By proclaiming God dead, the rambunctious philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche failed to come up with an able bodied substitute. Not having half the mustache as this spectacular lunatic, far be it from me to proclaim the demise of porn.
Holiday weekends tend to be mighty slooooooooow when it comes to news trolling, so out of boredom and a potentially lame Eagles football matchup against the Bears, I donned my Ernest Hemingway adventurer’s gear and went on safari.
A cyber safari, if you will. I wanted to see what the world of the Internet was up to as far as sex is concerned, and I came to a couple of conclusions about its state of affairs, many of which you’ll probably never agree with. Then, again, everyone’s got an opinion why porn’s in the drink, and I figure my cocktail’s as good as the next bartender’s.
Then this morning I found the following article www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=45154 which was written by someone I had gone to school with at Temple University in Philadelphia. We were both majoring in Radio & TV communications at the time.
The author of said article went on to become a household name in the Philly-New Jersey markets by doing some salient work analyzing the communications industry. After my foolish attempts at some level of corporate credibility and getting tired of that nonsense, I went into porn. So I was curious what take a bonafide mainstream writer- and someone I knew- had about this squirrelly business.
Basically I have to agree with a lot of what he had to say, only because I’ve always taken the distanced, cynical approach about hardcore porn. I never got it, never will. I suppose the supreme but arbitrary value placed on the Money Shot has a lot to do with that.
In fact, hardcore porn going back to its Deep Throat days existed entirely for the edification of the theater raincoater and a little for the thrill-seeking, anti-establishment spectacle of some naked guy with a Tom Selleck mustache cumming all over, an, at-best, average-looking chick with an unruly pussy. Then along came Tracey Adams, but that’s another story.
Thus it became mandated by porn financiers after a decade’s-worth of Times Square Grindhouse theaters, babes in the raw and artificial coitus: no pop shot, no scene, ergo, no movie.
Many times I’ve been witness to a production being shut down for hours in search of a stunt cock. Matter of fact, industry legend Jonathan Morgan was almost out of the business before he ever got in it due to such an untimely instance involving Jenna Wells, Alicia Rio, her husband, and Jonathan’s flaccid member. I think I’ve told that story before about Rio’s husband walking in like a relief pitcher to bail out a floundering Scotty Fox shoot.
Time now to get rid of the archaic notion of the pop shot, I say. No HIV issues. No Cal-OSHA. No AIDS Healthcare Foundation and their flood of press releases all over your back. No grueling 20-hour shoots. No Shelley Lubben. No Federal obscenity busts. No complaints from couples who want to share the intimacy of erotic cinema without experiencing the shock value that often goes with it.
Of course, that’s all likely to happen as a Saudi-funded vacation resort opening in Tel Aviv, but dare I suggest, in the same breath, that all the arguments against the condom in favor of the unsheathed penis and the pop shot might also be a wee bit gay if not very weak?
Me, I gravitate to porn because I just want to see pretty, naked women, and not for some body waxed musclehead who’s only there but for the grace of God and the remarkable productivity of his gritty ball sac and noble penis head.
Is another man’s intrusion in my sexual fantasy welcome? Hell, no. But in hardcore porn, the reality is that female body worship is almost unheard of thinking and not always your opportunity for fulfillment if you want to perchance wander into the garden of visual delights.
[Of course there’s the opposing argument that the distaff portion of the audience, whatever percentage of that might be, craves seeing a naked male and his genitalia and they have to be served.]
Whichever bone of yours to pick on this issue, resultantly, porn couplings, more often than not, look like they’re straight off the assembly line. And while being cookie cutter fresh, they’re generally conducted with nary a second thought to whether someone’s actually getting off to them.
Then comes my personal pique: women wearing dopey-looking shoes or something equally distracting from the fashion dept. during intercourse.
Compounding the felony, more times than not in your average porn flick, is how a man’s object of desire [I’m speaking solely about women, here] is half clothed or half naked, depending how you look at it.
[Do earth people really fuck with their clothes on, a Martian might ask when chancing upon the artifacts of a past porn civilization. Or was there a sale at Target contingent upon the actress wearing said items on camera?]
Oh, but what about all those boxoffice bonanza porn parodies out there, you might ask.
[Yes, I know they’re successful because I keep getting all those press releases telling me they are.]
My reply: Great costumes. Funny scripts, faithful re-creation and factory-fresh sex, just like the French smoker reels and no different from the ones granddaddy used to watch.
I used to laugh at new directors coming into the business confidently proclaiming all the time how they were going to re-invent the wheel. None of them did. Then, again, I’m dead certain porn parody is giving all the frustrated Tarantinos out there an opportunity to convince themselves just how good they are which, if they actually were, they’d been in a middle of a cable or regular TV gig and using porn to slum in the slow season.
Often, too, in porn production the camera’s not even residing on the good angle. This I know from the sets I’ve been on where I’m watching a scene in real time only to note with amazement on the monitor how the camera’s lens is focused on something else entirely.
A great sex scene is about good camera instincts as much as performance and emotional authenticity. Michael Cates had that eye, that instinct, and guys like John Stagliano and Bruce Seven who employed him relentlessly were very successful.
Also for years, the porn fan came about his information second hand. He’d read a review written by a journeyman employed by some rah-rah-rah, sis-boom-bah publication whose sole purpose of existence was good will and the advertising dollars that went along with it.
People who fork over the bread in those instances always want to hear how grandiose their product is, not that it sucks however well-worded the review was.
[Did I ever get threatening phone calls from irate advertisers? Should you avoid anal immediately after eating at a Mexican restaurant?]
With the Internet, everyone’s now a critic, and no longer is the fan basing his purchasing power solely on the Wizard of Oz and his almighty say so. It’s not that the fan isn’t forking over money on porn. it’s that he’s more sophisticated, more up on things and spreading the green judiciously.
A good porn scene is also a cumulative array of fetishes with many things in it to appeal to the various viewing strata. Fetish- get with it and know how to make it work for you.
Unfortunately, most companies don’t even know the first thing about it, and those that don’t, produce some pretty embarrassing attempts, judging from what I viewed this weekend. In my homework assignment, I watched the age-old fantasy of sexy student seducing teacher for good grades attain retching levels of self-parody and incompetence I never thought humanly possible.
Porn piracy? That’s like running to the cops complaining that your getaway driver ran off with the stolen bank loot. So if the porn industry thinks it’s generating any element of public sympathy with this sudden windfall of ISP lawsuits, it’s sadly mistaken, and it will land them, at best, a Pyrrhic victory.
If porn were gone from the scene tomorrow, its fans would be off seeking their next vice or better yet making stronger attempts at experiencing the real thing for themselves. And don’t look for public outcry, either. It’s human nature to be private about your guilty pleasures than to be vocal about them.
As far as porn being a multi-billion dollar a year business? Yeah, that’s why separating money from a porn owner nowadays is like the old Three Stooges bit of extracting a wisdom tooth with a gigantic pair of pliers. Perhaps that’s maybe the real reason why AVN needed an emergency cash infusion from a silent partner/Greek investor? Is it because the industry just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be?
Oh, and one of the biggest blunders continually made by the porn industry? That hiring young guys [or women] as directors is smart strategy because youth knows what today’s market is.
Besides knowing crap, youth has to have enough wisdom, confidence and personal sexual experience [which only comes in time] in order to translate that successfully to the screen.
It’s not about having some universal gripe against women because one of them turned you down for a date in high school and you’re now seeing porn as a convenient opportunity to put the choke hold, by proxy, on every female alive.
Just because some fans share that particular disdain, isn’t exactly a plebiscite indicating that all of them do.
Getting back to that original article, for the moment. Where porn is losing major ground to, undeniably, is the amateur market. Stands to reason.
Amateur porn affords the constant and endless infusion of the fresh, enthusiastic face, where it’s the unabiding nature of the male to keep looking at the door of the singles bar for the next new girl walking through it. After about 200 times of watching her, even the prettiest girl grows tiresome and turns into a hardened criminal right before your eyes.
[I think the concept’s called beating a dead horse.]
Remember the old cynical adage: for every great looking woman, there’s a guy tired of fucking her.
Oh, and another truism coming out of the deflated market? Talent has priced itself right out of the business.
Casting shouldas, couldas and wouldas aside, one of my pleasant discoveries this weekend, besides the opportunity of seeing an early Capri Anderson cavorting in the nude, was, via a chance Google tag, an armchair introduction to a blonde named Georgia Adair [pictured].
[She’s a “former” amateur who operates a website called www.sweetgeorgia.com we learn.]
Georgia, apparently the Miss Nude Internet of 2002, looks, I’ll have to admit, pretty stunning and tantalizing in a black Audrey Hepburn cocktail dress. Which, by the way, is my top favorite porn gimmick that’s never really been employed as a gimmick. Except, lose those strappy, clunky shoes, Georgia. [Part of that pesky porn fashion problem mentioned earlier.]
Only black dress pumps, according to the late Mr. Blackwell, work with that kind of outfit.
Besides her laudable physical attributes, Georgia’s business model is also quite uncomplicated. She offers one-minute long T&A movies of herself, quite reminiscent in style of the arcade girly loops of yesteryear. Chances are, you’ll probably want to see more of her doing nasty things, and Georgia’s banking on that, so she supplies the hard material, but for a price.
The argument we’re always reading about- how hardcore porn’s being made available for free? I didn’t see many instances of it to tell you the truth.
Another provocative-looking site, www.bootyfuls.com promised me great anal content, also for free [great, judging by some fabulous frame captures] but wanted money up front with a sign-up requirement. Huh? Damn, I wanted to see more of those two cute Brazilian blondes with the farm fresh look and the country wide asses.
Which, in the final, what-the-fuck analysis, hardly matters. Only because something like the two-minute ”Strip Monopoly” clip featuring two chicks and some dude which is currently offered for view on Spike and a number of other Tube sites www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS6OLb141Zg is content that suits my wanderlust these days quite adequately.
It’s very cleverly done. In just 111 seconds with no apparent budget and a plethora of well chosen camera shots, you get a fully realized story, some female nudity, titillation and a satisfying feeling that you haven’t mortgaged your future for a boner. Is someone making money out of all this? Ever heard of YouTube? So I guess so.
In my meanderings, I also discovered, to my pleasant surprise, some luscious Brazilian model named Glenda Goncalves who, I guess, has been taking her clothes off all over the Internet. And, answering the more important question of where have I been all these years, I also chanced upon a batch of entertaining clips from an old Italian strip poker TV show that requires a hotbed of lively female contestants to take it all off.
So, in a weekend of wholesale goofing of, I located some great content and verified a few opinions. And if you ever need a mental respite from the exhausted, same-old, same-old porn formula and its grievous sins of omission – factors which are what’s really driving this business into the ground – it’s definitely out there.