Traci Lords during an interview with Tonight Show host Jay Leno on November 18, 1997. And that was my first Hollywood audition.” When I get done, Tony says to me, ‘Now we want you to do this like you want to fuck everybody that you've ever looked at.’ That's when the tears came, and that's when I walked out. I work hard and I know that I did a really good job. So, I'm just going to go into this character and be funny and do what I've rehearsed. I’m reading for the waitress.’ And I go, ‘Why don’t we just read?’ Because now I'm, like, going to cry. And the first thing that Tony says to me is, ‘Can we get a nude Polaroid?’ And the first thing I say to Tony is, ‘No.’ And he goes, ‘How about a topless?’ I said, ‘No.

I was really, really excited, and I’d worked so hard. I hired a private acting coach, Al Mancini from the Beverly Hills Playhouse, and I worked on it for two weeks. Recalls Lynn, “The character was a waitress, a small part. In 1986, Lynn would go on her first audition for a studio project, Beverly Hills Cop II, directed by the late Tony Scott, flying high from Top Gun, the biggest-grossing movie of the year. Peter Turnley // Getty ImagesĪt the same time Traci was embarking on her journey, Ginger Lynn, a fellow Video Vixen and the closest thing Traci had to a rival in the business, was embarking on hers. Traci Lords poses in 1992 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And, psychologically, the distance between the two is vast. But geography is irrelevant here since Hollywood and the Valley are as much states of mind as they are physical locations. Geographically Hollywood is a short distance from the Valley-just over ten miles, a more or less straight shot across the Santa Monica Mountains. The one thing I was certain of was that I wanted to be an actress.” “I had already gone through the whole thing with the X-rated films. “By the time I was 18,” she told Inside Edition. When Traci moved on, it was to Hollywood. Only then I realized: there is no moving on from the Valley. I thought I was ready to do as Traci did, and leave the Valley behind, move on.

Stated gaudily, it’s the bastard off-spring of a three-way between Boogie Nights, Gone Girl and A Star Is Born.Ī few weeks ago, I, along with my partner on Once Upon a Time.in the Valley, Ashley West, reached the end of the podcast’s 12-episode arc. Stated simply, it’s a real-life psychological thriller and unsolved mystery. It’s called Once Upon a Time… in the Valley. the pornography capital of the world), and what happened back in 1986, when it was revealed that Traci, then the biggest star in Adult, wasn’t one was, legally-speaking, a child. A flashback that’s really a flash-forward:įor the past year, I’ve been working on a podcast about Traci Lords, the San Fernando Valley (i.e.

Traci lords