While you may have always wondered what Ginger from “Gilligan’s Island” would look like in a three-way with Gilligan and Mary Ann, several legal obstacles must be removed before your castaway fantasy becomes a reality.
Porn parodies of mainstream fare have always been around, but have recently cycled back into popularity. They are among the highest profile moneymakers for the adult industry, which has turned to parodies in an increasingly niche-dependent market.
Even though blockbuster adult movies like the Pirates series and smaller projects like XPlay’s string of sitcom parodies are hot properties, porn adaptations of mainstream products have always had a place on shelves, with movies like Smeers, Sexbusters, and Nic Cramer’s A Clockwork Orgy (or, at the very least, their boxcovers) deliberately reminiscent of the non-porn originals.
Today, parodies occupy a special place because they belong to a small group of products that can’t logically be hacked up into pay-per-minute clips. People buy the whole movie, just like in the old days.
But even as parodies have shown themselves to be cash cows, they also require and draw more legal scrutiny than their non-parody competition.
Parodies are a form of criticism and have historically been protected by courts as long as they follow certain Fair Use guidelines that take into account the market for the parody, the amount of elements of the original work contained in the parody, the nature of the original and whether it is more or less deserving of copyright protection, and what a parody might do to the marketability and reputation of the original.
A porn parody, for profit, of a copyrighted sitcom is not exactly a noble cause, but neither is a sitcom considered something that must be protected at all costs.
So how does a porn company portray someone named “Cindy Brady” getting it in the butt while covering its own ass legally? For most companies it is all about pre-production quality control and risk prevention.
“We research any possible trademark infringement,” said Hustler director of Video Operations Jeff Thill, who joked that the company has “2,467 lawyers.”
Hustler produces its own parody movies but also serves as a distribution partner for XPlay’s spoofs. Because the companies work closely together to be legally compliant, it is often difficult to tell which movies were made by what company because both entities take similar precautions.
“While we often deal with fictional characters, they are different from parodying someone like Sarah Palin or Bill O’Reilly,” Thill said, referring to the company’s “Who’s Nailin’ Palin?” series featuring Lisa Ann as the Alaska governor. “So we put those people in outrageous situations to underline that this is a parody.”
Thill admits that Hustler has a legal team “on retainer 24/7,” and since Larry Flynt’s company is an old hand at dealing with the fallout from satire, the porn giant tries to deal with potential problems before they become actual ones.
“For example,” Thill said, “your replacement music has to be similar but not the same as the original. The key might even have to be different. You might only be able to play a certain piece of music for a limited time.”
Jeff Mullen, founder of XPlay, has come closest to raising the hackles of protective lawyers simply because he has made so many parodies over the past four years, from the “Britney Rears” series to “Not the Bradys,” “This Ain’t Three’s Company,” and the upcoming “Not Married with Children.”
“We don’t invite lawsuits, but we’re prepared to deal with them,” said Mullen, whose producing partner Scott David designs sets and dresses characters eerily similar to – but not the same as – their non-porn originators.
“We put ‘Parody’ on every available surface,” said Mullen. “But that doesn’t keep their lawyers from sending us Cease And Desist letters.”
And while people like Thill and Mullen take pains to not mirror the originals too much, the chilling effect of a much better-financed mainstream producer’s C&D letter often keeps smaller companies from attempting their own porn parody.
“They might not have a legal leg to stand on but that doesn’t matter,” Mullen said. “We don’t exactly have a big legal budget to fight even a case we know we’ll win.”
Mullen is currently in legal non-disclosure mode involving a recent parody, in fact. “It’s not a case, but they’re tying us up,” was all he could say.
Thill further delineated where a studio might misstep in making a parody.
“You need to check if the logo is trademarked,” he said. “You might need to change the font. Maybe there was a particular costume piece or prop that may represent a copyright infringement. Small things can get overlooked.”
Not only that, but Bill Cosby might have chosen to protect what the estate of Sherwood Schwartz didn’t, or vice versa, so the legal vetting for one project might not follow the same course as another.
What porn companies have going for them is that all publicity is good for sales – if they can financially withstand a lawsuit – and that mainstream companies are often loathe to have their names sullied by porn associations.
Digital Playground, whose Pirates includes story elements very similar to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and whose pockets are deep enough to have financed both the movies and the Hollywood-style marketing campaigns for both of them, nevertheless said that repercussions from the litigious Disney were nonexistent.
“We changed the original artwork way before the movie(s) even released so it wouldn’t be an issue,” said Digital Playground publicist Adella O’Neal.
And maybe the porn industry should be considered a model for the open source dissemination of all copyrighted materials. After all, isn’t Hustler’s Barely Legal series mirrored by its competitors’ Almost Illegal Teens, Fresh Outta High School, 18 And Easy, and Barely 18? Didn’t Pirates, a porn adaptation of movies that were themselves an adaptation of a theme park ride, not bat an eye when Loaded Digital came out with Surrender the Booty?
This just says to me that there is enough money for everybody, and that it will never, ever stop.
- See the gallery for Not Married With Children XXX here.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: We Shall Overcome (on your face); My This Ain’t Gilligan’s Island journal; Strollin’ in the Brolin; Digital Playground preps Pirates 3
See also: Hustler, XPlay, Digital Playground
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