Porn Valley- Even by American adult film industry standards, Rob Zicari has long turned stomachs and generated disgust for his filmed depictions of rape and violence against women and also the desecration of the Bible.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan on Wednesday asked the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a judge’s decision to dismiss a 2003 indictment against Zicari, his wife Janet Romano, and their production company, Extreme Associates, on charges of violating federal obscenity laws.
The couple and their company were accused of selling tapes and downloadable video clips — with titles like “Forced Entry” and “Extreme Teen #24” — to an undercover U.S. postal inspector and others in the Pittsburgh area.
If Buchanan wins, the case could have far-reaching implications for the multibillion-dollar American porn industry, which is centered in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles.
Zicari has long pushed the adult film genre to extremes with depictions of women being choked, punched and slapped while having sex in coffins and Dumpsters. He has angered religious people by having actors rip up Bibles in the name of sex.
Nina Hartley, an adult video performer who has been involved in the industry since 1984, is not a fan of Black’s work, which she says is all about shock value, not eroticism. But that is his First Amendment right, she said.
“He told me years ago that it’s like filming a train wreck,” Hartley said. “People want to look at it even though it’s terrible. But it’s important to keep in mind that this is a free society, and people need to be able to say and read whatever they want, even if it makes people upset.”
Zicari has had a long association with the pornography industry, beginning when his father, Dominic Zicari, of Rochester, N.Y., opened a string of adult bookstores on the East Coast in the 1960s. The younger Zicari told an interviewer for the PBS program “Frontline,” which aired a segment about the industry, that his mother is a nurse who condones what he does.
“Extreme Productions are the filthiest of filth,” Zicari said in a 1998 magazine interview. “There’s the drug dealer, and we’re just a little above that.”