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In a flower print skirt down to her ankles and wearing thick glasses that frame big doe eyes, Lori Michaels projects the innocence of a young Midwestern farm wife on her way to a prayer meeting. But appearances are deceptive. She has arrived at an ocean-view estate in Pacific Palisades, where the porn flick she’s starring in is being filmed, to spend the afternoon having sex with near-strangers. One of her partners, an actress who goes by the name of T.J. Hart, is a pleasant ex-collegiate swimmer fresh out of the University of Colorado. The other is Bobby Vitale, a well-known adult film stud with whom the svelte, auburn-haired Michaels has worked once before. Sprawled on a blanket beside a grotto-like swimming pool with a waterfall, Michaels goes at it, first with Hart, and then with Vitale, in a swirl of amorous acrobatics that lasts for an hour, minus pauses to change film rolls. It is demanding exercise. Afterward, the breathless Vitale scampers for a can of fruit juice and a Power Bar. Michaels calmly retires to a dressing room to freshen up. If they gave Academy Awards for moaning, she’d be a shoe-in as a nominee. “The sex stuff is just a job to me,” she later explains. The movie, called Statues, is an improbable X-rated yarn about statues that come to life and have their way with her. It’s her 10th feature film and her sixth while under contract to San Fernando Valley-based porn juggernaut Vivid Video. But even though her status as a Vivid Girl has made Michaels a top draw in the adult film world, her screen work isn’t her prime career focus. Her main interest, and what has enabled the once down-and-out Kansan to become a self-made millionaire at age 28, is purveying sex--not on the silver screen--but on the World Wide Web. In business terms, the movie roles are little more than vehicles to drive paying customers to her Internet site. “My Web page is my baby,” she says, her face beaming with excitement. And why not? In two short years her Dreamy.com has hit the online jackpot, attracting her considerable porn film following and others to shop from her online store and pay $9.95 monthly to access adults-only erotica. Panties that she “guarantees” to have personally worn are such hot sellers at $5.95 a pop that she can barely keep up with demand. This may explain why, after the film shoot, she scurries home without so much as a time out. “There aren’t enough hours to do it all,” she says.
From skin-flicks to sleazy backstreet video outlets, the
chief marketeers of pornography have long been men who’ve reigned pimplike
over an industry infamous for treating women as chattel. Well, move over
fellas. As Michaels attests, in the rapidly exploding world of cyberporn,
some of the most successful entrepreneurs are women. Not surprisingly,
for a city that is the porn film capital of the planet and claims
more Internet start-up companies than even Silicon Valley, Los Angeles
is also a magnet for some of the leading female sex merchants on the Web.
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