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The adult film actress and star of Steven Soderbourgh’s The Girlfriend Experience has proven herself a true cinephile. On The Rotten Tomatoes show she listed her five favorite films: Herzog’s Stroszek, Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl, Godard’s Pierrot le fou (apparently great escapist entertainment), Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, and Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Now try to top that badass list.
Film bloggers everywhere elated (including me). A 21 year old porn star has the same highbrow taste as them. She has even vanquished me in the French film department. I haven’t seen Fat Girl or Pierrot le fou yet. But the best thing about her is that she doesn’t act a tad pretentious about it. She has some difficulty describing the films and admits to not knowing how to pronounce a couple of the directors’ names. But there seems to be a genuine love for these moves. When I first saw films like 8 ½ and Contempt I didn’t know how to describe them too well either but I knew they were incredible.
With this extensive knowledge of the art house, she might make some good choices for future non pornographic roles, if she chooses to go that route with her career. Perhaps she can be Herzog’s next muse as opposed to the female lead in a John Cena direct to DVD action flick.
http://current.com/items/90088825_five-favorite-films-with-sasha-grey.htm
The Girlfriend Experience is now available on Video on Demand and Amazon. It’s also playing in select theaters.
- Anthony Nicholas
This is some good information, I just finished my paper for school and think i may need to bookmark or save this for the second class lol. You may have just made me a regular
Correction: I believe Escape from New York would have been her choice.
I wonder how she would be viewed if she only listed that one film?
Good luck SG. Like you said your father tells you, I hope you do everything you say you’re going to do. Have integrity. Follow through.
GFE is an interesting production.
I am a big fan of Sasha and I am not quite sure why yet but something about her makes me think that she has a lot to offer the film world outside porn. Anyhow I hope we will be getting an interview with her at Fantasia in a few weeks.
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I’ve read a number of her interviews. She says the same thing in almost all of them which provides some corroboration and serves to counter journalistic inaccuracies. If you had paid close attention you would understand that these films were recommended to her by her high school drama instructor and the director of GFE. She also states her tastes in music came mainly from a website she discovered in high school. Nothing negative about any of this; I’m glad she has gotten good tips, no matter who they came from. But it should be recognised that, based on what she has said, each of her favourite films are ones recommended to her, not ones she chose herself. Maybe some people are making this girl fit their fantasies instead of seeing her for who she is (i.e. paying close attention to her words).
@ Lily, Why are some people so judgmental? So what if she’s a porn star? To look down on a porn star is a sign of hypocrisy and hypocrisy is a sign of dumbness. I see porn stars as artists, it’s their kind of art so don’t look down on them. Sasha Grey is a very good artist in her own right, so why question her taste in movies? Do you think that because she’s a porn star she’s dumb? I collect non-mainstream films but to tell you honestly, I only saw one of the five that she mentioned and it is Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence. Now i am looking for the other four and see if I like them too. It is true that even if you really like a film and knows that it’s great, you sometimes fail to put into words what the film looks like to you. Just like the film, The King, I really like it but I find it quite hard to explain to people why it is so good.
9 to 5: Days in Porn is not good at all. That film is exactly like Porn: full of tiltiating promise, but the mechanics of it leave us limp. For someone who spends his days around porn, I appreciated it for the fact that I actually got to know some of the stars whose blank faces look at me every day. I was also astounished by the fact that there were new stars who shone and burnt out during the making of the film that I had never heard of.
Apparently, Sasha is trying to be the Goddard of porn. Everyday, I see her rather adorable face look back at me in the shop, and my advice to to her is to be like Truffaut.
My favorite film of all time is No Surrender. Should I get involved in porn in hope of having better taste in film?
Really? I thought it was completely pretentious. Everything she said about the films was completely superficial and vacuous – acting like they’re her favorites when she can’t say anything about them that’s not cliche IS pretension. Anyone can carry around a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra and namedrop Herzog.
I bet if she wasn’t a porn star you would not doubt her choices. I think she is downright honest and she doesn’t need to state why she likes these films. She does not have to prove it to anyone. Some journalist simply asked what her favorite films were and she answered. What is wrong with that?
Come on Lily, It’s a 3 minute segment where she picks 5 of her favorite movies, what did you expect? She came across honest to me and appart from Stroszek wich I haven’t seen, all the other four are really good movies, so if she can convince one single person to see any of them is all good.
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I haven’t seem Stroszek, the other ones are all great, I don’t think any of them would make my top 5 list but are all sweet movies, especially Pierrot le fou. Godard is my favorite director and Vivre sa vie and À bout de souffle would probably be on my top 5 list, Pierrot le fou wouldn’t but is probably my third favorite movie of his.
Herzog’s Stroszek is increfible. I actually just picked up the DVD for 5 dollars.
I could care less about Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl.
Godard’s Pierrot le fou is a masterpeice. Please take some time to listen to our podcast special on Jean Luc Godard. It was one of three films we reviewed.
Any list with Cassavetes is a good list but I could think of way better films from John Carpenter.
Good list anyhow.
I enjoyed it. But I am addicted to pornography.
Did you see 9 to 5: Days in Porn? She’s one of the subjects of that documentary, where she discusses using sex as a weapon against society or something along those lines.
I saw that documentary. It isn`t that good.