How long have you been in porn? What changes have you seen in the industry since your start?
I started with Gino's sets back in '93... What changed in these 19 years? Everything. Back then, there used to be a few visionary players --both in production and in distribution. Today, everyone with a $300 handycam and an Xtube channel is his own producer. The studios that contributed to shaping the business are no longer: Catalina, AllWorlds, Studio2000... Big budgets and production values, gone; auteur porn, story-driven and visually-driven porn... gone. Instead, 'corporate' porn has taken over --often with gimmicky properties and pseudo-amateur camera work. Media and viewing habits have shifted: from VHS/DVD to the internet realm of now-free-and-everywhere. Piracy has quickly devalued adult content to the point consumers no longer see a need to pay more than a $1 trial and producers no longer see the need to support it with adequate budgets and broader ambitions. Blogs, tubes and affiliate links have replaced the old, passionate reviews. Can you imagine what would've happened to Bresson or Fellini in a traffic-driven environment? Then you have brand-new forms of adult entertainment --with nothing to do with the pre-recorded content I first fell in love with: live cams, dating sites, cruising sites. It's a whole new game, really!
If you had never started doing porn, what would you be doing right now?
Let me rephrase the question: would I start doing porn today? No... What attracted me to it as an art-form is no longer. What attracted me to it as a film genre is no longer. Same goes with porn as an industry: we've lost well over 50% of revenues to piracy and 'free porn': it's no longer fun, really. We all work ten times harder to make ten times less. Whereas we used to take risks, invest time and money, patiently hone our craft, play with form/content, take pride in our accomplishments and in our failures,
Anything else you want to tell us?
Let's end on a more optimistic note. The magnificent porn features of the late 70s - 80s had in fact developed from the 'loops' of the early 70s: reality porn and pseudo-amateur porn as we experience online these days are somewhat similar to those old 8mm loops, poorly lit, blocked, shot, edited. What kind of porn will develop in the next few years? How will it look like? Which needs will it answer? Which aesthetics? These are the questions that keep me going and, once in a while, get me all excited.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment