A MILLION MEN'S FANTASY - ONE WOMANS NIGHTMARE
Minnie was just a regular high school girl from a middle class family. She did well in school and she was looking forward to going to college on a gymnastics scholarship. But when she suffered a career ending injury she got caught in a years-long downward spiral.
She met an older guy. She got into drugs. And slowly but surely he started breaking her down, coercing her to do things she had never even imagined. Before she knew it, Minnie wasn’t Minnie anymore, she was Callie Calypso - a “porn star”.
After years of abuse in and around the porn industry, Minnie felt that she had nothing more to lose than her life. She left everything behind and managed to escape.
Since then she has been trying to put her life back together but her past is still haunting her. Every scene she ever made is still out there on the internet and the emotional scars are so deep that she fears they will never truly heal.
In this documentary film Minnie will travel back in time and tell the story of what a life inside the american porn industry truly is like.
THE ILLUSION
But Callie Calypso is not real. Her enthusiasm is an illusion. Behind her submissive smile is a real, young woman who for years endured rape, violence and exploitation.
This was her job - satisfying a never ending stream of hardcore porn consumers.
Callie is an illusion crafted from our collective fantasies.
She is a character in a film.
Callie Calypso is the dream lover. Available, enthusiastic, submissive and ready to do anything to please her man. Her body is there to be enjoyed. And then abused and discarded.
Her young, smiling face gives her audience absolution. She is there to please them in their need for ever escalating acts of sex and violence.
Her body belongs to Minnie.
Minnie is a 29 year old student. She is witty, warm and direct.
She is a brilliant and persuasive storyteller.
Her story, as Callie Calypso, illuminates the dark and well-worn path of the Girl Next Door.
Always ready, always enthusiastic, never needy -
Hers is a story about loss and pain, shame and humiliation.
It’s a story about our appetite for subjugation. But also and most importantly, hers is a story about finding and accessing the strength to escape.
It is a call to action to stop the cycle of abuse in the porn industry.
The film will be a journey in both time and space. It’s a lonely journey between 2 worlds - the world Minnie physically escaped but where she is mentally trapped and the world of healing and hope she envisions for herself but still hasn’t found.
Minnie needs to face her past in order to have a chance to heal her present and have a future.
This is a film that is brutally honest. It is an intimate and personal story with an important and powerful message about something that concerns us all.
In this documentary film, Minnie embarks on a road trip that will take her back to a life she has left behind but is still haunting her.
She is driven to expose what the American porn industry is all about.
Her story will take us to Florida, the home of ”amateur porn” and where most performers start out in the business, she’ll show us a world of pimps, fast money, and deception.
She’ll trace her own footsteps back to California and the professional part of porn where the money is better but the demands are inhumane.
She will take us to the clubs and brothels in Nevada where former porn actors end up after their careers have peaked.
FACTS
The topic at hand is something that concerns us all.
Porn has never been as easily accessible as it is today.
Every day 68 million search queries related to pornography - 25% of total searches - are generated.
By some estimates, 200.000 Americans are classified as porn addicts.
40 million Americans regularly watch porn online.
Porn has become the primary source of sexual education for a whole generation of young people.
The porn industry itself is full of stories of trafficking, exploitation and coercion.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN YOU
OR YOUR DAUGHTER
Minnie quickly went from being a straight A-student to a highly sought after porn actress.
After a few horrendous years in the American porn industry and all that it entails she managed to escape.
HOPE
And she will look into her own future and ask herself if her life after porn can be anything more than just survival? Is there a way for her to ever be free?
This film is and has since the beginning been a collaboration between the filmmakers and Minnie herself. It bears repeating that this is something that Minnie wants to do. She wants to reclaim her own voice that she feels was stolen from her by the powerful men in the porn industry.
During the course of this project we have been and will continue to be extremely mindful about the fact that Minnie’s story is still very much an open wound.
We never force her to do anything she is not comfortable with and we always make sure that there is professional help available for her if she feels that she needs that.
We want this story to be told in a way that makes Minnie and her voice stronger, not the other way around.
Throughout the film Minnie is not only taking us through her past. She is also desperately trying to find a future - a way to finally be free.
She meets up with friends, family and strangers she meets along the way to talk about what her life could become.
And out in the nature, where she sometimes can almost feel free, she chases experiences that can help put her on the right track
Meet The Team
JENNIFER SIMS
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EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Jen Sims is an accomplished producer of documentary content for film, television and new media. Her mission in work and art is to amplify voices and stories that are often missing from mainstream discourse.
She is stalwart in her belief that the most complex problems can be solved by patience, curiosity and listening.
Previous works include Peabody Award-winning Surviving R Kelly, The People V The Klanfor CNN, Adam McKay’s This Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy for Amazon and Secrets Of Playboy for A&E exploring the impact and legacy of Playboy from the perspective of the women who made the brand iconic.
PONTUS ANDERSSON
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DIRECTOR
Pontus Andersson is a Swedish director, writer and producer with over two decades of experience.
He has devoted a big part of his career to covering topics such as human rights, trafficking and inequalities all across the globe.
In recent years he has developed, produced and directed five seasons of the highly acclaimed documentary series ”På Gränsen” for Scandinavian streamer Viaplay.
TONY JOHANSSON
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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Tony Johansson is a Los Angeles based cinematographer with 20 years of experience. His main focus over the last 10 years has been long-form feature documentaries as well as documentary-series and short form commercials.
Tony just finished the feature documentary film "CHYNA" for Vice & Hulu and are working on 3 different documentary film projects.
MINNIE
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CONSULTING PRODUCER
Minnie is not only a unique on screen talent but also an integral part of the making of this film. Through her vast experience we have a great source for research and for connecting with people from her past. After her years in the porn industry it is imperative for us that we now make a film that she wants to make and to have her onboard in the creative process is therefore very important.
DP VISION
It’s very important to us that the viewers feel close to Minnie content wise but also visually.
We need to make her and the other subjects we are filming feel comfortable in front of our camera.
Visually, we want the film to feel cinematic, and have a mix of ”real life doc scenes” as well as more ”staged” scenes to create that filmic look. The staged scenes will be created more like a film scene and used throughout the film. Filming in 4K RAW with cine prime lenses will have some challenges but we have done it before with great success.
To achieve the goal of having Minnie’s feelings come across on screen, we will work with both color contrasts such as red and yellow or blue and green, but also more monotone color tones to reflect what she is feeling. The majority of the film will be filmed with a slowly moving handheld- one camera. For some content parts and b roll we will use drone, car rig, gimbal and dolly.
Sit down interviews should feel as if they are taken out of a film scene rather than a classic sit down. Minnie will rather be sitting in a bar, or near a diner table, naturally lit. In the interviews the colors should match the subject at hand.
DIRECTORS STATEMENT
Throughout my whole career I have always drifted towards stories that are both captivating on a personal level and tells us something about the world we live in. Stories that make us think about the parts we play in the lives of people we haven’t even met.
For me, Minnie’s story and what it says about the world of sex trade and porn is exactly that.
From the moment I met Minnie I realized that she is unique. Her intelligence, honesty and wit makes her believable and relatable. She has a way of seeming remarkably strong and extremely vulnerable at the same time.
She’s one hundred percent human.
Minnie will show us the dirty underbelly of an industry that many of us financially contribute to on a regular basis. And she will tell us how it can affect her, us and the people around us.
In order to keep the film engaging throughout we will make great efforts to make sure that everything feels ”in the moment”.
We are there when Minnie relives her old life, when she meets people in the present and not least I feel that we have an original take to the ”life story-documentary” in Minnie’s ongoing phone conversations with her husband.
They add a deeply personal layer to the story.
I’m Not Her is a brutally honest documentary with the feel of a motion picture.
We will use a lot of well planned scenes but will always let Minnie and the people she meets speak freely and from their hearts.
We want this story to exist somewhere far, far away from how ”pornstars” and the porn industry are usually portrayed. We are not here to objectify and sexualize those already objectified and sexualized - we are here to meet human beings, not figures of our imagination. Therefore - there won’t be a single frame of actual porn included in the film.
