Memories of Juliet
For me, this was a life-changing scene from a life-changing movie; it completely rewrote much of what I'd earlier thought to be the truth about sex. This scene in particular stayed with me so strongly that a dozen years later, without my having seen any other film of Juliet's in the interim, when I caught a couple-second glimpse, from 100 feet away, of her walking into a restaurant, I immediately knew who it was.
Not long after, Juliet asked my wife and I over for dinner and a screening of a video/live performance we'd recently staged at a club downtown. René had turned to sex-work relatively late in life, deciding at age 32 to quit her job as a systems engineer with [a large telecom firm] to become an exotic dancer and live sex show performer -- and Juliet, 39 when she shot her first adult film, felt a kinship there. Accordingly, several months later, when René finally decided to make the leap into porn, it was Juliet she turned to for assistance and advice. Eventually, Juliet was to become René's mentor and primary cheerleader, seeing in her the next Nina Hartley.
Alas, it was not to be. Our marriage came to an end -- and the next man in René's life no longer wanted her to work in the industry that first brought them together. Far more tragically, Don Crane, Juliet's dearest friend and her partner in video production, died suddenly one day while returning home after a visit with Juliet; he was only 49. It was a terrible blow for Juliet -- one from which I'm not sure she ever fully recovered. After Don's death, Juliet couldn't bring herself to finish any of her projects with him -- including a video of René on which they'd been working.
Ultimately, Juliet's and my friendship would outlast both the marriage through which we met and the 5+ year relationship that followed -- and it survived my purchase -- and the eventual collapse and closure -- of Spectator magazine, an adult newsweekly with which Juliet had been associated almost from her first days in porn. With the paper's closing, I could no longer count on seeing Juliet once or twice a month at some community event or another. However, when finally I was forced to sell my house in SF and relocate to the East Bay, I ended up living scarcely five minutes from Juliet's new place -- and during my time in Berkeley, we were constantly running into one another. Unfortunately, such felicitious encounters pretty much ended once I moved back into the city. Finally, I decided to do something about it, and dropped her a note asking when she might have time for a visit.
The next day, I heard she had died.
I miss her.
______________
In a somewhat different mood, I must also confess Juliet's partner in this clip also made *quite* an impression on me, both for (1) providing definitive proof there *were* sexually open, sexually active, enthusiastically bisexual, female 'civlians' -- i.e., non-porn-stars -- running around out there, somewhere, as well as for (2) just being incredibly hot; amateur or not, I thought, it would be downright criminal *not* to have cast her in any other films. But even in after the rise of the internet, I had no luck in finding anything else about her.
...Until Juliet's memorial service, that is, when 'Kay' got up to speak -- and I was absolutely stunned to learn my mystery woman was someone I'd known and occasionally done business with for over a decade...
>> originally published as a comment on http://xhamster.com/movies/885411/juliet_anderson_scene_from_reel_people_1984.html
Not long after, Juliet asked my wife and I over for dinner and a screening of a video/live performance we'd recently staged at a club downtown. René had turned to sex-work relatively late in life, deciding at age 32 to quit her job as a systems engineer with [a large telecom firm] to become an exotic dancer and live sex show performer -- and Juliet, 39 when she shot her first adult film, felt a kinship there. Accordingly, several months later, when René finally decided to make the leap into porn, it was Juliet she turned to for assistance and advice. Eventually, Juliet was to become René's mentor and primary cheerleader, seeing in her the next Nina Hartley.
Alas, it was not to be. Our marriage came to an end -- and the next man in René's life no longer wanted her to work in the industry that first brought them together. Far more tragically, Don Crane, Juliet's dearest friend and her partner in video production, died suddenly one day while returning home after a visit with Juliet; he was only 49. It was a terrible blow for Juliet -- one from which I'm not sure she ever fully recovered. After Don's death, Juliet couldn't bring herself to finish any of her projects with him -- including a video of René on which they'd been working.
Ultimately, Juliet's and my friendship would outlast both the marriage through which we met and the 5+ year relationship that followed -- and it survived my purchase -- and the eventual collapse and closure -- of Spectator magazine, an adult newsweekly with which Juliet had been associated almost from her first days in porn. With the paper's closing, I could no longer count on seeing Juliet once or twice a month at some community event or another. However, when finally I was forced to sell my house in SF and relocate to the East Bay, I ended up living scarcely five minutes from Juliet's new place -- and during my time in Berkeley, we were constantly running into one another. Unfortunately, such felicitious encounters pretty much ended once I moved back into the city. Finally, I decided to do something about it, and dropped her a note asking when she might have time for a visit.
The next day, I heard she had died.
I miss her.
______________
In a somewhat different mood, I must also confess Juliet's partner in this clip also made *quite* an impression on me, both for (1) providing definitive proof there *were* sexually open, sexually active, enthusiastically bisexual, female 'civlians' -- i.e., non-porn-stars -- running around out there, somewhere, as well as for (2) just being incredibly hot; amateur or not, I thought, it would be downright criminal *not* to have cast her in any other films. But even in after the rise of the internet, I had no luck in finding anything else about her.
...Until Juliet's memorial service, that is, when 'Kay' got up to speak -- and I was absolutely stunned to learn my mystery woman was someone I'd known and occasionally done business with for over a decade...
>> originally published as a comment on http://xhamster.com/movies/885411/juliet_anderson_scene_from_reel_people_1984.html
13 years ago