national geographic: sex for sale
May 28, 2012 Adult Industry
Some of you are aware that I appeared on a National Geographic documentary that first aired in February. Now the rest of you are aware. Once again, my brush with mainstream media is generally negative. Eventually I’ll learn.
natgeo 2009
NatGeo spoke to me in April 2009 about appearing on their Taboo series. One of their episodes was going to cover sex work. Though I spoke for 90 minutes on the phone with Kate Witchard and emailed with her, they decided not to use me. This was right before I was beginning my travels and I pitched the idea to her, but she told me National Geographic wasn’t interested in following a working escort around the world.
Utter waste of time. I don’t take kindly to having my brain picked for free. (Shortly after, someone whom I suspect was producing the Belle de Jour series wanted to do that too so I quoted a price and never heard back.)
natgeo 2012
Last summer I was approached by NatGeo again. I was not interested. Daniele Anastasion, the producer, assured me this was a stand-alone documentary focusing on the US and the legal issues surrounding prostitution. After back and forth emails, I agreed to a 5 minute phone call that turned into 45. It seemed okay and I agreed to it. Of course they weren’t going to pay me a dime. (It’s a documentary! They wouldn’t do something so icky as pay for interviews!) No makeup provided either. But it seemed like it would be intelligent. It’s National Geographic, after all.
We settled on a shooting date. They weren’t thrilled about having to come to Dallas but since they weren’t paying me to show up anywhere else, Dallas was it. They wanted to shoot an interview — which was the point. They also wanted to shoot “B-roll,” which is silent footage that shows up in the background with interviewed voiceovers. This is where it started getting to be a bit much.
Tags: activism, amanda brooks, book sales, book selling, criminalization, internet sex work, interview, mass media, media, national geographic, publishing, tv, tv shows
tonight
Nov 11, 2008 Personal, Random Bits
Filmed in July, I almost forgot that it was real. But I’m going to be in a CNBC documentary on high-end prostitution. Sometimes I’m excited about it, sometimes not.
It airs tonight at 10pm. I don’t even watch TV and don’t have cable (I was given a TV, but my DVD player is still in storage in another state).
And it seems that the blog post I wrote about “Amanda Brooks” was prescient (thanks to a friend for the link).
FYI: The show will re-air a few more times over the month of November. Go to its web page for the schedule (link above).
more media lessons
Mar 18, 2008 Random Bits
In the “big deal for me” category, I was on Fox Business News live last Friday with David Asman (obviously this is an up-to-the-minute blog). And if anyone saw it, they saw my virgin TV appearance. See? I have NOT done everything before!
It wasn’t a bad experience at all. I was slated for five minutes starting at 4:40pm Eastern. I knew what they wanted to discuss and I rehearsed answers to possible questions. Well, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was on right before me. I could hear him when I got miked up. He was somewhere on the California coast holding forth on the environment (no to oil drilling off the coast of California, yes to drilling in Alaska – what an environmentalist). He talked and talked. He wouldn’t shut up. He ate into my minutes. Like he doesn’t get enough press time or something.
My segment turned out to be shared with a guy who had run a New York agency before. He was very chatty. Guys are an extremely talkative species. But maybe it was his first time too. I don’t know.
We got about 3-4 minutes. Thanks Arnie.
But I did learn some lessons.
