The Dependable, Suspendable Chanel Preston

By Gram Ponante Of Gamelink's Naked Truth Porn Blog

You want to call Chanel Preston a jack of all trades, but she’s a porn star so that title sounds like an intentional double entendre. So maybe it’s safer to call her an all-around player? Maybe not. And yet 100 Percent Dependable just doesn’t seem sexy enough, even though that’s exactly what she is.

I first met Preston in 2010 on the set of “Not M*A*S*H” (and I hope I never have to type that again). We were at Hustler’s then-studio space in Deep Porn Valley Chatsworth but Preston was commuting from Hawaii where she’d lived for six years, entering the adult business as a dancer and a model (she grew up in Alaska, and it was fascinating to me for reasons only clear to myself that she’d lived in the two final states to join the Union). In the way that all dancers-turned-porn performers are, she seemed strong, sexy, and solid. It’s the work ethic and physical training as well as a deep understanding of dudes.

But it seemed like, despite her curves, height, and general badassery, Porn Valley didn’t know where to cast Preston. She didn’t have an ingenue look and you would never see her sticking her finger in her mouth and giggling, which is 90 percent of the gigs out there. She also wasn’t a 12-alarm sex bomb that would corrupt your offspring and your husband upon sight in the checkout line at Ralph’s, nor was she an obvious dominatrix.

She looked like the hottest news anchor you can imagine or a scientist in a James Bond movie. These are archetypes that one wants to see naked but come only tantalizingly close to getting there.

So it was naked that Chanel Preston got but simultaneously began getting the kinds of gigs porn stars don’t usually get — hosting and commentating. Preston could be seen this year hosting Showtime’s “X-RATED: THE GREATEST ADULT MOVIES OF ALL TIME” and doing a kickass job.

Speaking of kicking ass, the industry seems to have bent around Preston and other strong women in very pleasing ways. She is doing a lot of fetish work for companies like Kink.com but three movies in particular, the “Training Day” parody, Pornfidelity’s “Get My Belt,” and New Sensations’ “My Hotwife’s Lover” really showcase her range, chops, and humor.

Which is why it is a pleasant surprise to catch up with her hanging around (literally) on an independent porn shoot directed by bondage master Tim “Pro Villain” Woodman at a commercial dungeon in Porn Valley this week.

Woodman produces a specialized kind of bondage porn that he sells through his own webstore or a Clips-style site. Usually his fans will ask him for bespoke kidnapping videos in which a woman is in “peril.” Today he is making a non-artisinal video in which Preston plays a schoolgirl Freddy Krueger victim (Halloween is coming up, Woodman points out), a thwarted superheroine bound and suspended by her nemesis, and a party guest groped by her evil host.

We talk while she isn’t being trussed, and talk about trust.

GRAM: You’ve been in an increasing number of kink-flavored fetish videos since you started five years ago. Is there a learning curve?

CHANEL: Kink was always something I knew about and was interested in, but Yes, there were things I wasn’t familiar with. I have no desire in my real life to hurt men or kick them in the balls; I had to learn that. So I get a lot of dominant, fem-dom roles.

GRAM: What comes first? Did you find that these dominant roles added some flavor to your real life, like the ability to get a customer service manager on the phone at Charter?

CHANEL: I get hired a lot for dominant roles because I have an assertive personality. Some people ask me, “How can I get hired by Kink.com?” and I honestly don’t know the answer to that other than “You need to appear (believable) as a dominant or submissive person.”

GRAM: As your porn career has unfolded you’ve been in a wide variety of roles, and that’s not usually the case. We just don’t get chances, a lot of times, to see what people are capable of…

CHANEL: Well it’s weird, some of the fans encourage you to do different things, and that’s one way I’ve really expanded my range. Twitter followers, forum threads, for example. I never thought people would want to see me do strap-on or fem-dom work, but people have this picture and it’s fun to inhabit that role.

GRAM: So is there a character?

CHANEL: I’m not the “horrible person” sort of fem-dom but I have this character where it’s like Attention-seeking Dominance. It’s really fun to play.

[It’s very interesting to hear this, because I think of feature movies as having specific roles, but gonzo movies based on age or hair color or glasses or boob size never made me think of needing a character choice. But fetish work definitely does. The domme played by Dana DeArmond would be different from Aiden Starr’s or Chanel Preston’s versions.]

GRAM: So you were assertive, but the porn applications of that came later?

CHANEL: Yes. I started doing it because I was interested in it, but I started making movies after I started domming (privately).

GRAM: And what’s the appeal, both as a domme and — in the case of the movie you’re shooting today — as a sub?

CHANEL: I like a cerebral mindset. Fetish work gives you that. It’s not always straightforward. It’s fun to turn the scenario over in my mind and decide whether I like this or not, as the character.

GRAM: And your character today? She is to be groped, raped, and blown up, I think.

CHANEL: I’ve been murdered a lot on film, but you know what’s odd? In a scene where the guy is supposedly raping you, I don’t like it when they pull out and come on your chest. It seems to defeat the purpose. You’d want to come inside, wouldn’t you?

GRAM: I don’t know. It would involve thinking like a rapist. That’s a really good question …

Preston and Woodman get ready for the next few hours of shooting various scenarios. Woodman asks if she prefers condoms or not. She says she prefers not (but you’ve always gotta ask). He asks about the lube. He has some coconut stuff for a blowjob. “Coconut, but not silicone, please,” she says.

Later, Woodman will suspend Preston from several bone-supported places on her body (armpits, ribcage, pelvis, etc.) and she will howl through her ball gag, deciding whether her character likes this or not.

For the schoolgirl scene, Preston puts on a too-tight white polo shirt, saying “I bought this shirt for a scene with Dana DeArmond. I wanted a real schoolgirl thing rather than a stripper schoolgirl thing.”

And that’s where we’ll leave you today, with a few questions to engage your cerebral mindset, to turn them over in your head, and to remember that somewhere in your porn library, Chanel Preston cares that you’re seeing the real thing versus a stripper thing.