“Porn: A Series” of Semi-clothed Events

A scheming ingenue from the Midwest comes to the big city, befriends a fading star who is gracious to someone she takes for a wide-eyed rube, and then the newcomer topples her mentor and assumes her throne. This is the plot of the classic “All About Eve” as well as Hieronyvision’s “Porn: A Series.” But one is about the backstabbing New York theatre world and the other (well, you can guess where the other one takes place).

Rose Ryan and Bree Daniels

For people who have reached the end of Netflix and for whom those lower reaches of Hulu and Amazon are repositories of madness and student films your friends are in, Hieronyvision’s 12-part melodrama set in the porn world is a well-made, satisfying, and respectful—if reality-adjacent—English language telenovela streaming at a new “channel alternative”: Hieronyvision.com. The platform also features comedies, dramas, documentaries, articles, and an intriguing film library built from a hodgepodge of distribution deals.

“I think of the site as the joy of browsing a bookstore, if bookstores still existed,” says Hieronyvision producer Felix Werner. “As a distribution channel, it’s a lot more accessible than making your film, shopping it at Sundance or other festivals, and hoping and praying that someone will buy it.”

Jenna J Ross

And now, in addition to forgotten comedies and cultural artifacts featuring the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Brooke Shields, and Tom Green, as well as treatises on the Dead Kennedys, Hieronyvision hopes to hook viewers with a story unfolding in a dozen 8-minute episodes that feature just enough nudity to justify the title but not enough to require 2257 documentation.

Werner admits his 5-person crew was originally met with skepticism.

“Because we were shooting in the wake of (Rashida Jones’ unflattering Florida porn documentary) ‘Hot Girls Wanted,’ people in the porn industry were nervous-to-up in arms about us,” he says of the series’ 8-week shoot in 2019, “but we brought a lot of people from the adult industry on board.”

Actual adult performers taking on the roles of fictional adult performers include Bree Daniels and Jenna J. Ross, both of whom deliver likable, credible, and nuanced performances as troubled fading star Annabel Lee and her sassy best friend, Victoria Blackwell. Rose Ryan is Grace, the ingenue cam girl from Indiana with a past (it is interesting to note in the real-live porn world that camming and Florida are both seen as farm teams by Los Angeles-based porn professionals, but L.A. porn stardom isn’t the aspirational prize that Porn Valley players seem to think mere cam girls think it is). Elena Koshko and Michael Vegas have smaller roles, and extras were cast from the roster of Matrix Models, an adult talent agency.

An actual location

Roles played by non-porn actors include The Abusive, Problematic Boyfriend, the Abandoned Christian Husband, the Sympathetic Immigrant Cab Driver, and the Porn Mogul. This last stock character, played gamely by Caesar James, suffers from a lack of development. It is Louiza Zouzias, inhabiting scammy porn star-turned-agent Danni, that is especially fleshed-out, fun, and familiar.

“It was filmed run-and-gun and opportunistic,” says Werner. Atmospheric shots of Los Angeles, capturing homeless camps to last fall’s fires, complement the narrative. The main action takes place in a Palisades house that is the headquarters of a cam operation (in this world, porn stars pay their rent while taking shifts on cams). In real life, this location is a property where the production team lived.

Along with Hieronyvision’s other original and licensed content, available for $1.99 a month plus various Friday freebies, the first season of “Porn: A Series” is available now and gearing up for a second season.

When the porn industry looks at itself in movie form, the results can be difficult to watch. Think of the chip on the shoulder of any systematically misunderstood person and apply it to a whole business. Would you want the whole porn industry crying in its drink to you at a bar about how no one gets how worthwhile or clever it is? No. You would tell the porn industry: Get some distance, do some work on yourself, and stop caring whether I think you’re smart or not. Further, porno-verite projects often reveal limitations of filmmaking and storytelling skill.

Some nudity required

Similarly, when the business is viewed through an outsider’s lens, the project can seem anthropological, glib, or downright mean-spirited. The agenda gets in the way of any curiosity to understand the humanity of its subjects, and the industry appears monolithic as opposed to the rabbit warren it is.

Thus, “Porn: A Series,” with its film student nods to “All About Eve,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and even “Clockwork Orange,” and made with the participation and input of Daniels and Ross, in particular, but written and lensed by respectful tourists (the writing credit goes to Gus Greene), is a refreshing hybrid. No, it doesn’t get everything right within its own universe or even the real one, but it is filmed and scored (with Daft Punk-lite compositions by Yir Hurgh) thoughtfully and confidently.

Note: Perhaps there is nothing more legitimizing in the porn world than your project’s title being nearly identical to another. Following the release of Hieronyvision’s “Porn: A Series,” Wicked Pictures released the much more hardcore (and unrelated) “Porn: The Series.” Pornier still would have been Vivid-Alt launching “Porn: An Series.”

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Eating Out Your Way Across Porn Valley (2009)
See also: Hieronyvision

About Gram the Man 4399 Articles
Gram Ponante is America's Beloved Porn Journalist

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