Sasha Grey is most prominently known for her roles in various adult films, but after headlining Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, it seems she’s caught the Hollywood acting bug, as she’s currently in advanced talks to star in I Melt With You, an indie drama ready to role with Mark Pellington at the helm.

If she secures the role, Grey will play “a character named Raven, described as a free spirit who helps one of the men realize that nirvana can only be achieved by death.” She will star alongside Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe, Zander Eckhouse, Abhi Sinha and Arielle Kebbel and Jeremy Piven.

Synopsis: I Melt With You centres on a group of college buddies (Jane, Lowe and Piven) who, now as adults, look within themselves and find emptiness when they have their annual summer reunion. They resurrect a pact they vowed to live, die and kill by.

I Melt With You will begin shooting in North California next month.

Reported by: The Hollywood Reporter

Actress Sasha Grey states that her name was dually inspired by The Kinsey Scale of sexuality and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.  It is Dorian Gray I recall as I sit in a tiny screening room with the crisp, Vogue editorial, beauty of The Girlfriend Experience unfurling on the screen before me.  Utter lack of affect in the face of unspeakable actions.  Is prostitution unspeakable?  Perhaps, at least, it is the latter-day love that dare not speak its name.

When Steven Soderbergh selected Grey as his muse for this Sex, Lies and Videotape for an Apprentice generation, speculation was rife (and ribald) that The Girlfriend Experience would be as blue as the economic mood upon its release.  Pleasingly nothing could be further from the truth.

The Girlfriend Experience presents five days in the life of a unique independent contractor ““ Manhattan call girl Chelsea.  Chelsea’s $2000 an hour services conjure the illusion of an immersive relationship-lite.  Sexually she is a consummate courtesan but emotionally her role is closer to that of Geisha.  Solicitous, fascinated and utterly, china doll, detached.  Boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) is fully aware of Chelsea’s double identity.  Chris understands the pressure of a life trading one’s self as a commodity ““ every cent of profit he makes over his wage goes to fill the coffers of the downtown gym where he trains the wealthy and time-impaired.  He is at an impasse and struggling to find a way forward.

While Chris struggles, Chelsea has an opportunity to introduce her charms to the readers of an influential punter-review forum.  She sleeps with the lecherous webmaster, he raves about her performance online.  He is paid in kind, she in custom.  Surely her flawless professional facade can withstand such a trade?  The story we see in broken fragments suggests not.  Chelsea’s dynamic with Chris has become as close to GFE as any $2000 encounter so new client Phillip appears a kindred spirit and an escape when her tightly knitted-life begins to unravel…

I suspect that many people will go to see The Girlfriend Experience expecting a dialogue on the cause and effect of life as a working girl ““ it is after all the cause du (Belle de) jour.  Others will go to see a little T&A.  They will all be disappointed.  In The Girlfriend Experience Steven Soderbergh has created a film which doesn’t proffer gift wrapped answers to the viewer.  There are no life lessons here.  Much has been made of the life-landscape behind GFE shot, as it was, in the weeks leading up to the 2008 Presidential election.  As he favours structured improvisation the “˜civilian’ cast were encouraged to speak just as they would in life, to discuss the headlines of the day and banter about the minutiae of their lives.  Thus the issues of the wider economy underscore the personal concerns of the cast and offer a timely context to a story originally conceived in 2006.  The important thing to bear in mind though is that this tale could take place at any period of modern history because it is a story unique to Chelsea and the extraordinary world she occupies.

I will confess to having been a little disconcerted by the way The Girlfriend Experience ““ as both a movie and a concept ““ has been represented in reviews.  I have read much that reinforces an idea of Chelsea as executive toy.  Or even as a bespoke provider of instant coupledom for the busy man-about-town.  The consensus appearing to be that GFE as a service is primarily about the G, that other distasteful F word diluted by phrases such as more than sex. Let me be very clear here then ““ The Girlfriend Experience is a film about a prostitute.  It is a realistic and direct look at one successful working girl’s working week.  It is doubtful that many of her clients are paying thousands of dollars for vanilla lovemaking and companionship.  To not accept this as fact is to misunderstand the absolute accuracy of Grey’s standout performance.  You want pretence, watch Pretty Woman.       

Of Sasha’s performance James Rocchi at Cinematical wrote “Grey is not a great actress — I can’t really imagine her playing Ophelia or one of the Three Sisters”. I cannot help but agree.  As one of the new power players in pop culture and contemporary porn I imagine, should Ms Grey set her sights on The Dane, she would insist upon playing the man himself!  In appearance her Chelsea recalls Alison Lohman’s transient foster child in Peter Kosminsky’s White Oleander ““ a cool, pale canvas awaiting interpretation.  For me though, in performance, Grey is pure Jennifer Jason Leigh ““ clever, complex and carnal.  She credits Leigh as one of her heroines and there are echoes of the same temperament and tone here.  I wonder that she has not received more praise for her compelling turn.  When she is on screen she commands your focus utterly.

Together DP Peter Andrews and Steven Soderbergh have created a striking film.  It has an authenticity that owes a great deal to the inexperience of the cast who, besides Grey, were predominantly playing variations on themselves.  Irrespective of the 2008 setting, its gloss, materialism and magazine shoot aesthetic lend an undeniable 1980s tone.  Further reinforced by the scattergun chatter of men on a Vegas bound jet that punctuates throughout. And anyone familiar with Bret Easton Ellis’s searing social commentary American Psycho will feel the retro force at its strongest as Chelsea meticulously details every outfit she wears.  The attention to detail is impeccable, her presentation so Rachel-Zoe-by-numbers as to be a gentle pastiche.  The red light camera emphasises the photo shoot effect, lending the available light all the mighty powers of an art department airbrush, so that the jumps from then to now and back become a flip through the pages of a life.

Chelsea hides behind her Zoe-disciple shades, impeccable wardrobe and the lowered gaze of a false-lashed eye.  In place of self-awareness, surface.  We never get any closer and we never understand.  She shields the dangers of her job with superstition as her only safeguard.  We see her in a town car with a driver, incongruously young against the formality of the backseat and lunching in a restaurant with a friend chattering about life and work.  We see her at home lounging on an overstuffed couch and we see her taking investment advice from a Hassidic jeweller client before taking him into the back room for the unfriendly F.  We see her at home, at work and at play.  We never see who she is.

The Girlfriend Experience offers no new ammunition to either side of the prostitution debate and it is much the better film for it.  It credits the audience with the ability to simply let it be what it is.  For that reason The Girlfriend Experience stands out as one of my favourite films this year and one I unreservedly recommend.

The Girlfriend Experience is released in the UK on 4th December

Read our exclusive interview with Sasha Grey here

View the full trailer below

I am Sasha Grey, there is no other!

It has been a day since Dr Brooke Magnanti gave the broadsheets and daytime shows an excuse to talk about prostitution without any of the pesky people trafficking back-story they are usually compelled to attach.  They are, to a one, quite sweaty with glee that the escorting world has a new (and educated!) spokesmodel.

I am on my way to meet Sasha Grey, star of Steven Soderbergh’s new film.  The Girlfriend Experience opens a five day window on the world of a high-end Manhattan escort and a far cry from Belle and her fanciful fiction.  You may read our review here.  Sasha stars as twenty-something Chelsea, a call girl offering a tailor-made “˜girlfriend experience’ to Manhattan’s elite.

Sasha is an international superstar, an award winning actress and the head of her own production company.  Until this latest role though, you may have been reluctant to showcase her DVDs in your public collection.

In person she is pretty and engaging, her welcome warm and smile wide.  Can this stylish young woman really be the star of more than eighty hardcore porn features?  Indeed she can and she is proud to be so.  HeyUGuys are happy to introduce the incomparable Sasha Grey:

HUG: Sasha you have described yourself as a sex symbol with an intellectual stance ““ which we think is fabulous.  Chelsea though is obviously less sure of her personal and emotional identity.  Who was she for you?

SG: To me she’s completely not about her sexuality, sex just happens to be part of her job.  It’s a very small component of her job so she isn’t concerned about or worried about projecting this self confidence of her female sexuality to her clients, it’s more about just being sexy definitely.  And she’s a very vain young woman.  She uses ‘Personology’ as this escapism, this excuse to be a guideline for her life rather than taking responsibility for her actions.

Which keeps everything one step removed from her?

SG: Oh yeah definitely.

Some of the more extreme reactions to the film seem to dial down the prostitution angle and claim GFE as equivalent to an American Express Black Card – an elite club!  Why is there such a reluctance to accept that young women can be sexual and empowered and make their money that way?

SG: I think it’s frightening for people to come to grips with the fact that a young woman can be empowered and make her own decisions and be conscious of “yeah I want to take the right steps and not have regrets that I just went with the flow later”.  I think it’s hard for people to understand that you know?  Not just men use their minds but women do as well.

As concerns your time on set ““ Steven Soderbergh obviously favours structured improvisation and only the conversations that would naturally occur are included in the film.  As the only trained actress on the set how did you find his technique?

SG: It was very stressful at some points because you know how to keep an improvisation going but the other people around you don’t.  So sometimes there are these long awkward moments where it’s like “just go ahead and do something, go with it!“  But, in the same vein, that’s what makes it so great, because in real life we don’t have the perfect thing to say all the time, like you see in idealised films. (Laughs)

Everything I say will be right, everything you say will be right and the conversation just flows naturally.  Really you go off on tangents ““ I know I do all the time!  That’s how conversations usually happen you know, it’s not perfect, so I think that part of it was just great because it added this sense of realism to each scene.

You’ve spoken about the emphasis on conversation in The Girlfriend Experience but there is going to be a presupposition made by people that there will be sexual content.  You seem to enjoy eroding the line between art and porn, fetish and mainstream.  How important was it for you that the film did not spill over into the more adult areas of your work?

SG: I have to be honest – this was a Steven Soderbergh film.  I mean…there was no question for me of would I do it or not!  And because the first time we met he was like “It’s a film about an escort, she’s a high-priced escort and she has a live-in boyfriend and she will leave her boyfriend in the film”.  That’s all I knew.  So I hear escort, prostitute and I’m thinking okay there’s gonna be sex in it.  I’m gonna be nude in it and yeah I have no problem with that.  Because I knew it would be done in good taste and I knew it would be done in the context of the story.  Not just nudity for nudity’s sake or sex for sex’s sake.  But in the same breath it was great to be able to dive into a character and just be.

You know in adult films I’m just an extension of myself ““ I’m performing but it’s hyper-me.  So in this film it was great to be able to get into a character and to create a character ““ because I had a lot of freedom to be able to do that and work with Steven on that.

When you finally saw the finished product which, in keeping with Chelsea’s appearance, has the look of a really editorial magazine ““ it’s beautiful, it’s glossy ““ what was your reaction to it?  Was the film what you had expected it to be?

SG: The thing I was most shocked about was the editing because we actually shot this in chronological order ““ which for any film is quite rare.  So we actually saw the rough cut they took to Sundance a couple of weeks before and I was just amazed because I was completely not expecting that.  Whenever you perform in anything you can’t enjoy it the way that someone else would because you are watching yourself and you know what’s gonna happen.  But this kind of added an extra element of surprise because it’s non-linear so I had no idea when Scene A will be here and vice-versa.

It’s timely you being here speaking about GFE because an author and blogger who wrote about being a high-end escort has chosen to unmask herself this week (perhaps to aid flagging book sales).  It seems that it takes an “˜issue’ for this subject to be discussed in the open.  When you were researching the role of Chelsea and meeting with escorts was it your experience that it was a hidden world?

SG: Yeah it felt like they were maybe hiding a lot.  Because I sat down with them for maybe three hours each and I was trying to ask as many questions as possible in that time as I possibly could.  They were all very nice and friendly but it just felt that there was so much more that I could’ve pulled out of them, that they just were not willing to give.  And neither of them outright told their families what they did, only their spouses – definitely undercover oh yeah.

Chelsea came across, with her lack of affect, very much like a courtesan or a geisha in that she just seemed to be there for men to project their idea of an identity onto her.  Do you think she knew who she was ““ in your mind did she?

SG: I think the film shows…she believes she knows.  But as that week starts to unfold she learns “I’m not really in love with this guy.  Maybe I’m not too happy”, but she knows how to make her money and I think that’s what’s most important for her ““ making that next dollar and always staying on top and always being the very best at her game.

We touched earlier on preconceptions and obviously you had an experience on The Tyra Banks Show experience.  They had an idea of who they wanted you to be, dressed you as a schoolgirl and then took you on stage in front of an audience and said “Oh my God you look like a schoolgirl!”

Is that something you’ve had to confront when you meet and speak to someone for the first time?  Do you think your age plays a part in why people are reacting so strongly to GFE, that they project their expectations of what a younger person “˜should’ be?

SG: Sometimes, not all the time though.  Spending fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes with someone isn’t long enough to get to know them.  So I think it’s less about them projecting their ideas of what a young woman is or generalising “This is what a young woman should be” and more about “We’re going to put you over here in this box.  We’re doing that because we want something out of it.”  Sometimes I subject myself to that purposely because I want something out of it too!  So, as much as I might not like the fact that somebody painted my face up with bright pink blush and put me in a bright pink tee shirt, I still got what I wanted out of it.  At the end of the day I can complain all I want but I chose to be there and I knew “yeah, this is probably gonna happen”.  But you’re getting something out of it so…

On that show they seemed to need you to be a victim and similarly in The Girlfriend Experience people seem to need Chelsea to have a back story.  A reason why ““ why, why, why…

SG: (Laughs) Yeah, that’s the mystery with the film, it especially angers some people which is funny.  Most of all it’s great because it gets people to think about the subjects addressed in the film.  You can just look at it visually as something that’s pretty or you can dig deeper and pull out everything else that’s there, because it’s still only a week in the life of this girl and her clients and her boyfriend.

We’d like to thank you so much for sitting down with us and wish you the best of luck with the film.  In closing, we know you’ve expressed a desire to move into mainstream film and clearly this is a huge tick for that ambition!  You also have your own production company ““ what’s next for you moving forward?

SG: Well right now with my production company I’m focussing on adult films but I’m taking a more cinematic approach which really isn’t easy.  It’s really fun, the challenge of it is incredibly fun because it’s problem solving every day on set and shooting sex cinematically and adding this absurd surreal element.  That’s kind of what I’ve been doing lately because I’m really trying to start small and move into a narrative, start dealing more with visuals and imagery ““ metaphorical imagery- rather than having people deliver dialogue.  I actually just executive produced a television show I hosted as well so that will be on in December!

The Girlfriend Experience is released in the UK on 4^th December

View the full trailer below