Jon Ronson’s new podcast, The Last Days of August, is a sparing, delicate and at times harrowing series, ostensibly about the suicide of the porn star August Ames, who killed herself in December 2017, at the age of 23. Ronson first delved into the adult entertainment business with his previous podcast The Butterfly Effect, which offered a sympathetic picture of an industry that many within it argue is still little understood by the mainstream. It was a warm and compassionate investigation, and drew smart lines between the thundering pace of technological advances, the easy availability of pornography and what that all meant for the people at the heart of it.
Given that Ronson is also interested in social media and its sometimes catastrophic impact on people’s lives, it’s no surprise that August Ames’s story piqued his interest. Ames – who is referred to by both her work name and her real name, Mercedes Grabowski – took her life shortly after a controversial tweet ignited the kind of pile-on that Ronson studied in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Ames wrote that she chose not to work with men who had shot pornographic scenes with other men (“crossover talent”); the response was swift and damning, particularly from other famous figures in the industry.
Her husband, Kevin Moore, an adult film producer who is interviewed extensively on the podcast, issued a statement in January 2018 blaming cyberbullies for her death. He named people who had been particularly vicious on Twitter. “I write this to make it crystal clear: bullying took her life. If the harassment had not occurred, she would be alive today,” he wrote.
This is only the starting point. Over seven 30-minute-ish episodes (a lesser podcast would have taken much longer, given the amount of interviews and evidence Ronson and his producer Lina Misitzis pull together) a story unfolds that goes beyond Moore’s statement, to paint a more complete picture of Ames’s life, and what happened towards the tragic end of it. They speak to her friends, family and colleagues, and people who know and knew Moore, too. By the second episode, when it becomes clear that this will be about more than cyberbullying, Ronson puts the brakes on, clarifying that although the story unfolded in ways they did not anticipate, this will not be a true crime series, and does not purport to uncover or reveal any particular truth.
What it does, instead, is open up an emotionally fraught story of damaged individuals and an industry struggling with how to manage the mental health of its participants. If The Butterfly Effect humanised an unknown industry for its listeners, this seems more willing to confront the dark side of that world. It can make for deeply unsettling listening. Moore’s character is called into question by people who knew him. At the same time, hearing a man whose wife has only recently died defending himself against accusations about how he treated her is uncomfortable in the extreme.
Again, though, it is handled with care: Ronson opens up to listeners about his own ethical dilemmas in getting involved in this story – later, he and Misitzis have themselves become part of the story – and explains, convincingly, why he felt an obligation to see it through to its conclusion. In the end, everybody is interviewed with consideration and respect, no matter how stretched the circumstances for that may seem.
Throughout the series, we hear snippets of an old interview with Ames by the director Holly Randall. She talks about being sexually abused, and how, when she spoke out about it, she wasn’t listened to, or believed. “Oh man, growing up,” she says, laughing, as if recalling something as trivial as being sent to her room.
A crucial part of the story here, which focuses on a porn shoot that Ames said went very wrong, is also about being listened to and being heard. At its best and most sensitive moments, you get the sense that The Last Days of August goes some way toward hearing the story of August Ames – and of Mercedes Grabowski.
