LOS ANGELES — Christy Canyon will return to the airwaves this Monday with “The Christy Canyon Show," broadcast on Vivid Radio on Sirius FM, channel 415.
Canyon’s daily show, a long-running interview and commentary program centered on sex and the adult industry, has been on hiatus since early April, when Vivid Radio suspended operations at the start of California’s “stay-at-home” orders due to the pandemic.
But the irrepressible Canyon has not been idle over the past few months. She and her close friend, fellow adult industry legend Ginger Lynn, have also created “Who Let the Girls Out,” another radio show with a podcast format they have been recording weekly, and also shooting on video, at a pro studio in Las Vegas.
XBIZ met the cougar-tastic twosome (they refer to themselves, only half-mockingly, as “your legends”) at Canyon’s majestic home, overlooking the entire San Fernando Valley. They talked about “Who Let the Girls Out” and jumping on the OnlyFans juggernaut at this point in their storied careers, the one photo shoot or movie of theirs they’d save from a house on fire, and how two of the unquestionable, capital-letter "Porn Stars" continue thriving and adapting in the digital millennium.
Your Two Favorite Legends
Canyon immediately launches into pitch mode with the self-made assurance of someone for whom selling is second nature. The moment XBIZ hits "record," she’s off to the races, explaining how to access “Who Let the Girls Out” via their Patreon and going full female Don Draper on the concept pitch:
“Who Let the Girls Out!” she proclaims. “Ginger Lynn and Christy Canyon. Your two favorite legends getting back together. We were on a different radio show for 10 years together on Playboy radio, then we were apart for six years, but we kept in touch all the time 'cause we’re besties.”
Canyon explains that after Playboy, she went off to do the Vivid Radio show for SiriusXM, but when that show was put on hold in the spring because of the pandemic, she grew restless.
“So I called Ginger three months ago and I said, ‘This is the perfect time to start our own thing, with audio, with video, and bring back the magic we had together for all those beautiful years at Playboy!’” Canyon explained.
Lynn told XBIZ that the big difference between the self-produced, self-distributed “Who Let the Girls Out” and Canyon’s Vivid show, or their former Playboy show, is total freedom to do whatever they want, particularly with their body parts.
“One of the nice things about us doing our show together is that we don’t have anyone saying, ‘You can’t do this’,” said porn’s original blonde-next-door.
“Playboy first had a three-page contract with ‘dos and don’ts'” she adds with that iconic, mischievous smile. “By the time I was done, it was 300 pages, very clearly specifying ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that!'"
She makes a fake-coy face. “I mean, it originally didn’t say ‘You can’t suck dick on the radio,’ so I kept pushing the envelope and the contract got thicker every day: ‘No insertion!’ ‘Nothing hardcore!’ What did they expect — I’m famous for putting things in my pussy that don’t belong there.”
Fun Fact: Christy Canyon and Ginger Lynn, your legends, love saying shocking things in the most adorable, matter-of-fact way. There’s something refreshing — in these “I’m a brand/I’m an influencer/I make content” days — about the good ol' classic raunch that peppers their conversation and demeanor, as if every environment and conversation had the same codes as the roller disco in “Boogie Nights.”
Christy Canyon adores “Boogie Nights.”
“They got it right,” she confirms.
Do What You Girls Do
At the studio they have rented to shoot and record “Who Let the Girls Out,” that anything-goes atmosphere gets dialed up to 11, by two gals who have seen (and done) it all.
“Suddenly we have our own platform,” says Canyon, “with no rules, no limits and we can be who we really are.”
Their producing partner, they tell XBIZ, had some minimal reservations at first, but after seeing them in action — say, for example, by exploring diaper fetishes by putting diapers on each other and broadcasting their thoughts and feelings while urinating — he changed his mind.
“Do what you girls do,” he told them, “because no one can stop you — and it’s fabulous.”
Lynn says that "one of my OnlyFans people sent me a text saying we are like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but we are constantly switching, where one is the straight guy and the other one is funny.”
“Our show,” she adds, “combines sexuality, sex — for real — comedy, instruction, education and two or three times a month there might be a segment that’s kind of gross.”
“And you get it all in one episode!” adds Canyon.
Lynn explains that the loose format embraces chance. “We’d have a topic, and then I’d see Christy’s titties and then just lose my train of thought.”
“But eventually we get back to what the topic is — most of the time,” adds Canyon, describing the “Art of Eating Papaya” segment, where they demonstrate their cunnilingus skills on a tropical fruit.
“Christy ate hers beautifully,” says Lynn. “Mine, I pretended it was Traci Lords and I felt sick about it,” she deadpans in a playful reference to her historic industry nemesis.
From Film to OnlyFans
Lynn’s mention of her OnlyFans page prompts a question about how they get along with the notorious premium site du jour.
Turns out they both have profitable accounts that they manage very closely. Since they crashed the business in the mid-1980s, the adult industry lifers have reinvented themselves as needed through film, video, streaming and now OnlyFans.
“We have known each other for 36 years,” says Canyon, “and it’s always been great. In the 1990s there were times when we wouldn’t talk for a year cause we were doing different things, but we always come full circle and we pick up right where we left off.”
XBIZ points out that if they'd a kid when they met, that kid would now be considered a MILF.
They laugh, though Lynn instantly points out that she’s fine with the concept, she hates the "M-word."
“I’m a cougar, baby” purrs Lynn, “and she’s a panther!”
Prompted by Julie Cash when she guest on the SiriusXM radio show, Canyon started her OnlyFans two years ago. “But I didn’t know what I was doing. I still had my old-school website," Canyon recalls. "I now look at how advanced everything about my OnlyFans is, and the old site feels like a VHS compared to gonzo scenes.”
It took Canyon about a year to understand the process, but once the enterprising and investment-shrewd entrepreneur got the hang of it, she really started making bank.
“Fans want both new stuff and vintage stuff,” she explains. “I have everyone from a 25-year-old up to my dear fans who were there from day one and may have lost their masturbation virginity to a VHS of ‘Christy Canyon Acts Like a... Virgin.'"
“You have the younger ones who love the cougars, and you got your old timers that are glad you’re still around,” she adds.
Lynn only started her OnlyFans a month ago, and she is learning fast, coached by her co-legend. “There’s a huge age range,” she says. “My fans come from all over the place, not just because of my porn, but they also come because of the Rob Zombie movies, the Metallica videos and all my mainstream stuff.”
Top One Photo Shoot and Movie
Unlike the 2020 industry newbies, Canyon and Lynn are also sitting on a massive vault of vintage content that they can monetize.
If they had to salvage only one from a house on fire, XBIZ asked, what would be their favorite shoot and movie from the vault?
“My Penthouse layout was my favorite,” says Canyon without hesitation. “It came out in February 1985 and it was beautiful. It was amazing, shot by the great Steve Hicks. As far as movies, I love the early Vivid comedies, particularly ‘The Show’ (1996) and ‘Comeback’ (1995), written, believe it or not, by two guys who used to write the sitcom ‘Mad About You.’ They wrote it because they loved PT [director Paul Thomas], they loved Vivid and they loved me!”
Lynn says that her favorite magazine shoot happened before she started doing films. “I did a shoot for Suze Randall, for Puritan magazine, where I had five guys at once,” she reminisces. “I had both hands, my ass full, my pussy full, my mouth. You have to juggle, to keep everyone hard was a lot of work, but so much fucking fun!”
“As for movies — ’New Wave Hookers’ (1984) and one of my comeback films, ‘White Lightning’ (2000),” says Lynn, namechecking one of the true classics of the genre (plus a personal favorite).
But neither Canyon nor Lynn live in the past. They both realized early on that the internet was going to change the entire industry — in Lynn’s case, very early on.
“I first saw the internet in 1992,” she says. “It was starting to get going and I was petrified of it.”
Canyon marvels at this revelation. “1992? I remember right about the late-1990s when I was on the road dancing and they had newsgroups called things like ‘alt.fan.christycanyon.’ And I remember Dave from Ohio, a long-time fan of mine who became a friend, he would come into the club and print out all these questions from alt.fan.christycanyon and I’d say ‘What’s this?’ and he’d say 'It’s a newsgroup on the internet,’ So, I’d answer his questions and he’d type them up and upload them.”
A Valley Fairy Tale
Canyon says she had a much clearer picture of the internet’s effect on business around 2004, when she got her job on Playboy Radio and her guests kept complaining about their scenes being “stolen.”
“I’d go to Vivid,” Canyon says, “because they ran ChristyCanyon.com and they’d be, like, ‘Christy! What’s this scene from?’ because they had an attorney sending [DMCA] letters to these websites to pull them down.
“It got so out of hand,” she says, that she thought, “Holy shit — the internet is gonna kill the porn business.”
Fortunately, 16 years down the road, the oft-foretold demise of the porn business hasn't happened. Canyon and Lynn even managed to keep their fanbases, gain new fans, and learn to navigate this Brave New Millennium.
And, like two porn princesses in a Valley fairy tale, they have each other.
“The good thing with Christy and I,” Ginger Lynn tells XBIZ, “is that not only have we done everything together, but we always come back around to each other and we always have this magic when we’re on-air. We’ve known each other so long, we finish each other’s sentences.”
“And,” she adds, with 1980s VHS-catalog, ultimate cover girl-next-door eye twinkle still intact, “Christy just knows when I want to juggle her tits, and she pops them out for me!”
To listen to “Who Let the Girls Out,” visit the radio show’s Patreon.
Main Photo: Ginger Lynn and Christy Canyon, Studio City 2020, by Gustavo Turner
