Visitors to the Mylie Cyrus show at the nearby Disney-run El Capitan Theatre did not know Nina Hartley was talking about post-Federalist Papers cocksucking two doors down.
“…a little John Jay B.J.,” she was saying.
Panelists at the XBiz Hollywood Conference addressed keeping track of revenues and HIV infection, the prolonged death of the DVD, and why the coming change of presidential administration might be as hostile to the adult industry as the old one.
“A Clinton presidency might result in the paying off of political favors to anti-porn feminists at our expense in the same way Bush did with the religious right,” said Ernest Greene, editor of Hustler’s Taboo Magazine and director of O: The Power of Submission.
Others acknowledged the money-making opportunities presented by harsh political climates.
“(Political) backlashes help because the cowards get out of the business,” said Steven Scarborough of Hot House Entertainment.
Sharon Mitchell, founder of STD screener Adult Industry Medical, described battles with the L.A. County Health Department over preventing and controlling HIV outbreaks.
“Sometimes I think their concern is (actually) not solving the problem but proving to someone else that they are concerned with it,” she said.
The air of adult conferences has always been charged with a feeling of doom, as participants fret about dwindling sales and political oppression. But the explosion of porn delivery systems in recent years, such as user-driven “-tube” sites, has people especially worried.
“People told me at the AVN convention, ‘I’ve got the greatest -tube site for you that’ll save you a lot of money,'” said Hustler vice president Michael Klein. “And I said ‘Yes, it’ll save us money because we won’t have to rent a booth here next year. We’ll be out of business.”
But Ali Joone, president of Digital Playground, said that “traditional” media like DVDs still had a place in the market because upscale customers would still purchase high-definition DVDs.
“They’ll buy blockbuster movies to watch on a big screen,” he said, “because you’re not going to get quality like that online in a while.”
But when moderator and XBiz president Alec Helmy asked what the future held for a DVD-only business model, Joone responded, “I think that’s like sticking with VHS.”
And unlike the much-vaunted porn-driving-technology axiom from the 80’s, online “Netflix of Porn” company WantedList founder Anh Tran expected mainstream media’s tech choices to trickle down to porn rather than the other way around.
“How mainstream consumers choose eventually finds its way to porn,” he said.
Tran reflects an aspect of the adult industry that views DVD as another delivery system instead of the one nail to hang the business on.
“We’re in the media delivery business,” he said, “DVD is just one aspect of that.”
Typical of tradeshow breakout sessions anywhere, questions tended to be softball ones, and the dialogue was often mutually congratulatory.
But there were occasional spirited exchanges, where harder questions yielded real information.
XBiz publisher Tom Hymes asked Penthouse CEO Marc Bell (who would later win XBiz’ Man of the Year award) about what differentiated Penthouse from Playboy.
“Playboy likes to avoid saying they’re in the adult business,” he said. “We’re not afraid to.”
But when Bell spun Penthouse as a unique media empire, Hymes shot back with “What about Hustler?”
The animated discussion that followed was one of the most interesting of the conference; it touched on the likelihood of more adult companies going public, whether or not Penthouse would take an active role in combatting anti-porn legislation (“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” Bell said, without actually answering the question) and the problem of getting Penthouse Pets to also do porn.
“Well, we want them all to shoot porn, too…” Bell said.
As panelists discussed consumer demand further splintering into niches and how to get people to pay for what they can increasingly get for free, one attendee stood to talk about the quality of studio porn.
“Why is it that user-submitted content on -tube sites always outperforms stolen stuff from big companies?” he asked.
He was unable to supply numbers or sites to support this claim, but I think his remarks speak to the sameness of studio porn, to the point that anything that appears “real” is more exciting.
Whereas recent years’ legal discussions focused on 2257 recordkeeping, this year the boogeymen were piracy and the constant threat of external controls.
First Amendment attorney Jeffrey Douglas pointed out that, though injuries in martial arts films are expected, martial arts movies are not regulated any more than other genres.
But the adult industry is constantly threatened with regulation. Douglas posited a possible defense against regulation on free speech grounds.
“If you need to enforce battery laws in martial arts films, for example,” he said, “you would dramatically alter the content.”
Veteran performer Nina Hartley offered a view of porn workers as a whole, suggesting that self-regulation was something to constantly strive for.
“People are in porn because, traditionally, they don’t want to play by the rules of others (in the mainstream), but (accurate) paperwork is a sign of growing up and working with the community,” she said.
But she offered a compromise.
“Maybe to prove our patriotism we can recite a bit of the Declaration of Independence before we say, ‘Can I suck your cock please?'”
Previously: XBiz Forum and Awards: Us v. Them
See also: XBiz Hollywood
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