Joanna Angel: A Few Words at AEE ‘10
Saturday, 23 January 2010 19:43
Joanna Angel shares some insight into into her alt-porn brand's growth and mainstream exploits at the 2010 AEE adult convention.By Todd Konrad
I’ve been lucky enough to meet and speak with alt-porn entrepreneur Joanna Angel before and I’ve yet to be disappointed. A Rutgers graduate in English Literature, Angel started up her website Burning Angel after graduating while living in Brooklyn and hasn’t looked back since. She has emerged as certainly one of the figureheads of a porn subgenre that places as much emphasis on tattoos, piercings and punk rock as mainstream porn has on fake blonde hair and frighteningly fakes body parts. However, Burning Angel is not just a place to get your rocks off but a bonafide community of people who are young, passionate, and embody much of the rebellious spirit that punk rock says it’s about.
Vegas Outsider: How are things going with developing the Burning Angel brand and any new developments with the different sites that you'd like to discuss?
Joanna Angel: Everything’s doing ok. Obviously I’d love them to do better; I don’t think we’ve reached our ceiling of success but considering how times are tough, we’re doing surprisingly well. It’s kind of odd to me that some of the big companies are almost going out of business, ones that when I first came into the business I looked up to and thought “Oh my god if only Burning Angel could be that big one day” and now we’re bigger than some of them, which is weird when I think about it. So yeah, we’re doing ok but I’d love to be doing better.
VO: I've noticed that you've been receiving more mainstream attention as of late, especially being pegged as perhaps the sexiest Jewish girl out there via Heeb Magazine, doing hosting work for G4, etc. How has it been for you being highlighted in this new way?
JA: Yeah, Heeb loves working with me and I just shot something for G4 a little while ago; basically I’m me all the time. When I’m doing something “mainstream”, I act and carry myself the same way as I do when I’m doing porn. The people at G4 are awesome, they’re really laid back and cool. Over the summer, I went to Quake Con with them and it was one of the best times I’ve ever had. Blair (Herter), the host, is a lot of fun and a lot of their fans are our fans too. It’s the perfect demographic for us.
So it doesn’t feel like I’m “stepping into the mainstream” as much as I’m just the same person to everyone. Different girls in the industry have different mainstream careers; anything mainstream I do, again I basically play myself. G4 is hiring Joanna Angel to cover Quake Con, they’re not saying “Joanna, we think you’re so much better than porn. We want you to be our new show host”. When I’m on there, I’m usually talking about porn and they’ll ask me to play it up, like they wanted me to wear a shirt at Quake Con that was pushing my boobs up so they could get a lot of footage of the geeks’ responses. They’ve never really asked me to do anything outside of what I am, so it doesn’t really feel like I’m doing something “mainstream”.
VO: At this year's AVN awards, you and Burning Angel have been nominated for a collective 17 awards this year. How has it been for you knowing how much work and struggle you put into this company to receive the amount of attention from the industry that you have received this year from AVN?
JA: Yes, this is the most AVN nominations we’ve ever received; there was one year where I got 16 nominations but that when I was with Hustler, granted they were movies I made but they were distributed through Hustler. So this is the first year that Burning Angel, in and of itself, was nominated for that many awards and it’s such a good feeling. To see our name alongside all the big companies is really amazing to me, I really appreciate it. I appreciate how AVN itself looks at something as different as us compared to everyone else and still respects and appreciates it. 
VO: In addition, with these nominations and where do you feel the brand stands in terms of the other major companies, i.e. Digital Playground, Wicked, etc. and do you ever feel in any sort of direct competition with them or do you feel that your audience and the kind of content you produce is unique enough where you don't have to think in those terms as much?
JA: Well, I mean you have to worry about the competition to a certain extent; you don’t really have a choice. But again, what I do is different than what other people do, yet in other ways it’s still quite similar. People are still having sex in the movies, they’re just different girls, wearing different clothes, performing in different settings. I think the craziest category this year is Best Parody, which is kind of odd that that’ll be the biggest award this year. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to win that but I’d really like to, because I did LA Pink but it’s up against The Cosbys, Scrubs, Seinfeld, etc. They were all really big parodies too and sure I feel a little competitive there like “oh my parody was so much better than theirs, I want mine to win” (laughs). But you know, I just try to do what I do.
VO: What’s your opinion on the parody genre in general, given how big of a dent it’s made over the past year?
JA: I think it’s really weird because people would say to me “oh, the big new thing now in porn is parodies” and I’m like “there have been parodies in porn forever”. Before I ever really watched porn, I think back when I was in high school or college actually, my friend had a copy of Edward Penishands. I never watched it but just thought “oh wow, that’s really funny”. And then I remember after that going into a porn store and seeing a parody of A Clockwork Orange, I think it was called A Cockwork Orange, something like that (laughs). And I made Re-Penetrator, which was a parody of Re-Animator, years ago and I wasn’t doing it then to cash in on a genre. I do think it’s getting a little ridiculous right now though. I always feel like there’s trends in porn and then it gets really saturated and then it just stops. That’s just the way it goes and I think it’s going to die down soon mostly because nearly every show’s been done now. That said, I still had fun making LA Pink and think that overall parodies are fun because it gives viewers something to relate to and makes it easier for people who necessarily don’t buy porn to purchase one.
*To learn more about Joanna Angel and Burning Angel itself, check out www.joannaangel.com and www.burningangel.com
*Photos courtesy of Joanna Angel
