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Grace under pressure >> Annabel Chong's alter ego debunks porn's mystique by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Quek admits being of two minds about the frequently troubling documentary. "What Lewis did is focus on the aspects that affected him in a personal way," she says. "It's part of me up there, but not all of me. I mean, we shot about 120 hours of footage, and there's nothing of me just talking to my friends, hanging out and relaxing." At the same time, she's relieved the doc didn't devolve into an empty puff piece. Reactions, Quek notes, have been very polarized. "Some people would say, 'Oh, she must have absolutely no self-esteem.' Or that I'd betrayed women, betrayed feminism. Very few people can walk away from it without any reaction. The important thing is, it starts discussions." What's particularly interesting is how people in the porn industry itself have dealt with Quek's stepping out from behind the Annabel Chong persona. "A few years ago, I would have been accused of breaking the myth, the mystique of porn. But lately porn has become chic, so in their own rather simple way, many people in the industry appreciate my moving into the mainstream." Quek cynically puts a best-before date on porn's current visibility. Still, having graduated from actress to director, she's not ready to turn her back on it. "It's funny how a lot of the guys in my films who used to work with me, when I was an up-and-coming starlet, now work for me. It generally takes them about half an hour to adjust to the fact that I'm the boss signing their paycheques. But there are more women directors in porn these days, so it's not that hard for them. And I'm definitely the boss--I know what I want."
Quek presents Sex: the Annabel Chong Story at the Imperial on Thursday, August 12, 9:40pm, $5 |
Under the screen name Annabel Chong, Grace Quek starred in 1995's The World's Biggest Gang Bang, in which she fucked 251 men over the course of 10 hours on camera. A substantial feat, screwing with generally held gender preconceptions. But not nearly as tough as some of the fallout, dealing with the internal sleaze of the porn industry or coming clean with her repressed Singaporean Chinese family. All of which is documented, quite candidly, in Gough Lewis' Sex: The Annabel Chong Story.