John D. Lamond: The Mr. Skin Interview

Your first professional credits were the documentaries Australia After Dark and The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style. What made you choose to enter the world of sexploitation from this angle?
During the early '70s in Australia, there was something of a re-birth of the local movie industry. After starting life in the movies as an assistant editor, I joined Village Roadshow, Australia's most successful film distributor, working in the publicity department and learning how to market movies to the mid-'70s drive-in movie audience Australia-wide. I was by then bursting with enthusiasm to make a movie of my own.

After several fruitless years of messing about with financial/broker bullshitters who pretended they were interested in film financing, I finally had a chance to pitch a small movie to the management of Village Roadshow. I was advised to select something low budget, a project not too taxing for my untried skills as a director of actors, a blatantly commercial picture that could run in the drive-in circuit.

I had seen the Italian feature documentary Mondo Cane and I was keen to produce an Australian movie along the same lines. Mondo Cane had set the recipe: a compilation of unusual stories, nothing more than a few minutes in length, everything controversial, beautiful, sexy, or weird.

My movie was to be called Australia After Dark: "A bizarre secret world of exotic places, erotic and forbidden sights. A place you thought might have existed but never dared to seek out." You know the stuff.

Australia at that time was just escaping from a draconian era where everything with a tit growing on it, every sexy word, and everything on film with even a sexy theme was heavily censored. All nudity was considered pornographic by definition!

I decided to stir the pot, goad the censors, and confront them with a highly controversial Australian movie. Heavy cuts were demanded, appeals were made and won, then suddenly my movie was on screens and out there earning money. It really did show Oz audiences a side of Australia never seen before in cinemas.

It had a homosexual wedding, a naked witchcraft ceremony deep in a dark forest, a porno moviemaker filming, and some real, actual sex on screen. How could I show a porno moviemaker at work, I argued to the film censor appeals board, if the sex was fake? A sadomasochistic party and a beautiful nymph swimming naked underwater on the Great Barrier Reef also helped to emphasize the blue color of my movie!

Drive-in movies filled, audiences turned up in large numbers, and nice profits were made by the investors. Sensing the potential in something even sexier, I quickly produced The ABC of Love and Sex: Australia Style, partly shot in Stockholm and featuring many highly explicit scenes with actual sex. This really troubled the Australian censors and this time they demanded and got cuts in about thirty-five places, very nearly resulting in a total emasculation of my movie. Though it has been released in many overseas countries, the full version has never been shown in Australia.

Felicity was your first narrative feature and the first time you worked with Glory Annen, who plays the title role. How did you two hook up?
My girlfriend, now my wife Diana, and I were in London to start casting for Felicity. We had arranged to see a steady flow of beautiful models and actresses, and as the doorbell of our audition room rang for the first time I was puffed up with "Dutch courage" being in a foreign capital with a pocketful of dollars, to cast my first erotic movie, with a proper narrative storyline, and in walked Glory.

Glory was, believe it or not, the first person we saw. Not the last, though. Lots of brainless model/actress/whatevers showed up; a few flakes, quite a few who hedged at the idea of nudity in front of the crew. We got them all to strip off immediately and if anyone objected, I would say, "Well, if you won't strip off in front of the director and his girlfriend, then you're not going to do it in front of a crew of twenty-five technicians."

We always made it plain that while the set would be a private filming exercise and not on the executive studio visitors' tour; by the same token it would not be a "closed set." I wanted great lighting, full sound, and a camera crew operating for the whole film; and the whole film would be sexy.

We met over two hundred beautiful women, saw them all naked, but even then, when we went to a nice little Italian restaurant around the corner for lunch, I still watched when the fully dressed waitress in the miniskirt bent over. Does this say something about me or about men in general?

Glory was a great choice and Diana was convincing in her reasoning: lovely looking, uninhibited, and she could act!

I read that Glory is a casting agent now. Does she still act?
She paints and she writes and she still acts, in fact we did a small movie last year and she worked on that with us too.

Any chance she'd take it all off again for you?
Oh, I guess so... maybe even for a movie too. Seriously, though, she's really very talented in many aspects of the movie business, so now she would likely opt to write, act, produce, but always clothed! She is always a joy to work with: uninhibited, witty, charismatic on camera, and able to put the other actors at ease. Quite often, in my experience, some of the male actors are more inhibited than the females. Maybe it is harder for them to hide their feelings.

You've done a bit of acting yourself, playing Peeping Tom Gardener in Felicity. Did you do any method acting to prepare for this role or was it natural for you?
Oh, yes. We used method acting throughout the movie. Before any scenes of a highly sexual nature I told the girls to imagine the nearest guy to them was the most desirable man in the world and then to imagine that they could actually seduce him. Needless to say, I always made sure I was the nearest guy.

The guys behind Severin Films, who have just put out the uncut director's version of Felicity on DVD, say it's the greatest softcore movie of all time. What was your intention in making it?
Firstly, let me compliment them on their excellent taste. Really, a lot of it does have to do with taste. After seeing lots of films labeled sexy or erotic or soft-porn, it became obvious to me that the really good quality erotic movies were to be found in Europe. The original Emmanuelle (Picture: 1) was just great, as was The Story of O (Picture: 1 - 2). Severin have sensibly decided to concentrate on this niche, beginning with Just Jaeckin's Gwendoline (Picture: 1 - 2) and following it with Felicity. I am proud to be in such distinguished company.

Back then, the average "sexy movie" always looked like a small crew had hired a cheap motel room, thrown in a few would-be actors and actresses, fired the makeup woman, and shot heavy sex from several angles. The characters always looked "warts and all" or should I say "pimply asses and all." You know the type of thing. When they left the motel room, it was called "going on location."

On the other hand, my ideal erotic movie has an idealized, almost fantasy feel about it: beautiful women, handsome men, exotic locations, sexy easy-listening music, soft moody lighting, and characters who "live out" the kind of fantasies enjoyed by you and me! I decided to make one of those fantasies and hopefully we achieved it with Felicity. Unfortunately now I can only make love to my wife if I wear special #5 fog filters as contact lenses and hire a five-piece orchestra to play French music in the bedroom! And to those who say real sex is not like that, well, it is in my house!

The movie is ripe with, not only Glory, but also some of the hottest naked women captured on film. What kind of provocative shenanigans were going on between takes on set?
Hey, what kind of person do you hope I am? Everybody said it was one big orgy--not true! It was a series of small orgies, punctuated by irregular but very horny clandestine meetings in unfamiliar hotel rooms with lots of heavy breathing and black underwear... sometimes even with women present. Seriously, though, after thirty-six days of endlessly filming many naked female bodies, do you really think I'd let myself get involved in meaningless sex with a beautiful woman? You bet your sweet ass!

How different is the DVD to the theatrical version of the movie?
The DVD has everything! There were several versions of Felicity for the 35mm release, due to the varying needs of the film censors in different countries. In the new version we have the real sexy material; in the Singapore version, which got banned anyway, I think Felicity and Miles just shook hands and smiled at one another.

When we put the DVD together, we added a gallery of sexy still photos and we recorded a special narrative track with Glory Annen and myself, discussing not just the location, lenses, and the technical statistics, but also some impressions on what it was like making this scene or that scene, or why the lesbian scene was cut in some countries, for instance.

Lots of people seem shocked by a good lesbian scene. Some say it leaves them with a nasty taste in their mouths. Critics suggest that in Felicity the lesbian scene was "contrived, calculated, gratuitous exploitation" and merely an "expression of my own fantasies." I will probably take the Fifth on that comment.

Lesbian scenes do rather touch a nerve with my male friends, though in fact, when I am setting up the false door in the bedroom at home, I still watch that lesbian scene through the keyhole because I find it's the only way to get an erection now that my neurologist has cut back on the gingko biloba capsules.

Is there anything you wish you had done differently with the film?
Yes! I should have made a sequel straight off! One day I might do just that.

You went on to direct a horror movie, Nightmares, and some comedies including Pacific Banana (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3) and A Slice of Life. Are there any nude scenes in those pictures?
Nightmares had a few choice pieces of flesh. Pacific Banana had script interference from the studio involved so its sex scenes are somewhat tame, lots of very attractive female nudity though. A Slice of Life was a modest, nudity-free TV movie.

You've also done a romance, Breakfast in Paris. Is that something we at Mr. Skin should be aware of?
Only because of one little scene involving the lead actress, beautiful Barbara Parkins (Picture: 1), of Valley of the Dolls and Peyton Place fame, and Australian actor Rod Mullinar. Prior to filming of what would now be considered a fairly tame bedroom scene with both performers groping about under the bed sheets and ending with some dialogue from Barbara, sitting up with the bed sheets bunched up, strategically covering her breasts, I remember saying to Barbara, "Why do so many American films still do this? Is it a hangover from the dark days of the Hays Code?" Having the actress cover her breasts up straight after supposedly making wild, naked love to the guy seems totally unrealistic. Who would do that? Only a very inhibited woman.

Actually it always looked to me like the actress had suddenly noticed there was a film crew lurking in the room and quickly covered up her tits. As I recall it, Barbara suggested that she would let them all hang out and, so I, of course, gave in and agreed!

You're still making pictures, most recently the action flick Killing Time (24/7). Does that mean you've forever left behind the more erotic expression of your early career?
Not at all! That's a different John Lamond, actually my son John Lamond Jr. After co-directing with me a '30s film noir thriller, Shanghai Lily, John Jr. made his solo feature directorial debut with Killing Time (24/7), shooting it all with a tiny crew on the streets of a big city in Southeast Asia. It's a day in the life of a youthful hit man. Shot on the new high-definition format, the film represents a landmark experiment, which I believe is quite unique.

Movie buffs all over the world can download Killing Time (24/7) for free on the PlayStation portable. It's one hell of a bold move, but it will enable us to focus our movie headlong into this niche market and start to build an incredible word of mouth. The Killing Time (24/7) website, has been updated and is now offering free downloadable versions of the trailer and the movie specifically formatted to play on PSP units.

Oh, and especially for fans of Mr. Skin, there is a gorgeous piece of Thai female flesh in the movie's opening scene! When you see her onscreen, I'm sure you'll agree that the young woman needs a damned good tongue-lashing for getting around like that in such a tight pair of knickers!

You also have a daughter, Jennie Lamond, who you've directed in two of your films, Breakfast in Paris and Nightmares. Did she ever do any nude scenes? How would you feel if she decided to take it off for the camera?
Jennie swapped on-camera duties for a background job in the cutting rooms prior to making a career in documentary filmmaking, so her clothes stayed on!