NYT porn as business article -- continued ...
As in nonadult video, DVD is cutting into videocassette sales -- even more so in adult,
perhaps, because DVD's have the added virtue of being more easily camouflaged on a
shelf than cassettes. Hampshire is particularly proud of VCA's DVD technology. With his
vast catalog, he is following the model of Hollywood studios by rereleasing classics --
The Devil in Miss Jones 2," "The Opening of Misty Beethoven" -- in "Collectors
Editions," replete with aural commentaries from original stars like Jamie Gillis. As with
Hollywood's DVD rereleases, they are pitched at nostalgic consumers in the
"boomer-retro" market. "These aren't 'adult' -- they're pop culture now," says Mischa
Allen.
But VCA aims far higher than merely recycling golden oldies. In a windowless VCA
office, I meet Wit Maverick, the head of its DVD production unit. He is 37, and with his
blue Oxford shirt, goatee and glasses, he could be a professor somewhere -- perhaps at
Cal Arts, where he got a masters in film directing. He ended up at VCA, he says, because
it was "the best opportunity to push the envelope of technology."
Maverick knocks mainstream studios for providing only a linear cinematic experience on
their DVD's. "There's a great hubris in Hollywood," he says. "They think the way the
director made the film is the only way the story can be told. We have a lot more humility.
If a viewer wants something different, we give it to him." As an example he cites "Being
With Juli Ashton," VCA's take on "Being John Malkovich." The viewer, Maverick says,
"can go inside the head of the person having sex with Juli Ashton, male or female. He
can choose which character to follow. He can re-edit the movie. Would James Cameron
let anyone do that with 'Titanic'?
"I feel like filmmakers 100 years ago," Maverick continues. "It's a great technology, but
we still don't know what to do with it. A hundred years from now I want grad students
to read what I've done on DVD the way I read about D.W. Griffith."
Wit Maverick collaborates on his DVD's at VCA with Veronica Hart, 44, one of
the business's most prominent female executives and, before that, a leading
porn star of the late 70's and early 80's.
Universally known as Janie -- her real name is Jane Hamilton -- she is typical of the
mostly likable people I met in the porn world. She combines hardheaded show-biz savvy
and humor with an utter lack of pretension and even some actual candor -- a
combination unheard of on the other side of the hills.
"The difference between us and Hollywood," she elaborates, "is money and ego. We deal
with thousands of dollars, not millions. In mainstream, people are more cutthroat and
pumped up about themselves. We're just like regular people -- it has to do with exposing
yourself. If you show something this intimate, there isn't a lot you can hide behind.
You're a little more down to earth. We're not curing cancer. We're providing
entertainment."
Hart studied theater at the University of Nevada in her hometown, Las Vegas. After
acting leads in plays by Pinter and Lorca -- as far east as Kennedy Center's annual
college theater festival -- she passed through the music business in England and worked
as a secretary at Psychology Today magazine in New York before ending up in movies
like "Wanda Whips Wall Street." While we are talking in her office she looks up Veronica
Hart's 100-plus performing credits on the Internet, including some non-hard-core B
movies with faded mainstream actors like Farley Granger and Linda Blair. "In this one I
played a stripper," she says while scrolling down the list. "That was a real stretch."
She pulls back from the computer screen and sums up her career: "I was lucky enough
to be a performer in the golden age of porn cinema. I'm no raving beauty, and I don't
have the best body in the world, but I look approachable. And I've always really enjoyed
sex." More recently, she played a cameo as a judge in "Boogie Nights," but she disputes
that movie's historical accuracy about porn's prevideo age. "We never shot in L.A. back
then, only in New York and San Francisco," she says. Indeed, adult exactly mimicked
movie-industry history -- beginning in New York, then moving west.
In 1982, at the top of her career, Hart fell in love and left the business. "AIDS had just
started up, and I lost every gay person I knew," she says, listing close friends who
worked on the production side of the straight-porn business. She had two sons and
helped support her family in part by stripping. Though not intending to re-enter porn,
eventually she did, as a producer and director.
Hart has been in adult longer than anyone I met and has done "everything" in it, she
jokes, "including windows." She warns me that "any blanket statement about the
business is meaningless" because it's so big that "every conceivable type of person" can
be found in it. "You'll find someone who's into it to provide spiritual uplift and
educational self-help" she says. "And if you want to find rotten, vicious, misogynistic
bastards -- you'll find them. You'll find everyone who fits the stereotype and everyone
who goes against the stereotype. In the loop and disposable-porno section of our
business, you'll find the carnival freak-show mentality. There has to be a geek show
somewhere in our society. What ticks me off is that all of adult is classified according to
the lowest that's out there. We've always been legal. Child molestation has never been in
mainstream adult. We've always policed ourselves. There's no coerced sex. But there are
little pipsqueaks who get their disgusting little videos out there. There's a trend in
misogynistic porn, and it's upsetting. I've been in the business for more than 20 years,
and I helped make it possible for these guys to make these kinds of movies. I don't
believe that's what America wants to see."
As for her own movies, Hart, like many of her peers, is preoccupied with the industry's
biggest growth market -- women and couples. The female audience was thought to be
nearly nil when consuming pornography required a visit to a theater, an adult book store
or the curtained adult section of a video store. But now hard core is available at chains
like Tower (though not Blockbuster), through elaborate Web sites like Adultdvdempire
that parallel Amazon and by clicking a pay-per-view movie on a TV menu (where the bill
won't specify that an adult title was chosen).
The Valley's conventional wisdom has it that women prefer more romance, foreplay and
story, as well as strong female characters who, says Bill Asher of Vivid, "are not only in
charge of the sex but the rest of the plot." Hart isn't sure. "Just because women like
romance doesn't mean we want soft sex," she says. "We want hot and dirty sex just like
anybody else. For instance, many women love the fantasy of being taken -- but how do
you portray it without sending a message to some guys to abduct?"
Hart, who thought of herself as a sexual pioneer when she was a porn performer, finds
that there is no shortage of women who want to appear in adult now. She never has to
search for new talent; willing performers call her "from all over the country." The men?
"They're props."
Today's porn stars can be as temperamental as their Hollywood counterparts, or
more so. "I assume Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall show up on the set on
time," said Paul Fishbein rather tartly when I asked about Jenna Jameson, the
industry's reigning It girl of recent years. Though he was trying to give her a free
vacation as thanks for her work as host of the recent AVN awards, Jameson wasn't
returning his calls. "In adult, they don't show up and don't care," Fishbein says. "Lots of
girls in this business -- and guys, too -- are dysfunctional. The girls get here at 18 and
aren't mature. They do it because they're rebels or exhibitionists or need money. They
think they're making real movies and get really upset when they don't win awards or get
good reviews."
Some porn directors have similar
(see next post ...) |
