THE LAST DAYS OF AUGUST
BN1 CHATS WITH...
JON RONSON BY LOUISA STREETING Not many of us can say we’ve had the opportunity to sit in on an adult movie set, but Jon Ronson has certainly encountered a fair few. Recalling his very first porn set experience, Jon said: “The night just dragged on for so long. I was so tired, and I was just desperate for the guy to ejaculate so I could go to bed,” he laughed as he remembers those moments in the San Fernando Valley, California, home to the multi-billion dollar pornography industry. “You know you’re getting old when people considerately rub your back on a porn set.” His visit was in preparation for his 2015 book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, an insight into online shaming and shame in pornography. Jon’s initial encounter led to years of meetings with influential figures of the porn community for two podcast series: The Butterfly Effect and The Last Days of August. Ronson has built a robust career as an author, screenwriter, journalist, and documentary filmmaker on an abundance of topics. Most recently, with his eye-opening investigations of the porn industry. Although Shamed only touches the surface of the porn world, 2017 saw the release of The Butterfly Effect, a podcast series focusing on how technological advancements in porn have affected the business. The series centres around Fabian Thylmann, the man behind online streaming site, Pornhub. Six months into the project, it was suggested Jon should have some assistance from producer Lina Misitzis. The pair quickly earned the trust of key figures within the industry, including top agent, Mark Spiegler: “He gave us the seal of approval, then he introduced us
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to [porn producer] Mike Quasar, and Mike gave us the seal of approval because we had Mark Spiegler’s endorsement.” Jon tells me about the delightfulness to the story in The Butterfly Effect. The listener is exposed to an incredibly humanising portrayal of the porn industry, including an astounding ‘custom porn’ request in which a woman is asked to burn a man’s vast and expensive stamp collection. Conversely, Jon’s most recent venture into the adult entertainment industry has taken a much darker approach with The Last Days of August. The podcast series traces the events leading up to the suicide of porn star, Mercedes Grabowski, known in the industry as August Ames. After August tweeted she did not want to work with a crossover actor who had shot gay porn to not put “her body at risk”, she was accused of homophobia and met with a tidal wave of online abuse. Jon describes this as a ‘Twitter pile-on’. The series is composed of an emotional collection of interviews from family members, friends, and colleagues of August to piece together the final moments before the 23-year-old ended her life. The series closely follows adult film producer and August’s widower, Kevin Moore. When rumours come to Jon and Lina’s attention about Kevin’s character, the podcast takes an unexpected turn: “We really didn’t know what to make of Kevin. We kept on hearing these terrible things, then we’d see him and he would seem so emotionally distant.” I admit this alternative information led me to some unanswered questions about August’s death and with Kevin. Jon contested he felt differently about The Last