WORDS BY KHALID STRICKLAND a.k.a. BLACK PACINO
Joanna Angel, reigning Queen of alt-porn and multiple AVN Award winner, does not have fly-by-night fans. She has a devout cult following who swears by her groundbreaking BurningAngel movement.
Spearheaded by Joanna, BurningAngel.com kicked off with a few photo sets and a band interview back in 2002. Since then, the site snowballed into an adult DVD production company, web community, hardcore video collection and photo gallery featuring over 200 girls. Like Joanna herself, most of the BurningAngels are not your average porn starlets; they’re tattooed-up, pierced and actually look attainable. Undoubtedly, sex is the selling point but a majority of BurningAngel videos are scripted and entertaining in a grindhouse sort of way.
Aside from being the co-founder and visionary of BurningAngel, Joanna Angel is also its brightest star. I respect her hustle, which is why she was invited to The Spizzy for the intriguing Q&A session posted below. Whether you’re a thirsty horndog in search of jollies or an aspiring entrepreneur seeking business advice, Joanna Angel has what you need.
Eavesdrop on our conversation…
Black Pacino: In the beginning, did you envision Burning Angel would become the movement it is now?
Joanna Angel: No, I did not envision that at all. I didn’t think of it as a movement. I just kinda thought of it as starting a porn site with one of my friends. And the girls that we used… the ideas that we used… it was just part of who we were. So I had no idea it was going to be this untapped market or whatever (laughs). So I think I was kind of blessed a bit, we didn’t really have a business plan or anything like that. We just did what we wanted to do and it helped set the foundation for what we are now.
Pacino: How did Burning Angel expand from a regular website to a social network, store and all the other things it currently encompasses?
Joanna: Well, the company just grew. Ever since the company started I really loved it, even when we were this rinky-dink website that updated once every six weeks. Like, I always really loved the site and I loved the company and what we stood for. I think I was just always really determined so I just always wanted to keep pushing forward and I just kind of forced it to keep growing. Fortunately we’ve always had an OK product. People always liked us.
I think I was pretty smart with our money… like, every dollar I made, we put back into the company. I didn’t put a dollar into my pocket until just 3 years after we started the company. I think its good advice for anybody starting a business. And I only put the money in my pocket because at a certain point I have to quit my other job so I had the time I needed to put into the site. But I never lived super-extravagantly. My number one priority was always to put money back into the company and help it grow. So I think that’s part of the reason.
I think we just have good ideas and I think that worked. We had something unique. You don’t see our girls all over the place. I think the concepts for our movies, you can’t find really anywhere else. We had members that joined and were not cancelling. We have people who have been members for 8 or 9 years. They continue to keep their membership because we continue to make them happy.
We started off as one website and we kept expanding. And then we started putting out DVDs. I just kind of took things step-by-step. Every single day my goal is to make this company bigger and better. It’s at the forefront of my mind all the time. To just be able to do that… it’s what kept us going and what’s made us grow into what we are now. Now we have DVD distribution where we put out about 20 DVDs a year and we have 9 different websites that get updated on a regular basis. It’s a lot for a couple of people to do.
Pacino: Do you ever think that since your business is porn & hot chicks, people overlook the fact that you’re great at marketing and the business mechanics that go into making Burning Angel success?
Joanna: I think other people in porn really do admire and respect what I’ve done. I really do. I feel that everywhere I go people respect me as a good businesswoman. Sometimes it’s kind of hard with people outside of porn, I feel like there’s just a stigma in general. Just the general idea of the world is that porn is a big party and there’s so much money. People see it as like you just make one porn and you have millions of dollars that just come to your house. You know? People don’t understand that there is a struggle in the porn industry and that makes it hard sometimes.
People don’t understand that you can make a movie and there’s a good chance that no one will want to buy it, there’s so much out there. Or if you actually sell copies of a porn, that took time and energy and marketing and PR and so many different elements that people don’t really consider. People don’t really give porn enough credit. People are a little insulting; they kind of treat it like a circus. Y’know, like, “Why don’t you make a porn about this or that?” Like, people just kind of think of ideas because they think they’re funny, not because they’re really good ideas.
But I just try to play along with it, I don’t get insulted. I understand it’s a lot how porn is represented. I think sometimes it’s hard for people to understand how much effort there is to what we do. But I knew that when I got into this industry I would be stigmatized a little bit. I think over time porn has become more mainstream. It’s not so taboo but it’s really has become more of like… the best way I can describe it is a circus. People just want to look; they kind of see it as a big joke.
Pacino: You actually answered my next question…. has porn become more mainstream, in your opinion?
Joanna: It’s more of the idea of porn and not porn itself. The ideas of sex and sexuality has become more mainstream. If you look at TV… you look at the way people dressed in movies 10 years ago it was a lot more tame than it is now. Just stuff like that. You look at the bikinis girls wear on regular TV shows and they’re way skimpier now than they were 10 years ago. That’s fashion, movies and commercials. Everything has just become more sexual.
But I think people sometimes forget… what makes porn a porn is you see hardcore penetration and there’s nothing even close to that in mainstream. So I think the idea of porn has become more mainstream, like you can say at a restaurant, “I do porn” and people aren’t as scared or they don’t cringe the way that they used to. They don’t think it’s so weird. But it’s not something that’s going to be in the next Harry Potter movie (laughs).
It’s still taboo, still rated X. There’s a lot of things people don’t know. You can’t put an advertisement for a porn in Maxim magazine but you can a picture of a girl that’s wearing a bikini that is dressed and looks like a porn star. The mainstream will not welcome porn in a legitimate form of media. From a business level, porn really is still adult-themed but just from a consumer point-of-view porn has gotten more mainstream because we hear about it all the time.
Pacino: What do you look for in a Burning Angel actress or model?
Obviously, this is porn so looks go into it but you know… it’s a combination of looks and personality. Some of the girls have tattoos at Burning Angel and some of the girls don’t have any tattoos at all but they still have that personality… y’know, they like that particular kind of music or they’re part of that subculture.
It’s kind of hard, we get so many applications a day and have so many girls at the site it’s hard to boil them down into one sentence. But for the most part we aren’t necessarily looking for girls that want to be the next Jenna Jameson, y’know? We’re looking for girls that… they’re excited and turned on by the idea of having sex on camera… they want to make new friends, they want to be part of the community and come to our events. Stuff like that is always a plus for us.
We want the girls to look like someone you’d see at a show or someone you’d see at a bar… and not look like someone you’d never meet and you’d never know and you’d never obtain. So it’s a combination of having the right look and having the right personality. Like, we’ve had some girls that have applied that are beautiful but they’re like, “All right, how much are you paying me? I really think I should get this much money and blah, blah, blah…” Honestly, we don’t mind having these conversations really but if we see that the only thing driving a girl to work for our company is then money then we’d rather hire someone else that’s in it for the whole package. But that’s just us.
Pacino: Of course, you’re one of the main reasons people come to Burning Angel for, you’re the flagship artist so to speak. You’ve shot some pretty wild scenes. What’s the wildest, craziest scene you’ve ever done? What’s Joanna Angel’s signature scene?
Joanna: (Laughs) Well, I don’t really know… I feel like every time I do a scene it’s like a different adventure (laughs). I don’t know what my craziest scene is. Hmmmm. There was a big scene that was in Joanna’s Angels 3 that had an orgy with 8 or 9 people in it, that scene is pretty crazy. That’s a good scene that I tell people to watch. That one is pretty cool. I have this one scene that I did on JoannaAngel.com, it’s from a movie called Doppelganger. The whole movie is about my blow-up doll coming to life and trying to kill me.
In the final scene of the movie I did this whole fight scene with the blow-up doll. And me and the blow-up doll are hitting each other and it’s trying to kill me. It’s like really crazy. And then I kill the blow-up doll because in the final scene the blow-up doll tries to go on a date instead of me… like knock me out and kill me, then go out on a date for me (laughs). I don’t know. Anyway, this ends with me killing the blow-up doll and having sex with my date. I like that scene a lot because the actual sex in the scene is really good and everything leading up to it is so ridiculous. So I like showing people that scene because it’s pretty funny and once the sex starts it’s pretty intense.
Pacino: I know you on the 4th of July you weren’t out poppin’ fireworks, you were actually putting in work filming. What did you shoot?
Joanna: Yeah, we just shot a new movie; it’s a ninja movie coming out in September. I’m not sure what I’m going to call it, I think I’m going to call it Kung Fu Pussy (laughs) ‘cuz people seem to like that and it also sounds a little like Kung Fu Panda. There’s no pandas in it or anything. But I called it that just tentatively and put that on the script just because I needed a title to put down and when I handed the script to everyone on set, everyone was like, “Oh! Kung Fu Pussy, that’s such a good title.” I’m like, “Well that’s not really going to be the title, I just put it there.” But everyone seemed to like it so much that I’m going to just keep it. Usually the first thing that comes to your mind is the best.
Pacino: A lot of porn starlets give themselves titles. For instance, Phoenix Marie is the self-proclaimed “Anal Queen” and Lethal Lipps claims to be the best at giving head. So what’s Joanna Angel’s specialty?
Joanna: Ohhhh, I don’t know (laughs). I think I just owning my company and being a bit of a pioneer for girls with tattoos in porn and stuff, I think that’s really my thing. I guess I can take it in the ass pretty well but there’s a lot of girls in porn who can do it just as well as I can, if not better. So I would never like want to be like, “Oh, I’m The Anal Queen” cuz I’m not. There’s plenty of girls that take it in the butt.
Pacino: No bold declarations today, huh?
Joanna: Yeah, I’m not the first person to take it in the ass on-camera (laughs). I’m not the first and I won’t be the last.
Pacino: I’m from Brooklyn. You were based in Williamsburg at one point, right?
Joanna: Yeah, we still actually have an office in Greenpoint. I’m not there all the time but I’m there sometimes.
Pacino: What was it about Brooklyn that made you set up shop there?
Joanna: I love Brooklyn. I wish I could still live there but you know… you just can’t really run a porn company and not be in L.A. I mean, I love everything about Brooklyn. I love the food. I love all the bars. One thing I really like about living in Brooklyn is that there’s bars everywhere that play good music and you don’t have the shindigs you have in Manhattan, it still kind of feels like home, y’know? It’s not like so pretentious and you still have all the excitement that you have in Manhattan.
When I go to New York for a week, I go out every single night. I live in L.A. and weeks will go by where I barely go anywhere except out to dinner. But the nightlife in New York, all the restaurants and all the bars and clubs… I really love the energy there, the attitude of everyone. I’ve even gone out there even when it’s 10 degrees outside (laughs). It’s always something different but it’s always very comfortable to me at the same time. It’s really awesome.
I’m there every month; I was there a couple of months ago. Actually, Williamsburg is a bit much now and when I go back I go to a lot of bars in Bushwick, instead of Williamsburg. I still like going to Williamsburg but it’s become a little overpriced. But whatever, there’s a lot of fun things in life that are overpriced, sometimes you have to indulge in them (laughs).
Pacino: Last question. Any upcoming projects we should be looking out for?
Joanna: I’ve got this ninja movie coming out in September. But just go to my website, there’s always something there at BurningAngel.com. I’m also on Twitter.com/JoannaAngel, that’s where you can find out everything new and exciting. Minute-to-minute updates on Twitter (laughs). And also we just started doing a lot of live shows in the chat room at Burning Angel. They’re a lot of fun, people like them.
Pacino: Cool. I’ll be watching intently.
SIDEBAR: Joanna Angel brings her feature dancing skills back to Pennsylvania to transfix all of her fans at Al’s Diamond Cabaret from July 14th – 16th2011. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Joanna will twist, twirl and tantalize on a pole and go totally wild for her fans. Shows start at 10:30pm and 12:30am each night. July 14, 15, 16 Al’s Diamond Cabaret, 1810 North 5th Street, Reading, PA. First show: 10:30pm. Second show: 12:30am
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Another great interview. Shockingly I’ve known about Joanna Angel for years but have never seen a movie with her. Maybe it’s time I did lol. (BTW with all those tattoos she looks like she could be a dancer at Pumps in Williamsburg lol)
Williamsburg is like her 2nd home, so maybe she danced at Pumps already lol. She has a flick called “Bartenders” & it looks almost like it was shot at Pumps.
Yeah, her flicks are good.
A dancer a pumps!!! That is too funny. Shorty is really got it together too. Smart cookie. Then, aren’t they all right? Making millions instead of pushing pens and paper. Well, she pushing paper- heavy paper at that. LOL
Word. It pays to be in the flesh trade.
She made it sound so easy, even though it obviously wasn’t. She didn’t even have a business plan! But she cornered a niche market – good for her! (Wish I could do that – there are definitely niche markets in porn that have yet to be tapped into the way Joanna tapped into the alternative/tattooed/pierced girl market.)
Yup. Porn ain’t the 24 hour party everyboy thinks it is (unless you’re Charlie Sheen). There’s plenty biz to handle. The growth of BurningAngel is an inspiration to anyone gettin their operation together.
She ain’t spend a dime of the profits for 3 years & put it all back into the company. I know a few rap “moguls” who could use that advice. Get your weight up before you cop a fleet of Bentleys.
Joanna is sexy and quite a business woman IMO. Kudos for her.
Word life. The business-woman part makes her even sexier. She can fuck like a maniac… and balance the books.