Pornography for everyone

On May 17, Cannes, where the famous film festival is buzzing, will host another, no less impressive event - the presentation of the Hot D'Or prizes. A kind of pornographic Oscars. The neighborhood really shouldn’t be surprising: porn cinema has long been a source of talent for big cinema and, in general, a familiar part of mass culture.

Do you think this is an exaggeration? Nothing like this. On a weekday, even on an ordinary Russian TV, you can easily find a dozen porn characters.
Turn on MTV - the fun-loving California band Bloodhound Gang sings "The Ballad of Chasey Lane." Let me explain: Chasey Lane is one of the highest paid and most popular porn actresses in the world, starring in the revolutionary concept film “New Wave Whores.” And the video for the song “The Ballad of Chasey” featured several porn stars of a lower rank, but from the same company as herself - Vivid Video.
Here's the Kid Rock song. Watch the clip carefully, because you can see the living legend of pornography - actor Ron Jeremy, playing the piano.
Then on the same MTV there is a video by the Everclear group “The Boys Are Back in Town”, where a dozen porn actresses from the Vivid studio are employed (the PR department is working!).
Do you think it was MTV that excelled? Switch to respectable ORT and watch porn star Ashlyn Gere in the series “The X-Files” (episode “Blood”). You press the remote control again: bourgeois NTV is playing the film “Blade” with Wesley Snipes and porn star Traci Lords. You jump to STS and see Traci Lords again in the series Melrose Place. You rush to TNT - and together with superman Nash Bridges, you hunt for the same Traci Lords.
Charter, you choose the statist RTR. And you see in full screen the erect penis of Rocco Siffredi (25 cm), the most fashionable porn actor and porn producer. This is the French film "Romance", a hit at last year's Moscow Film Festival.
You go back to MTV and see a Blink 182 video with porn superstar Janine (in a nurse's uniform, as usual).
In other words, porn characters and porn movies are truly becoming part of mass culture. Regardless of whether you know a star named Chasey Lane in your bear corner or not.

Two Hollywoods
Of course, you can, together with the American Family Defense Committee, become filled with anger at the word “pornography” and demand that Cosmopolitan and Glamor magazines be removed from general sale, but the truth is that in the same puritanical States, 700 million porn cassettes were rented last year alone (about $5 per day) and more than five thousand new films of the XXX category have been released. And the annual turnover of porn cinematography has reached $8 billion. This, by the way, is a little more than a third of the annual budget of one underdeveloped country, occupying the space between Finland and China. (So don’t let Pochinok wonder where to get the money - pass a law on the circulation of sex products, introduce taxes on it and, damn them, fees.)
And this is not only in America. From 1991 to 1994, international box office receipts from American porn films grew by 250% to $5 billion. The San Fernando Valley, where most porn studios are located, became the new Hollywood.
And the respectability of the porn industry began much earlier. In 1972, Damiano's film "Deep Throat" with Linda Lovelace was released on wide screens, and all of America - from intellectuals to longshoremen - lined up at cinemas that were allowed to show porn legally. They were not in vain - this film is still the real leader in cumulative box office receipts in the United States, leaving the first part of Star Wars far behind.
At the same time, old Hollywood and new XXX-Hollywood have a lot in common. Do you like Hollywood films "Basic Instinct" or "Indecent Proposal"? Know that all the sex scenes in these films were made by porn stars from another Hollywood - Ashlyn Gere and Randy West. I called West in California and asked how he felt about the respectability of porn.
- Why not? — he asked. “After all, porn is just when beautiful people have sex.” And if gays have already come out of their closets, then why are we, heterosexuals, worse?
This is the opinion of the second most popular porn actor in the world, after Ron Jeremy. His career began during the so-called “golden era of porn,” which Anderson’s non-porn film “Boogie Nights” is dedicated to. And the fate of the prototype hero of this film, John Holmes, is part of West’s own fate.
In general, “Boogie Nights” made an excellent advertisement for the XXX industry, calling porn heroes just heroes, and porn victims just victims. And putting everything in its place, regardless of morality.

Rock doesn't mind
Pop music hasn't been left behind by porn either. The formula “where there are pop stars, there are top models” is outdated. Capricious, greedy, narcissistic and expensive top models have tired everyone out. Another slogan is in use - “where there are rock stars, there are porn stars.” It’s not for nothing that half of the modern records say “Children under... are prohibited,” just like on some Color Climax magazine.
The romance between porn and rock, however, began sadly: porn actress Savannah, who had affairs with Slash (Guns`N`Roses) and Tommy Lee (Motley Crue), committed suicide (music and porn have nothing to do with it - it’s all because of cocaine) .
But now life together has already improved. Thus, at Marilyn Manson concerts, porn star Kobe Tai performs backing vocals. (By the way, she performed at the Grammy ceremony as part of Kid Rock.) And the singer of the band Smash Mouth came to the ceremony of presenting this musical Oscar in the company of porn star Janine Lindenmueller.
“Rockers,” explains Kobe Thai, “don’t make scenes of jealousy because of what we do in front of the camera with other guys. They understand: work is work.”
And director Gregory Dark, who gave the world not only four episodes of New Wave Whores and The Devil in Mrs. Jones - 2, 3, 4, but also a whole series of thrillers under the name Gregory Hippolight, became an outstanding rock video director. To begin with, he shot videos for the group Sublime (Ron Jeremy again plays in the Date Rape video), and then continued with 100% pop bands - Counting Crows (Hangingaround), Orgy (Blue Monday) and (attention!) Britney Spears (From the Bottom of My Broken Heart).

Where do the stars come from?
People who get hired for work in American porn cinema are mostly striptease performers. If your name is featured in a good porn film, for example, “Psychosexuals-5,” then fees during strip show tours and tips grow exponentially.
So, Janine or Chasey Lane receive up to $25,000 in cash for a week of strip tours. As contract actresses at Vivid Video, they also receive between $2,000 and $5,000 per day of filming. An actress without a name, but with abilities - from $200 to $500. Male actors' fees are not comparable to female ones. Porn is a business that cherishes woman with a capital W. And this is already a sign of art.
To avoid any doubt about this, the publisher of the American magazine Adult Video News, Paul Fishbein, came up with the European Hot D'Or award, which has been awarded at the Royal Casino Hotel in Cannes for the fifth year in a row. And this happens just when the so-called big cinema is walking around the Palais des Festivals on the Croisette and drooling lustfully at its “big stars”.
Fishbein also hosts the AVN Awards in Los Angeles. Last year, an elderly disabled person in a golden wheelchair received an honorary award for lifetime achievement. On it, holding back a stingy tear, he went on stage to receive a girl with wings. This was the famous Larry Flynt, about whom Milos Forman made his film “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Almost documentary. About how Flint turned America's ideas about morality upside down by selling his Hustler magazine in ordinary shops (not sex shops).
“Hypocrisy and the inability to separate love from sex is the reason that America today is a home of depravity,” Larry Flynt tells me, sitting in the same stroller. We are in his office in his own skyscraper on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
When Larry Flynt separated sex from love, he became a millionaire and published not only Hustler, but also Leg World, Barely Legal, Taboo and a dozen other non-pornographic magazines.
Thanks to several cases won in the US Supreme Court, Flynt became a hero of intellectual America. After his victories, reading Playboy and Penthouse became bad manners.
What could have worked better for the respectability of the porn business?

Talents from Russia
Russians have their own relationship with big porn - as soon as the border opened, first to Hungary, then to France and then to America, domestic girls who want to become porn stars flocked.
And they succeeded. The first to distinguish herself was Tatyana Rusoff from Little Russia, who received a contract from Private. Then two friends, Vika and Nikita, reached amazing heights, becoming actresses under contract with the VCA company.
Moreover, Muscovite Nikita started out as a top model, but then refocused on collaborating with Rocco Siffredi. She has now starred in more than 60 films. What awaited her in Moscow?
“Nikita, the guys in Moscow are waiting for you to arrive,” I tell her at the party of the French pornographer Marc Dorcel.
- What didn’t I see there! Is it possible to help the girls leave and start earning normal money?
In Los Angeles, the Mecca of the porn business, she is her own boss - together with Vika they bought a wonderful house and are preparing to debut as directors and screenwriters.
But let's return to Russian MTV. Metallica sings the old Bob Seger song "Turn the Page." The leading role of the video is the legend of world pornography, actress Ginger Lynn. This year she is filming her latest porn film. She, like me, is forty. And for ten years now she has been running an orphanage with her own money.
Why talk about morality after this?

IGOR MALTSEV

Magazine "Kommersant Money" No. 19 dated May 17, 2000, p. 68

Authors:

Igor Maltsev