runaway 2"

Gram Ponante — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:05:01 EST

Maybe you're like me and thought "Runaway" was a Night Ranger song and had to be reminded that it was Bon Jovi who sang about how daddy's girl learned fast all the things he couldn't say.

But I don't think Daisy Tanks has parents; I think she sprang fully pierced from the ground.

Read our review of the punk rock document "Little Runaway 2" after the gap.

Little Runaway 2

Studio: Powersville
Director: Jim Powers
Cast: Daisy Tanks, Desire Moore, Scarlett Pain, Paris Gables, Holly Wellin, Rob Rotten, Drehyden, Jenner

Review by: Gram Ponante

One of my favorite directors is Jim Powers, whose punk rock and pop culture sensibilities always find a way into any movie he directs.

But he always stays removed enough so that his earnestness never backfires on him. In other words, he never succumbs to the notion that he's making art when he's in the entertainment business.

That is not to say that the non-porn elements of his movies aren't compelling; in fact, they are usually the most watchable non-porn scenes in porn. They are just not redolent of the director's need to justify his career in Filth.

Sometimes the pendulum swings so far back into the "entertainment" category that he leaves the camera on during painful backstage episodes. His Porn's Most Outrageous Outtakes series captures many of these, but porn is such a playground of morbidity in general that there's an undercurrent of it in every movie he does. If fans of mainstream porn call what he does exploitive, he might argue that all porn is exploitive.

So what does somebody like Powers do when he makes a movie around a subject — punk rock — that he genuinely cares about? Little Runaway 2 is definitely a dirtier, sexier movie — the sex scenes, anyway — than any of the altporn Powers compares it to in his press releases, although companies criticizing "Alt" at this point (Adam & Eve's Independent Adult Cinema has been doing it recently) is like beating a dead horse.

A series of scenes revolving around last year's Punkfest 2007, Little Runaway 2 features people with the hair and the wardrobe and tattoos that seem more integral to their personalities than the poseurware Powers et al have an issue with.

Daisy Tanks, Scarlett Pain, and Paris Gables really walk the walk and fuck the fuck, rutting in dirty warehouses, buses, and on questionable mattresses. The movie also features performances by several angrily aging punk bands, including Powers' own, Killroy.

I could have done without these performances, but real fans of SoCal punk, especially those who wouldn't normally buy porn movies, might well love this as a pretty reliable document. In the behind the scenes featurette Powers captures drunkenness and belligerence, as per usual, and Rob Rotten's scenes with Daisy Tanks and Scarlett Pain made me think of alleys and back rooms of every dive-y, dangerous club I've ever found my feet sticking to the floor of. And that's a good feeling.

But the "Clockwork Orange" riff at the beginning of the movie falls flat; I'm sure there was a reason to use those Kubrickian sets and costumes beyond their availability from The Violation of Chelsie Rae, but availability of the sets seemed the primary reason.

(And the droogs in the previous movie were women, which was a plus.)

In the end, Powers is filming his friends, with some sex representative of their lifestyle thrown in. In that I would want to do similar things to Scarlett Pain as Rob Rotten does, Little Runaway 2 reaches into my Gordon Lightfoot/Ronnie James Dio world and makes me regret tossing out that mattress I got scabies on.

· Jim Powers (mrfilth.com)
· Buy "Little Runaway 2" (jerkoffzone.com)

AVN Awards '08 Countdown: Who Was That Mystery Blowjob Woman

Gram Ponante — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:20:11 EST

When "Swallow My Children"'s Rob Rotten showed up last year dandling this lady, the Internet was atwitter. "Who is that girl?" the Internet squealed. Rotten was coy, as was the girl. Neither was ready to reveal her One True Porn Name. That changed when Rotten's white trash blowjob epic surfaced in the summer, and the mystery woman was revealed to be Daisy Tanks. So now you know, too.

· Rob Rotten's Punx Productions (punxproductions.com)