I'd like to open up a new discussion on 'tv-reports on porn'. The problem is that in my country Germany there's only one station that runs a weekly sex and porn-themed show. Unfortunately I get the impression that this show tries a compromise between promoting a movie and have journalistic approach. IMHO both fails! Also, the great majority of reports are on Magma productions.
But I don't want to critize and not show a better example. I think there's an almost perfect tv-report, very well done by a Swiss tv-station. It is called "Heidi im Pornoland" and is about Laetitia, a Swiss actress in the 90s. What I don't understand is why it is not more chronological and why it is intercut with long uninteresting stuff on her agent.
I have read about tv-reports on Salieri (in Italy), on Woodman (in France - see below). Are there any about Nacho in Spain or most interestingly for me behind-the-scenes with Katja Kean in Denmark. BTW, rumors say that KK also did a report for German RTL (she gave a tour around Hot D'Or or something).
For further discussions I believe it is useful to have the exact name of the report.
Any input is welcome.
Cue
for the French: Ici on trouve sur "Comme du bétail" details d'un reportage sur Pierre Woodman: "Quelques semaines après un reportage d'Envoyé spécial qui montrait le producteur Pierre Woodman recrutant ses actrices à Budapest comme du bétail,..." Quel est le nom de ce reportage?
On UK terrestrial TV there have been a few shows which have covered porn.
Longest running of these is Eurotrash (Channel 4), presented by Antoine Des Caunes, an ironic look at the extremes of European culture, not just porn, which has featured Rocco, Nacho, Eva Henger, Lolo Ferrari and many more over the years. It tends towards humour, with silly dubbing of crazy foreigners etc.
Channel 5 has had a couple of shows more directly dealing with porn: a review show I forget the name of; Sex and Shopping (semi-serious mix of titilation and interviews, featured many top names from US and UK over two or three series); European Blue Review, news-style coverage of European porn, the Hot D'Or and so on, with a half-decent Silvia Saint interview by Ben Dover that I recall, but this show has been cancelled - like all these programmes they tend towards humour to pardon the fact they're just an excuse to show porn on TV. No real serious in-depth interviewing. I think European Blue Review might have a DVD available.
The only decent things I've seen on TV were that Ron Jeremy documentary and a fascinating but very sensational documentary about a girl called Leeane McQueen (AKA Felicity?) who went from the UK to LA to try to make it in porn, and ended up in various unsavoury circumstances that I am not going to go into. Channel 5 also did a nice documentary about Berth Milton Jr running a porn company in his time away from the golf course.
IAFD, supporters of beastiality. Just say no. 7564 Posts 11/02
Posted - Mar 31 2003 : 4:07PM
French Canal+ has (had?) "Le journal du hard", while XXL has several 'talk shows', such as "Hard Talk" (presented by Brigitte Lahaie), "Le top du X" (a kind of hit parade) and several others, which I don't remember right now. Two, three years ago, several Flemish TV stations seemed to be airing lite style 'reportage' programs on the strip/porn scene in Belgium. One of the TV crews even followed Belgian actress Cindy to a Ben Dover shoot, which ended up in Ben Dover's Delightful Deviants . The porn topic seems to have vanished from the screen now. Funny, but the most popular topic of these infotainment programs at this moment, is child birth. All 3 national Flemish TV stations have their own series devoted to pregnant couples.
Italian tv has tried to show unbiased portraits of the adult industry in the past. But most of the time it's just the same old moralistic crap. A couple of years ago, a special devoted to porn in Prague caused quite a stir. It was a real reportage, with almost no moral strings attached. But nothing special. Just for shock value. French actress Ovidie was recently one the guests of our most popular talk show, and despite the fact that she's an outspoken and educated person, and an accomplished writer, a few other guests treated her as a leper.
C. Grand, I'm late about this topic, but being a huge fan of Letizia Bisset (Laetitia) I'd like to know if that Swiss TV documentary about her is available anywhere. I did some research with Google but found only stuff in German. Letizia was a true Goddess.
"I think there's an almost perfect tv-report, very well done by a Swiss tv-station. It is called "Heidi im Pornoland" and is about Laetitia, a Swiss actress in the 90s. What I don't understand is why it is not more chronological and why it is intercut with long uninteresting stuff on her agent. "
The credits say that the movie was produced in 1995 by Swiss-German TV station SF DRS. The director, Alain Godet, on the other hand seemed from Romandy (French speaking part of Switzerland). This and the fact that you often find translation in Switzerland might give the chance that there's a French version. You might even be lucky to get her original voice since all the interviews are conducted in (Swiss-)German with a (German, French?) subtitle. Good luck.
edited to add the link
Edited by - secluded observer on 5/27/2004 6:03:38 AM
It's not so much open-minded, it's that what would draw ratings. Like someone else said, Family Business is one but how does it do compared with other cable channel shows?
Not sure if this is of any interest, but the German language Swiss channel SF1 is showing “Das Mädchen von nebenan” (Original Name – “The Girl Next Door”) in the early hours of Sunday morning (01.40 CET on 30.5.04) – It’s about Stacey Valentine.
'Family Business' is a series that supposedly shows Seymour Butts and family as they go about life in the 'porn world.' It's all fake, of course, but has porny moments, nonetheless. I haven't watched it in over a year, but I suppose it is still on Showtime.
The Laetitia Bisset documentary was broadcast in the Netherlands a few years ago. Unfortunately it is the only 'serious' report of any length I ever saw. The Dutch tv broadcasting corporations SBS6 and BNN occasionally have porn items. For instance, ex VJ and BNN talkshow hostess Bridget Maasland visited Hungarian ex-performer Anita Rinaldi who runs her own agency (or was it production company?) in Budapest. Bridget acted as the 'personal assistant' of Michelle Wild for a day, and even participated in some sound dubbing for a Kovi shoot. Most of it is just a combination of sensasionalism and corny humour, but there were some interesting bits, especially in the Anita Rinaldi interview.
On Dutch tv there are also sometimes short porn-related items in showbizz news shows. There have been a few Dutch porn stars of some stature, like Zara Whites and Kate More, who have been interviewed briefly on mainstream tv.
Come to think of it, I saw one other documentary which was of decent quality, comparable to the Laetitia/Heidi one. It was about Lasse Braun, pseudonym for an Italian guy who made a lot of movies in Scandinavia in the 1960s, and who had a studio in the Netherlands for a while. There was some interesting 'behind the scenes' stuff and recent interviews with some of the performers, who are now in their fifties. The working legend on the set in those 1960s was French, by the way.
Although the Netherlands has had a role in porn, especially distribution, for a long time, most press articles and tv items show a lack of real interest and background knowledge on the part of the journalists.
secluded Observer wrote:Yeah, subtitles as usual. As has been said elsewhere in this thread, Laetitia speaks Swiss German and that's pretty funny for a Dutchman to hear.
(That's because most of us can understand, if not speak, standard German pretty well, but Swiss German is pretty much unintellegible to us but for some reason the sound reminds us vaguely of our own language. So hearing a Swiss person speak at some distance we might think he or she is speaking Dutch until we get close enough to hear the individual words).
Sorry for this little digression, but to me, voices and language are very relevant. I HATE dubbing, in mainstream but even more so in porn movies, because it spoils the experience. Conversely, I am usually delighted if I can tell where a porn performer is from by her accent.
On a side note, I also much prefer interviews in gonzo movies with the help of an interpreter if necessary, over an 'interview' in 'English' with a 5-word vocabulary. That way you don't get anything meaningful out of the girl that adds to the experience. Even worse are interviews in a language that not even the interviewer can speak intelligibly, like TT Boy's 'Spanish' interviews with Brazilian girls.
skronker said: "Better watch out, DD is still all-powerful ... emanating like the icy finger of vengeance from deep in the Ghost World .... [oooooh, I get chills just typing these words .... Beware! O ye that doubt!]"
There has just been a good documentary about Larry Flynt on Channel 5. Now there showing Sex and Shopping. Its the one from when porn got legalised in the UK.
