Playing Doctor

Dana Cannon sits on her couch in her Huntington Beach, California, apartment, looking like any other extremely pretty young college student. She talks about the typical college woes: the pain of computer registration at California State University at Long Beach, her problems with chemistry—a crucial class, since she's a premed student—and the discipline necessary to tackle the enormous amount of homework assigned.

She fantasizes about the future, too, speaking lovingly of her live-in boyfriend, Dave Smith, and the family they plan to raise together someday—and dreaming of the day she'll be a doctor, preferably a pediatrician (she loves children) or, perhaps, a pediatric weight-control specialist (she lost 30 pounds five years ago and has kept it off). She's bright, articulate and charming.

Then, Dana begins to talk—with the same intelligence and honesty—about her part-time job, the work she does on the side that allows her to continue her studies and maintain the well-furnished apartment she and Dave share only three blocks from a gorgeous stretch of California shore line.

The job? For a few days each month, Dana puts away the textbooks and becomes the sultry Bridgette Monet, one of the hottest actresses in the steamy world of hard-core pornography. Dana/Bridgette has played the lead or a major part in I Like to Watch, Talk Dirty to Me Part II, Sorority Sweethearts, Let's Talk Sex and the upcoming Bodacious Ta Ta's, among others, and she was named Most Promising New Actress of 1983 by the East Coast Producers Association at the Critics Adult Film Association Awards in New York last year.

Just as Dana is obviously no ordinary premed student, Bridgette is hardly your run-of-the-mill porn star. Sexually explicit films have often had a problem luring the most attractive actresses, but Dana is a wondrous exception. And while the public has taken note of her beauty, those inside the adult-cinema industry have come to realize that they're dealing with an outspoken and sometimes cynical leading lady.

"I don't really have a lot of good things to say about the people in this business," Dana explains, as her cat, Checkers, romps next to her on the sofa. "A lot of the guys, for instance, think that they're God's gift to women and I just don't get along very well with that kind of person. I get a lot of talk behind my back about being a princess, thinking I'm too good for other people, but I'm not in this business for my ego, and that's where 99.9 percent of the men are coming from."

There's one notable exception in the remaining one tenth of one percent. Dave Smith, Dana's longtime boyfriend, joined her in adult films as an actor. He also borrowed her name, working professionally as David Cannon, and often stars as Bridgette Monet's love interest.

"Actually," says Dana, "I feel sorry for the men. It's a lot harder for them; they get all excited thinking that this is their big fantasy, and then they realize that it's work—and nothing happens. A sex scene can take up to three hours to do, and there's a lot of starting and stopping and cutting to different angles. It's difficult. Even guys who have been in it for a long time have problems occasionally."

These days, Dana manages to put one important proviso on her film career: There are no sex scenes with any men other than David. "I'll keep working in the business as long as I can have things on my own terms. But if I can't, I'd just as soon not do it. I have other things I could be doing."

Most porn films, of course, stick to a basic formula, and that formula calls for the leading lady to have sex with more than one partner. Even the most easygoing producers insist on Dana's doing one or two lesbian scenes.

"I don't have any problems being with other girls," says Dana. "I guess other people would consider me bisexual, but I don't really see myself that way. I just do what I have to do for the film. It's pleasurable, like being with a man is pleasurable, but it's not something I seek."

Still, her decision not to work with other men has made some producers reluctant to use her. "I've actually restricted my own earning power quite a bit by working only with David," she explains. "I could probably be earning twice as much."

Despite her loyalty to David, actually getting married has never seemed necessary. "Our relationship is going great and there's no real reason to change anything right now," explains Dana, who's 24. "We probably won't get married until we want to have children, and I don't know when that will be. I still have to finish school and there're a lot of things I want to accomplish in my life."

Since she has been increasingly picky about roles and co-stars, Dana has been augmenting her income with an erotic phone service, so that her fans can have aural sex with their favorite hard-core star, and she's considering an advice column—called "Dear Bridgette"—for an adult-movie magazine. (concluded on page 136)Playing Doctor(continued from page 128) Both are jobs she can do at home, which makes studying easier. School, despite the thousands of dollars she makes from her various porn projects, is still extremely important to her, a remnant, perhaps, from childhood.

"I was very strait-laced," she says. "I grew up in a white, upper-middle-class neighborhood in San Diego. I was a straight-A student and I was in advanced-placement classes. Plus, I was in student government, on the track team and in a lot of other activities. My parents were kind of restrictive—they discouraged me from sexual contact, because that's what parents do. It probably lasted later in my life than it does for most girls."

After high school graduation, Dana got a job at an insurance company, where she fell in with a more sophisticated crowd. "I had a lot of good friends there and they were older, and that's when I learned how to drink, had my first experience with smoking pot or whatever. Everyone was pretty free sexually, too." Through her new friends she met David.

"I guess I'm just a one-man woman," she sighs. "We're pretty much married."

Of course, not many married couples have sex professionally with each other—or with strangers—for the camera. "You learn to separate working and your real sex life," explains Dana.

Sometimes, even cynical professionals can combine business with pleasure. For Dana and Dave, it's occasionally watching their handiwork on their home video recorder. "It can be exciting sometimes. There're a couple of things we've done—three-way kind of things with another girl—that can be fun to watch, in moderation. We use it as a kind of foreplay."

But how would potential patients respond to seeing their doctor in a three-way, even if one third of it was the doctor's boyfriend? Dana foresees no problems. "Anybody who's going to bring it up to you is going to have positive things to say about it. They think it's good or they wish they could do it. The other people aren't going to see these movies," she explains.

"I do want to do something that I feel is respectable and something that would help people. That's why I want to be a doctor. And I've always done very well at science," she says.

"When I'm a doctor, I'll be a doctor on my own merit," she insists. "It's not going to have anything to do with what I've done. Besides, my name is different—Bridgette Monet is a stage name."

One thing she's not going to do, though she seems eminently well qualified, is become a sex therapist. "I really don't care about people's sex problems," she says. "I just want to entertain them. Or treat them. But not at the same time."