The NYT has published an article featuring actors featured in pornography videos. They are complaining that the industry is not making films that allow them to display their acting talents. Too much sex.
Was it ever different? Apparently, yes:
Vivid, one of the most prominent pornography studios, makes 60 films a year. Three years ago, almost all of them were feature-length films with story lines. Today, more than half are a series of sex scenes, loosely connected by some thread — “vignettes” in the industry vernacular — that can be presented separately online. Other major studios are making similar shifts.
To understand this complaint, take a moment to gloss over any soft-core title on Cinemax. The sex actually takes a back set to the weak attempt at a plot. A popular soft-core porn hit from a few years ago, Pirates, is actually available in an edited format with all sex scenes removed. This version was created because the film had a substantial plot and a hefty special effects budget- and an attempt at acting! I suspect high-budget porn once had a great deal of plotting and "acting" outside of the sex. The industry has probably been forced into unadulterated smut because homemade sex-only porn is now so widely available on the internet. Maybe the modern porn consumer has less patience in the era of gonzo videos?
But, but, but . . . I only watch porn for the riveting plot-lines . . . .
The film "Boogie Nights" is apparently based on how the porn industry really changed in the late Seventies, early Eighties. A couple of producers and a number of actors really wanted to make "art"…
So now it has come full circle. The stuff available in the Fifties and Sixties were little more than a series of sex scenes strung together with the thinnest of "plots". The Supreme Court test on obscenity required a film to have some "socially redeeming value" which meant, to many, a story. Hence "Deep Throat" had this bizarre medical angle regarding the location of Linda Lovelace's clitoris (guess where).
After all the legal wrestling, much of it sponsored by or put forth by Larry Flint (!), porn for the most part is just accepted. So the attempts at making actual movies, with stories, is a passing thing and we're returning to the strings of sex scenes…
Not many porn stars can act. The late Marilyn Chambers kept trying to break into "real" films and actually did appear in a couple, but she was the exception. The level of "acting" would have been sufficient for old adventure serials from the Forties.
I recall reading that the Dirk Diggler character in "Boogie Nights" was loosely based on John Holmes.
Mark, not only did the movie show the improvement of the genre, but also demonstrated the importance of the porn industry in making home video a success. Many media experts have opined that the availability of porn on the VHS format made VHS the standard even though the Beta format was technically superior.
I worked in a video store in the mid 80's and the staff had to view the movies in order to recommend them to customers. Many at the time were pretty lame, but some had pretty good stories. Many were mysteries where the hero or heroine would use their "skills" to get information for their cases".It seems that most is now the gonzo and amateur types.
There were also a large number of porno parodies of popular TV shows and movies. Titles like "Hannah Does her Sisters", "Sex Trek", and "Dy-Nasty".
The customers that favored the films with plot lines were mostly couples and women. It seemed the women who liked porn wanted the story lines and would often watch with husbands or boyfriends wile the gonzo stuff was usually rented as background noise at stag parties.