Finally, A Film Brave Enough To Tell “The Truth About Teens”

(Hint: They're very sexual and love fucking.)

"The Truth About Teens" is a very useful movie because it started out being something else. Porn budgets being what they are, however, it became something more documentary when one of the performers melted down.

That performer was Tanner Mayes. Footage is included of Mayes, distant and incoherent, performing in a scene that never got finished. There is also an iPhone snippet of Mayes threatening to call the cops.

I know of several flicks that Mayes has rendered documentary pieces (most notably a couple of Jim Powers movies) due to meltdowns that may or may not have something to do with drugs, and—porn being porn—all the scenes and the backstage footage is included. After all, the reasoning goes, Mayes is still naked for part of the movie and she got paid, so why not use the whole buffalo?

So Mayes' aborted scene with Tony DeSergio (he got to save a double load for the sassy Alyssa Branch the very next day) opens the movie, intercut with commentary from fellow director Eli Cross (Gazzman will not appear on film). Cross tells us that the word around town is that Mayes is unstable and "unshootable."

Q. But won't such talk ruin her career?
A. No. This happens all the time.

Following the Mayes anti-scene, we get a fully serviceable "teen" movie shot European-style (harder, as if enacted by dirty robots) featuring Branch, the incorrigible Chastity Lynn, Celeste Star, and Olivia Wilder.

But Mayes has stirred the pot, so we are treated to further observations about why this one is good or why this one shouldn't ever work again.

I was present for the Alyssa Branch scene, shot in the middle of June, and heard the story from several crew members of the previous night's Mayes performance. That we're getting a finished film—from London—less than two months later is astounding.

But that's the porn budget dilemma, too; things move so quickly that it's important to capitalize on the fact that Mayes is apparently a Christian now.

· Harmony Films (harmonyvision.com)
· Buy "The Truth Abut Teens" (gamelink.com)