The Last Days of August (ABC)
The night the Santa Paula fires ripped through the canyon towards Ventura, propelled by winds of 80 kilometres per hour, Mercedes Grabowski was found dead in a park in nearby Camarillo.
A coroner would rule it as suicide.
The porn actress, known professionally as August Ames, had been caught up in a firestorm of a different kind. After tweeting that she would not work with a “crossover” co-star who had filmed gay scenes, the wrath of the porn industry and Twitter at large descended upon her.
After her death, the wind would change direction, and others stood in its path: gay porn star Jaxton Wheeler, who had said August should take a cyanide pill; veteran actress Jessica Drake, whose more oblique tweets were framed as cyberbullying; and August’s husband, porn producer Kevin Moore.
