June 30, 2006
God, I hope so.
I don’t know how many years its been since most of the the XXX Biz has wandered the great wasteland known as Gonzo, but its been far too many.
I started out in this business as a feature guy. I’ve produced, directed, shot, and/or edited more features than I can remember. Back when features ruled, you needed some skills to make them; even if those skills were simply knowing the right people to hire to manage, shoot, and cut your feature.
But then everything changed, including the need to know how to do much of anything.
Suddenly, all a gonzo porn-maker needed was a cheap mini-DV camera and an equally user-friendly still camera… plus a bit of fundamental knowledge like how to turn the cameras on and switch them to full auto mode. And if you didn’t know how to do that, you probably knew someone who could, at the very least, figure that much out. Some of these people often were (and remain) guys and gals who couldn’t get a job as a PA on a feature set. I know that sounds elitist but I don’t really give a fuck if it does.
If you don’t believe it takes a bit more skill and knowledge to make a feature, consider the vast numbers of cheap, incompetently produced, so-called gonzos released each day, week, month, and year.Gonzo certainly opened doors for a lot of wannabe pornographers. After all, gonzo is cheap to make and if there’s one thing pornogaphers love, it’s cheap-to-make content. But when a marketplace becomes SO saturated with cheap product, something’s gotta give. And while some people might say, “In a free-market economy, easy access to the marketplace is a good thing,” look where it’s gotten us: Its led us to the Great Porn Depression! Never, in the annals of porn history, has so much inept shit been stuffed down the throats of the porn consuming public!
The good news is I think I’m seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I think maybe the success of a few features are causing a few more people to re-think their positions on the venerable feature; Digital Playground and Pirates comes immediately to mind.
And now I’m reading about companies like Bo Kenney’s SexZ Pictures who are embracing the feature market. And I know Mr. Kenney well enough to know he’s not trotting down the feature path because he’s simply a patron of the arts.
Yeah, I’m thinking maybe features are going to make a comeback. And if they do, there’s gonna be a few unemployed (unemployable?) pornographers wandering a different sort of wasteland.
But on the plus side, there will be a few–perhaps like myself–suddenly finding themselves returning to the helm of feature porn-making.
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June 29, 2006
I attended eroticaLA over the weekend. Actually, I only attended on Saturday. But just attending Saturday-only was more than enough for me.What can I say about eLA that hasn’t already been written? How about it sucked?
When I say it sucked, I’m not talking about it sucking from a financial point-of-view. I’m sure it was a cash cow for its promoters. After all, all those thousands of people coming in at $30 a pop– That’s some serious green.
When I say it sucked, I’m talking about it, basically, being a big freaking bore.
First off, other than Club Jenna’s girls and a few others, there really weren’t many porn stars there. At least, not that I saw. Could it be that few exhibitors were willing to part with some dough to pay these girls to hang out at their booths at a FAN CONVENTION and endure the lurid, groping advances of salivating fan boys? I don’t know. I was just an observer. I don’t scientifically analyze this shit.Next, there was some truly frightening women there who had no business wearing what little they were wearing. Don’t these chicks own mirrors? There ought’a be a law against showing so much skin when the skin is padded with so much, uhhh… padding. Granted, I got no room to talk. But I keep my lack-o-leanness covered. And I cover it with dark colors cuz, you know, dark colors are thinning.
It also seemed to me that less companies were exhibiting than in previous years. Sure, the aforementioned Club Jenna was there, as was Wicked and Red Light and some other “big guys.” But where was Digital Playground? Vivid? Sin City? Metro? If they were there I didn’t notice them.It seemed that sales of DVDs were brisk, especially considering many of them were being purchased for prices like 3 for $5. I guess that was a windfall for their sellers.
I brought my camera but I felt out of place shooting images with an actual camera rather than a cell phone.
“Hey! Check that dude out. He’s shooting pictures with a camera.”
“Silly pornographer.”
The pic at the top depicts the girls of JC’s Girls (posing with your humble scribe.) JC’s Girls, btw, were nice enough to badge me for the show. No one else was thoughtful enough or considerate enough or Christian enough, as some say, to do this for me. The other pic is the ever-cherubic Leah Luv. Leah is a contract performer for Anarchy and I thought I’d post a pic of her (with Anarchy’s logo prominently displayed in the background) because, well, because I shoot stuff for Anarchy and, with things being slow right now, I thought I’d kiss a little ass.
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June 29, 2006
When I was a kid, my parents were very frugal with their money. Most of my friends’ parents were the same way. One of the reasons so many people, like my parents, were so careful with their money is because, when they were kids, they grew up during this thing called The Great Depression.
During The Great Depression, the stock market tumbled, banks folded, millions of people lost their jobs, and bread lines and soup kitchens were common sights in America. It was a tough time made worse because, back then, there was no welfare or unemployment insurance. Finally, someone had a great idea to have a World War and kill lots of people and steal other countries’ land and resources and, as a result, the economy rebounded.
Right now, we’re in a porn depression. Buyers are returning product in record numbers and they’re either extremely slow payers or they’re not paying at all. The halcyon days of cables sales are history and foreign sales are in the toilet as those guys aren’t paying worth a shit either.
Traditionally, porn has always gone into the doldrums in the summer months. But I can’t ever remember the summer slow-down arriving as early or as hard as it has this year. And my observations aren’t merely based on an early summer slow-down. The Justice Department is scaring the crap out of a lot of people. Legend has laid off a significant portion of its workforce. Companies like Red Light and others have either announced a production hiatus or their simply not shooting and just not saying much of anything about not shooting. And at just about every company I interact with, people are complaining that business sucks more than its ever sucked before.
“Doctor!” says the nurse, “We’ve barely got a pulse!”
“Don’t worry, nurse. Sex sells. It always has and always will.”
“If you say so, Doctor.”
Yep. We are in a porn depression.
So how did this happen?
Well, there’s a lot of stuff contributing to this, not the least of which is the incredible amount of product being dumped into the marketplace.
Economics is about supply and demand. The jiz biz is trying to supply more than the demand can bear. So one of two things happens. (Or they both happen.) That is, buyers take less product than is offered and/or they continue taking the product but, later, they return a bunch of it and don’t pay for what they kept. (Or they pay excruciatingly slow for the product they kept.)
But I have a plan. A very simple plan. I think a lot of you Johnny-cum-latelies to the XXX biz should simply get the fuck out. And, frankly, maybe some of you old-time companies should retire. I know that sounds harsh but a lot of you barely have a clue what you’re doing anyway and your product sucks and you whore it out and, since you new guys don’t have any real juice with buyers anyway, they’re going to pay you even slower if they pay you at all. Besides, a lot of you are going to tank anyway so why don’t you just do the right thing and leave. I’m sure you new guys can sell your investors on other scams where you might even be more accomplished when it comes to pretending to know what you’re doing.
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June 29, 2006
I figure a good way to begin resurrecting my blog is with some girlie pics. Besides, I need to learn how to post pics on this thing.
The pics are Kitty and Naudia. Kitty’s the blonde and Naudia is, uhh… not the blonde.
Both girls are from Ohio and fairly new to the biz. They told me they know Felecia Fox, Tim Case, and Mike South from before coming to SoCal. It must be true. Who would admit knowing Tim and Mike if it weren’t so? (BTW, if either of them know either Tim or Mike in the Biblical sense, they didn’t say.)
Katie Morgan brought them by the studio so I could shoot some images of them for Absolute Modeling.
(Now I gotta get Katie in here for some quality, jimmyD, photo time.)
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June 28, 2006
Miss me? Yeah, well, we’ll see how much you missed me after I set up a special, simplyjimmyd.com paypal account. Right now, I’m just figuring out how to work this blog software I downloaded for free. It’s supposed to be the simplest blogging-ware ever but this is moi we’re talking about and I ain’t too swift with this kind’a shit.
Okay. I’d love to write more–after all, it has been a while–but it would probly behoove me to figure out how to make the site look a little more artsy… or slick… or whatever. But come back soon. I’ll have some updates. I’ve got, yu know, some things I want to talk about.
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