Jenna Jameson, one of its most visible stars, had her memoir appear on The New
York Times best-seller list several years ago. A trip to the newsstand finds
Tera Patrick on the cover of nonporn magazines or in red carpet photos at the
Grammy Awards. Stormy Daniels, better known for her work in "Busty Beauties 2"
and "On Golden Blonde," landed minor roles in the comedy "The 40-Year-Old
Virgin" and the cable drama "Dirt."
And yet it's still a largely underground business, not discussed in polite
conversation, conveniently ignored by local businesses and political leaders.
In an area jokingly referred to as "Porn Valley," this mega-money producer and
employer
still draws hushed tones or denial from those who say they've never watched.
Jobs for the Valley
Like it or not, the business has been a major factor in the Valley's
development, providing jobs, money and the people who have made up this
community for decades. From film to video to digital productions, it has
evolved from its adult-theater roots to a commodity available online in homes
worldwide.
And at the same time, the Internet that built the industry into the
multibillion-dollar economic engine it is today threatens to drive it off
course. The gate has been cast wide open - and that's letting too many people
in the door.
"As much as we love the Internet, we hate the Internet," said Brad Armstrong,
an actor, director and producer for Canoga Park-based Wicked Pictures. "Now,
everyone with a camera's a pornographer."
For years, that was far from the case. Not long after moving pictures first
made their debut around the turn of the last century, enterprising men came up
with primitive porn known as stag films. Though crude in nature, they required
a degree of technical sophistication to produce that kept them out of the
amateur realm.
Some time between 1907 and 1912, years before audiences flocked to mainstream
fare like "Birth of a Nation," Argentine pornographers came up with "El
satario," a feature involving a woman having fairly graphic sex with the devil.
Illegal, uncopyrighted and distributed on the sly, movies of this ilk were
passed around for home screenings and club functions for years.
As legal restrictions slackened by the late 1960s, adult theaters and sex-shop
video arcades showcased the still-crude films to a larger audience. Still,
author Linda Williams referred to the group in her book "Hard Core" as "the
`raincoat brigade,' furtive, middle-aged men." It was still looked at through
suspicious eyes, considered marginal material reserved for masturbators.
And then, in 1972, a curious thing happened. A hairdresser-turned-filmmaker
named Gerard Damiano released a 61-minute, lushly produced film called "Deep
Throat." Featuring a young actress by the name of Linda Lovelace - who later
renounced porn, went back to her original name of Linda Boreman and crusaded
against the industry - the X-rated film was an absolute sensation. It crossed
over into mainstream theaters and attracted interest from The New York Times
and Esquire magazine.
A couple of then-unknown reporters named Woodward and Bernstein named their
shadowy contact that brought down the Nixon administration after the movie. Men
took their wives and girlfriends to screenings. Even former Gov. Gray Davis, at
the time an aide to then-Gov. Jerry Brown and the ultimate embodiment of
establishment squareness, let it be known that he'd caught a showing.
So began the Golden Age of Porn.
It rode out the rest of the decade, producing iconic fare such as "The Devil in
Miss Jones," "Behind the Green Door" and "The Opening of Misty Beethoven." Shot
on film, plotted out and directed with an eye toward art, the movies aspired to
ride the success of "Deep Throat" firmly into mainstream consciousness.
In this period, the Valley cemented its reputation as the porn capital of the
world. These films needed crews and post-production workers, and the Valley,
right in Hollywood's backyard, had them by the dozens. Up until the early
1980s, with the sexual revolution in full swing, the industry cranked out artsy
flicks that aspired to something beyond sex aids.
Videotape and VCRs followed, the simultaneous salvation and bane of the
industry. Much like the Internet that Armstrong both cheers and deplores today,
video lowered the bar to get into the business. Crews shrank, titles
proliferated and art largely went by the wayside. Then came gonzo.
Starting in the late 1980s, directors like Van Nuys-based John Stagliano, known
to his admirers as Buttman, and Ed Powers took sex-on-tape to a whole new
level. Borrowing from the Hunter S. Thompson school of gonzo journalism, the
pornographers made themselves an integral part of the movie, appearing on
camera and performing with the actors.
In his "Dirty Debutantes" series, the balding, pale-skinned Powers dispensed
with any conventions such as plot or detachment from the scene. He just set up
a couple video cameras, pressed record and started talking to a young,
inexperienced performer. Then they had sex. He occasionally kept his black
socks on.
This was cheap, easy to produce and wildly successful. Studios and small
operations alike cranked out gonzo flicks for years, ushering in the DVD era a
decade later and building the industry into the behemoth it has become today.
The Internet blew things up even further. Companies started offering pictures,
then clips of scenes online to lure in new consumers. Amateur moviemakers
started filming themselves at home and posting online, undercutting the
Valley's industry and shuttling porn dollars away from the area.
Professionals, fearing for their livelihood, fired back with more and more
gonzo titles, hoping to cling to any shred of revenue they could. If a video
did well, soon it had a sequel, then another, then another.
Hustler's "Barely Legal" series is now on its 67th iteration. Joey Silvera
presented 15 versions of "Fashion Sluts." Powers produced more than 300
installments of his debut films, expanding into another multi-volume series,
"Global Warming Debutantes: The Ed House Effect," that boasts dozens of titles.
And with so much porn around, it's getting harder to stick out and make sales.
Hustler sells a DVD for $40 in its flagship store on Sunset Boulevard, but
charges only $34.62 for a month's membership to its Web site, which allows
users to view every title in its catalog.
Quick and dirty
`There's a glut'
Further complicating things for studios, there's such a proliferation of
pirated content and short clips circulating on the Web, many consumers don't
even feel the need to buy porn at all. Even veteran pornographers are nervously
discussing a slowdown in sales and wondering where the industry will go.
"There's a glut," said Oren Cohen, president of Van Nuys-based Tightfit
Productions. "We did it to ourselves. Anything that seems too good to be true
for too long probably is. That's why we should focus on other ways to make
money, because people are always going to want to watch sex."
His answer: Push the boundaries by shooting low-cost, edgy fare such as
autoerotic asphyxiation movies and artsy material that harkens back to the days
of 8 mm stag films. He says that with a $10,000 budget and some creativity, he
can make a more compelling movie than another studio's $40,000 gonzo flick.
There's no need, Cohen says, for him to wear out the fast-forward button on his
customers' DVD remotes, so he generally opts for scant plot and lots of sex.
That's a model that has proved successful for plenty of producers, especially
E.A. Productions, which Stagliano runs with his wife, Karen.
"You don't have to do things that are romantic to be sexy, but you do have to
have it in mind to turn people on," she said. "If it doesn't turn you on when
you're watching it, why's it in there? Plots aren't necessarily bad, but there
needs to be a payoff. We don't want production values to distract from the
movie."
But while the vast majority of E.A.'s titles are gonzo, shot for between
$20,000 and $40,000, one of its biggest successes came from "Fashionistas," a
four-hour epic Karen Stagliano says earned "a good chunk of money." The company
spent more than $400,000 to produce the movie, which retails for as much as
$69.99 and was later turned into a critically-acclaimed Vegas dance review. And
a $400,000 sequel.
That could be the way out of the slowdown brought on by cheaply produced garage
porn assembled on home computers and shot to the masses over the Internet. The
golden age may have a second act.
"Gonzo and extreme porn, all the stuff that came about with video, is easy to
knock off and put on the Internet," said Chris Mott, a University of
California, Los Angeles, professor who has taught a class on pornography and
its ramifications on literature and politics for the past 10 years. "Feature
films are not - that takes real work. They gonzoed themselves out of business,
so old-school features are their best shot to attract people back from the
Internet."
That's where films like "Pirates" come in. A co-production of Van Nuys-based
Digital Playground and Adam & Eve, which has offices in Chatsworth, the
2005 film was a phenomenon. Digital Playground claims a budget of more than $1
million, making it 100 times as expensive as a cheap gonzo movie, and it comes
in a three-disc boxed set so slick it can command a retail price of as much as
$60 - $20 above most standard titles.
Digital Playground founder Joone, a single-named entrepreneur who also directed
the film, says an average title can sell between 800 and 1,000 copies. A
runaway hit might manage 5,000. "Pirates" claims sales of several hundred
thousand titles.
It made its blockbuster budget back, said Digital Playground President Samantha
Lewis, before it even shipped its first copies.
The two-hour epic has special effects, outtakes and its own soundtrack -
well-crafted classical music more reminiscent of a dinner party. The filmmakers
edited it down to an 85-minute, R-rated version and sold it to mainstream video
stores and retailers.
Earlier this year, the company debuted a computer graphics-heavy trailer for
the sequel. Though it still maintains a gonzo line, it sees well-crafted
features as the future.
That means more jobs and more money flowing through the local economy. Wicked's
Armstrong, who has worked as a performer, director and producer after stripping
his way through Canadian art school, employs 30 people for his bigger pictures,
double the crew of a low-budget shoot.
He spends as much as $175,000 to put out a movie like "Manhunters," which
retails for $60 and earned seven Adult Video News awards, referred to as the
Oscars of porn. He sees this as the polar opposite to Internet fare, which he
refers to as "the lowest common denominator, the worst for the cheapest."
"Before, you were happy with anything because you had no choice," said Joone,
who attended University of Southern California film school. "Now, especially
with the Internet, you can choose. We're seeing that people are choosing
quality."
Part
II: Porn: Easy job to get but has downsides
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