Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano are the brains behind the budding dyke porn dynasty that is S.I.R. Productions. Last year they released the double feature Hard Love and How to Fuck in High Heels to rave reviews and an Adult Video News nomination in the category of Best All-Girl Feature. To everyone's excitement they won the award at the 2001 AVN (Adult Video News) gala held in Las Vegas. Part of the San Francisco dyke underground, they write, cast, direct, produce and star in their videos. It's porn made by dykes, for dykes featuring "real, local dykes fucking the way real dykes fuck." They each take on the title of Pornographer with class, style and no apologies. Both are sex educators and when they're not making their videos, Jackie is performing with her band The Hail Marys and Shar is writing articles and books. Her books include Star F*cker, The Femme's Guide to the Universe, and Virgin Territory. Ssspread talked with Shar and Jackie in San Francisco in late March. This is the first of a three part interview with them.

How do you feel about your AVN (Adult Video News) award?

J: Awesome! So many things have happened this year and its only March.We were ecstatic. We went to just party and have fun with our friends in Vegas thinking it would be really cool when they announced our name on stage just reading the nominations. And Ginger Lynn no less coming out and announcing it. It was our own little Boogie nights fantasy. But it was this moment like, whoa, theyre looking at us right now - what were doing instead of vice versa. Like what Michelle Tea said, " the fringe of the fringe."

Do you feel that youre now part of the mainstream?

J: No, definitely not. But I feel like the mainstream is kind of taking a look over. Its analogous to what happened with the music and book industries little groundswells of indy things start to get critical notice and then the machine goes, "Oh, OK, whats up?" Lets take a look at that and copy it, or lets hire them. But, you know, its put on by the AVN and the AVN has people working for them, normal people and editors and what not, and its coincidence mixed with good luck and hard work because theres a slew of them in there that do actively want to change the industry theyre representing as well. We were told first hand, its like, keep up the good work, we like what you guys are doing. And a lot of women, a couple queer women and some of the other people on staff, it was very purposeful. Besides they thought it was good and they liked it, but it was kind of a political move. Like these guys are doing good and we want everyone else to take notice.

Weve been told that dykes dont buy porn, that the market is really small and a porn site will never be successful if its aimed at queer women. Do you think thats true?

S: Half of me says all those things and the other half hopes that its wrong. Because we want o start our own site. Weve owned realdykes.com for a long time now and we havent had the time or the money to put it up even though weve thought about it for a long time and have written out all of our notes and planned out all of our models. So we actually have the same kind of questions. When you are in a fringe world of sex, you cant make any rules because I think that people do appreciate stuff like authenticity and quality. For example. When Michele Tea was interviewing us for the Bay Guardian, she asked Cloe and she asked Nina Hartley and some people who are in the industry if they were shocked that we won. A couple people were definitely shocked but a lot of the people who try really hard to be authentic and do good work, like Cloe for example, she was like, no, Im not shocked because thats how she made it. She was an A cup. She refused to get boobs. We put her in "Bend Over Boyfriend #2" and the year before that she walked away from the AVN awards with 3 or 4 awards in her hand. Shed never won an award and nobody expected her to. So there are a lot of examples of people breaking the rules and everybody being shocked that everything was a success. But really, I think the sex world is a world that inherently is waiting to be shocked, you know what I mean? And actually I think frankly thats true for a lot of art. And thats why like Jackie said, all of a sudden all the big record labels own indy labels to act like an independent. Theyre not an independent but like Atlantic Records will own a label that looks like an indy label because they thought the indy labels were doing good or like the indy movies. The "Crying Game" completely changed everything. Before that there was the big movies and the tiny starving artists who made their movies and there was nothing in between. That;s a whole big theoretical question. But over all in the sex world its especially true, so I think you guys will shake em up and then youll be a success and everyone will go, Oh my God, how were they a success? Its like well, duh! This is what people are doing. Its exciting and real and shocking to some people and that tweaks their panties when theyre shocked.

J: And women stereotypically we all know, yeah, they dont have as much disposable income, but& we know first hand with our dyke porn, it retails for $40. But women, especially gay women are starving for it and they will put their money where their mouth is and theyre willing to support what we produce. We know theres an audience there and theyre waiting for the next thing.

Its great that we can finally start to talk about marketing to a queer audience and actually making it work.

J: Yeah. The beauty of the internet is that people contact us through the company and right now were a 2 person company and we do everything every aspect of the company. Well get this email from Podunk, Iowa of somebody saying "THANK-YOOOUUUUU!!!!! And also saying "Ive finally seen my sex life up on the screen." And its like, holy shit, right on& You know? Here we live in an urban Mecca and there are dirty dykes everywhere doing dirty little things.

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