- Director, Christine Fugate  
   
Slamdance celebrated it's 5th season with a very special screening of documentarian Christine Fugate's The Girl Next Door, featuring the over-salined porn star Stacy Valentine.  From housewife to porn star is the hook that SROs and overflows the  screening room at the Treasure Mountain Inn.  

Stacy Baker was a shy, adult victim of child abuse (at her violent father's hands) and spousal abuse from her ex-Oakie husband who encouraged her into posing for Hustler, then got pissed at her for doing it.  

"I believe in punishment and spanking," says the new and improved talking headstress Stacy Valentine. "But not when you're mad." Okay...  

Quickly, Fugate wisely takes us onto porno sets, where the true characters of the business  from grips to managers to directors to co-stars, to "JJ the stunt dick," manage to amuse with their deadpan dedication towards perfecting the art of the DP, or Double Penetration.  Yes, the amount of holes stuffed at once has -- in recent years -- supplanted the old money-shot to the face in terms of popularity.  

Balancing comedy with the unnerving,  Valentine allows the camera to follow her into her various plastic surgery sessions -- liposuction and breast enhancement procedures that look like hideous, sadistic experiments gone amuck.  

The Girl Next Door's mid-section becomes sickeningly soap operatic, as Valentine falls in love with knucklehead porn stud Julian, moves in with him, and -- much like her experience with her ex-husband -- receives the wrath of his jealousy for "doing" another guy first in the first porn scene she was to do with him.  

The victim of her own repetition of romantic mistakes (expecting different results) then gets shut out at a video awards ceremony she had her sights set on winning, and then even her sex drive drops to zero upon her realization that "There's more to just having sex with me."  She retreats to the comfort of her cats, sees a hypnotherapist to heal her self-image, and even goes home to Tulsa where we meet her mother and stepfather who are actually cool about their daughter's career choice.  

She's had enough!  After two years in, and a meteoric rise in the adult entertainment industry, Stacy Valentine wants out.  She wants to go to school to be a makeup artist.  She really does, until she falls back in with Julian and travels to Cannes where she -- in short order -- wins something called the Hot D'or Award for Best Actress, then prostitutes herself to a wealthy French fan.  

In the end, Stacy signs a healthy contract with a major video company, but -- split again from Julian -- her "soul is still hungry."  

After the screening, the big-titty glitterbug joins her director for a rousing Q&A session.  Her message is "porn stars are people too," but, other than that, she doesn't have much to say.