I once read that "gun" was a euphemism for "large penis".

When I arrived on set it was a little before 9:00am. That meant I was early. I figured that if ever there was an opportunity to be on time for something, the morning you’re offered to visit an adult film shoot had better be it. Not to mention, our filming location was a good 40 miles outside of Los Angeles and just a brief ten minutes prior I’d convinced myself that I was absolutely lost. So, you can imagine my relief when I realized that I’d made it to the correct address: a dusty horse ranch on the outskirts of L.A. county.

As I locked the door to my truck, the wind kicked up a nice thick cloud of manure and pimp slapped me right across the face with it. To add insult to injury, it was cold-as-hell out, too. Really cold. An ugly day was certainly brewing on the forecast, but that wasn’t enough to postpone (yet again) this day of shooting. I’d been told that 30 days prior production had been rained out and forced to reschedule this pivotal day of filming. Hell or high water, something erotic was getting filmed today, whether Mother Nature liked it or not.

In true Daily Bugle fashion, I was brandishing a very obvious notepad and pen tucked tightly underneath my armpit. I stood out like, well, a douche writer on a porn shoot. From afar, thank God, my production contact noticed my arrival and emerged from a small wooden cabin to introduce himself. Following an awkward-but-necessary “welcome to set” handshake, he begins to explain that the crew is busy sorting out a small “situation” that has just come up: apparently there is an issue with the day’s scheduled Bear Girl-on-girl scene. Yes, Bear Girl. I wish I could say that this had caught me off guard, but one must come to expect these sorts of things when Vince Mancini asks you to visit the set of True Grit XXX.
*fires finger guns into air, holster and pants fall down completely*

Though the crew and I were only a short hour from the porn mecca that is California’s San Fernando Valley, the base camp we’d set up at was a far cry from anything that a teenage boy would expect a XXX feature to resemble. No matter how high or low I searched I could not find a single Bang Bus, Casting Couch or Milf Hunter nearby (at least I don’t think I did). What I did happen to find though were a lot of horses, a bunch of costume pieces, a few ranch hands, horse handlers, the gunsmith and, oh of course, Murrugun “The Mystic”: a professional circus performer who also happens to hold title as the only performer to ever receive oral sex while swallowing a steel sword. The moment I met this guy, I realized just how insignificant my own sexual conquests really were; incomparable by The Mystic’s barometer.

Then came time to meet our director, Mr. JacktheZipper [sic]. Huddled inside a rickety wooden shack, I meet the man whose moniker, without even trying, greatly outshines my own. He’s a fast-paced guy, rattling off shreds of information, hidden beneath sunglasses and a beard -a guy who makes it apparent, very quickly, that he doesn’t want any photographs taken of his face. He exhibits this when he raises a Mr. Miyagi like palm to the lens of a nearby media member who attempts to snap his photo. “No one photographs the Zipper,” he explains. Soon, Jack is back in full force again, tackling the issue of the scheduled Bear Girl lesbian scene; apparently, right before my arrival their Bear Girl actress had grown jaded and decided to just up and leave set, driving back home to her awaiting TiVo. After scratching at his beard for a moment, Zipper decides that they’ll just have to improvise a guy-on-girl scenario in its place; this will be the scene in which Ned Pepper fornicates with a local. Too bad, really, I heard that bear costume was really impressive. And therein lies the ethos of the Zipper’s True Grit hardcore remake: everything must be authentic. From the buttons to the pubic hair, I’m assured that everything is as if we were really boning in the late-1800′s. The Zipper continues explaining, in detail, the entire days schedule, but all I can keep thinking about is the fact that soon people need to go outside, in the frigidness, and have intercourse. That poor cast. Those troopers.