"Kelly Close-up" from its title would suggest another porn movie spotlighting an actress, the sort of "Deep Inside..." genre providing XXX career highlights. Instead, Bud Lee chose to create a rather complicated look at the act of filmmaking, centered on new Vivid contract girl, the quite underwhelming Kelly Jaye.
Lee appears on screen as an approximate version of himself, namely director Bud Lee directing a movie, and as part of the overall video release including a BTS segment that relates to and amplifies the rest of the show. We see the actors shooting their individual scenes (including both sex and narrative content) and they are doubly fictional -playing fictional actors with different stage names and also the fictional characters the actors are portraying. Then in the BTS they are themselves, to the extent that actor Nick East is repeatedly colloquially called "Scott" by Lee, likely his real name, beyond the "Nick East" stage name.
So watching "Close-up" was quite interesting from a structural point-of-view, but it fails in terms of featuring stimulating content, as to its sex scenes or the fictional story. Sex is mainly mechanical, seeming to document the hard day's work of sex workers (especially since the viewer in metacinema terms is focused on the artifical nature of the filmmaking process rather than suspending disbelief and becoming involved in a story).
The movie within a movie that Lee is shooting is a potboiler, having to do with Jon Dough as a big-shot worried about his company's security arrangements, particularly to protect a very valuable diamond in its care. Kelly plays an undercover security agent hired by Dough to pretend to be his sister, and using that ruse to test whether security measures can easily be subverted. The plot of the surrounding movie deals with these two actors, called Randy and Jennifer rather than Jon and Kelly, dealing with a problematic personal relationship, in which Randy is domineering and highly unsympathetic to poor Jennifer. I found Jon's acting to be poor in both his fictional roles, whether he's Randy the actor or the businessman Randy is hired to play.
At the same time, we watch Bud represent his problems and strategies as a film director (porno division) dealing with his actors. He seems duplicitous at times, in how he handles different players in a scene in order to achieve the overall desired result, and then we also see in the BTS his philosophy of filmmaking and how he specifically directs and advises the actors like Kelly and Buck Adams in a supporting role.
To use the analogy of how porngraphy is rated legal by virtue of "socially redeeming value", "Kelly Close-up" holds interest, but unfortunately is not compelling entertainment.
Lee appears on screen as an approximate version of himself, namely director Bud Lee directing a movie, and as part of the overall video release including a BTS segment that relates to and amplifies the rest of the show. We see the actors shooting their individual scenes (including both sex and narrative content) and they are doubly fictional -playing fictional actors with different stage names and also the fictional characters the actors are portraying. Then in the BTS they are themselves, to the extent that actor Nick East is repeatedly colloquially called "Scott" by Lee, likely his real name, beyond the "Nick East" stage name.
So watching "Close-up" was quite interesting from a structural point-of-view, but it fails in terms of featuring stimulating content, as to its sex scenes or the fictional story. Sex is mainly mechanical, seeming to document the hard day's work of sex workers (especially since the viewer in metacinema terms is focused on the artifical nature of the filmmaking process rather than suspending disbelief and becoming involved in a story).
The movie within a movie that Lee is shooting is a potboiler, having to do with Jon Dough as a big-shot worried about his company's security arrangements, particularly to protect a very valuable diamond in its care. Kelly plays an undercover security agent hired by Dough to pretend to be his sister, and using that ruse to test whether security measures can easily be subverted. The plot of the surrounding movie deals with these two actors, called Randy and Jennifer rather than Jon and Kelly, dealing with a problematic personal relationship, in which Randy is domineering and highly unsympathetic to poor Jennifer. I found Jon's acting to be poor in both his fictional roles, whether he's Randy the actor or the businessman Randy is hired to play.
At the same time, we watch Bud represent his problems and strategies as a film director (porno division) dealing with his actors. He seems duplicitous at times, in how he handles different players in a scene in order to achieve the overall desired result, and then we also see in the BTS his philosophy of filmmaking and how he specifically directs and advises the actors like Kelly and Buck Adams in a supporting role.
To use the analogy of how porngraphy is rated legal by virtue of "socially redeeming value", "Kelly Close-up" holds interest, but unfortunately is not compelling entertainment.