By the standards of what we see on the TV each and every day, $1,000,000 is a tiny budget for a feature. What makes pornographers think they can do it for $100,000 is beyond me.

-T.C.

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-They don't shoot it on film anymore. Shoot a feature on video and it just doesn't look right.

-Too many girls with tattoos, the stripper look etc. Not enough normal looking girls. Feature is supposed to be more realistic, Tons of blondes with fake tits and tattoos isn't realistic.

-Condoms

Edited by - M.B. on 10/8/2003 9:49:49 PM

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To what extent do you think the vanilla sex action, bourgeois premises, condoms, and even run times are related to the issues of making the videos "cable-ready" for distribution to the various stations? Remember, adult cable networks have grown a lot recently, and porn has only been used in soft formats on them for about the last ten or twelve years--Paul Thomas and Vivid were key early players in this regard, and I remember Thomas being interviewed about 1993 in Adam Film World on the subject, saying the cable version was ultimately the most important to him, because it was the most profitable (I have no idea if this is true or not).

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I think a better construct would be based on the level of social opprobrium that a person is willing to risk for the sake of seeing people fuck. Some people will risk a discreet charge on their phone bill, some people will risk receiving a supiciously plain package in the mail, and some may even be willing to be seen pulling into the back parking lot of the local sex-shop. I feel pretty safe in asserting that the latter, especially those who will take this risk on a regular basis, are in the overwhelming minority.

I remember the same Thomas quote, and I think he was very astute in seeing that there was a whole lot more money to be made pumping softcore into people's livingroom, than there was in asking them to go into "the back room" at the local video store for their hardcore. I don't know if he also foresaw the decline of the mom and pop video store, which for many people was their only access to hardcore pornography. If our local video store,which carries porn, went out of business we'd have to drive 60 miles to the nearest sex-shop. Nothing between here and there but Blockbusters. (Nevermind the fact that we live in a small town, so anytime we'd want to rent smut we'd have to do it in plain view of our neighbors. As far as I can tell, there's nothing in that backroom that's worth suffering the curious glance of my daughter's pre-school teacher.) The alternative? Cable porn, which is both expensive and unsatisfying.

Now if there was something out there that was worth spending money on, we would. We have a medium sized collection of silicone dildos, and other premium sextoys. Our annual expenditure on new toys/lubes is probably about $200. There's no doubt in my mind that if someone created smut that was as pleasurable an enhancement to our sex lives as a Vixen String of Pearls, we'd buy it -- especially if we could do so from the comfort of our own home.

Instead the choice seems to be to sulk into the local video store for Ass Invaders 12 or For Ladies Only 2, or pay $8 for a night of Playboy/Spice, which is more or less the same crap, but with out the parts we want to see. Our anual expenditure on porn is zilch.

-T.C.

Edited by - TonyC on 10/9/2003 10:35:50 AM

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