The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - #1745 A Funny Pornstar? Yes Please

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Pornstar extraordinaire who also happens to be a comedian, Silvia Sage, joins Adam and Dr. Drew in a no holds barred conversation covering a wide range of titillating topics. Silvia discusses freedom with sexuality after being raised in a religious household, details on consent, condoms, STD’s, and what an audience should expect when watching porn. Next, Dr. Drew has some compelling questions that are as informative as they are engaging. Listen to ‘Sexy Funny Raw with Silvia Saige’ wherever you find podcasts And follow her on Instagram @TheSilviaSaige Please Support Our Sponsors: Angi.com

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Plus, a live performance of the famous Hollywood Improv on the final day of camp. So get your chops ready. Spend four days with me and some of the most successful people in the comedy business and get on the fast track into the world of comedy. Go to Adam Carolla dot com comedy fantasy camp dot com or call 888-762-2263 to sign up. That's this October 12 to 15. The first ever comedy fantasy camp in Los Angeles with Adam Carolla Jay Leno, and a host of comedy stars and TV writers. Recorded live at Carolla One Studios with Adam Carolla and board-certified physician and addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky.

You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show. Yeah, get it on. Got to get on. Get it on and welcome to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show. Dr. Drew's Board Search Vibes. This has been... All right, we got a guest today, Sylvia Sage. Sylvia is an adult film star and a comedian.

Good to see you, Sylvia. Hi, thank you for having me. Current adult film star? Technically, yes. I haven't officially retired. I still work for myself a lot, but I don't work for mainstream companies very much anymore. All right, so let's get to know Sylvia a little bit, and then we'll get on with some

subject matter here. You come from where, where, where were you born? Originally I'm from Kansas city, Missouri, home of the Superbowl champions. Oh yeah. And did you come out to LA for something or did you come out for adults film or did you do that out of KC? I actually came out for stand-up comedy. I've been doing stand-up for 11 years. I started in Kansas City and then wanted to make the jump to a place where I could actually pursue comedy, which Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago and Kansas City was cold enough. So I decided Los Angeles and it took about three months of me being in LA

where I realized that the cost of living was much higher than I could have possibly ever anticipated. So I very quickly got into adult films thinking it would just be something to kind of fund my comedy career. But then it turned into a nine-year career in pornography. What is the economics of adult films these days? Well, it's great if you can brand yourself well. I was one of the extremely lucky people to have not much success in adult films. But when the OnlyFans trend came through, I was selected to do a documentary on Hulu. And that kind of changed the game for me. So my income now is 100% off of my OnlyFans. And that's why i don't really work for studios any longer because the studios don't pay very much and they control all of the content so this way i am the content

creator i'm the owner and i make my money off of myself as opposed to just giving my likeness to someone else adam i i'm going to drill more into the only fans thing because that's something you and i rarely talk about and it's a really interesting landscape. I remember about five years ago, students started saying, you know, every time, you know, like 20 years, we go to the PTA meetings, every every mom's going to have her own video or own only fans. And we're getting there. I hope we do. And so when somebody says only fans, it's a huge spectrum of what goes on there, right? Of course.

Yeah. It's everything from comedians to chefs to adult people. It's not just sex. I mean, you're obviously allowed to put whatever kind of content you would like there. But I think that what you were saying about that, you know, every mother having an OnlyFans, I would love to see something like that, because I think that takes away the sexual stigma that is put on so many women. And I know, you know, ageism is one of the things that we might be discussing, but it's almost baffling that we tell women that the more that they age, the less sexual they should be when we are also coming into our sexual prime. be when we are also coming into our sexual prime. And it's almost looked at as like older women and older men are seemed as like predatory, you know, as a cougar or as a dirty old man, when really

sexuality should be based in the aging people and not put so much emphasis on, you know, young bodies and the youth being sexualized i think we have really turned things around there i had a i had dinner with amy horowitz last night and he told me a story he's now a single guy and he went to a bar and he met someone and left the bar with her and she was a bit younger than him and he went back to that bar and the bartender kicked him out for being a predator. Really? He said it's happened to him twice. Wow. Because he's what?

He's in his mid-50s or something probably? But he looks like he's 17. I mean, he's 140 pounds sopping wet. I mean, he doesn't look like a predator. But I guess I'm trying to think of um well in a way if you think about um who was the politician who went by like a senior wences or something and named uh dickie dickman who's all right no you know the you know who was the politician? His wife was in with Hillary Clinton, and his last name is Dickman or Dickie or something. Come on, Drew.

Well, tell me what he did first. I don't have to tell you what he did. I gave you his weird senior whatever name. I told you his wife, Uma Kubadad, or whatever, was in with him. Oh, okay, yeah. Wiener. Yeah, Wiener. Was Anthony him. Oh, okay, yeah. Wiener. Yeah, Wiener. Was Anthony Wiener, right?

Oh, yes. There you go. Right. Well, so predators come in small packages on occasion, is what I'm saying. But OnlyFans, so I think when people hear OnlyFans, they just think pornography or some version of it, but they don't think cooking and they don't think comedy. What percentage do you know is stuff that doesn't involve nudity or skin? That is a great question, and I don't know the answer to that. I would estimate to say it's a very low percentage that is not sexual. It's kind of,

you know, the drive of what OnlyFans is. But I know it definitely does exist because I have comedian friends and chef friends and fitness trainer friends who are also on OnlyFans. And at the end of the day, it still is a subscription based website, you know, so and the money comes in in so many different ways. Every message they open, there's a charge. Any message I send or receive, there's a charge. They can buy certain things from you. They can buy custom videos or panties or socks or any of the things. So it's everything in the OnlyFans game is monetary.

And Drew, when your wife was speaking about every woman at the PTA meeting having an OnlyFans game is monetary. And Drew, when your wife was speaking about every woman at the PTA meeting having an OnlyFans account, is she saying through showing nudity or is she just saying having an OnlyFans account where they talk about anything? She was actually talking about having a porn. And then it sort of morphed into OnlyFans because that's the sort of newest incarnation of that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is. I mean, it is an interesting time. So let's see if we can figure out the chronology of pornography. So back in the day, there were plenty of college girls who would do porno movies in New York in the early 70s. They looked at this sort of art house stuff. And also they figured, look, what are the chances any my family back home in

Nebraska is ever going to see any of this stuff? They don't have a pussycat theater in my hometown. You know, there's just no way anyone's going to access this. and that worked for I'd say a pretty good period of time and then at some point you know VHS tapes and DVDs came around and those started circulating and then the internet opened up and now not only is everything on the internet and shareable so there's a good chance your family back in Nebraska may catch wind of what you're up to. Oh, yeah. But all the women who did it in 1973 thinking they would never be seen have now been grandfathered into this shareable thing called called the Internet. internet then it sort of morphed into you know Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian and every other celebrity female and male having some sort of bootleg something out on the internet and then the numbers growing from you know a relatively small amount of adult actors and actresses to just about

everyone to I mean homemade you know sort of backyard porn and all that now the stigma has gone away because everyone seems to be represented in some way shape or form so then that now it's not even a thing anymore. Like, you know, herpes is stigmatized if one person has it. But if everyone has herpes, then everyone has herpes. And here we are. I think we're just hitting the threshold of that. So if somebody back in Nebraska said, oh, my God, my daughter's doing porn. If there were more than three people in that room, someone else would raise their hand and go, my daughter's doing as well. And now we've erased the stigma. Does that seem like an accurate chronology of it?

Yeah, I would say so. And I think it's an excellent turn. If I do say so myself, I grew up very heavy involved in the church and I had a very healthy fear of God and I had a very healthy fear of sex and sexuality for a very long time. And I think because sexuality is being less demonized, it's such a healthy place for everyone because now we can actually have conversations about sex and tell the youth of today that pornography is not a lesson in sex. You know, we always make a joke that pornography is no more of a teachable sex lesson than you would go to the Fast and Furious for driving instructions. You know, it's not what it's meant to be, but we should be having open conversations and we should be talking about women being sexual and mothers being allowed to be sexual without just being a mother. I have two questions. You said healthy fear of sexuality, number one.

I was curious about that as well. And then number two, Adam and I have been doing this for 30 years. This is not a new thing. So it's a little confusing. Well, I don't know that healthy fear is the correct terminology. I would just say I definitely was raised with fears of sexuality. I have childhood molestation in my past. And so I was scared of men for a very long time. And I didn't have the body autonomy that I have or I didn't understand really what consent was. I spent most of my 20s kind of giving away sex, you know, because I didn't have my own value and my own worth to my sexuality.

So were you treated for that trauma? I don't know that treated is the correct. But you would know. You would know. It's a very specific thing. No. And so, you know, there's an awful lot of childhood sexual abuse in the adult industry. A lot.

Well, one in six women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. So it's not just in the adult industry. It's more than one in six. It's more than one in six. And it's usually explicit to it's really like, you know, full, really serious sexual abuse sustained oftentimes. Yeah. And so it's interesting how this becomes sort of a choice when that history is there. How do you prevent from re-traumatizing yourself? Because now I live in a world of consent. That is the one thing that pornography gave me that the real world did not. No one taught me that I was allowed to say no to things or people until pornography.

Pornography gave me an actual checklist of things and said, what are you comfortable with? And before you have sex with anyone in a sexual scene, you run through everyone's checklist. So everyone is aware of what everyone is capable of doing, what they're comfortable with. And if anything is done on that list that makes someone uncomfortable, the entire scene is stopped. And we get back to where everyone is comfortable and happy. And that is something that never exists, does not exist in the real world. And so a lot of thing, you know, having treated many, many, many people with this history. One of the things that is extremely common is a difficulty bringing sexuality and intimacy together, particularly in a close relationship. How have you managed that?

I don't think I have a true problem with intimacy, but you may have me there because I've also been single for 15 years. I say out of choice, but I have just been very focused on my career and doing my thing. So I haven't been in an intimate relationship since being in pornography, but I have had healthy relationships prior. Well, and you say be focusing on your career and doing your thing. Yeah. So a little bit difficult to date when in pornography. That's what I was going to say, because if you were an attorney, you could focus on your career and doing your thing and have a man waiting for you at home when you got home from the law office. But this is not something you feel like you can do at the same time, essentially. I definitely think I could.

I don't want to. I don't like having to schedule sex with my partners. And because of pornography, that's what I would have to do out of my own safety fears. You know, I'm tested every two weeks, but by, you know, the standard, but I test in between every partner. So just, I like to have the knowledge of if anything came to me from this specific person. So I think it would be more difficult to have to schedule a time for intimacy with my partner, as opposed to just having the ability to only have that one partner. So are you with partners on your only fan site?

Of course. Yeah. And so it's not solo stuff. It's you're doing it with people. It's solo. And occasionally I hire other actors as well. I see. And that's interesting. How does that? Yeah. How does that work?

They're like independent contractors. Well, I've worked in the porn industry for nine years, so I know all of the porn actors and actresses within the industry. and actresses within the industry. And a lot of times we'll do content trade where we both own the content or what you can do is, you know, I can hire a male talent and I basically buy the rights away from him. I will pay his rate and then I own all of the content.

So it's like you're the studio. Yes. What is a typical male rate versus a female? Is it also what would what would Adam get? Yeah, what would I get? The males do start out rather low. The males start out around, I'd say, between three to five hundred a scene in the beginning. Sexism.

Yeah. Yeah. But the longer that they are in the industry and the more reliable they prove to be, their rate does go up. So like the Johnny Sins of the world, who is a very recognizable name to most people, he's making probably a couple thousand a scene. It strikes me that there's kind of a catch-22, but I don't know what your opinion on this is, which is in terms of being in a long-term or committed relationship while being involved in the industry, part of the fact that you're going, you know, your day job is to have sex with Johnny sin and then come home and make lasagna for me at night. Like I, I don't, I don't trust that guy. Now, a lot of people look at it as, as it's the ultimate in the evolution that this person is so evolved that they can compartmentalize and be completely open to. I just haven't really met that guy. I haven't either. But I do have friends in the industry who have been in very long term relationships and make it work. A lot of the times they're dueling performers because it takes a performer to kind

of know what we go through so they can better understand the ins and outs and the fact that it is work and it's me going to work to do a job. Yes, the job involves sex, but it's also, I always tell people that it's not real sex. It's real penetration, but it is a theatrical performance, you know, and there's not a lot of things that are comfortable about it. There's very rarely, often even real orgasms that are happening, you know, so it's not the same connection you would have with a partner. All right. We need to take a quick break. Be right back with more Sylvia Sage and Dr. Drew right after this. All right, be right back with more Sylvia Sage and Dr. Drew right after this. Hey, naturally, when a break-in happens, every second counts.

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When you sign up for fast protect monitoring, it's a huge offer, limited time. All you've got to do is go to simplisafe.com slash adam2. That's SimpliSafe with an I. S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com slash adam. And then number two an I S I M P L I safe dot com dash Adam and then number two simply safe dot com slash Adam to there's no safe like simply safe. All right, so ageism in the adult film industry, you do. I mean, I've I've sort of two heads on it you know I was actually thinking about it I was watching the NFL network before I came in today and they were doing this sort of retroactive you know Super Bowl great Super Bowl teams and at the end they did a sort of here's

what these guys were up to and it was that I think it was the 85 Bears team and it was at the end they did a sort of, here's what these guys were up to. And it was the, I think it was the 85 bears team. And it was at the end, it was Jim McMahon. And now, you know, he won a second super bowl is Brett Favre's backup with the green Bay Packers in 1996. A lot of people don't know that two super bowls for Jim McMahon, but now it goes now he enjoys golfing. And, and I thought to myself, sure, that makes sense. And then I thought to myself, wait a minute, I'm probably older than that dude and I'm coming into work, you know. And we've accepted that in football, for instance,

you're done at age 33, 34, and then you golf. Professional sports all the way around the board are pretty much that way. No one really gets it. Jim McMahon had severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy too bad. Oh, he did. Oh yeah. But nobody, nobody gets past their 40th birthday in professional sports. And then you, and everyone understands it. And I think a lot of it is not just that the guy can't physically perform

but he can't like people go no one wants to pay money to see a 50 year old jim mcmahon hobble around on a football field so i think that bleeds into pornography sometimes as well so is it so meaning it's just a market issue well yeah Is it ageism or is it a market issue? Because they'll take Tom Brady in his 40s. Well, if it's not a market issue, why not have 70-year-olds in porn or 80-year-olds in porn? Because people don't want to watch. And so it's just a market thing. Yeah.

It truly is. And it is a physical aspect of it as well. I mean, I will be 40 in just a few months and I feel it after every set. I started at the industry at 30 and I was able to do 15 scenes a month and be fine. Now I can go in and do two scenes and I'm exhausted and need to take the next month off. Which is another issue because perimenopause kicks in in the mid-30s, and this all becomes painful and damaging sometimes. Absolutely. And if they're not, you know, you said you're attending to the medical issues

carefully with the testing. I'm curious what you're tested for, but we'll get that in a second. But people should be taking hormone replacement therapy if they're going to try to maintain this level of activity. No, absolutely. And there are certain things that happen to a woman's body with aging. I'm sure you know this as well, Dr. Drew, but the lining of our vagina will actually thin, making us more susceptible to STDs. Right. But that's all perimenopause stuff. That can be reversed. But yes, absolutely, it happens. But the UTI stuff, that's more common and not much about that because that's all pelvic floor stuff that just, you know, our muscles just age. So gonorrhea, syphilis, um, what am I missing? Chlamydia. Yes. Thank you. But the, what you're probably asking is, do we test for, uh, herpes and HPV? And the

answer is no, we do not. Because once again, as we've said, if one person has it, it is stigmatized, but if not, you know, so we're pretty confident that the entire industry has both of those things. Yeah. And so I actually was I was actually curious about syphilis because that used to not be on the routine panels. And then there was an outbreak of panels again. And I'm curious if I was just curious if they're still on the panels. And as it pertains to HPV, are people if they have not been vaccinated, are they encouraged to get vaccinated? There is really no, like, we have a board that kind of oversees our testing, but there's really no, no one telling you what you should be doing in the porn industry. It's all very cutthroat. And so no one is giving advice

to anyone. So no. What do you mean? That's interesting too. What do you mean by cutthroat. And so no one is giving advice to anyone. So no. That's interesting, too. What do you mean by cutthroat? It's very competition based. So there's not a lot of people giving you tips on how to succeed because they would rather just see you fail and go away. Is that, is that again, just because those, I'm just curious, it doesn't sound like the male performers would be that way, right? Cause they want work from you. Was it just the female performers that fight amongst themselves? Uh, I wouldn't even say fight amongst themselves. I would, cause I think within the industry, like once you're in and you're good, uh, everyone's fine, but certainly in the beginning, beginning um no one is helping you come on and figure out what's going to make you money no one's telling you what companies to work for

you know no one's giving good sage advice uh to these people reverse ageism adam reverse yeah is um i was thinking about the venereal diseases and then I was thinking about a lot of legislation and discussion about condom use several years ago that I don't hear brought up anymore. Remember, there's a lot of discussion about mandatory this and folks are going to make their films outside of California. There's a lot of condom talk. It was like 10 years ago. And I've not heard anything about it in a in a decade what is we don't we do not use condoms and is it is it sort of like leaf blowers in that well no what i'm saying is i'm not comparing the other way my gardener showed up with a

electric leaf blower last week oh electric i would like to hook a condom up to a leaf blower and see how big i could get that thing but number one or if i could fly but the point is this there is a ordinance in la county that for it's been around for over 20 years leaf blowers are illegal yeah they are it's just not enforced at all and i'm saying maybe the condom use is like the leaf blower and that i remember rules and legislation and this is this is what we mandate and then the backlash the industry was pushing back and so on and so forth and it was like no this is what we're doing yeah so the rule probably didn't get rescinded. It's probably still on the books. They just realized it's not enforceable and to move on sort of like they did with they did with the leaf blowers.

Yeah, I would say so. I don't know that it actually took effect, but we certainly do not practice it. So I think that Emmy or Ben in the booth could probably find out. I mean, Drew drew you remember this conversation right it's about a decade old and there's a lot of this is the new mandate some of the city's got up in arms because we're gonna lose all the revenue from you know van i is not gonna be the porn capital anymore yeah yeah i I just remember a lot of that discussion just sort of falling to the wayside. It seems to me that the adult film industry was basically run by men since its inception.

Yes. Yes. But women seem to be taking a much bigger role in the sort of front office, these people that had these, you know, were contract players with Vivid, broke off and started their own thing and own their stuff and license and likeness and all that kind of stuff. But is it still sort of a male dominated profession? And we know this. The stars aren't the males, per se. Who's then who are the males that are cashing in? Um, well, that would be the people who own, you know, MindGeek. Um, the MindGeek owns pretty much all the porn sites. They own Pornhub. They, uh, have their hands over everything. It's a Canadian based company. Um, and yes, it is a-run industry. It's a male-run industry for men,

and the stars are, of course, the women, as you mentioned. But there are some more female-led companies that are coming, too. The problem with that is these female-run companies are trying to make female porn for female viewers, but there's just not a big enough crowd. You know, there's not a big enough audience that's waiting for female porn. So at the end of the day, males are the ones taking in, males are the ones running it. And that's, I mean, there's really not a whole lot to say about it you know years ago uh gosh it probably was around 2005 or something stormy daniels was on loveline were you i don't know if you were there adam or not and and she said to me she goes look i produce these i produce these films now i produced a ton of them because i

learned one thing and that thing is that men watch porn and they want to see people having sex, period. Women want to know why those two people like each other so much that they're willing to have sex together. And she goes, I produce totally differently for men than women. Yeah, it is. And the porn that's for the women is a lot softer. There's a lot more storyline going into it. You know, it's a full length movie as opposed to a 10 minute clip. Well, last but not least, we should talk a little about stand up. Yes. go for what they know. You know, fat comedians talk about being fat. Sometimes oftentimes black comedians will talk about the black experience. You know, they just talk about things that they're familiar with. That's where their source of their material. So how much of your act is about pornography?

A lot. But I will say so. I got into porn at 30, but I worked in the medical industry for nearly a decade. I worked four years in cardiology and four years in chiropractic. So I have a college degree and I talk about all of that in my set. And I talk about how I worked in corporate America, found out it wasn't for me and made the switch into comedy and pornography. And I talk about what I've learned in pornography. I get very serious. I even do talk about my molestation and my standup. So it is all me and it is my life. And you come on a rollercoaster ride with me. And I'm just down here in San Diego actually working on my hour. So I bet it's interesting. Yeah, because when you have interesting life experiences

and you bring it to comedy, it makes it interesting. Are you looking to do an hour special? Yes, I will be. I will be recording my hour special later this year. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Do you know where we could? And by the way, I can throw people to your Instagram and probably find it there.

It's actually will be recorded in Los Angeles, but it's a new comedy club that's being built downtown. Not quite ready yet. Oh, interesting. Podcast Sexy Funny Raw with Sylvia Sage. And if you want to find out more about her stand up or beyond, you can go to her Instagram at the Sylvia Sage as well. Sylvia, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate you having me on. Shining a light. I'm going to be in Vegas coming up at Kimmel's Comedy Club.

That'll be July 20th. And then Boise, Idaho at the Egyptian Theater. Never been to Boise. July 27th, Portland, Oregon, Helium. July 23rd, 20, sorry, 28th and 29th. Just go to amcroll.com for all the live shows.

What do you got, Drew? Check out my OnlyFans. Just kidding. I got to say, I'm jealous of people that are able to do that. It sounds like an interesting business. Dr. TV for that streaming show Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Let's see.

Check out Vivek Ramaswamy. I love both of them. And it's really interesting stuff. Check it out. So, Dr. Drew, I would subscribe to your only fans. Thank you. I appreciate it. Till next time, I'm Carl Ruff for Sylvie Sage, Dr. Drew saying, Mahalo.

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