In 2007, Stormy Daniels starred with Randy Spear in the porn film Black Widow (sorry, not a porn parody of the Marvel film, although, yeah, those exist. Look up The Assvengers). It was one of the first films she made after she had sex with Donald Trump one time in 2006. And, in context, I gotta tell you: there’s a dissertation that could be written about this confluence of fucked-up history and fuck film.
Lemme set this up for you: Stormy plays Peyton, a poor young women from an abusive mother and a cruel, neglectful father, and she grew up in south Louisiana (like me). The movie takes place after Stormy/Peyton is grown up. She has decided that the way to get anywhere is to find a sugar daddy, marry him, and then murder him. When the movie starts, we know that Peyton is married to Randy Spear or “Charles,” a wealthy corporate lawyer with a heart of gold. She’s 20 and he’s 56. She says, “He was just attractive enough to fuck…He was quiet, gentle, and suffered from chronic depression.” Nothing like hearing about mental illness in the midst of jacking off to porn.
But think about it… think about it...The reason that Stormy Daniels let Donald Trump fuck her was because he was making promises about getting her on Celebrity Apprentice and helping her go mainstream. Except he ended up failing on that promise. So, in real life, she had sex with an unattractive, mentally ill man because she thought she’d get something out of it.
Back to Black Widow: In order to get what she thinks she deserves, Peyton decides she’s going to poison Charles and take his fortune. She even finds a small book on assisted suicide she uses as a guide to see what to give Charles to kill him.
Now, I suppose you’re wondering, “Wait, isn’t this porn?” Well, sure. And, just like Stormy with Trump, Peyton has sex with Charles, although I'm sure this was a lot more athletic. There’s a bunch of cocksucking and pussy-eating before some condom covered dick-in-vag action. But the whole thing is scored to some minor key strings, like a bunch of evil shit is happening. It’s like Charles is jizzing on Peyton’s face while saying, “That’s fucking awesome, yeah, yeah” while on the soundtrack isn’t the usual "bang-chicka-wah-wah." No, it’s like a horror movie with dissonant violins screeching.
Which, again, if you think about it, must have been what was going through Stormy Daniels’ mind while Donald Trump lumbered on top of her and thrust his mushroom dick into her without a condom for a couple of seconds before heaving off her and saying how awesome it was. Can you blame her for saying, “Oh, fuck, yeah, you’re paying me for silence” when they offered it to her?
And, by the way, Daniels (or, you know, Stephanie Clifford) is no slouch in the business acumen department. Indeed, you could teach a seminar in supply and demand with her autobiography cum business guide, Full Disclosure. Check out this look at the capitalistic give and take of the strip club:
“If you walked in at ten p.m., you were going in cold, trying to get the attention of guys when you were one of many to choose from. But that’s where the money was. There were three set shifts: 3 to 11, 8:30 - 2, and 10 - 2. Dancers had to pay a house fee for the two later shifts, with the last shift asking the highest house fee for the shortest time. A house fee is the ‘rent’ you pay the club as a contractor occupying their space to offer your services. The same way hairstylists will often pay for their space at a salon. There was no fee if you came in at opening, because no girl wants to be there when it’s three guys.”
Now, here is where Daniels reveals herself to be far wiser than you’d think. She says, “I wanted to avoid the house fee but wanted to maximize profit, so for the first five months, I worked the 3 to 11 shift, clocking out just as many girls were getting there. Then I got smarter and I would work a double, starting at three in the afternoon and not leaving until two in the morning. I could skip the house fee, establish my guys, and stay with them when the later girls rolled in.”
Am I wrong, economics nerds, that this is an example of market optimization, maximizing profits based on your marketing efforts? I think so. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who saturated the market with his own gaudy, debt-heavy casinos that ultimately went bankrupt because of a fundamental misreading of the market.
Later, Daniels offers a lesson in long-term investment strategy through her regular customer who she called “Bear” because “his white hair and beard gave him the look of a polar bear.” She writes, “He was definitely a creature of habit, coming in every night at midnight after finishing his job as the nighttime manager of a car wash and taking his usual spot to stay the last couple of hours. Once I saw he came in every night, I always made a point of dancing for him. Bear was never a big spender. He would tip a five onstage, and he only got table dances if it was a two-for-one, which they did every hour. Table dances were only ten dollars, but he always gave a twenty and he always closed out the night with me. That meant Bear was good for between twenty-five and fifty dollars a night. But late on a Friday or Saturday night, there’s always a guy who wants to go into a VIP room and you can get six or seven hundred dollars, so the girls would ignore Bear to make that money. Not me - I would always give Bear the last dance of the night. Girls would be like, ‘This guy wants to give you a hundred dollars for a table dance.
“‘No, I only dance for Bear.’
“‘What’s wrong with you?’ was the constant refrain.
“‘He’s twenty dollars every night,’ I said. ‘Every week. Every month. Do the math.’
“He was sensitive about things, and why be rude to him one night to get two or three hundred dollars off this guy who I’m never gonna see again? It’s the long game, and Bear taught me it.”
Here, Daniels evinced an ethos based on self-control, on customer retention, rather than short-term gain. Customer loyalty allowed Daniels to get through times when there was a reduced market in general.
When Daniels started doing pornographic films, she acted in dozens before she started to write and direct them. She became recognized as one of the best directors for actors, never demanding they do more than what they had agreed to do. Women especially like to work for her. That's a hell of a great reputation.
She is currently worth over $2 million and she says that she carries zero debt. By some of the most pessimistic (or optimistic, depending on your bent) estimates, Donald Trump holds at least 1.1 billion dollars in debt. And some other estimates put his assets at around 600 million dollars. That means that there is at least a small chance that Stephanie Clifford - Stormy Daniels - is worth more than Donald Trump.
In other words, being a respectable porn artist and stripper is better for your portfolio than being a wildly irrational real estate speculator and brand operator. To put it another way, Stormy Daniels dealt in less fantasy than The Art of the Deal. And if Donald Trump is indicted and arrested this week, we can thank Daniels for taking advantage of Trump's weaknesses, like a good capitalist.
