Interview With Big Top's Robyn Powers
2003-09-10 13:48:48
She called me at 11AM 9/10/03. Big Top is based in Tucson, Arizona.
They specialize in busty babes. For photos of Robyn, I believe you should
go to www.boobsville.com.
I wonder
if Robyn is the girl bouncing up and down in the video?
She's not only beautiful and sexy, she's smart too, running three booby
companies and directing eight videos. Could this be the year the Academy
of Arts and Sciences recognizes the contributions of Robyn Powers to
the cinematic arts?
Luke: "How did you get into the adult industry?"
Robyn: "When I graduated college [in 1993 with a double major in social
sciences and socio-boobology], I took a job with a company doing customer
service. That was eleven years ago, and I've been here eversince."
Luke: "Do you get to use your education on your job?"
Robyn: "The only part I use is all the writing skills I honed as well
as some statistical stuff. I don't use a lot of the history."
Luke: "You should interweave with the plots of your movies. You should
do more busty historical dramas."
Robyn: "Are you telling or asking?"
Luke: "I'm being stupid."
Robyn: "You can be that. There's something about a porn drama that just
doesn't work. It's like herding cats."
Luke: "Like hurting cats? I just had a bird fly into my apartment...
It just flew out."
Robyn: "Did I just hear a Boston accent?"
Luke: "Australian. I've been here 26 years."
Robyn: "Don't give your age away."
Luke: "When you were a girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?"
Robyn: "Let me ask my friend Jackie, who's standing here. I wanted to
work with kids."
Luke: "That's what you're doing. They're just grown-up kids."
Robyn: "I also wanted to get involved with law. That's not something
that is out the window. It's something I could do later on."
Luke: "Did you have any exposure to pornography in college?"
Robyn: "Oh, with friends, just to be funny. It wasn't anything that
was a personal part of my life."
Luke: "Did you understand why boys were so into it?"
Robyn: "Absolutely. First of all, they get to engage in sexual pleasure
without dealing with the pressures of a relationship. They get to be
voyeuristic with women who are more fantasies, rather than a realistic
portrayal of the general female community. They get to express their
fantasies. Men are very visual. Women tend not to fantasize as much.
It makes sense to me that would like to see things in the privacy of
their own home. It can enhance a couple's relationship.
"For me, I'm so desensitized to it that it is not something I need in
my personal life. I wasn't planning on getting into porn."
Luke: "How did you get that initial job as a customer service rep? Did
your college have a feeder program to Big Top Video?"
Robyn: "No. I was in school in Florida. I went home to New Jersey. I
answered an ad for customer service."
Luke: "It didn't say what product it was servicing?"
Robyn: "No. When I went to the office, it was just this little office,
a small operation in square footage but a profitable one in sales. I
met with the boss. He seemed like a friendly. It looked like an office
with a warehouse shipping department. I was offered $300 a week. For
somebody right out of college, that was pretty good.
"We were a wholesale distributor and we had a mail-order company. Catalogues
were sent out four times a year. The mailing list has always been about
100,000. The average movie in 1993 sold for $69:95.
"I opened the mail. Processed the order in the computer. Answered the
phone."
Luke: "Did you get a lot of breathers on the telephone?"
Robyn: "Not too many. The majority of our customers are college-educated
businessmen and they are generally polite. Because our movies are higher-priced
because it is a fetish, we deal with a more advanced clientelle. You
do have to have some money to purchase our products. When people send
away for a catalogue, they have to be willing to spend $5 on a catalogue.
We don't want to fill our database with people looking for free stuff.
"The company was founded in 1976 by Sam Xavier, the owner. He still
sits behind his desk every day and opens the mail."
Luke: "Does he yell at you a lot?"
Robyn: "No, I probably yell at him more than he yells at me."
Luke: "What were you thinking during your first few days on the job?"
Robyn: "I was happy to be making a check. That was my first exposure
to a computer (IBM 386). In college, I just used a word processor. I
was learning stuff and I was happy about that."
Luke: "Have you guys ever been busted for Interstate Transportation of
Obscenity?"
Robyn: "Never. We've never been busted or investigated for anything."
Luke: "Have the police ever come through and looked through your stuff?"
Robyn: "The first movie I directed - Busty Pom-Pom Girls (1998). We
rented the house of the photographer we hired. John Dragon. Apparently,
he had some drug trafficking going on through his house. When we wrapped
at the end of the day, the LAPD Vice Squad raided the set, looking for
drugs and for some of the people who stayed at the house. The footage
was confiscated and held as evidence. We got it back in a couple of
months."
Luke: "I can just imagine them looking through the footage for the evidence.
"How did you come to direct your first video?"
Robyn: "We had a supplier in London who shot a tremendous amount of
movies for Sam over ten years. The supplier started to retire. We got
stuff from others and it wasn't the quality we wanted. We were converting
to digital (1997). A couple of the suppliers Sam used were not wanting
to go digital.
"Because I planned out the catalogue, I was looking for good pictures.
I thought, well, how difficult can it be? I went to the boss and said
we can do this. We don't have to outsource it all the time. He agreed
with me. We contacted an agent in Los Angeles, booked some girls. Sam
has been in the industry for so long, he knows everybody. We made some
phonecalls and put a shoot together. We flew out to LA and we shot a
movie in two days."
Luke: "Did you write the script yourself?"
Robyn: "Yes."
Luke: "What sort of experience was it to direct your first movie?"
Robyn: "It was fun and it was exhausting. It was my first exposure to
working with the talent. The crew were great. They were professionals.
They knew how to do this."
Luke: "What do you think of breast implants and how they affect a woman?"
Robyn sighs: "It's an individual situation. Some models, like Kim Chambers,
have had implants and are happy. She seems to have her head screwed
on correctly.
"Some women are in this industry for the wrong reasons, to boost their
self-esteem..."
Luke: "What are the right reasons for being a porn star?"
Robyn thinks. Five seconds of silence. She laughs and sighs.
Robyn: "Jason warned me about you."
Luke: "You said there were wrong reasons for being a porn star. So I
wondered what the right reasons were."
Robyn: "The right reasons are to be an entertainer and be confident
with your body and mind and make use of the gifts physically that you
have been given."
Luke: "What does your body of work say about you?"
Robyn: "Come again."
Luke: "What do the movies you've made say about you?"
Robyn: "They reveal that I appreciate the fetish of big bust, even though
I don't have it personally. I've read enough customer letters and seen
enough of what our customers buy to understand what they like.
"I think it reveals my humorous side. I don't like to attempt to make
serious dramas out of pornography. I like to make them campy and over
the top. When it comes to the sex, the silliness stops.
"I watch some of these movies with their $60,000 budgets and they're
trying to be over the top with the acting and the scenery... These people
are sex performers, they are not actors."
Luke: "Do you keep your end user in mind and do you picture him sitting
there at the TV set?"
Robyn: "Yes, by casting girls with the breasts that our men would find
appealing. They have to be a minimum size of DD. The implants have to
be well done. I had one girl who I fired right off the set. I had someone
cast her for me. When she took her bra off, it was like a shark attack.
I felt so bad about doing that. How do you tell a girl that she got
botched?
"We like to use natural breasts as often as we can. They're harder to
come by. When we find a nice model with natural breasts, we try to shoot
her as much as possible before she falls off the scene.
"There are four types of customers. There are the men who go for the
stripper-type girls with the big silicone breasts. Men who go only for
natural breasts. Men who go for the plumpers. Men who don't discriminate.
As long as its got big busts."
Luke: "Are you married?"
Robyn: "Divorced."
Luke: "Did pornography end your marriage?"
Robyn: "My ex-husband works as our editor and DVD author. We have an
excellent relationship. We get along better now that we're divorced
than when we were married."
Luke: "Is most of your social circle within or without the industry?"
Robyn: "Without."
Luke: "When people outside the industry ask you what you do for a living,
what do you say?"
Robyn: "I work for a DVD-authoring company. That means when you put
the DVD into the machine, all of that footage needed to be digitized
and compressed... And most people by this time start looking around
because they don't know what I am talking about.
"I am very careful about who I tell I work in porn. If I were in Europe,
where they are not as judgmental about this sort of thing, I'd feel
free to tell people what I do.
"I live in two worlds. I have my business world and I have my personal
world. My boyfriend is not in porn. He knows what I do. It's not something
he's into. He sees it as I see it - it's business. It's a commodity."
Luke: "There's no picture of you on the home page of www.bigtopvideo.com?"
Robyn: "It's for our customers. They don't want to see me."
Luke: "What's your title?"
Robyn: "I'm the executive director of three companies (first in line
under the owner): Big Top Digital (distributes nationally), Xavier Productions
(mail order), and Boobsville.com, our website."
Luke: "How did you feel about Big Top's pee pee movie?"
Robyn laughs: "David Christopher was shooting for Sam. Whenever he shot,
he'd ask somebody to go off and pee somewhere and he'd shoot it. I guess
he has a thing for this. He wound up compiling a whole bunch of scenes
and sent it into Sam and told him to make a movie out of it. Sam said
why? David said, Just do it. We sent it out in the catalogue. It was
30-minutes of girls tinkling for $39:95. It sold like crazy.
""Big Bust Pissing Perverts" we've had for a while. We haven't released
it for a couple of years because we weren't sure about the climate.
We don't want to attract negative attention. We do not get involved
in anything extreme. Those really extreme companies give the adult industry
a bad name."
(BOOBSVILLE, USA) -- Look out! Things are about to get a little wet
in here! "Comin' atcha" in stores and online today are two back-to-back
Big Top Digital [ http://www.bigtopdigital.com ] DVD releases, "Wild
Bill's Erupting Volcanoes" and "Big Bust Pissing Perverts." You won't
believe the amazing sex tricks these voluptuous hotties can perform
in your very own living room and bedroom!
Wild Bill has been one of Big Top's best-selling directors for years
and "Wild Bill's Erupting Volcanoes" is one of the visionary's most
classic releases, now available for the first time on DVD. Twin Volcanoes
and her enormous milk laden tits star in this classic milking tale,
along with fellow big titter Crystal Starr. It's kinky lactation and
hardcore sex, as only the perverted mind of Wild Bill can bring to you!
"Big Bust Pissing Perverts" features an entire hour of your favorite
busty babes tinkling and teeteeing all over the damned place! They're
all here and they're all pissing their little hearts out: Harley Rain,
Sierra, Donita, Envy, Jessica Jewel, Charlie, Lovette, Sana Fey, Nikki
Sinn, Sophia Staxx, Kayla Kleevage, Elizabeth Starr, Tastee, and Barocca.
They may not be able to write their names in the snow... but hey, when
you gotta go - you gotta go!
Luke: "What do you love and what do you hate about this industry?"
Robyn: "I hate that I have to hold so much discretion when people ask
me what I do. That's my choice. I don't like being judged by what I
do for a living but unfortunately, that is the way the world works.
I don't like that there are some nasty bottomfeeders [in porn].
"Whenever the adult industry is portrayed on television, it's always
a fat guy with a hairy chest and gold chains. It's always done in a
negative light. That's not how it is. The adult industry self-regulates
itself as far as HIV-testing.
"I don't like the hypocrisy this country has. Somebody is buying this
stuff but out in the social world, people turn their noses up, look
down on [porn], so I have to use so much discretion.
"What I love about the adult industry is that we are always on the cutting
edge of technology. I love the creativity it affords me. I love my salary.
When I started working for this company and getting promoted, I wasn't
going to go back to teach at $22,000 a year. As much as I wanted to
work with kids, I'm not that idealistic."
Luke: "What did Jason [Sechrest] tell you about this interview?"
Robyn: "He said there weren't many people he'd send to be interviewed
by you because you're controversial and nothing is off the record, but
he thought I could handle you. I emailed back to him, ooooh, I'm scared
already."
Luke: "Ahhh, that's so sweet. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."
Robyn: "Oh good."
Luke: "How did your family react to your porn career?"
Robyn: "They were all supportive. I don't have a meddling judgmental
family. I don't think I would be still doing this if it were a big negative
for them."
Luke: "Which of your movies are you most proud of?"
Robyn: "Boobsville.com. I did it specifically for marketing purpose.
If you do a movie for cable, they take off all your trailers. I figured
if I made a movie named after my website, they can't take that off.
I also made Return to Boobsville.com.
"I have a business dinner with the boss once a week. We bounce stuff
off of each other. Often I will give him an idea. Two weeks later, he'll
tell me about the idea and claim it is his."
In the past 24 hours, Robyn has done two interviews with Adult Video
News.
Luke: "What closet door have I forgotten to open, where the skeletons
will come crashing out?"
Robyn: "I'm not going to help you."
Luke: "What would it mean to you to win an AVN award?"
Robyn: "It would be a nice acknowledgement of the work I've done but
I don't think those awards are [legitimate]. Sam's been in this industry
for a long time. He's known Paul Fishbein for a long time. These things
are just not objective."
Luke: "Do you think they are swayed by advertising?"
Robyn: "Absolutely. We've lost a lot of respect for AVN over the past
three years. We stopped advertising in AVN because we think that things
like the awards are not representative of the work submitted."
Robyn has little knowledge of who works at AVN.
Luke: "Have you noticed any changes under the new editor and publisher?"
Robyn laughs: "I didn't know there was a new editor and publisher.
"We've been sending them in movies monthly and it's hit and miss when
it gets reviewed. We're just not too pleased with AVN.
"We don't advertise in AVN Online. We don't sell our content. It's a
good webmaster resource if you are looking for content or for an affiliate
program. We are building our affiliate program. I don't know if we will
ever need an ad in AVN Online. Webmasters have other resources online.
I don't know how much they use AVN Online as a resource.
"We get a booth at the AVN Expo. We liked it better when it was with
CES. It's become so much about AVN. Before, it was nice to be involved
with something legitimate, like the CES."
Luke: "Has there been any talent who has ever tempted you to go lesbian?"
Robyn voice rises to a shriek: "Has there been what?"
I repeat the question.
Robyn: "I haven't needed any talent to tempt me to do that."
Luke: "I thought you said you were hetero."
Robyn: "I was talking about our movies. I'm primarily hetero but I don't
mind a little experimentation every now and then. I think Taylor St.
Claire is hot. I don't focus on them much.
"I like Angelina Jolie."
Luke: "You were a consummate professional."
Robyn: "Thank you."
Luke: "It wasn't a compliment."
Robyn: "Oh, you wanted something more exciting for your column."
I wonder if a coke-snorting Mafia hitman related to Steve Hirsch and
Christian Mann broke into Robyn's office immediately after she hung
up with me and started randomly shooting pornographers (nobody that
we care about) because proper tribute had not been paid to Peter Gotti
and the Gambino crime family.
BOOBSVILLE.COM: THEY'RE BACK, BUSTIER & BETTER THAN EVER
The internet's official big tit hardcore web site gets a major face
lift... and their biggest boob job to date!
(BOOBSVILLE, USA) -- After over a year of reconstruction, what is hands
down, the Internet's most popular "big bust" specialty site, www.Boobsville.com,
has been completely redesigned with a member's area and online store
that has archived nearly thirty years worth of exclusive busty video
content. This site features the world's largest collection of "big bust"
movies - over 700 exclusive titles are currently available in their
extensive online store, plus over 2,000 movies will be streamed in their
members area. According to their Media Archivist, Jaci Davidson, Boobsville.com
has enough exclusive video content on hand to add daily for the next
ten years, not including the new movies they shoot every month.
Boobsville.com is developed and overseen by Big Top Digital, which has
been distributing movies wholesale since the 1980's, and is a subsidiary
of Xavier Productions, which has sold well over 4 million big bust movies
since 1976, both retail and wholesale. Like their video production companies,
the Boobsville.com web site offers surfers more than just busty content,
but a variety of "voluptuous fetish" that includes plumpers, BBW, milking,
pregnant women, leg fetish, stockings, and more from some of the most
famous large breasted women in the adult industry. So many, in fact,
that there are over 400 models in the newly designed Boobsville.com
Model's Gallery.
"The success of the site is phenomenal," says the site's webmaster and
Big Top Digital's Director of Technology, Michael Gennitti. "The week
that we relaunched Boobsville.com, we received over 500 signups and
that is without any real promotion. Now that we're actually promoting
the site and have an active publicity department, those numbers have
well over quadrupled."
Boobsville.com is the brainchild of President and CEO, Sam Xavier, who
has owned all three companies since he founded Xavier Productions in
1976. "It's not just a dime a dozen porn site," says Sam Xavier. "It
is a museum, it's my life's work, it's a collector's cache of big tit
fetish that I've amassed over the past three decades. This site is intended
to be a community, if you will, a specific locale in this vast world
wide web where fans and connoisseurs of big bust fetish can come, browse
and enjoy...and stay as long as they like."
In addition to the collection that will be posted to the site daily
over the next decade, Boobsville.com continues to shoot its own exclusive
line of movies, all centered around the goings on in Boobsville. "Only
a handful of adult websites have the resources or the budget to shoot
their own productions", says Executive Director, Robyn Powers. "I started
the line with the simply titled 'Boobsville.com'. The original intention
for this movie was marketing, plain and simple. It went on to be nominated
by AVN for Best DVD, and it's a high quality production we are all very
proud of. Every time this movie is displayed on a video store shelf,
or watched in a hotel room, it's automatic advertising for our site.
We now have over ten movies in the Boobsville line, including 'Return
to Boobsville.com, Boobsville's Hot Body Shop, Boobsville Penitentiary,
Boobsville Sorority Girls and more...we just wrapped Boobsville Hot
Chocolate Shop, which will be out early 2004."
When asked what the most attractive feature of his site is, Sam Xavier
didn't hesitate to respond. "Exclusive busty content. You cannot find
this product anywhere else in the world. This is as busty as the internet
gets."
Boobsville.com is currently averaging a minimum of 790,000 hits per
day.