‘What Gets Me Hot’ (1984) – What Really Happened? A Brief, Oral History of Traci Lords’ First Film

What Gets Me Hot (1984) is not a good film even by the low standards of mid 1980s XXX video quickies – but it may be one of the more consequential adult movie releases.

Shot in October 1984, it was the first hardcore film made by Traci Lords, who went on to become one of the era’s most popular and successful adult film actresses.

The problem is that, since leaving the business, Traci has always stated she was tricked and coerced into taking part in the film. And she maintains that the events on that set subsequently led to a spiral of manipulation and exploitation over the next two years, made worse by drink and drugs, that resulted in her appearing in further sex films.

So what really happened on the set of ‘What Gets Me Hot’?

During the course of interviews The Rialto Report has conducted over the years, an informal ritual developed: we would read excerpts from Traci’s autobiography, ‘Underneath It All,’ to those who worked on ‘What Gets Me Hot’ to elicit their memories and opinions – and then compared them to Traci’s version. This included conversations with Jim South, Herschel Savage, Helga Sven, Tom Byron, Alexis Vogel, Christy Canyon, and Ginger Lynn.

This is what we learned.

All quotes have been taken from interviews conducted by The Rialto Report, except for the words of Traci herself, which have been taken from her autobiography, ‘Underneath It All.’ (All names have been restored to reflect the person’s real name rather than the pseudonyms used in Traci’s book.)

Content advisory: this interview contains references to child pornography.

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In February 1984, Traci Lords (then Nora Kuzma), aged 15, answered a newspaper advertisement for Jim South‘s World Modeling Talent Agency, and, using forged identity documents, went to meet South with her stepfather, ‘David.’

Traci Lords (actor):

We stood in the doorway waiting for (Jim South) to finish his phone call. I was transfixed by the rows of eleven-by-fourteen-inch glossy photographs lining the walls on both sides of his desk. He was small, thin, weaselly, with a skinny mustache.

I started sweating. I wasn’t sure about this, but David calmed me down. He said he understood it was scary, that it was natural and not to worry.

Jim South showed up in the hallway with the Polaroid camera. I was still dressed. He looked frustrated. He said he understood it was my first time, but I needed to relax.

I said I needed a minute.

Traci Lords

Jim South (agent):

I remember the day Traci walked into my office like it was yesterday. Which is strange if you think about it: hundreds of girls walked through that door, and very few stand out from their first time. But Traci did.

She was accompanied by a man named David, who she referred to as a stepfather, I think.

First impressions? She was beautiful, obviously. But what stood out was her confidence. Few people have that degree of… self-assuredness.

Traci Lords:

I snorted a line of white powder that South called “coke” from a mirror he’d left in the little dressing area. I’d never snorted coke before and it gave me a weird, jittery burst of energy. Suddenly I felt charged, brave from the drug and champagne.

Jim South:

In all my years as an agent, I never tolerated drugs of any kind anywhere near me or my business. I am a white toast, meat-and-potato, four-cornered soul in a circular world. That’s just the way I am. Old-fashioned, you could say. I was born in the 1930s, and I was a different generation from most everyone in the business.

So when it came to drugs… what people got up to on their own dime was up to them, but there were never any drugs anywhere near my business.

Christy Canyon (actor):

We used to joke that Jim was like a cross between Elvis Presley and Jed Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies. He was protective and straight. You could always rely on him. But he was so straight! I once got tipsy and tried to make out with him. He couldn’t have been keener to get away from me (laughs).

But no: Jim and drugs were never in the same room.

Ginger Lynn (actor):

No. Never. The idea that Jim would leave coke out like a bowl of pretzels for people to help themselves to… is ridiculous. It’s almost funny. It’s also a lie.

Jim South

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Over the next months, Traci worked as a nude model, appearing in magazines such as Velvet, Juggs, and Club, and in Penthouse’s September 1984 15th-anniversary issue – where she chose the stage name Traci Lords, after the actor Jack Lord from the television series, ‘Hawaii Five-O.’

Traci Lords:

The attention that the Penthouse magazine brought me in the porn world sealed my fate. It was October 1984 when I graduated to doing porn films.

It kind of just happened.

Jim South:

It is true that once a girl has done all the magazines, the photographers want someone else, someone new. To be straight with you, it’s difficult to sell a photo set of a girl who’s done it all before. When that happens, the girl is timed out and leaves the business – or she starts doing adult films. For some of the girls, that’s an easy decision. Others have more of a problem.

I had that conversation with all the girls. Including Traci. She understood that.

Traci Lords:

I’d made every excuse I could think of to South, trying to convince him that I was worth more to him as a centerfold model than a porn star. But it didn’t matter. My time had run out.

Jim South:

Whatever initial feelings a girl has, I don’t do a ‘hard sell’ to any of them. I always outline the risks in detail. I do that because if she tries and fails – it will reflect bad on me. Every time. And in my business… I’m only successful if I can provide reliable talent, time and again.

Traci Lords:

Needing the cash, I agreed. South told me it was a softcore for cable. I was hired to walk around looking pretty, and was asked to bring several bikinis and a selection of high heels.

Jim South:

She wrote that I told her it was softcore?! (laughs)

Well, honey… I wasn’t in the business of providing talent for ‘softcore for cable’ productions (laughs). Producers making those kinds of films went somewhere else. Maybe to Hal Guthu, for example. But not to me. I didn’t handle anything like that.

Besides, this was a Dick Miller film – and he’s not someone that you’d confuse with a softcore director (laughs).

Dick Miller (and Amber Lynn)

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Dick Miller (aka Richard Mailer) was a veteran adult film director and producer active in the adult film industry since the 1970s. His early films were made in New York and were characterized by an emphasis on rough-and-ready sexual encounters accompanied by a distinct lack of production values. In the 1980s, he relocated to California where he formed Island Home Video, and directed a string of shot-on-video films.

Jim South:

Dick called me about a video he was making called What Gets Me Hot. He came in, looked at the Polaroids – and specifically requested Traci. She’d never made an X-rated film, so I told Dick he had to be real precise about what he wanted from her.

He left me a copy of the script. He wanted Traci to be the star. I looked through it. It was the usual, plain-as-a-bean few pages. There were several lengthy dialogue scenes for her, a number of nude scenes – you know the deal: a shower scene, topless by the pool – and then finally a sex scene with Tommy Byron. She hadn’t done anything like that, but I thought she could do it because she was darn confident about everything.

Traci Lords:

I had one line, which I’d practiced a dozen times the night before. South had told me my line was, “I know what gets me hot,” but I had no idea what it referred to. All I knew was I was getting paid four hundred and fifty dollars a day with a guarantee of two days’ work and no nudity.

Jim South:

I’ll make one thing clear right now: I didn’t do “no nudity” jobs (laughs). And no one gets paid $450 just to walk around and say one line.

Traci Lords:

The first time I walked onto a porn movie set I was wired. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, and as I drove myself to the location, I was exhausted and overwhelmed by the anxiety of imagining what it would be like. Stopping by the liquor store on the way there, I stashed a couple of cans of pre-mixed vodka and orange juice in my backpack for courage.

Alexis Vogel (make-up):

I must have been one of the first people that met Traci when she arrived on set that day.

My father, Ron Vogel, had been a still photographer since the dawn of time (laughs) and had taken pictures of everyone going back to the nudie days of Playboy in the 1960s. He knew everybody in the business, and so it was natural that when I became interested in doing make-up that he’d fix me up with jobs… in porn films! (laughs).

Alexis Vogel

Traci Lords:

The movie was being filmed in a mansion deep in the San Fernando Valley. When I arrived on the set early, I couldn’t find anyone who knew where I was supposed to go. I was told I should look for Richard, the director, who would tell me what to do.

Alexis Vogel:

I think it was my father who got me the job on ‘What Gets Me Hot’ because he was doing stills.

I often looked out for the new girls in a big sister kinda way. Doing make-up is an intimate way of getting the measure of someone. You’re getting in close, touching them, talking to them, understanding their physical insecurities. If they’re vulnerable, you become a bit of a therapist.

Traci was kinda cocky, but she seemed cool. I have to admit, I liked her. She was sassy, funny… and really smart. She could be a mean girl, but she was fun to be around too.

Traci Lords:

I’d sat in traffic for almost two hours and I had to pee like a racehorse. Pleased to find a bathroom in the direction of the noise I was following. I walked in and was greeted with what looked like the hygiene aisle at the drugstore. There were condoms, jellies, foam, and douches of every flavor on the counter.

Extract from the shooting schedule from ‘What Gets Me Hot’

Herschel Savage (actor):

I knew Dick Miller from our early days back in New York – and he was a great character. Everyone liked him. After he came out to L.A., I became tight with him.

He was good because he’d seen it all before – which in this business meant that there was no drama when you’re working. It all goes smoothly. And that’s important because no one likes drama. Drama is bad on a sex film set.

Tom Byron (actor):

I met Traci (for the first time) on that set. I think she was doing a non-sex role. Or rather, she was going to do a masturbation scene in the movie. She was the hot girl of the week, the hot still photo girl – because she was fucking gorgeous.

I knew her as Krissie. Krissie Nussman. That’s what she had on her ID. She hid (her real identity) very well. She wasn’t stupid by any stretch.

Traci Lords:

Following the noise, I found my director behind a camera watching a woman having sex with two guys. Blushing, I gawked at them. I had never seen anyone have sex before, and it was so aggressive, so primal the way this woman moaned that it scared the crap out of me. Oh my God, is that what they expect me to do? I turned and ran down the hall to the front door. I knew exactly what kind of movie this was now – and I wasn’t having it.

I tore out of the parking lot and was gone before anyone knew I’d arrived. I called South from a pay phone a few blocks away screaming at him for lying at me. He told me to “grow up,” pissed that I had left and saying that I’d made him look bad. If I ever wanted to work again, I’d better get my butt back there and apologize for being late. I hung up on him and sat in my car downing vodka and OJ at eight-something in the morning. I knew I had to go back. Where else would I go? What else could I do? I tried to imagine what having sex on-camera would be like, but I couldn’t even fathom it. I decided I’d just go back, at least apologize for quitting, and hope that South would still keep me on as a model.

Jim South:

(laughs) This version of events is like a screen door on a submarine. She’s talking up the wrong tree as we say in Texas.

(sighs) No – she didn’t call me. She knew exactly what to expect.

Herschel Savage:

I’d heard about Traci before I met her on the set of her first film. I can’t remember if it was Jim (South) or Ronnie (Jeremy) who told me about her from her photo work, so I was intrigued to meet her. You always looked forward to any new girl in this business: most of the time, you worked with the same girls on every single film – and no offense, but there’s a limit to the number of times you can get aroused by Fluffy Cumsalot… no matter how hot she is.

I was introduced to Traci that day but I didn’t have a scene with her. She was pretty, and seemed bratty. That was ok with me. I liked bratty (laughs)

Helga Sven (actor, Traci’s mother in ‘What Gets Me Hot’):

I didn’t know it was Traci’s first film at the time. She seemed relaxed when I met her, I thought she was a veteran (laughs).

I was playing her mother and we had a dialogue scene, and as soon as she got to the set, the director took us aside to make sure we knew our lines and he got us to rehearse them. I remember that Traci and I couldn’t stop laughing – the lines were so corny…

Traci stated that her sex scene in the ‘What Gets Me Hot’ happened unintentionally and inadvertently – when she was filmed without her initial knowledge or consent.

Traci Lords:

As I poured myself a vodka, the stud of the moment, Tom Byron, walked in and started flirting with me. He asked if I lived around there and how long I’d been modeling, and though he seemed nice enough, I told him nothing at first.

Tom Byron:

She started coming on to me. I was on the deck of this house, smoking a cigarette or something, and I think they were shooting a sex scene in the other room. She came over and sat in my lap and we started making out. But she came onto ME! I was like, “Wow, this girl is fucking gorgeous.” I was sorta like a hotshot back then, the hot new kid on the block, you know, so she gravitated towards me. We made out for a bit, and I got her number.

Traci Lords:

He had this sweet, dopey, puppy-dog thing going on and I let my guard down. I was wasted by that point, and since then I’ve often wondered if he’d been sent into the kitchen to seduce me or if he just got lucky. I’m still not sure why I let him have his way with me. I don’t know what I was thinking. All I can say is that I never intended to be filmed having sex in that kitchen, and I only realized I was being filmed when it was nearly over.

Tom Byron

Alexis Vogel:

She said that she wasn’t aware that they were filming her?

I don’t claim to have known Traci that well, but… that isn’t a smart thing to say. Even a 10-minute sex scene would take an hour or more to film: you have to get the lighting, continuity, establishing shots, close-ups, lighting, make-up, money shot… (laughs). The problem on a set is that these elements are too present… and you wish they were more invisible.

Jim South:

The idea that an entire sex scene can be filmed without the participants being aware… is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You have to understand: Traci was the star of this film. She was in lots of dialogue scenes – as well as doing her sex scene. That was made clear to her from the start. You’d see that if you had the script that Dick gave me.

It may look like some pornos are shot without a script (laughs), but believe me, there was always some kind of outline. ‘What Gets Me Hot’ was no exception…

Sadly, I no longer have my copy. I trashed it years ago.

Herschel Savage:

Actually, I have some sympathy here for Traci because I think I know what happened. And everyone has got it wrong (laughs). I know this because, like I say, I was close to Dick (Miller) at the time, and he told me what unfolded.

What happened was this: Dick signed Traci up for a solo masturbation scene for this film – as well as some dialogue scenes. Traci wouldn’t agree to do anything more than that at that stage. Dick was disappointed, but he went ahead and did the film – with Traci’s solo scene. After the movie, Traci started dating Tom Byron, and so a few weeks later, Dick persuaded her to let him film them doing a sex scene. I think Dick told them some bullshit like he was just practicing shooting techniques or something (laughs) and that the scene wouldn’t go anywhere.

And then he inserted that scene as a fantasy sequence in ‘What Gets Me Hot.’ So I sort of see where Traci is getting her story from that she didn’t know what was happening… Dick fucked her over in this case.

So I hate to say it, but Jim South is wrong: Traci did not have a sex scene in the script of the movie. It’s a shame that the script is long gone.

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The Rialto Report located a copy of the original shooting script and shooting schedule for the film. It supports Herschel Savage’s version of events, in that there is no mention of a sex scene involving Traci’s character, ‘Lannie’, and Tom Byron. (Click on the image below to see the full script).

Jim South:

Ever since those days, people come up and ask me if I’d known that Traci was only 16 when I got her the part on ‘What Gets Me Hot.’

I did not. She showed me her ID. I trusted her. I wish I hadn’t. But what sticks in my craw is that she blames me for it. It’s OK if you commit a crime, but you can’t blame everyone else for it.

Alexis Vogel:

I get why people get upset about Traci – on both sides of the fence. I do. The law says that if you’re under 18, you don’t have the ability to agree to do anything like this. That’s non-negotiable.

But to flip it the other way, that means that, legally, Traci was completely blameless. Traci was totally innocent. And therefore, everyone else was taking advantage of her.

That just seems a little harsh on everyone, you know?

Herschel Savage:

Did I hear that Traci was underage at the time? No!

If I had, I would have ran to Mexico without stopping. I didn’t need that, and I don’t think anyone else would’ve taken that risk either.

Helga Sven:

I was shocked when the story came out. I had a teenage daughter, and I would have hated to think of her getting involved in sex films when she was as young as 16.

Tom Byron:

Anyone who tells you she was a naïve young girl who got sucked in… bull-fucking-shit. She was smarter than everybody else on the set. Tremendously intelligent woman.

She had a plan, and she put it in motion, and eventually it all came crashing down when the Feds found out about it.

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After Traci was arrested in 1986, she was questioned by the Los Angeles’ Office of the District Attorney. The Rialto Report obtained the previously unpublished transcription of the meeting in which she talks about her memories of ‘What Gets Me Hot.’

In this exclusive excerpt, Traci’s statement differs in a few key aspects from the autobiography that she would publish years later: for example, she said that she knew she’d been hired for an X-rated film, she stated that she was already dating Tom Byron at the time that ‘What Makes Me Hot’ was filmed, and that she knew her sex scene was being filmed from the start.

Questioner: Why did he (Jim South) take a picture of you with your ID?

Traci: I don’t know.

Why do you think he did that?

I don’t know, maybe to protect his ass, I don’t know.

Did he – did he suspect that you were under age?

I don’t know. Only he knows that. Maybe.

OK. Did you form an opinion about that at the time?

I was only 15 ½ years old. I looked like I was 14 years old. Any idiot would’ve known how old I was. But he seemed to believe my ID. So that’s – that’s all I can say.

OK. But you think that that’s why he took a picture of your ID?

I don’t know. Maybe he takes a picture of all models’ ID. I don’t know.

So who did hire you?

A guy came to me, and he said, “You want to be an actress? Well, I have a straight part in a movie. It’s an X-rated movie though. But you don’t have to do any sex, just acting.” I said OK.

Who was this?

Richard Mailer for Island Home Video.

Did he come to you through Jim South?

Yeah. South was always around somewhere. I mean his office is pretty big, people roaming around. They have casting calls and all the little fuck bunnies from the industry come in and then the producers pick out which ones they want.

Did Richard Mailer ask how old you were?

No.

Did he care?

I imagine he’d care. He didn’t ask.

OK. For Island – for Richard Mailer: what happened with that one?

I ended up on a porno set. I was doing a straight acting part. I got carried away. There was a guy on the set that I was dating at the time, Tom Byron, and I ended up doing a sex scene in the kitchen with him. OK?

OK.

That’s about the end of that.

They filmed it?

Yeah.

OK. And you knew they were filming it?

Yeah.

It started out that you were just doing a straight acting part?

Yeah.

Did Tom Byron know how old you were?

No. He didn’t know anything about me. I dated him for like two weeks. We can’t even really call it dating. It’s just someone to – just a partner, let’s say.

Do you remember the name of that film?

‘What Gets Me Hot.’

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Helga Sven:

Many years later, maybe 15 or 20 years, I thought I saw Traci in a busy clothing store in L.A. I went closer and saw that it was her. She was wearing big sunglasses like Audrey Hepburn, and she looked glamorous and beautiful. This was long after the scandal had erupted and died down. I approached her with my arms open, and said, “My daughter! How are you?!” (laughs).

She looked mortified and gave me a brief hug. Before I could ask her how she was, she made excuses and disappeared into the crowd.

I still don’t know why she did it, do you?

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