Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two part interview with plus-sized porn princess Kelly Shibari. The first part can be found here.
W! So what advice would you give to an aspiring girl, of any size, who’s trying to get into the industry?
KS I would probably tell them not to consider it a career move. To always have something on the side and make it just a hobby. You know, once they’re in, if somebody wants to shoot five days a week, then awesome. But if you only do one shoot a month, then just be happy with that one shoot a month. If you’re not getting more work then don’t go out of your way to get more work than is coming to you. So many of these girls, you know, they choose to have sex with directors or whoever, or they do drugs, or they drink too much, or they do the night club scene, and at the end of the day they just end up hurting themselves.
And there’s unfortunately not enough work, especially with plus size, to start a lifestyle based on just being a performer. There just isn’t. There might be in the beginning when you first start out because everybody wants to shoot the new girl, and then it doesn’t even matter what you look like, whether you’re skinny or big. You’re just the new girl. But after three to six months, that work is gonna dry up because you’re going to have worked for just about every company, and then it’s a matter of, are you going to spend your time looking for more work, or are you going to have something else that allows you to still have fun? Because at that point it just becomes a job. And I don’t ever want sex to become a job because then it’s boring and annoying. I’d much rather do it because it’s fun. And [. . .] if you want to work with someone on a scene, you don’t want it to be someone that you find completely disgusting who doesn’t turn you on. And don’t feel bad if you want to tell the director.
W! I think that’s very good advice. So then you still do all of your marketing and social networking, you give talks, you go to conventions… You do all kinds of stuff with that, and I think that’s really interesting. Especially with the social networking side of it; that’s a science, or an art, that’s really only developed in the past few years, so it’s probably quite the commodity to be a guru in that area.
KS Yeah, well, what happened was a friend of mine who I knew when I was starting being in adult [films] introduced me to Twitter as a place to advertise my website. At the time I had a website that was just me, doing porn. I did what every porn girl does: they set up a website and they show what they have, so tits and ass. And I had my big happy smile and my skin hanging out, and I was attracting a few people, like fans and people form the website, but I wasn’t really interacting with any new people. So then I changed my background so it was a little more pretty, and I changed my avatar to just a headshot, and I still mentioned that I did adult in my bio, but I think that just that simple move of getting rid of that NSFW content on the Twitter background made a huge difference in the people I attracted as far as followers.
And then one of them happened to be a social media guru named Chris Brogan who said he wanted to have a conversation. One of those guys, like the Twitter elite.
W! Hah! The Twitterati!
KS He contacted me out of the blue and said, “Hey, what you’re doing works. Why don’t the other girls know that?” I said, “Well I don’t know. I’m not those girls.” He said, “Hey, I’m having this conference in San Francisco, and I want you to come up and speak at it.” I was like, “Well I don’t know enough about social media to sound like an expert.” He said, “You’re still doing it better than any of the other girls on Twitter right now. So you’re doing something right, even though you don’t know what it is. So come on up, hang out with us, chat for about an hour, and if you’re not comfortable we’ll do it in an interview format. And just talk to all the other people.” And none of them were adult industry people, they were just marketing people. And so through my association with them, with conventions with those kinds of marketers, I’ve learned enough to kind of spin that around and offer it to the adult industry.
W! You got in at the right time.
KS I know, my timing couldn’t have been more perfect! The other thing is, a lot of the corporate companies who do social media for corporate companies don’t necessarily want adult kind of clients. So the interesting thing is, I go to adult industry conventions, and I’m the only one that they’ve got [who does social media coaching]. Which is kind of cool, right? But at the same time, if I go to a not-adult convention, I’m the only one who’s there for the adult industry. Because adult industry people don’t go to those conventions.
W! It’s a damn shame, because really the adult industry could use a few pointers on how to use the internet properly.
KS I mean they use the internet as far as technology is concerned, how to develop a website and how to direct traffic. They really have that figured out. Cause they’re all tech-y people. But even though they’re like tech-forward people, but they’re not really marketing-forward people. They still want to use old-school marketing techniques. They still want girls to go out on stripper tours and there are still DVD distribution companies who still haven’t made it online. Or they’ll do stuff online, but they think Twitter’s just another place to hang out. They don’t even bother putting up a profile. Or if they do, they just go, “Oh, we have an update. Oh, we have an update.” But they don’t interact. They’re using it as just another place for a bulletin board ad, instead of interacting with potential customers. Because that message doesn’t work, they then go, “Well this doesn’t work. This is stupid.” It’s like giving someone a remote control and them going, “Well this doesn’t work, so I’m going to just throw it away.” But if you hire me to teach you how to do this, it’s like getting a manual. I mean there are millions of people using this, so there’s gotta be something there that works.
W! It’s kind of like thinking of your grandfather with a brand new digital camera and having no idea how it works. And who would have ever thought that the adult industry would be the grandpa, looking at the new technology and going, “What?” It’s so strange.
KS Exactly.
W! I also wanted to ask you about the triple x parody of “Roseanne” you’re going to be starring in! That is awesome.
KS The thing is, I really don’t do that much talent work anymore. I mean, if people call me about it I consider it, but I’m pretty much done with amateur triple x work. So most the work I do do is larger productions, or with companies I’ve gotten to know over the years. Like this one company, if they contact me I’ll always say yes because they’ve always been nice to me.
You know, I recently had this company contact me; people were recommending that they shoot me for the past two and a half years. But they always turned me down because I’m not black. People recommended me for a black BBW company. And so I guess they either saw the response I was getting at AVN or the fact that I was in the magazine, and all of a sudden… I said, “You know, you had two years to shoot me.”
And I’m not in this for the money. At this point I’m in it more for the fun. If I was in it for the money I probably would have gotten fired and developed a drug addiction.
So now, I’m currently in production being one of the girls on the new April Flores movie. It’s kind of like Reservoir Dogs meets Charlie’s Angels. It’s a girls’ detective agency but we tend to be really super violent with our male clients. So we have a huge special effects department working on things. I’m pulling a bullet out of Nina Hartley’s stomach, and I think Kimberly Kane is ripping someone’s ear off, and April Flores is sticking acupuncture needles in somebody’s penis. I mean, it’s really violent. But it’s an erotic film. But it’s not a porn film. Also Syd Blakovich, Ashley Blue, you know, I mean, these are not amateur girls. So we’re shooting a few days this month and a few days early next month. And hopefully it’s out before spring.
And then I’m also working on the “Roseanne” parody.
W! That sounds like so much fun, but I have to just stick in there that I hope that the guy who’s playing her husband is a little more attractive than John Goodman. I mean I love John Goodman, but…
KS See the thing is, I like chubby guys.
W! Oh, no, it’s not really the chubby thing. I just find him, generally, not very attractive. Even facially.
KS I always thought that John was very cute.
W! I never did. He has like a really heavy face or something. Like his features are very large, I don’t know. He’s not my style I guess.
KS Tom Arnold? Not very attractive. Attractive man, but not attractive. But John, he has that thing where it’s like he’s gonna come in and make you feel better.
W! Yeah, like a really nice guy.
KS It’s just that I’m a submissive by nature, so that daddy thing kind of appeals to me. And I’m personally not a big fan of skinny guys anyway. There are plenty of girls out there who can have them. So, that’ll be probably the first sitcom parody that features a BBW.
W! Yeah, that seems huge!
KS I mean, there are companies that have done BBW parodies, but then the entire cast is BBW. But this will be the first one where the main character is a BBW. But, you know, “Roseanne” was the only sitcom that had a BBW as a main character as well, so.
W! That’s true. It’s interesting because I think that “Roseanne” was one of the best shows of the nineties. The writing was fantastic and I have a lot of respect for Roseanne as a person because of that show.
KS She has an amazing sense of humor and she really understands—is not a part of, but is a happy supporter of—the adult industry. I had a conversation with Nina Hartley yesterday and she said that Roseanne had come by one of her shoots and she said, “You know, your films kept me sane in a couple of marriages.” So, we’re gonna probably have a handful of non-sex cameos. We’re speaking to Nina Hartley, and we’re trying to get Ron Jeremy. So that should be fun. And we’re also talking to Sunny Lane about possibly playing Becky. So it should be a fun shoot. They are putting the final touches on script now.
W! Cool! I’m really looking forward to that. Hopefully I can get my hands on a copy for review. So do you have any other projects you’re working on that you want to plug?
KS Well, if people want more information they can to got KellyShibariXXX.com, which is where I put up all the DVDs I’ve been in and make announcements on my public appearances.
And then, as far as PaddedKink.com, we’ve had so many responses from so many people around the country. Which is great. But I mean, we can’t really fly to New York to shoot one scene and then to Seattle to shoot another scene, so we’ve decided to do it kind of like a national tour to shoot content in different cities. So we’re gonna spend a few days in every city for a few days every month to shoot content. So that keeps my budget in check, too. We’re shooting firstly in Los Angeles, then in Las Vegas, all through March. Then we’re gonna take a month or two off to regroup and figure out where to go in the fall. But this summer, July and August, we’re going to be doing San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. And then probably after that, we will be considering doing the east coast.
W! Cool, if you get to New York, let us know!
KS And probably, somewhere in there we’ll be in the Midwest. So that’s what we decided, rather than trying to fly everyone in here. And that’s one cool thing about doing kink stuff is that there are so many cool dungeons in so many different cities, that we want to showcase those, too, rather than bring girls to L.A. and shoot in the same dungeon all the time. So, we’ll jut kind of go to them and shoot a bunch of different girls.
W! That will be really fun I bet.
KS That’s kind of our plan. I don’t know why, but there are a lot of kinky girls in Philly. That’s all I know. We have such a huge response from Philadelphia.
W! You know, that’s not very surprising to me.
KS I ,you’d think there would be more in New York, maybe. Or Chicago. But our response from Chicago has actually been kind of small, and the New York response is like, meh, it’s kind of ok. But like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh? It’s like the entire state of Pennsylvania is really kinky.
W! Huh. I’m from Pennsylvania. I never noticed that, but maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough.
KS Or maybe it’s just because of the Amish there, too, so maybe you’re gonna have all these ultra-conservatives.
W! Yeah, all that repression.
KS I don’t know, but we’ve got a lot of scenes that we’re working on this month already that are gonna be really cool. We’re going to be doing some stuff with clowns, because everyone has a phobia of clowns, we have to have at least one. And we just recently shot a BBW furry. We did a solo scene with her last week. The thing with having kind of a blanket kink site is that we can kind of touch on all the kinks. As long as they’re BBWs. And I mean, just because a girl isn’t a BBW doesn’t mean we won’t consider her.
W! Oh, ok, I was wondering about that.
KS We just would much rather have real lifestyle people doing lifestyle things, rather than stick to a specific model profile.
W! That will open a lot of new doors up. Well, Kelly, thank you so much! I’m going to let you get back to your very, very, very busy schedule, but thanks so much for this! I’ll send you a link when it goes up on WHACK! Magazine.
KS Thank you! Sounds great!
—Interview conducted by the Walter Cronkite of cooze, Miss Lagsalot