Daze Reader

Weblog Archive: October 21, 2007 to Oct 27, 2007

Friday, October 26, 2007

http://www.dazereader.com/24001060.htm Excellent news from Georgia: Genarlow Wilson to be freed from prison. Wilson had been serving a ten-year sentence with no possibility of parole, for the crime of getting a blowjob from a girl at a party when he was 17 and the girl was 15. Under Georgia law at the time, plain old penis-vagina sex would have been a misdemeanor, but oral sex among consensual participants was technically "felony aggravated child molestation". No one ever disputed that the sex was completely consensual, but prosecutors pursued the most extreme charge and penalty. The Georgia legislature later changed the law to treat consensual oral sex across that age gap as a misdemeanor, but voted against making the change retroactive to Wilson's case, leaving him to serve the full ten years.

In June 2007, a Georgia Superior Court judge ruled that Wilson's ten-year sentence and lifetime sex-offender registration represented cruel and unusual punishment, and reduced Wilson's conviction to a misdemeanor and ordered him free. The Georgia Attorney General appealed this ruling and fought to keep Wilson locked up without bail. But today, finally, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling and ordered Wilson be released.

In the decision, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote that changes in the law "represent a seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants."

"Although society has a significant interest in protecting children from premature sexual activity, we must acknowledge that Wilson's crime does not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children," the court's majority found.

"For the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disproportionate to his crime," the majority opinion concluded.

This case was an outrage on so many levels. Wilson should never have been charged with any crime, and it's nice to see him get some semblance of justice finally.


Wednesday, October 24, 2007

http://www.dazereader.com/24001059.htm Dave Navarro, best known as guitarist for Jane's Addiction and later Red Hot Chili Peppers (during John Frusciante's junkie mystic phase) and recently the reformed Jane's Addiction (that's his guitar solo over the Entourage opening credits), and of course co-star of MTV's 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave with new bride Carmen Electra (ironically, they separated after 32 months), brings his artistic vision to a new medium — porno flicks.

"Broken" is the first in a planned series of celebrity-directed porn movies from Teravision, the company owned by porn star Tera Patrick and her husband, former BIOHAZARD bassist/vocalist Evan Seinfeld. Navarro conceptualized the movie with producer Sancho, who recently made his own directing debut for the company with Ferocious.

Set for a September release, the movie stars Sasha Grey as "a woman torn apart by the duality of control and powerlessness in her life."

As opposed to the more common porno motif of a woman torn apart by the duality of two recent parolees DPing her senseless. This sounds like very highbrow stuff.

While Seinfeld puffs up the series as "the perfect way to fuse porn, rock and celebrity into a dark new artistic vision that will put both the porn and mainstream worlds on notice", Navarro treats the project more as a lark in this interview with Rock Confidential.

It just seemed like a really different, fun project to take on. The interesting thing about the adult film industry is that it moves incredibly fast. You go from a conversation to a month and a half later and it’s a finished product. [...]

It was a creative project. There were some ideas I wanted to add to the film that had nothing to do with sex and it had more to do with film making. It was something I wanted to try out. If an artist doesn’t do something he wants to do based on the potential for public perception, there’s a big problem.

That would also decrease any sincere output from that artist, too.

Exactly. I embrace ... my favorite artists are the ones that didn’t give a fuck. [...]

I’ll be honest with you. I’m not a big adult film viewer myself. The ability to be behind the camera and put together a feature-length film was really interesting to me. It wasn’t like Dreamworks was beating down my door to do a movie!

TMZ has a one-minute video clip of Navarro talking about filmmaking. GameLink has Dave Navarro's Broken for sale on DVD.