As America’s foremost critic of pornographic and pornotextual material (it even says so on my parking space), I am often asked, upon writing an unfavorable review of a movie, what right I have to say so if I have never directed or performed in a pornographic movie?
A reasonable question if one disregards the following two things:
- Do I have to be a chef to appreciate good cooking? If I throw up, am I therefore a bad eater?
- How come my credentials are never questioned when I give something a good review?
More and more I am falling out of love with porn features, those movies with stories and scripts, because too often the weight of the parts overwhelms the appeal of the movie’s basic porniness. The inevitable disparity between hype and substance reveals limitations less ambitious movies don’t have. I think a simple, cheap gonzo movie succeeds much more frequently than one that tries and fails.
I even see a little arrogance in some of the bigger feature efforts, as if just trying should be enough to justify and forgive a train wreck’s failure. Only in school are we given grades for effort independent of success.
The features that most often fall afoul for me are the serious ones dealing with sexual obsession, darkest desires, and hidden secrets. People who can’t act are not allowed to have those things. And sometimes even porn comedies, those things which I think are closest to the spirit of what getting naked on camera should be, also trip over themselves.
Of all the things that get jammed down the throat in a porn movie, the script should not be one of them.
Four notable exceptions of features that play to everyone’s strengths (though there are more) that come to mind: Upload, Spunk’d, O: The Power of Submission, Contract Star.
I mention this because, oh man, I really didn’t like Carolina Jones And the Broken Covenant, much as I like Ava Rose and Bree Olson. I wish it could have been a bunch of sex scenes with no script, costumes, or foreign locations. The money saved could have gone for a pizza party at the end of the school year.
For more, click here.
Previously: Buffet line in the Czech Republic
See also: Adam & Eve, XBiz
Agreed, on all counts. Also, how much extra would it have cost to take Steven St. Croix, Randy Spears, or Evan Stone along, instead of relying on guys who can’t speak English and have to read it phonetically? Or to have hired a scriptwriter?