Facts you may already know about Misty Mundae: she's New Jersey born and bred, 23 years old and has already made well over 35 feature movies, the first of which was I WAS A TEENAGE STRANGLER. Factory 2000 got her into the business, where she attracted the attention of Seduction Cinema, and the rest is softcore erotica history. She went on to star in such films as PLAY-MATE OF THE APES, LORD OF THE G-STRINGS, SPIDERBABE and many, many others.
Now that we have those facts out of the way, let's take a look at a side of Misty that we haven't seen before. When asked what her plans are for next year, Misty tells us: "I plan on making the Dean's List!"
Indeed, it's no secret that Misty is an A student in college, where she's majoring in Communications. But hold on, Misty, we're not letting you off that easily. What are your plans for next year careerwise?
"That's the beauty of my career," she continues. "I don't have any expectations, so I'm never let down. Yeah, I like starring in the films, and directing is fun as well, but starring in six feature films can be monotonous if they're all similar. I've got to keep myself entertained, you know?
"Seduction Cinema shoots many, many films. It's a formula and it has its quota of everything that needs to be in it. That's why I feel that if I get more opportunities to direct that I could be the one to shake it up a little bit. I'm on the actress side saying things like, 'Didn't we already make this film a couple times? Let's do something new!'"
Misty has already directed two features, LUSTFUL ADDICTION and CONFESSIONS OF A NATURAL BEAUTY. LUSTFUL ADDICTION stars Ruby LaRocca and herself. "Basically, it's a remake of a late 1960s Nick Phillips film," Misty relates. "Michael (Raso, brainchild behind Seduction Cinema) had the idea to release the original and have a new rendition of it on the same DVD. So he gave me that project to direct. I tried to make it look as retro as I possibly could, very much in the same vein as the original. We did it without natural sound, with overdubbed voice-overs. The idea was to keep continuity with the original picture. We changed the story a little bit for convenience and budget but also because we wanted to take it in a slightly
different direction."
And how did Misty feel about directing? "Honestly, I think directing the actors is a lot easier (than the technical aspects)," Misty replies. "Technically, of course, I'm a novice and everything I'm learning, I'm learning as I'm doing it. When you're directing a feature film, it's not the best time to be learning! But the only way you can learn is through experience. I had a lot of technical direction helping me throughout. I had Johnny Crash, the editor, doing camerawork for me, and then we sat down and edited it together. I learned a lot.
"But as far as directing the acting, that's what comes most naturally to me, because I've been in those shoes so many times. I feel that I know how to approach it. I know what I perceive to be good direction and how I receive direction from people in a certain manner. That helps in how I project my own direction, even though Ruby was my roommate at the time. She was my roommate for six months and we’re friends. But that probably just made it easier for me because I could speak openly with her and find out what she was uncomfortable with. I have a pretty good grasp of what she's capable of. I think she's a really good actress; she's the only girl I thought would be good in that part in LUSTFUL ADDICTION. Originally, the producers wanted me to play that role, but it's just too hectic. When I was doing CONFESSIONS OF A NATURAL BEAUTY, I was starring and directing--and that was my first attempt at directing, so it was really intense. It's enough for me to try and star in a film with all the other stuff on my mind at school and in my personal life.
"People have this image of me that I'm always this beautiful, together, maintained type of girl when in reality I'm just a hippie and I sit around and read books and play guitar all day. In real life I don't lounge around in my fancy, lacy lingerie waiting for men to peep in my window. That's not
really what I do."
It isn't? What a shock. How does she think she's perceived by her fans?
"I don't know how they perceive me," she says, "because I don't try and mask who I really am. I don't portray myself as a Barbie doll. I think my diehard fans probably have a better understanding of who I really am, as opposed to people who only have relations through their television set. I have no way of knowing; I hope that however they perceive me, it's positive. "
As far as the media is concerned, Misty Mundae is now an international star. The British TV show OUT THERE TV has just done a segment on her, and a Seduction Cinema DVD boxed set of some of her movies is soon to be released in the U.K. What does Misty think of all this?
"I think the angle that the British producers were taking on my career," she continues, "is that I am not your most typical actress in that I don't have plastic surgery, I don't always have my nails manicured before I show up on set, and I don't study my lines! I'm there for the fun and the experience, and I do take it seriously because I'm trying to be professional. I'm contracted now and everything and I've evolved to a new relationship with Seduction Cinema. But beyond that, I think it's kind of uncanny that I'm doing these films. I think that's what the phenomenon is: I don't look like I should be in these films and that is kind of the appeal of it. There are actresses who dress up in fetish gear to make them look like they're 15, and that just doesn't work. There's no appeal there because you can tell that it's a gimmick. People who look at me think I really do look like the girl next door, because I really am. I don't look like a porn star! It's purely accidental that I'm in erotica."
Misty feels that, as a director, she can bring something to the table that is different from what her male counterparts do with the subject matter: "I don't know how advantageous that will be, because it's definitely from a woman's perspective. CONFESSION OF A NATURAL BEAUTY is just girls dressing up in cute outfits and talking about boys and then talking about how maybe
they like girls. It's not really thick in plot. It's an endeavor to try and get something across, and I definitely don't think it seems like a man directed it.
"It's important to have a male perspective, because I know it's a male audience. But at the same time, I just wanted the project to be a little different. Men don't know why they like what they like, but they like women. And so when a woman gets to actually interject what she thinks is sexy, it
should translate and the men should like it as well."
Misty has been doing so much film work during the past year that she feels it's swept by almost like a blur. She has the starring role in SPIDERBABE. "That's the latest one," she says, "so I kind of have SPIDERBABE on the brain. LORD OF THE G-STRINGS is like five projects ago, and I can't even remember it that well. I have a lot of hope instilled in SPIDERBABE, a lot of confidence that it will be good. The producers put so much into it that I'd be amazed if it didn't exceed everybody's expectations."
In the future, Misty hopes to direct "a spoofy kind of fairy tale." Meanwhile, she's been very busy directing a college video project based on the writings of Gothic poet and artist Edward Gorey. "Of all the projects I've done, I'm really most proud of that," Misty admits. "There wasn't any adult quota to fill and I could put copywritten music in it. I could just do anything I wanted with it, regardless of whether or not it's marketable. It's really refreshing; it reminds me of why I started doing movies. This is why I like working in film, to be creative. There's added stress the bigger
the movies get. I realize it's all to make the project better, but at the same time it's really fun and refreshing to go back to something that's low-tech, low-budget, one man holding a boom and two actors and that's it. You go and get your shots and there's no pressure. There's nothing else
tedious involved. Filmmaking should be fun, but sometimes it turns into something else. I wanted to do something like this to get my bearings again. I was losing sight of why I was doing this for awhile. It kind of reminded me that I do like working in film, it is a good medium and it's a lot of fun."
Time now for that time-honored question: Where does Misty see herself in ten years?
I'm really focusing on graduating college just now. I do like working in films, so maybe my future is somewhere in that realm. But I want my education to be eclectic and maybe ten years down the line, I'll just be figuring out what the hell I want to do with my life."
Right now, Misty says, she's trying to focus on school, her personal life and her own films, "regardless of whether anybody gets to see them. It's more important for me to express myself than be somebody else's vision all the time."
And being a groovy and happening chick while she's doing it.
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