Those Suicide Girls might get the press and claim to have hipster credentials, but as much as they tease, would they really expose themselves in the very real throes of the "little death"?
Log onto the Burning Angels site (BurningAngel.com) and prepare to drop your mouse at sexy punk rock girls who talk the talk and walk the walk, as in hardcore penetration!
Founding member Joanna Angel (Picture: ) may be pulling the strings from behind the keyboard, but she's more than willing to expose her tattooed love dolls with the scores of other Burning Angels who enliven the site with their arousing pictorials and explicit streaming videos.
No holes are barred, but despite the anal action, girl-on-girl get downs, and masturbatory peeks, Burning Angel is not your typical pay porn site. There are interviews with bands such as Marilyn Manson, Slash, and Bad Religion as well as smutty stories and diary entries. Joanna does the interviewing, and don't expect any technical heavy-riffing tutorials. She gets right to the meat, exposing musicians' more notorious sides.
And Joanna, a reluctant porn participator, may have the most fascinating story of them all. She electrified Mr. Skin's phone line calling from the Burning Angel world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, to discuss her newfound love of pornography, which movie stars she'd cream to feature on the site, and the new Burning Angel X-rated DVD release.
Are you the "angel" of Burning Angel?
Yeah, I guess so. That's me.
So when did the angel start burning?
People always ask us about the origins of the site as if there's going to be a magical answer. It was a slow process and it did take a while. It wasn't anything that happened over night. I was going to school with Mitch, he's the other guy I own the website with, and he grew up with another guy named Chummy and they always wanted to do something in the porno industry. They wanted to make videos and they asked me if I would help out. I was like, OK.
Me and Mitch were living together in school. It was kind of one of those ideas that didn't go anywhere. I mean, we didn't have a camera or know anyone. It was just something we talked about but knew wasn't really going to happen.
Then we thought we should put this on the Internet and that might really work. It kind of snowballed from there. It took a few months of brainstorming ideas. I don't know if at the time we thought it was actually going to happen, but when it started happening it just became something we did.
What is it about porno that motivates you? I mean everyone's had experience with porno, but few choose it as a career path.
What's funny, from what I understood when I went to L.A., a lot of people just kind of wind up [in porno], most people don't intend to be there. [Laughs] We made a very conscious, concerted effort to be there.
I never really knew anything about [porn]. Mitch and Chummy, I guess, growing up as young boys were really obsessed with it. They watched it all the time, collected it, had lots of copies of DVDs and VHS tapes and magazines.
When they proposed the idea to me I started looking into it, reading things about it and watching some of it. People always think I was some kind of nympho or a freak ever since I was little, but that's not the case.
What struck a chord with you, experimenting with pornography at that late date?
The most exposure to anything sexual that I had pre this website was that I was writing a lot. I guess I had a knack for writing erotica. I really hate calling it that because my stuff isn't romantic.
You were writing dirty stories?
Yeah, it's what I really like to write. I would always hand them to my English teacher, which was kind of disturbing. I don't really know why; I guess that was my outlet. Everybody has their own outlet.
When I was doing that I was thinking, well, maybe I can write for some magazines. That's how I started. When we started the website, I guess what attracted me was that there are so many women in this industry and everybody can get something different out of it. Some girls are there because they want to make extra money. Some girls are really into sex. Some girls are there for both reasons.
I just think there is a lot you can do as a woman in this industry. I knew that I could write all that I wanted and people wouldn't read any of it. But if you put stuff that you write on a website with a bunch of naked girls, people might actually listen to you. [Laughs] This is a really cool way to get people's attention.
When did you make the leap from writing to taking nude photos of yourself and posting them online?
This was when we were just starting. We were trying to find girls. It was really hard. We were like these kids living in this disgusting house on a college campus. There was me in a house with six other guys. It just sounded really shady. Hey, want to model for this website that doesn't exist, don't know when it's going up or what it's going to look like or what it's going to contain or how much we pay. It was an effort to get people.
We had this digital camera and I said, why don't you practice on me? Mitch and Chummy never really thought of me as a girl. I was like their best friend. They were, I don't know is that really a good idea? And I was like, I don't care, whatever. We took some pictures and I was like, let's use them. [Laughs]
Then once the pictures went up all these people were calling me, like ex-boyfriends, cousins, and uncles saying, Oh my God, what are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know. It's just my naked body. It's not like it's a big deal. It was fun. If I can have fun doing this then every girl can have fun doing this.
You discovered your secret exhibitionism?
Yeah, it was easy because the environment was really comfortable and everything was left up to me. I think that's all that girls really need to make them feel comfortable.
How did you get models after that?
Friends, friends of friends at first, we started out with five models. For the first few months we only updated the girls every three weeks. It was really a slow process. But once we had ten girls up there a lot of people started to get in touch with us. We made sure that whoever modeled for us had a positive experience and word started to spread. Now things are happening a lot more rapidly. We get lots of applications a day.
You guys launched around the same time as the Suicide Girls?
Yeah, I think we started around the same time. I had no idea who they were or anything about them. But once the site launched my friend was like, oh have you heard of this website. I looked at it and said, oh that's cool, and just kept going with what I was doing. [Laughs]
I try not to pay attention to it, but it gets kind of hard because people like to compare us to them all the time. But when we started this website business, let's make a website with naked girls and band interviews and stories. And it seems like Suicide Girls is almost a dating site, like Friendster. It's also really softcore and we're a hardcore porn site. I think we're totally different. The only similarity is that our girls have tattoos.
When I think of a hardcore porn site, images of blonde plastic nudes comes to mind.
We don't have that. We grew up in the underground music scene. This is just a representation of who we are. These are the bands we listen to. These are the people we hang out with. It's our big, extended network of friends. We weren't like, let's make porno and wouldn't it be cool if there were girls with tattoos. That's so different. It hasn't been done before. Let's just make a website with something we like, something we know. We wouldn't even know how to find big-titted blonde girls.
I had some wild friends growing up, but none of them posted streaming videos of themselves sucking off their boyfriends. How do you do it?
I think most people are a little bit sexually adventurous. But when you say porno, it's this scary, big industry in L.A. with all these directors with millions of dollars and people that are mean. It's this huge, big scary thing, and I don't think that's very welcoming to the average girls. If you put it in such a way, hey my friends have this website, it's kind of fun. You should do it too. That's a more feasible way of things spreading.
Being a sexual entrepreneur, do you remember your first exposure to sexually explicit material?
The first time I ever knew that people ever looked at porno, I remember going to my uncle's house and he had lots and lots of stacks of Penthouse magazine. I was eight years old and remember opening one up and saying, oh my God! I felt something weird and closed it and ran downstairs. Later, when everyone was sleeping, I went upstairs and looked at it again and said, this is interesting. . . .
The seed was planted.
Yeah, it's all my uncle's fault. The first time I saw someone naked in a movie, I don't know. I feel it was one of the Police Academy movies.
Well, since porno's your thing, do you have a favorite porno star?
I have a lot of respect for Belladonna. I think she's cool because she doesn't look like the mainstream porno girls. She doesn't have any plastic surgery and she's got a lot of tattoos. She also goes to such extreme measures. I think it's really sexual to do anything to the extreme. She's one of the filthiest porn stars.
You're into filthy porno?
I don't know if I'm really into it, but you have to respect a girl if she does it and that's her thing. And she's been doing it for a fairly long time. It obviously isn't, I'm just going to make my money and get out of here. She's into it. That's what I really like to see. When the girl's into it, that's what turns me on.
Is there a porn movie that's your favorite, where the sex is really genuine?
One Night in Paris (Picture: - - ). It's really cool because it's real. And I think it's really cool because she looks at the camera and says, "Don't ever show this to anyone." And she's not a porn star in the highest-selling porno right now.
Do you like the Pamela Anderson sex tapes?
Yeah, I do. When I wasn't into porno at all and I downloaded those.
Are there other mainstream actresses you think are hot?
Last night I watched a movie with Brittany Murphy (Picture: ). She looked pretty good. She's hot. It was Spun. And Angelina Jolie (Picture: ) is pretty hot. I know she's crazy, but she's really pretty. I don't know what it is about her, but there's something. Parker Posey (Picture: ) is probably my favorite. I know she's not the hottest girl in Hollywood, but I'd love to spend the day with her.
Is there a celebrity you'd love to feature on Burning Angel? Or have any contacted you and wanted to be on the site?
That'd be pretty cool if that happened. [Asks Mitch who he'd like to see on the site.] Did you ever seen the movie Rules of Attraction?
You're talking about Shannyn Sossamon (Picture: ).
Is that her name, the girl with the really short hair? Her name was Lauren [in the movie]. Mitch has some kind of obsession with her. He can't stop talking about her. Only her in that movie, though, we haven't seen her in anything else. We don't know what she'd look like on Burning Angel, but if she could look like she does in the movie (Picture: ) that'd be pretty cool.
We'll consider this an open invitation.
If you're reading this get in touch with us. [Laugh]
Besides Shannyn Sossamon, what's next for Burning Angel?
We've got a DVD coming out in October. It should be cool because it's like Burning Angel but the DVD. There are five sex scenes and five band interviews. It's a gonzo porn movie. And some extra stuff: behind-the-scenes at the office, we filmed somebody getting a Burning Angel Tattoo.
Are you doing one of those sex scenes?
I am! This is my first time on camera. Yeah, I actually did a pretty filthy scene. It's me and a guy and he's . . . you know. I guess it was . . . anal.
If you have to guess then it probably wasn't.
No, it was. I had a lot of fun. I think I'll do more.
Log onto the Burning Angels site (BurningAngel.com) and prepare to drop your mouse at sexy punk rock girls who talk the talk and walk the walk, as in hardcore penetration!
Founding member Joanna Angel (Picture: ) may be pulling the strings from behind the keyboard, but she's more than willing to expose her tattooed love dolls with the scores of other Burning Angels who enliven the site with their arousing pictorials and explicit streaming videos.
No holes are barred, but despite the anal action, girl-on-girl get downs, and masturbatory peeks, Burning Angel is not your typical pay porn site. There are interviews with bands such as Marilyn Manson, Slash, and Bad Religion as well as smutty stories and diary entries. Joanna does the interviewing, and don't expect any technical heavy-riffing tutorials. She gets right to the meat, exposing musicians' more notorious sides.
And Joanna, a reluctant porn participator, may have the most fascinating story of them all. She electrified Mr. Skin's phone line calling from the Burning Angel world headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, to discuss her newfound love of pornography, which movie stars she'd cream to feature on the site, and the new Burning Angel X-rated DVD release.
Are you the "angel" of Burning Angel?
Yeah, I guess so. That's me.
So when did the angel start burning?
People always ask us about the origins of the site as if there's going to be a magical answer. It was a slow process and it did take a while. It wasn't anything that happened over night. I was going to school with Mitch, he's the other guy I own the website with, and he grew up with another guy named Chummy and they always wanted to do something in the porno industry. They wanted to make videos and they asked me if I would help out. I was like, OK.
Me and Mitch were living together in school. It was kind of one of those ideas that didn't go anywhere. I mean, we didn't have a camera or know anyone. It was just something we talked about but knew wasn't really going to happen.
Then we thought we should put this on the Internet and that might really work. It kind of snowballed from there. It took a few months of brainstorming ideas. I don't know if at the time we thought it was actually going to happen, but when it started happening it just became something we did.
What is it about porno that motivates you? I mean everyone's had experience with porno, but few choose it as a career path.
What's funny, from what I understood when I went to L.A., a lot of people just kind of wind up [in porno], most people don't intend to be there. [Laughs] We made a very conscious, concerted effort to be there.
I never really knew anything about [porn]. Mitch and Chummy, I guess, growing up as young boys were really obsessed with it. They watched it all the time, collected it, had lots of copies of DVDs and VHS tapes and magazines.
When they proposed the idea to me I started looking into it, reading things about it and watching some of it. People always think I was some kind of nympho or a freak ever since I was little, but that's not the case.
What struck a chord with you, experimenting with pornography at that late date?
The most exposure to anything sexual that I had pre this website was that I was writing a lot. I guess I had a knack for writing erotica. I really hate calling it that because my stuff isn't romantic.
You were writing dirty stories?
Yeah, it's what I really like to write. I would always hand them to my English teacher, which was kind of disturbing. I don't really know why; I guess that was my outlet. Everybody has their own outlet.
When I was doing that I was thinking, well, maybe I can write for some magazines. That's how I started. When we started the website, I guess what attracted me was that there are so many women in this industry and everybody can get something different out of it. Some girls are there because they want to make extra money. Some girls are really into sex. Some girls are there for both reasons.
I just think there is a lot you can do as a woman in this industry. I knew that I could write all that I wanted and people wouldn't read any of it. But if you put stuff that you write on a website with a bunch of naked girls, people might actually listen to you. [Laughs] This is a really cool way to get people's attention.
When did you make the leap from writing to taking nude photos of yourself and posting them online?
This was when we were just starting. We were trying to find girls. It was really hard. We were like these kids living in this disgusting house on a college campus. There was me in a house with six other guys. It just sounded really shady. Hey, want to model for this website that doesn't exist, don't know when it's going up or what it's going to look like or what it's going to contain or how much we pay. It was an effort to get people.
We had this digital camera and I said, why don't you practice on me? Mitch and Chummy never really thought of me as a girl. I was like their best friend. They were, I don't know is that really a good idea? And I was like, I don't care, whatever. We took some pictures and I was like, let's use them. [Laughs]
Then once the pictures went up all these people were calling me, like ex-boyfriends, cousins, and uncles saying, Oh my God, what are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know. It's just my naked body. It's not like it's a big deal. It was fun. If I can have fun doing this then every girl can have fun doing this.
You discovered your secret exhibitionism?
Yeah, it was easy because the environment was really comfortable and everything was left up to me. I think that's all that girls really need to make them feel comfortable.
How did you get models after that?
Friends, friends of friends at first, we started out with five models. For the first few months we only updated the girls every three weeks. It was really a slow process. But once we had ten girls up there a lot of people started to get in touch with us. We made sure that whoever modeled for us had a positive experience and word started to spread. Now things are happening a lot more rapidly. We get lots of applications a day.
You guys launched around the same time as the Suicide Girls?
Yeah, I think we started around the same time. I had no idea who they were or anything about them. But once the site launched my friend was like, oh have you heard of this website. I looked at it and said, oh that's cool, and just kept going with what I was doing. [Laughs]
I try not to pay attention to it, but it gets kind of hard because people like to compare us to them all the time. But when we started this website business, let's make a website with naked girls and band interviews and stories. And it seems like Suicide Girls is almost a dating site, like Friendster. It's also really softcore and we're a hardcore porn site. I think we're totally different. The only similarity is that our girls have tattoos.
When I think of a hardcore porn site, images of blonde plastic nudes comes to mind.
We don't have that. We grew up in the underground music scene. This is just a representation of who we are. These are the bands we listen to. These are the people we hang out with. It's our big, extended network of friends. We weren't like, let's make porno and wouldn't it be cool if there were girls with tattoos. That's so different. It hasn't been done before. Let's just make a website with something we like, something we know. We wouldn't even know how to find big-titted blonde girls.
I had some wild friends growing up, but none of them posted streaming videos of themselves sucking off their boyfriends. How do you do it?
I think most people are a little bit sexually adventurous. But when you say porno, it's this scary, big industry in L.A. with all these directors with millions of dollars and people that are mean. It's this huge, big scary thing, and I don't think that's very welcoming to the average girls. If you put it in such a way, hey my friends have this website, it's kind of fun. You should do it too. That's a more feasible way of things spreading.
Being a sexual entrepreneur, do you remember your first exposure to sexually explicit material?
The first time I ever knew that people ever looked at porno, I remember going to my uncle's house and he had lots and lots of stacks of Penthouse magazine. I was eight years old and remember opening one up and saying, oh my God! I felt something weird and closed it and ran downstairs. Later, when everyone was sleeping, I went upstairs and looked at it again and said, this is interesting. . . .
The seed was planted.
Yeah, it's all my uncle's fault. The first time I saw someone naked in a movie, I don't know. I feel it was one of the Police Academy movies.
Well, since porno's your thing, do you have a favorite porno star?
I have a lot of respect for Belladonna. I think she's cool because she doesn't look like the mainstream porno girls. She doesn't have any plastic surgery and she's got a lot of tattoos. She also goes to such extreme measures. I think it's really sexual to do anything to the extreme. She's one of the filthiest porn stars.
You're into filthy porno?
I don't know if I'm really into it, but you have to respect a girl if she does it and that's her thing. And she's been doing it for a fairly long time. It obviously isn't, I'm just going to make my money and get out of here. She's into it. That's what I really like to see. When the girl's into it, that's what turns me on.
Is there a porn movie that's your favorite, where the sex is really genuine?
One Night in Paris (Picture: - - ). It's really cool because it's real. And I think it's really cool because she looks at the camera and says, "Don't ever show this to anyone." And she's not a porn star in the highest-selling porno right now.
Do you like the Pamela Anderson sex tapes?
Yeah, I do. When I wasn't into porno at all and I downloaded those.
Are there other mainstream actresses you think are hot?
Last night I watched a movie with Brittany Murphy (Picture: ). She looked pretty good. She's hot. It was Spun. And Angelina Jolie (Picture: ) is pretty hot. I know she's crazy, but she's really pretty. I don't know what it is about her, but there's something. Parker Posey (Picture: ) is probably my favorite. I know she's not the hottest girl in Hollywood, but I'd love to spend the day with her.
Is there a celebrity you'd love to feature on Burning Angel? Or have any contacted you and wanted to be on the site?
That'd be pretty cool if that happened. [Asks Mitch who he'd like to see on the site.] Did you ever seen the movie Rules of Attraction?
You're talking about Shannyn Sossamon (Picture: ).
Is that her name, the girl with the really short hair? Her name was Lauren [in the movie]. Mitch has some kind of obsession with her. He can't stop talking about her. Only her in that movie, though, we haven't seen her in anything else. We don't know what she'd look like on Burning Angel, but if she could look like she does in the movie (Picture: ) that'd be pretty cool.
We'll consider this an open invitation.
If you're reading this get in touch with us. [Laugh]
Besides Shannyn Sossamon, what's next for Burning Angel?
We've got a DVD coming out in October. It should be cool because it's like Burning Angel but the DVD. There are five sex scenes and five band interviews. It's a gonzo porn movie. And some extra stuff: behind-the-scenes at the office, we filmed somebody getting a Burning Angel Tattoo.
Are you doing one of those sex scenes?
I am! This is my first time on camera. Yeah, I actually did a pretty filthy scene. It's me and a guy and he's . . . you know. I guess it was . . . anal.
If you have to guess then it probably wasn't.
No, it was. I had a lot of fun. I think I'll do more.
