Christa Faust: The Mr. Skin Interview

You're the first female author to crack the all-male pulp bastion of the Hard Case Crime imprint of hardboiled noir fiction. How does Money Shot hold up against those boys' books?

Money Shot doesn't pull any punches. It ain't chick lit. It's just as tough and hardboiled as any other novel in the Hard Case lineup, but honestly, gender aside, I find it pretty hard to compare myself to two-fisted icons like Richard S. Prather, Day Keene, and Richard Stark/Donald Westlake with a straight face. Those guys are my personal pulp heroes. I hope I can measure up, but I'll leave the final verdict to the readers.

Have you encountered any obstacles as a female writer of pulp fiction?

Not really. So far I've gotten nothing but positive feedback both from readers and from other writers. Of course there is a long-standing gender bias in that many people see hardboiled pulp fiction as a "male" genre.

Because of that bias, there's a kind of curiosity factor about what I'm doing. I'm a woman who writes hardboiled pulp, not just a hardboiled pulp writer.

But the way I see it, whatever gets people to open the book, be it curiosity, skepticism, or even outright hostility, it's OK with me. Once they have the book in their hands, then I have my chance to get the hooks in, maybe shake up their preconceived notions a little and make readers both male and female rethink the things they take for granted about gender and genre.

What is the plot of Money Shot?

It's about a former porn star, a briefcase full of money, and the international sex-slave racket. The book opens with the main character beaten, raped, shot, and left for dead, and she has to figure out who did it to her and why. Once she figures that out, she has to figure out how to even the score.

Is it inspired by true events?

Not exactly, although the details of the sex-slave racket are unfortunately all too real. Here's how it works: Foreign women from Asia or Eastern Europe are imported into this country under false pretenses, with promises of straight jobs.

Once they arrive, their passports are taken and they are forced to work as prostitutes to "pay back" the price of their tickets. Of course there's outlandish "interest" and they never see any actual money or accounting of any kind, so they can never get out from under that debt.

Most of them wind up strung out, HIV positive, and eventually dead, but no one cares because there are plenty more where they came from.

You've written erotica, but do you like pornography? You live in Los Angeles, so do you have any desire to work in that industry?

I do enjoy pornography. I've always been a fan of John "Buttman" Stagliano, and I've recently become enamored with Rob Rotten's new line of punk-rock porn. My favorite female stars include Mika Tan, Belladonna (Picture: 1), Roxy DeVille, and Aria Giovanni (Picture: 1 - 2) (the original inspiration for Money Shot's main character, Angel Dare).

I've starred in a ton of bondage and fetish videos, and I recently did a non-sexual cameo in a gay porn version of Superman (I was Lois Lane), but I've never done any hardcore. I certainly wouldn't mind taking a crack at directing hardcore videos, but at my age, I can't really see myself starting a career in front of the camera.

You're shooting a movie-style trailer for Money Shot. What's that going to be like and where can we see it?

It is a short cinematic "teaser" that I'm shooting and editing myself. I've hired an actress to play Angel, but I will not be recreating complete scenes, just shooting rapid-fire vignettes that will give people a visual taste of the book.

By the time this interview is up the trailer will be on my website as well as YouTube and other similar venues. There will be implied nudity, but not explicit—in other words tits but no nipples, because I want to be able to distribute the trailer as widely as possible.

There will also be bondage and erotic dancing. Money Shot is not erotica, but it is still pretty sexy, so I wanted to reflect that in the trailer.

You've been a writer for a long time, having done novelizations of Snakes on a Plane (Picture: 1) and others, plus many original novels. How would you describe yourself as a writer?

I'm proud to call myself a working writer. I love my job and I like to think of myself as a kind of mercenary pen for hire—a literary hitman. No women—romance—and no children, but I'll pretty much take on any writing gig I can get. I like the challenge of tight deadlines and trying to make an entertaining book out of often less-than-brilliant material.

When it comes to my own stuff, the stuff I do for love rather than money, I still don't really think of myself as all that high-brow. I'm a pulp writer at heart. I don't want to write the great American novel, I just want to tell a good story.

Some of the novelizations you've penned include horror classics such as Friday the 13th (Picture: 1) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (Picture: 1). Are you a fan of the genre, any favorites?

I was quite the little Fangoria-reading gore-hound as a teen and loved horror movies of every stripe. Faves include The Return of the Living Dead (Picture: 1)—great nudity in that one!—Hellraiser (Picture: 1) and Shock Waves. The original Nightmare on Elm Street had a powerful impact as well.

What about cult and exploitation flicks, are there any that you especially love?

Man, where to start? There are so many. Bloody Pit of Horror is one of my all-time favorites. The spiderweb bondage scene is amazingly cheesy and wonderful. I also like Night of the Bloody Apes (Picture: 1) and Orgy of the Dead. Pretty much anything with hot chicks, bad monster suits, and/or guys in masks, I'm there.

I also have a perverse fondness for Arch Hall Jr. movies, particularly The Sadist. If you really want to feel dirty, check out Arch's erotic novel Apsara Jet, written under the pseudonym Nicolas Merriweather. I love Mexican wrestling movies. Las Momias de Guanajuato changed my life. Mil Mascaras was so hot in that black leather suit with the black and silver hood.

Another life-changing find was the Turkish Santo rip-off 3 Dev Adam. Fake Santo and fake Captain America team up against an evil, sadistic Spiderman with eyebrows that are so thick and long they stick up out of the mask's eyeholes like feelers. With Herschell Gordon Lewis-style gore, thick Turkish chicks showering in their underwear, and plenty of gratuitous bondage, 3 Dev Adam may be the best bad movie ever made.

You're not only a novelist, but a screenwriter as well. You wrote and directed Dita in Distress, a fetish video starring Dita Von Teese
. How did that come about, and what can viewers expect to see in this provocative feature?

I wanted to do a kind of kinky, campy tribute to the damsel-in-distress Republic adventure serials of the '30s and '40s. I had worked with Dita Von Teese (Picture: 1) on a few other bondage shoots, and I knew she would be ideal for the starring role. So I put a crew together and scraped up financing and we somehow made it happen in a kind of crazy, sleepless, low-budget fugue state. We improvised everything and did everything ourselves. To give an example of our low-tech/no-tech visual effects, we created the wavy, warped time-travel effect inside the time machine by simply shooting through a spinning glass bottle.

What you'll see in Dita in Distress is Dita in distress. More specifically you'll see her in a variety of predicaments that involve being stripped out of vintage lingerie and tied up in various positions. She is nearly roasted by cannibals, carried off by a wild gorilla, and kidnapped by a mad scientist. She travels back in time, where she is menaced by dinosaurs, giant spiders, and cat-fighting lesbian cavegirls. It's a bondage fetish series, so you'll see tons and tons of squirming and struggling in elaborate rope bondage. It's divided into four episodes, each one ending with a cliffhanger. "Will our heroine escape her unspeakable fate? Don't miss the next exciting episode!"

Is it true you've appeared on the other side of the camera as well, playing a Screaming Female Ghost in the third episode of the miniseries The Shining?

Yeah, but I was just an extra. No lines or anything. It seems odd that something so minor is actually listed as a legit acting credit because I really don't think of it in those terms. It was just something I did for fun because [director] Mick [Garris] invited me and my then-husband to come hang out on the set. They were shooting up in Estes Park, Colorado, in the original hotel that had inspired Stephen King to write the novel. It was really more like a vacation where we all got to play dress up.

Are there any other acting gigs you'd like to share with us?

Just the fetish videos I mentioned. I really don't consider myself to be much of an actress. I prefer to be behind the scenes, writing or directing. Maybe it's the Domme in me, but I'd rather order actors around than be ordered around myself.

You're not the staid type of writer who's come up through academia. You've worked as a peepshow girl in Times Square. I'm a born-and-raised New Yorker from back in the day of the windowless peeps, so which places did you work at?

I was part of the Show World empire, though I mostly worked up on Seventh Ave., just north of the Sbarro's on the east side of the street. I have no idea what's there now, probably a Starbucks or something, but back then it was one of the smaller peepshow joints.

You went up a flight of stairs and there were maybe ten private booths plus the small stage surrounded by multiple viewing booths. And actually the private booths did have windows at that time—this was circa '87-'89—but the ones around the stage had half windows.

The booths ran on tokens, but if you wanted a "special show" you put extra money in a folded piece of paper and slipped it through the crack alongside the window. A "special show" was anything other than me standing there being a live nude girl, which was all you got for your tokens.

There was a jail-type telephone rig that let me talk to the guys. Needless to say I did a lot of fetish stuff while I was there. I think the guys could tell I was the kind of girl who wanted to tell them what to do. That was back when I was first starting to explore my Dominant sexuality. Pretty soon I got bored with the vanilla ooh-baby routine, so I gave it up and started working as a pro Domme.

What are some of your more interesting 42nd Street stories?

No question, my best Peepland story is The Pizza Man. Guy shows up on his lunch hour with a slice of pizza. He comes into my booth and tells me he's going on put on a show for me. So I sit back on my tall stool and watch this guy as he proceeds to have at the slice like it was his best girl. He's got the thing wrapped around his joint and he's telling me it "feels just like a pussy." I'm trying as hard as I can to not crack up and wondering what kind of pussy this guy has had that felt like a slice of pizza. Of course he ate it when he was done with it. Only in New York.

You're also described as a bondage expert, so did you work as a dominatrix in the New York fetish underground?

Yes, I did. I worked for years at The Vault back when it was located in the Triangle Building on west 14th and Hudson. I also worked at The Loft and the Nutcracker Suite as well as taking independent sessions. I continued to work as a pro Domme when I moved to Los Angeles in 1992, and I still take on occasional sessions when the mood strikes me and my writing schedule isn't too hectic.

Do you remember the first nude scene you saw in a mainstream movie when you were growing up, and how did it affect you?

I was raised by hippie parents, so nudity was never any big deal to me. I enjoy and appreciate nudity in film—the amazing Mathilda May in Lifeforce (Picture: 1) is a personal fave—but it never had the kind of illicit thrill it has for people raised in an environment where nudity is taboo.

The real naughty titillation in mainstream movies for me was bondage. I remember being fixated on the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker is hung upside down in the ice cave. It's supposed to be a scary scene, but it made me feel all tingly. To this day upside-down suspension is my favorite bondage position.

I also loved any scene in which a woman was tied up and squirming around, especially if she had to try and do something, like get to a phone or scissors. Growing up, I felt like there was something wrong with me because scenes that were meant to be scary were actually turning me on much more than the ones that were meant to be sexy. Now that I'm older I realize that there are plenty of other pervs out there just like me.

As a very sexy writer who creates very sexy characters, do you have a favorite sex symbol or six from filmdom past and present?

I love Barbara Stanwyck because she was tough and unconventional and even though she was thin and not traditionally "beautiful" she was still very sexy. Ava Gardner is another film noir fave. She was a goddess in The Killers. As far as modern women, I think Monica Bellucci is a real knockout, though her recent film Shoot 'Em Up (Picture: 1) broke my heart. How can you make a movie about a lactating prostitute and not show some tits? I liked her much better naked in The Brotherhood of the Wolf (Picture: 1).

After Money Shot hopefully takes the literary world by storm, what's next? Are you working on another novel set in the porn valley? Can you tell us about the projects you're currently working on?

I don't want to jinx things by talking about stuff that isn't finished yet, but I will say that I'm not currently planning a sequel to Money Shot or another novel set in the adult film industry. Of course you never know.

You seem like a femme fatale from those pulp novels you love and write, so any nasty parting words for the readers of Mr. Skin?

I'll give you the same answer the true sadist gave when the masochist begged to be whipped: No.

images courtesy of ChristaFaust.com