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06/29/2007: "AVN On the Set: Upload Wraps with a Body Cavity Search"

On the Set: Upload Wraps with a Body Cavity Search
By: Jared Rutter
from www.avn.com



LOS ANGELES - Despite desert windstorms, exploding meth labs, permit screwups and other perils of location shooting, Upload, SexZ Pictures' extra-big budgeted cyber-thriller, wrapped up its three-week shoot on schedule and with footage to spare.

"I'm thrilled with everything we're getting," director Eli Cross tells AVN on the final sex scene day, "but it's just a lot of hard work."

Several crew members, including one of the cameramen, have missed work because of stress-related problems. Kylie Ireland, Cross' usually perky partner, looks exhausted. Both of them are harried but coping.

"This shoot has really wanted to fall apart," Cross says, "but it hasn't. Everybody has wanted to keep it together, and so far we have."

It was the three days in the high desert that took the biggest toll.

The first day, a trailer housing a meth lab blew up on the other side of a hill from where they were working, bringing on clouds of smoke and police helicopters.

The second day heavy windstorms played havoc with the sound recording. There were also permit problems regarding county vs. city jurisdiction of the patch of sand they'd staked out as a location.

The third day they were denied access to a dry lake bed, where a sex scene had been scheduled, and had to move to a place called Vasquez Rocks.

Later on, when a Valley office building where they were going to shoot several key scenes suddenly became unavailable, they were forced to build sets elsewhere.

Today, a Sunday, they're in downtown Los Angeles at a studio whose stages are used by both X-rated filmmakers and mainstream indies.

The project's latest loss, due to a conflict, is porn legend Ginger Lynn, who had planned to come out of retirement for a cameo in a crucial scene.

Cross was quick to replace her. "We lost Ginger," he says, "and that's disappointing. But we have Michelle."

Michelle Aston, who was working on the movie as a production assistant, is a tall thirtysomething with bright red mohawk-cut hair and ample tattoos. She works as talent but has also done a fair amount of mainstream acting.

Stepping in for a legend at the last minute? "I love it," she says with a big smile. "But my fist is too big. I don't get to fist Hillary, Flick does."

That's Flick Shagwell, the British performer who segued into a career as a makeup artist. She's returning to acting, briefly, as one of two security guards who woman-handle Hillary Scott in the scene about to be shot.

It is a fisting scene, and as such will not appear in all DVD copies of Upload. As with Corruption, which included similar action, there will be a regular cut, without fisting, and a Director's Cut that shows everything—about three minutes of screen time, with dialogue. Distributors will be able to order either version, or both.

The fisting has a dramatic purpose. Scott, playing a rebellious cyberpunk, is suspecting of hiding on her person a microchip bearing a deadly computer virus. Two government security guards, determined to find it, conduct a double body cavity search.

The set is a cold, forbidding prison clinic. Hillary—who has been opening her orifices with vibrators offstage—is hauled in by the guards. They make her disrobe and bend her over the examination table.

As Michelle holds Hillary down by her hair, Flick pulls on a shoulder-length plastic glove and starts probing.

"You're not trying to bang her," Cross directs. "You're just rooting around, like you lost your keys."

Flick eases four fingers into the petite blonde's vagina, then, slowly, the whole hand.

Hillary emits a loud yelp. Acting or real?

"Hill," Cross says solicitously, "if it's hurting real bad, just say Cut."

"It's not hurting at all," she replies nonchalantly. "If anything it's the hair pulling." Michelle eases up on her grip.

Flick's whole hand is now inside her, all the way up to the wrist. In character, Hillary shoots back, "Does it make you hot, you sick bitch?"

Next, the hand inches into her anus. Finally: "Everything's in except for the bottom of my thumb"—which is fine with the director.

Flick removes her gloved hand from the anus and shoves it down Hillary's throat, still in search of that elusive chip.

Michelle, looking really mean, delivers the menacing punch line: "That was just foreplay."

After more shots from different angles, Cross has what he needs. Next up is a solo masturbation scene with co-star Eva Angelina, and that's the last sex scene to be shot.

Already in the can are two big fight sequences: the virtual face-off between the two female antagonists, much of which will be CGI-manipulated, and a real brawl with Eva beating up two guys.

After that it's three more days of shooting "exposition and plot and dialogue" before things wrap for good.

The footage then goes into the editing bays and CGI labs where the movie will be assembled and the 23-plus hours of raw BTS footage whittled down for the DVD Extras disc.

SexZ Pictures will release the package in September.

Pictured: Eli Cross, with script, directs male lead Derrick Pierce in the desert. Photo by Kylie Ireland.