| Username |
Post |
| naresh_karki |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 12:04 PM
This site seems to be for high profile academic people. This posting might not be worthy for them, they would definately crush on me just to show how great they are. I am sure it does appel to everyone. Everybody do have some shot of pervertness. No matter it is Bill or Kennedy .... BP or even KP.
Research shows many people do watch prono site. We all are tired of watching nude white skin guys and gals. Here I am able to capture own nepali. It is in bmp file so it takes time to open up for dail up connection. However snaps are great. guys just visit this link below.
http://www.geocities.com/naresh_karki/
I do respect privacy so I am not gonna tell who are they.
Enjoy folks.
Oohi
Naresh karki ( I am great fan of Ashu...trying to copy his writing style)
Baltimore
|
| Pervert!! |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 12:47 PM
Naresh Ji....
Muri muri hardik dhanyabaad. Indeed great site. Keep your seceret camera working.
pervert
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 01:19 PM
have you guys ever visited http://goups.yahoo.com/nepalisexpics (forgot the spelling, check the SEX usergroup at sajha). They gotta a whole bunch of pics inlcuding the one mentioned above. I think you need to be a member of the site to view though.
|
| thanks |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 08:04 PM
THANKS HUMM AND NARESH KARKI...
I WAS EXPECTING SUCH KIND OF WEBSITE.
LOT OF THANKS
|
| anepalikt |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 09:12 PM
I tried to go to the site and it said the site was down. So are there real nepali porn photos posted there or are you guys just kidding?
|
| Gosaikunda |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 09:36 PM
Ho ho ramailo chha.
bhande na tero k janchha.
|
| pervert |
Posted
on 27-Feb-02 11:32 PM
Anepalikt....
it does work!!! wow......
|
| Jogi |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 01:24 AM
How come it doesn't work???? The address doesn't work.
|
| naresh_karki |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 06:24 AM
Hello
Now I change bmp to jpg files. Now it works. Yesterday you guys got problem due to heavy traffic . Thanks for overwhelm response. On 2/27/2002 514 visitors visit this site. Its encouraging . I feel I am successful in my motive.
Thanks for visiting that site. Again thanks for GBNC for providing this platform.
Oohi
Naresh Karki
Baltimore
|
| Curious |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 08:13 AM
Is that you in the picture, Naresh ?
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 08:28 AM
Try the link below. But you need to join the group and I think you need Yahoo ID. There are a lot more pictures.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nepalisexpicx/
hoohi
hmm....
hamrika
|
| jogi |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 08:42 AM
The guy in the pictures looks like an Indian..........
|
| sunakhari |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 09:15 AM
OMG!!!
What the heck was that Naresh??
While I'm NOT a prude, I seriously think that if its not you in the picture, if I were you I would be concerned about legal rights. If you have cleared this with the people in the picture, then I would still recommend you visit your ethics about posting pictures of people you MAY know.
I would vouch a 99.9% that those people are NOT nepalese. This does not mean that they're other nationalities and Nepalese people don't pose as such BUT it does mean that Nepalese women and (some) men have a hard time LOOKING at themselves in the mirror when they're nude let alone POSE!!
|
| naresh_karki |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 09:39 AM
Sunakhari,
Do not crush on me. As long as these people who are in snaps are not concerned who the heck you are to tell me to ask my ethics. I do know what I am doing.
Whenver I watched prono sites, my fantacy was about our own Nepali guys and gals. How they look like in different pose. Now I got these pictures trying to share with thousands of nepali out there. My main motive is to give enjoyment out of my work. Most probably you did enjoy after watching it. Did not you were curious to watch it? Now you are talking about big moral values, ethics...and more.
My one question to you is, youalready knew that was porno site of nepali, why the hell you visited it? If you have any reason ....that is my motive sunakhari.
If you are doing any thing, if you like anything, DO accept it and if possible encourage it. Be straight and dont be hypocrite
Oohi
Naresh Karki
Baltimore
|
| k |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:02 AM
Hey , Dude
it's cool, put some more pics,
Wow!
|
| jhusule kira |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:14 AM
calm down Naresh! you're over reacting
|
| sunakhari |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:17 AM
Naresh Karki
You are so damn right, this is YOUR choice and maybe a reflection of your fantasies. ALTHOUGH, you may not be so damn proud of your accomplishments later on.
You are also right because I DID click on it but that was because I got tricked in the first place. If you do read threads here, you will see I had put down something with a SIMILAR THREAD TOPIC! That was why I skimmed your writing and went straight to the link!!!!
UNLIKE you, I do NOT draw conclusions on other people's characters (calling me a hypocrite) and maybe live a much more out-of-the-box kinda lifestyle compared to yours and OBVIOUSLY, you did not understand my first admittance - "While I'm NOT a prude".
Maybe you would like to meet me in person BEFORE you think that I am a hypocrite. Maybe I have seen more porno movies than you could care to count. Lots of maybes here
SUNAKHARI
MARYLAND (did you do a double take?)
|
| jj |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:27 AM
I thought the pictures were uncalled for and I was shocked to see them.
But I don't understand why everyone is making the accusations that these people are not Nepali. Why is that? I don't see why it is so hard to believe. Nepalis really have a holier-than-thou attitude. Why is it that you automatically blame the Indians or some other group. Also, Nepalis are so quick to judge a person's looks. It's always, "oh she's too dark to be Nepali" or "he's too tall to be Nepali" For god's sakes what does a real Nepali look like? How come you are so quick to make these assumptions??????????? This is by far one of the most frustrating things about Nepalis. I wish we all could just stop being so quick to make conclusions.
|
| Go guys |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 12:15 PM
No one knows who is over acting here, Naresh or Sunakhari. I have one advice for you guys. Both are in Maryland, why don't you meet in real life ...hang out together and decide who is hypocrite. You guys have will have a great discussion about porno movies, its prospective market in Nepal. (Both are addicted to it :) )
If you decide to make one movie, let me know. I will help you out. I think I might be a good male porno star. I got lot of scary ideas. I will not charge for these.
Interested
|
| sunakhari |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 12:19 PM
I thought some kids might react to that
"MAYBE I HAVE WATCHED...."
hah!
Its like throwing a bait and waiting. The only real difference is that the fish most times is smarter than most people here!
|
| Jack ass |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 12:43 PM
Sunakhari got serious problem. He might be smarter or something else but I dont understand why he is worried about Naresh's work. If you do not like that then shut the .....up and plez dont discourage Naresh.
I like his work and my thanks goes to Naresh. More posting plez.
Naresh's Fan
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 12:57 PM
Naresh-- You probably got the picture from the Yahoo Club I mention above. Yeah they certainly look Nepali. Not to crush on the hopes of all Nepali lovers--Both of them are Indonesians. This was a big scandal in Indonesai due to these pictures. The guy was(is) a well known Pop star.
One thing is clear from this-- There is a huge potential for Nepali Porno market of good quality. I have heard there were few made out of Dharan and Jhapa area, but never really seen it.
One of the posters earlier in another thread was willing to pay $1000 for an idea. How about this my friend. Go to Nepal and make some pornos. The girls from the east or the baadi girls of the west are pretty easy to find and give them work. We all know guys won't ask for money either.
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 01:01 PM
forgot to add my trademark, so here it is:
hoohi
hmm....
hamrika
|
| Jack ass |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 01:07 PM
Yeah watched that movie. Its called HOLIDAY HONEYMOON. picture quality chain ramro chaina.
|
| Ron Jeremy |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 01:56 PM
Mr. hmmmm,
Are you sure these kids aren't Nepalese but Indonesians?? How could you be so sure though?? You got any proof?
-Ron J.
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 02:13 PM
Talk to your Indonesian friends. I got these pictures from the yahoo group i mentioned above and my indonesian friend saw them too. he told me. you can see when these pictures were posted at the yahoo group files section. This Naresh_Kardi dude is a fraud.
Hoohi
hmmm....
Hamrika
|
| COPS |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 03:23 PM
Mr. hmmm :
Whoever make porno movies in Nepal, will be put in jail. I hope for a VERY VERY long time. Sell Nepali cheli beti ko ijjat just just because it will give them work? Shame on you.
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 04:21 PM
Prostitution is not a bad "pesha" unless its "forced" prostitution. Who are you to say that women should not have sex with whomever they want. And who are you to say that they should not charge for it.
My friend wake up and smell the coffee. Its a free world, one should be able to do whatever is desired without stepping on others toes.
Hoohi
hmmm....
Hamrika
|
| Body hammer |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 07:07 PM
Hey how about movies. Any way we can score Nepali porn? I heard there's some.
|
| porno lover |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 07:15 PM
Hey guys,
Why don't you list all the Nepali "XXX" movies in this site?
awe.....chhe.
|
| anepalikt |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 08:04 PM
I was curious to see if they were REALLY Nepali people. They probably aren't, but who really cares. I think pornography is ultimately exploitative. Yes, you can argue that prostitution should be legal and that sex workers who are not "forced" should be allowed to do what they please with their bodies and to sell it if they want. But who in their right mind would choose to sell their body. If people have real options in life, I refuse to believe that they would subject themselves to the kind of degradation and humiliation.
hmmm said "The girls from the east or the baadi girls of the west are pretty easy to find and give them work. We all know guys won't ask for money either."
Is it that you think girls from the East are sexually uninhibited? Or is it that there is more poverty there, so that like the baadi women, they are easier to prey on?
Why not solicit girls from say high caste families in Kathmandu? Maybe because you know that, unless in cases where the rare Nepali woman might really "independently" choose to pose nude or be part of some porn scene, most "willing" women are actually victims of circumstances. Usually it is about lack of options, resources, and lack of money.
For all the Nepali boys eager to start a porn industry in Nepal, think about how you would like to see you sister or cousin being portrayed in such pictures or movies.
Also, why do you need pornography? Studies have shown that the mainstream porn industry consumer is adult heterosexual man.
Here is what a pornographer has said...."My whole reason for being in the industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't much care for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they coudn't have when they were growing up." in a book called "Porn: Myths for the Twentieth Century" by Robert J. Stroller, MD.
Pornography might seem like harmless fun at first, but when it comes down to it, it is a horrible thing... it exploits and objectifies its subject and its consumption most often than not means your relationship to the opposite sex is sad, depraved and pathetic.
There are laws against pornography and for good reasons!
|
| nepalikt |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 08:32 PM
>I was curious to see if they were REALLY
>Nepali people. They probably aren't, but
>who really cares. I think pornography is
>ultimately exploitative. Yes, you can argue
>that prostitution should be legal and that
>sex workers who are not "forced" should be
>allowed to do what they please with their
>bodies and to sell it if they want. But
>who in their right mind would choose to sell
>their body. If people have real options in
>life, I refuse to believe that they would
>subject themselves to the kind of
>degradation and humiliation.
>
>hmmm said "The girls from the east or the
>baadi girls of the west are pretty easy to
>find and give them work. We all know guys
>won't ask for money either."
>
>Is it that you think girls from the East are
>sexually uninhibited? Or is it that there is
>more poverty there, so that like the baadi
>women, they are easier to prey on?
>
>Why not solicit girls from say high caste
>families in Kathmandu? Maybe because you
>know that, unless in cases where the rare
>Nepali woman might really "independently"
>choose to pose nude or be part of some porn
>scene, most "willing" women are actually
>victims of circumstances. Usually it is
>about lack of options, resources, and lack
>of money.
>
>For all the Nepali boys eager to start a
>porn industry in Nepal, think about how you
>would like to see you sister or cousin being
>portrayed in such pictures or movies.
>
>Also, why do you need pornography? Studies
>have shown that the mainstream porn industry
>consumer is adult heterosexual man.
>
>Here is what a pornographer has said...."My
>whole reason for being in the industry is to
>satisfy the desire of the men in the world
>who basically don't much care for women and
>want to see the men in my industry getting
>even with the women they coudn't have when
>they were growing up." in a book called "
>Porn: Myths for the Twentieth Century" by
>Robert J. Stroller, MD.
>
>Pornography might seem like harmless fun at
>first, but when it comes down to it, it is a
>horrible thing... it exploits and
>objectifies its subject and its consumption
>most often than not means your relationship
>to the opposite sex is sad, depraved and
>pathetic.
>
>There are laws against pornography and for
>good reasons!
hi anepalikt,
Pornography does not bound to any nationality, even though I do not believe that these people are nepali. The poster should know who they are and what values they have indeed.
I have objection on your saying that women are victim of circumstance, it may be in some cases, but not in all the cases of being prostitute. Recent research shows that many women have their desire to have more that one men for their sexual pleasure. Few women many be exceptional on this issue.
Pornography is the outcome of excess sense of freedom and it has been using in several parts of the world. Nepal is not an exceptional in this industry. However, Nepal has not paced so fast and aggresively in this industry.
Women should not be prohibited to expose her body. She has to have that right to expose herself at her will. It is the freedom that twinty first century's woman wants. Men are the complimentary part in this industry.
|
| body hammer |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 09:24 PM
There are laws against pedophilia, bestiality necrophilia and the likes.
Otherwise Porn is perfectly legal in US. It is all about consent and the ability to contract away individual labor.
Nepalikt, if you cite statistics there are plenty of studies that dispute that it is purely heterosexual males that consume pornography. Rather than your attempt to sweep us right back into the victorian age, a woman if she is free and willing should be free to perform in a porn. Of course there are free, UNcontstrained women perpetuating "what you call the stereotypes" and the industry by making thousands selling their soiled panties online, And as free standing males we are free to watch em.
As far as victim of circumstances go, there is another name for it "S&M", rape, slavery and clearly we are not talking about that.
Just because we talk about our love the free expression of sexuality and find a healthy outlet, does not mean that you all have to find some way to insert a social agenda in there. That is called unauthorized penetration, in industry terms "A strap on."
The genius of you people astounds me. No matter how light and fluff the conversation, you just find some way to creep in your depravity, and anchor down th ehigh some other people may be enjoying...with the feelings of your own insecurities and inadequacies
|
| anepalikt |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:21 PM
Nepalikt: so close, you and I, separated by a mere "a"!
I am not arguing that women should not be allowed to do what they want! I am not talking about imposing victorian sexual sensibilities on women of the 21st century like Mr. Hammer seems to think. Nowhere did I say that pornography is a particular national phenomenon. If women want to show their knickers, or lack thereof, online or whatever, and men want to watch, well, good for you.
You want to see brown bodies? There are plenty of countries around the world producing porn! Many nationalities around the world could pass for Nepali... obviously Indonesians, and most East asianss, indians, mexicans and latin americans will do.
But if Nepali people want to produce pornography I think they need to really examine the impact it will have and the socio-economic, psychological and cultural aspects of the whole thing. But maybe that is a truely unreasonable thing to ask when talking about the lowest common denominator! We don't seem to be talking about the most socially conscious people here - those who want to turn into pornographers. Though some might argue that without the demand there would be no supply, therefore the burden of responsibility should be placed on the individuals who create the demand in the first place. But I will acknowledge that cognitive dissonace is a common enough phenomenon!! So I am not damning anyone here (though obviously I am a buzzkill). Intelligent and generally ethical and moral men and women DO do things that are not consistent with their usual behaviours and thoughts!
And I did not say porn is a "purey" heterosexual male phenomenon, just that the "mainstream" consumer is an adult male heterosexual. As big as the whole gay porn industry might be getting, I think it is safe to say that the major consumers of porn are still male and heterosexual. Though of course there is a growing market for women supposedly with the whole "gentler" porn. But that we'll leave for another thread.
Yes, women are selling their soiled panties on the net! And making a buck off it! Yes, you are free to watch em as "free standing men". But my question stands, who are the women selling their undies? And would you like to see your relative do it? Well, most likely not! At least, not till the stigma of prostitution is not an issue. It is an issue still in the states. Therefore the Ricki Lakes and Jerry Springers do well. And in Nepal, I can't imagine a woman or her relatives admitting freely and proudly she is a prostitute!
When I said "victim of circumstances", I was not talking about direct coersion. I was speaking aout socio-economic circumstances that lead many women to sell themselves. I am talkign about a woman not having enough money to feed her kid and sellign her self to survive. I am talking about drug addictions that keep women trapped in that cycle. I guess this might be time to reexamine what rape and slavery mean in today's world. S&M is a different story and we will leave that for now!
Mr. Hammer, I am sorry to burst your bubble. Sorry to rain on your parade, but Porn SUCKS! :)
And sorry about inserting my social agenda into my response. I unfortunately am plagued by reality! Wish I could live in a fantasy world! It surely would make me happier, believe me. And "insecurities and inadequacies", hmmmmm. I don't know about that. Seems like you are projecting!
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:43 PM
Hi all,
Sometime last year, I read this fascinating (though quite long) article by
Frank Rich in The New York Times.
This article may be of interest to those who are curious as to how porn is
becoming a mainstream staple in America.
This article, as it appears below, is a simple copy-and-paste from email-archives of The Kathmandu Film Archive.
Enjoy,
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
*************************************
Naked Capitalists: There's No Business Like Porn Business
By FRANK RICH
The New York Times
In late January 1998, during the same week that America first heard
the ribald tale of the president and the intern, Variety tucked
onto Page 5 a business story that caused no stir whatsoever. Under
a Hollywood dateline, the show-biz trade paper reported that the
adult-video business "saw record revenues last year" of some $4.2
billion in rentals and sales.
It soon became clear to me that these bicoastal stories, one from
the nation's political capital and the other from its entertainment
capital, were in some essential way the same story.
In the weeks that followed, Washington commentators repeatedly
predicted that the public would be scandalized by the
nonmissionary-position sex acts performed illicitly in the White
House. But just as repeatedly voters kept telling pollsters that
they weren't blushing as brightly as, say, Cokie Roberts. The
Variety story, I realized, may have in part explained why. An
unseemly large percentage of Americans was routinely seeking out
stories resembling that of the president and the intern -- and
raunchier ones -- as daily entertainment fare.
The $4 billion that Americans spend on video pornography is larger
than the annual revenue accrued by either the N.F.L., the N.B.A. or
Major League Baseball. But that's literally not the half of it: the
porn business is estimated to total between $10 billion and $14
billion annually in the United States when you toss in porn
networks and pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite, Internet
Web sites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys and that
archaic medium of my own occasionally misspent youth, magazines.
Take even the low-end $10 billion estimate (from a 1998 study by
Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.), and pornography is a
bigger business than professional football, basketball and baseball
put together.
People pay more money for pornography in America in a
year than they do on movie tickets, more than they do on all the
performing arts combined. As one of the porn people I met in the
industry's epicenter, the San Fernando Valley, put it, "We realized
that when there are 700 million porn rentals a year, it can't just
be a million perverts renting 700 videos each."
Yet in a culture where every movie gross and Nielsen rating is
assessed ad infinitum in the media, the enormous branch of show
business euphemistically called "adult" is covered as a backwater,
not as the major industry it is. Often what coverage there is
fixates disproportionately on Internet porn, which may well be the
only Web business that keeps expanding after the dot-com collapse
but still accounts for barely a fifth of American porn consumption.
Occasionally a tony author -- David Foster Wallace, George Plimpton
and Martin Amis, most recently -- will go slumming at a porn awards
ceremony or visit a porn set to score easy laughs and even easier
moral points. During sweeps weeks, local news broadcasts
"investigate" adult businesses, mainly so they can display hard
bodies in the guise of hard news.
And of course, there is no shortage of academic literature and First Amendment debate about pornography, much of it snarled in the ideological divisions among
feminists, from the antiporn absolutism of Catherine MacKinnon and
Andrea Dworkin to the pro-porn revisionism of Sallie Tisdale and
Susie Bright.
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:45 PM
I'm a lifelong show-biz junkie, and what sparked my interest in
the business was what I stumbled upon in Variety -- its sheer
hugeness. Size matters in the cultural marketplace. If the
machinations of the mainstream TV, movie and music industries offer
snapshots of the American character, doesn't this closeted
entertainment behemoth tell us something as well? At $10 billion,
porn is no longer a sideshow to the mainstream like, say, the $600
million Broadway theater industry -- it is the mainstream.
And so I went to the San Fernando Valley, aka Silicone Valley, on
the other side of the Hollywood Hills, to talk with the suits of
the adult business. I did not see any porn scenes being shot. I did
not talk to any antiporn crusaders or their civil-libertarian
adversaries. I did not go to construct a moral brief. I wanted to
find out how some of the top players conduct their business and how
they viewed the Americans who gorge on their products.
Among other things, I learned that the adult industry is in many
ways a mirror image of Hollywood. Porn movies come not only in all
sexual flavors but also in all genres, from period costume dramas
to sci-fi to comedy.
(One series is modeled on the old Hope-Crosby
"Road" pictures.) Adult has a fabled frontier past about which its
veterans wax sentimental -- the "Boogie Nights" 70's, when porn was
still shot only on film and seen in adult movie theaters. (The
arrival of home video revolutionized porn much as sound did
Hollywood.) Adult also has its own Variety (Adult Video News), its
own star-making machinery (the "girls" at Vivid and Wicked are
promoted like bygone MGM contract players), its own prima donnas
and cineastes. It has (often silent) business partners in high
places: two of the country's more prominent porn purveyors,
Marriott (through in-room X-rated movies) and General Motors
(though its ownership of the satellite giant DirecTV, now probably
to be sold to Rupert Murdoch), were also major sponsors of the
Bush-Cheney Inaugural.
Porn even has its own Matt Drudge -- a
not-always-accurate Web industry gossip named Luke Ford, who shares
his prototype's political conservatism and salacious obsessiveness
yet is also, go figure, a rigorously devout convert to Judaism.
I didn't find any porn titans in gold chains, but I did meet
Samantha Lewis, former real-estate saleswoman and current vice
president of Digital Playground, whose best-selling "Virtual Sex"
DVD's are, she says, "the Rolexes and Mercedeses of this business."
I talked with Bill Asher, 38, the head of Vivid, who is an alumnus
of Dartmouth and U.S.C. (for his M.B.A.) and Lawry's (the
restaurant chain).
I listened to the story of John Stagliano, who
was once a U.C.L.A. economics major with plans "to teach at the
college level" but who instead followed his particular erotic
obsession and became Buttman, the creator of hugely popular
improvisational cinema-verite porn videos that have been nicknamed
"gonzo" in honor of the freewheeling literary spirit of Hunter S.
Thompson. A political libertarian, Stagliano was for a while a
big-time contributor to the Cato Institute.
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:47 PM
If the people who make and sell pornography are this "normal" --
and varied -- might not the audience be, too? It can't be merely
the uneducated and unemployed who shell out the $10 billion. And it
isn't. Porn moguls describe a market as diverse as America. There's
a college-age crowd that favors tattooed and pierced porn
performers; there's an older, suburban audience that goes for
"sweeter, nicer, cuter girls," as Bill Asher of Vivid Pictures puts
it.
There is geriatric porn (one fave is called "Century Sex"), and
there's a popular video called "Fatter, Balder, Uglier." Oral sex
sells particularly well in the Northeast, ethnic and interracial
videos sell in cities (especially in the South), and the Sun Belt
likes to see outdoor sex set by beaches and pools.
Yet such demographics are anecdotally, not scientifically,
obtained. So few Americans fess up when asked if they are watching
adult product, says Asher, "that you'd think there is no business."
But in truth, there's no business like porn business. Porn is the
one show that no one watches but that, miraculously, never closes.
orn doesn't have a demographic -- it goes across all
demographics," says Paul Fishbein, 42, the compact and intense man
who founded Adult Video News. "There were 11,000 adult titles last
year versus 400 releases in Hollywood. There are so many outlets
that even if you spend just $15,000 and two days -- and put in some
plot and good-looking people and decent sex -- you can get
satellite and cable sales. There are so many companies, and they
rarely go out of business. You have to be really stupid or greedy
to fail."
He points me toward the larger producers whose videos top AVN's
charts and have the widest TV distribution. There are many
successful companies, but some of them cater to niche markets (like
gay men) that as of yet haven't cracked the national mass market of
TV, where pay-per-view pornographic movies, though priced two or
three times higher and not promoted, often outsell the Hollywood
hits competing head to head. In a business with no barrier to entry
-- anyone with a video camera can be a director or star -- there
are also countless bottom feeders selling nasty loops on used tape.
Whatever the quality or origin of a product, it can at the very
least be exhibited on one of the 70,000 adult pay Web sites, about
a quarter of which are owned by a few privately held companies that
slice and dice the same content under different brands.
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:50 PM
Fishbein has a staff of 62 to track it all. He seems smart,
sensible and mercurial -- in other words, just like any other
successful editor. And like almost everyone else I met in porn, he
says he fell into it by accident. While a journalism student at
Temple University in his hometown, Philadelphia, he managed a video
store and found that customers kept asking him how to differentiate
one adult tape from another.
It was the early 80's, and the VCR was
starting to conquer America, its popularity in large part driven
(as the Internet's would be later) by the easier and more anonymous
access it offered to porn. Prior to home video, pornography had a
far smaller audience, limited mainly to men willing to venture into
the muck of a Pussycat Cinema -- the "raincoaters," as the trade
refers to that dying breed of paleo-consumer. The VCR took porn
into America's bedrooms and living rooms -- and, by happenstance,
did so at the same time that the spread of AIDS began to give
sexual adventurers a reason to stay home. There is no safer sex
than porn.
As adult titles on tape proliferated, Fishbein started a
newsletter to rate them. Other video-store owners, uncertain about
which porn films to stock, took a look. Now, some 18 years later,
Fishbein runs an empire that includes 10 Web sites and spinoff
journals like AVN Online. He also stages trade shows and presents
the AVN Awards in Vegas in January. An issue of AVN can run in
excess of 350 slick pages, much of it advertising, in which a
daunting number of reviews (some 400 a month) jostle for space with
sober reportage like "For Adult, Ashcroft Signals Circle the Wagons
Time." Fishbein has a soft spot for porn veterans like Al
Goldstein, the 65-year-old paterfamilias of Screw magazine who
writes a column for Fishbein's main Web site, AVN.com, in which
Goldstein sometimes rails against the new corporate generation of
pornographers who have no memory of the daring and sacrifice of
their elders. "Al Goldstein took 19 arrests for this business,"
Fishbein says reverently.
Though he embodies the corporatization of porn, Fishbein exudes a
certain swagger. "I'm here by accident, and now that I'm here, I'm
proud of what I do," he says. "My mother sits at my awards table
each year when girls accept awards for oral sex. Sex sells and it
drives the media, and it always has. Billboards, movies, ads,
commercials. It's what we're thinking about at all times of the
day. We're told it's bad, and it manifests itself as political
debates."
Fishbein assures me that he has no "naked girls running through
the office," and alas, he is right -- though a staff member does
wander in with a photo to ask, "Was that the naked sushi party?"
But there's a pleasant buzz and bustle about the place -- one I
associate with journalism. "This could be a magazine about pens and
pencils," Fishbein says. Maybe.
The browsers on the two computers behind his desk are kept on
CNN.com and AVN.com, which is modeled on CNN's as a (porn) news
portal. The decor of his large, meticulous office is mostly movie
memorabilia. A film buff as well as a news junkie, Fishbein is a
particular fan of the high-end comedies of Woody Allen, Albert
Brooks and Preston Sturges, and he could be a highly articulate,
slightly neurotic leading man out of one of them. He speaks
glowingly of having just taken his 12-year-old stepdaughter to "Yi
Yi."
Does he watch the movies that AVN reviews? He flinches. "I
haven't watched an adult movie without fast-forwarding since I saw
one in a theater at 18. I watch them for business reasons. My wife
and I don't watch them for entertainment. It is hard for me to look
at it as more than product."
Many of the top porn producers are within blocks of Fishbein's
office in the utterly anonymous town of Chatsworth -- an unhurried,
nondescript sprawl of faded strip malls, housing developments and
low-slung (and usually unmarked) business complexes that look more
like suburban orthodontic offices than porn factories. Everyone in
the business seems to know one another.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:53 PM
"There's a certain
camaraderie among those who are on the fringe of society, a
similarity to outlaws," Fishbein says. Yet he seems like anything
but an outlaw; he was about to fly off to the Super Bowl and then a
skiing vacation. I ask if organized crime is a factor in today's
porn world. "When I got here, I heard there were mob companies," he
answers. "But I've never even been approached by a criminal
element. I've never been threatened or bribed. So if it ever
existed, it's part of the history of the business." He almost
sounds disappointed.
Russell Hampshire, who owns one of the biggest companies, VCA
Pictures, did do time in jail -- nine months in 1988 for shipping
obscene videotapes across state lines to federal agents in Alabama.
Somewhat more prosaically, he is also a graduate of McDonald's
Hamburger U., which he attended while running McDonald's franchises
in El Paso in the 70's. It's business training that came in handy
in the porn biz. "I learned about inventory, buying the proper
insurance, doing everything by the book, not taking shortcuts," he
says.
Hampshire, who runs VCA with his wife of 10 years, Betty, has an
Oscar Madison look -- Hawaiian shirts, gym shorts and a baseball
cap. I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. He's big and leathery
and sounds like Lee Marvin as written by Damon Runyon. Asked why
the sign outside says "Trac Tech" instead of VCA, he says he wants
to stay "as innoculous as possible."
He has been in the business since 1978 and waxes nostalgic for the
early video days, when you could transfer a prevideo Marilyn
Chambers classic to cassette and sell it wholesale for up to a
hundred bucks. Now his top movies wholesale for $18 or $19,
sometimes lower. "There used to be only 10 to 12 titles to choose
from in a video store," he says. "Now there are thousands of
titles." A typical release may sell only 2,000 units or less --
7,500 would be a modest hit -- but thanks to TV and international
sales, Hampshire says he makes money "on every title." Though the
total income from a hit is pocket money by Hollywood standards,
Hollywood should only have such profit margins.
An adult film that
brings in $250,000 may cost only $50,000 to make - five times the
original investment. Production locations are often rented homes,
shooting schedules run less than a week, and most projects are not
shot on the costly medium of film. There are no unions or
residuals. Marketing costs are tiny, since quote ads run in AVN and
skin magazines, not in national publications or on TV. Most
economically of all, porn movies don't carry the huge expense of
theatrical distribution: video killed off adult movie theaters far
more effectively than it did regular movie theaters.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 10:55 PM
Still, Hampshire resents the lower overhead of porn's newcomers:
"I have 80 employees. I have a 100 percent medical plan for
everyone's family -- dental and vision care too. Some of my guys
have been working here 17 or 18 years. And I'm up against amateurs
with $800 Handicams." He also grouses about the new administration
in Washington, as many in the industry do, fearing there could be a
replay of the war on porn during the Reagan years, when Attorney
General Edwin Meese called for restrictions on live sex shows and
the dissemination of pornographic materials. "I like the rest of
Bush's cabinet -- just not Ashcroft," Hampshire says.
With the company's in-house press rep, a former preschool teacher
named Mischa Allen, in tow, Hampshire takes me on a tour of VCA's
40,000-square-foot operation, proudly showing off the
state-of-the-art video-editing bays, the room containing 3,000
video-duplication decks (churning out 400,000 tapes a month) and
the prop room in which I spot a neon sign for "Bada Boom" from the
set of the recent "Sopornos 2." The mechanized assembly line on
which the tapes are boxed and shrink-wrapped is as efficient as
that for bottling Coke.
But more than anything, VCA resembles the corporate headquarters
of a sports franchise. Only on close inspection do I realize that a
towering glass case full of what look like trophies in the
reception area in fact contains awards such as the 1996 Best Group
Sex Scene, bestowed upon the "Staircase Orgy" from "New Wave
Hookers 4." Hampshire, an avid golfer and bowler, has lined VCA's
corridors with his collection of autographed sports jerseys, the
latest from Tiger Woods. On one wall are plaques of appreciation
from the Hampshires' philanthropic beneficiaries, including a local
school to which they donate video equipment and free yearbook
printing.
Hampshire's own office is spacious, outfitted with leather
furniture, but -- characteristically for the business -- looks like
a bunker. Above his desk is a console of TV screens tuned into the
feeds from security cameras. Incongruously, this inner sanctum's
walls are festooned with another variety of pompously framed
"collectibles" -- autographed letters and photographs from Anwar
Sadat, Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. Hampshire
says they're all copies, but he points to a melted-looking clock
and says, "I've got Salvador Dalis all over the place -- authentic
Salvador Dalis." He also shows off a vintage group photo of Murder
Inc.
But Hampshire describes his existence as considerably more mundane
than Bugsy Siegel's. He almost never goes to a set, where the
hurry-up-and-wait pace makes it as "boring as Hollywood." He ticks
off his duties: "Dealing with distributors and OSHA rules and
regulations. I have to write reviews of all my department heads and
decide raises."
As I leave his office I notice still another framed artifact: a
Bronze Star for "exceptionally valorous action on 12/8/67" while
serving as a Company C rifleman in combat in Vietnam. The citation
says that Hampshire "continually exposed himself to hostile fire"
while saving the lives of his fellow soldiers.
It's the only thing that seems to embarrass him. "I buried it for
so long," he says. "When I first came out here, I was ashamed to
say anything because people might say I'm a bad person."
lmost every adult company is pursuing innovative media, preparing
for Internet broadband and interactive hotel-room TV. At Wicked
Pictures' newly revamped Web site, for instance, a visitor can
cross-index a particular porn star with a sexual activity, then
watch (and pay for) just those scenes that match. Digital
Playground's "Virtual Sex" DVD's resemble video games in how they
allow the user to control and inject himself into the "action."
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:02 PM
As in nonadult video, DVD is cutting into videocassette sales --
even more so in adult, perhaps, because DVD's have the added virtue
of being more easily camouflaged on a shelf than cassettes.
Hampshire is particularly proud of VCA's DVD technology. With his
vast catalog, he is following the model of Hollywood studios by
rereleasing classics -- The Devil in Miss Jones 2," "The Opening of
Misty Beethoven" -- in "Collectors Editions," replete with aural
commentaries from original stars like Jamie Gillis. As with
Hollywood's DVD rereleases, they are pitched at nostalgic consumers
in the "boomer-retro" market. "These aren't 'adult' -- they're pop
culture now," says Mischa Allen.
But VCA aims far higher than merely recycling golden oldies. In a
windowless VCA office, I meet Wit Maverick, the head of its DVD
production unit. He is 37, and with his blue Oxford shirt, goatee
and glasses, he could be a professor somewhere -- perhaps at Cal
Arts, where he got a masters in film directing. He ended up at VCA,
he says, because it was "the best opportunity to push the envelope
of technology."
Maverick knocks mainstream studios for providing only a linear
cinematic experience on their DVD's. "There's a great hubris in
Hollywood," he says. "They think the way the director made the film
is the only way the story can be told. We have a lot more humility.
If a viewer wants something different, we give it to him." As an
example he cites "Being With Juli Ashton," VCA's take on "Being
John Malkovich." The viewer, Maverick says, "can go inside the head
of the person having sex with Juli Ashton, male or female. He can
choose which character to follow. He can re-edit the movie. Would
James Cameron let anyone do that with 'Titanic'?
"I feel like filmmakers 100 years ago," Maverick continues. "It's
a great technology, but we still don't know what to do with it. A
hundred years from now I want grad students to read what I've done
on DVD the way I read about D.W. Griffith."
it Maverick collaborates on his DVD's at VCA with Veronica Hart,
44, one of the business's most prominent female executives and,
before that, a leading porn star of the late 70's and early 80's.
Universally known as Janie -- her real name is Jane Hamilton --
she is typical of the mostly likable people I met in the porn
world. She combines hardheaded show-biz savvy and humor with an
utter lack of pretension and even some actual candor -- a
combination unheard of on the other side of the hills.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:04 PM
"The difference between us and Hollywood," she elaborates, "is
money and ego. We deal with thousands of dollars, not millions. In
mainstream, people are more cutthroat and pumped up about
themselves. We're just like regular people -- it has to do with
exposing yourself. If you show something this intimate, there isn't
a lot you can hide behind. You're a little more down to earth.
We're not curing cancer. We're providing entertainment."
Hart studied theater at the University of Nevada in her hometown,
Las Vegas. After acting leads in plays by Pinter and Lorca -- as
far east as Kennedy Center's annual college theater festival -- she
passed through the music business in England and worked as a
secretary at Psychology Today magazine in New York before ending up
in movies like "Wanda Whips Wall Street." While we are talking in
her office she looks up Veronica Hart's 100-plus performing credits
on the Internet, including some non-hard-core B movies with faded
mainstream actors like Farley Granger and Linda Blair. "In this one
I played a stripper," she says while scrolling down the list. "That
was a real stretch."
She pulls back from the computer screen and sums up her career: "I
was lucky enough to be a performer in the golden age of porn
cinema. I'm no raving beauty, and I don't have the best body in the
world, but I look approachable. And I've always really enjoyed
sex." More recently, she played a cameo as a judge in "Boogie
Nights," but she disputes that movie's historical accuracy about
porn's prevideo age. "We never shot in L.A. back then, only in New
York and San Francisco," she says. Indeed, adult exactly mimicked
movie-industry history -- beginning in New York, then moving west.
In 1982, at the top of her career, Hart fell in love and left the
business. "AIDS had just started up, and I lost every gay person I
knew," she says, listing close friends who worked on the production
side of the straight-porn business. She had two sons and helped
support her family in part by stripping. Though not intending to
re-enter porn, eventually she did, as a producer and director.
Hart has been in adult longer than anyone I met and has done
"everything" in it, she jokes, "including windows." She warns me
that "any blanket statement about the business is meaningless"
because it's so big that "every conceivable type of person" can be
found in it. "You'll find someone who's into it to provide
spiritual uplift and educational self-help" she says. "And if you
want to find rotten, vicious, misogynistic bastards -- you'll find
them.
You'll find everyone who fits the stereotype and everyone who
goes against the stereotype. In the loop and disposable-porno
section of our business, you'll find the carnival freak-show
mentality. There has to be a geek show somewhere in our society.
What ticks me off is that all of adult is classified according to
the lowest that's out there. We've always been legal. Child
molestation has never been in mainstream adult. We've always
policed ourselves. There's no coerced sex. But there are little
pipsqueaks who get their disgusting little videos out there.
There's a trend in misogynistic porn, and it's upsetting. I've been
in the business for more than 20 years, and I helped make it
possible for these guys to make these kinds of movies. I don't
believe that's what America wants to see."
As for her own movies, Hart, like many of her peers, is
preoccupied with the industry's biggest growth market -- women and
couples. The female audience was thought to be nearly nil when
consuming pornography required a visit to a theater, an adult book
store or the curtained adult section of a video store. But now hard
core is available at chains like Tower (though not Blockbuster),
through elaborate Web sites like Adultdvdempire that parallel
Amazon and by clicking a pay-per-view movie on a TV menu (where the
bill won't specify that an adult title was chosen).
The Valley's conventional wisdom has it that women prefer more
romance, foreplay and story, as well as strong female characters
who, says Bill Asher of Vivid, "are not only in charge of the sex
but the rest of the plot." Hart isn't sure. "Just because women
like romance doesn't mean we want soft sex," she says. "We want hot
and dirty sex just like anybody else. For instance, many women love
the fantasy of being taken -- but how do you portray it without
sending a message to some guys to abduct?"
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| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:06 PM
Hart, who thought of herself as a sexual pioneer when she was a
porn performer, finds that there is no shortage of women who want
to appear in adult now. She never has to search for new talent;
willing performers call her "from all over the country." The men?
"They're props."
oday's porn stars can be as temperamental as their Hollywood
counterparts, or more so. "I assume Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim
Cattrall show up on the set on time," said Paul Fishbein rather
tartly when I asked about Jenna Jameson, the industry's reigning It
girl of recent years. Though he was trying to give her a free
vacation as thanks for her work as host of the recent AVN awards,
Jameson wasn't returning his calls.
"In adult, they don't show up
and don't care," Fishbein says. "Lots of girls in this business --
and guys, too -- are dysfunctional. The girls get here at 18 and
aren't mature. They do it because they're rebels or exhibitionists
or need money. They think they're making real movies and get really
upset when they don't win awards or get good reviews."
Some porn directors have similar pretensions. They can receive
grandiose billing -- "A Brad Armstrong Motion Picture" -- and are
sometimes grudgingly indulged with a "big budget" project ($250,000
tops) made on film, even though sex scenes are far harder to shoot
on film (with its trickier lighting and shot setups) than on video
-- and even though adult films are almost never projected on
screens.
"We have our own Brad Pitts wanting to make 'Seven Days in
Tibet,"' said one executive. Performers are paid at fairly
standardized rates -- by the day or sex scene, as much as $1,000
per day for women, as little as $200 for men. The contract girls at
Vivid and Wicked sign for $100,000 and up a year, in exchange for
which they might make nine movies, with two sex scenes each, over
that time, along with any number of brand-boosting promotional
appearances at consumer conventions and video stores. The top stars
double or triple that figure by running their own subscription Web
sites, marketing autographs (along with less innocent mementos) and
most lucratively, dancing in the nation's large circuit of strip
clubs at fees that can top $10,000 a week.
But porn stars have an even shorter shelf life than Hollywood's
female stars and fare worse in love. Though H.I.V. and drug
testing, as well as condom use, are rigorous at the top adult
companies, one producer asks rhetorically, "Who wants to date a
woman who's had sex with 60 people in two months?"
Since I've rarely found actors to be the most insightful observers
of the movie business, I wasn't eager to sample the wisdom of porn
stars. But I did seek out Sydnee Steele, a newly signed Wicked
contract girl who is by many accounts a rarity in the business --
she's happily married. Her husband is Michael Raven, 36, a top
adult director. They met in Dallas in the early 90's, when she was
a jewelry saleswoman in a shopping mall and he was a car salesman
who sold her a mariner blue Miata. Eventually they drifted into the
local swingers' scene. (One porn worker would later tell me,
"Texas, Florida and Arizona are where all the swingers and
strippers come from, though no one knows why.")
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:09 PM
"The industry looks up to our relationship," Raven says when I
meet the couple, now married nine years, at Sin City, another
production company in Chatsworth. Avid porn fans in Texas, they
migrated to the Valley to turn their avocation into a livelihood.
Like many of the directors and male performers in the business,
Raven is a somewhat lumpy everyman, heading toward baldness and
sporting a meticulous goatee. A Kandinsky poster decorates the Sin
City office. "I've gotten jealous on occasion," Raven allows. "I'm
not jealous of her because of sex in movies; I'm jealous when her
work takes her away from me. I get lonely if she's gone two weeks
on the road."
"Sometimes I'm too tired for my husband," Steele says. "We love
what we do, but it's hard work -- lots of 12-hour days." By now,
I've watched some of what she does and find it hard to square the
rapacious star of "Hell on Heels" with the woman before me, who is
softer-spoken, prettier and considerably less animated than her
screen persona. Maybe she can act.
The daughter of a college professor, Steele comes from what she
calls a "Leave It to Beaver' nuclear family," Raven from a
religious one. "I've leaned toward the right in my politics," he
says, "but I'm bothered by the Republicans' association with the
religious right. I know from my experience of religious people that
those who protest and scream the loudest usually have the biggest
collection of adult under their bed."
He wishes they'd protest
violent entertainment instead: "In video games, you're supposed to
destroy, maim and dismember an opponent. But if one person is
giving pleasure to another in adult, that's evil. Sex on TV is more
destructive than hard core. You can depict a rape on TV -- we don't
touch that subject."
Like his wife, Raven is increasingly recognized by strangers --
largely because "Behind the Scenes" documentaries about his movies
appear on DVD's and on cable erotic networks, much like Backstory
features on American Movie Classics. But Raven no longer stays in
contact with his own family. And Steele's parents, she says, "don't
totally know what I'm doing and don't ask. We don't lie, but
they've never really been told."
he secrecy among porn people is so prevalent that it's a running,
if bittersweet, gag in a made-for-the-Internet TV series called
"The Money Shot" that Paul Fishbein of AVN is producing as a lark.
If you care to sample only one product of the adult industry, this
is it -- and the episodes can be seen free in streaming video on a
nonporn site, moneyshot-theseries.com. But be warned, its rating
clocks in at about PG-13. "The Money Shot" is a roman a clef
comedy, much in the spirit of HBO's classic "Larry Sanders Show,"
about daily life in the adult biz, as it filters into the offices
of an AVN-like publication called "Blue Movie Guide." In a rather
poignant episode titled "The Parents Show," one character dolefully
concludes, "Nobody in this business tells their folks nothing."
Bryn Pryor, 33, is the director and a writer of "The Money Shot."
He's an AVN staff member who arrived in the Valley after nine years
in the theater, much of it children's theater, in Arizona. "The
Money Shot" hits his friends where they live. "Porn is legal now,
but it has the mentality of other businesses, like prostitution and
gambling, that started with organized-crime connections," he says.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:11 PM
"People approach it as if they've done something wrong. If our
customers project shame, than you must be doing something wrong.
Everyone at AVN writes under a pseudonym. We have people here who
don't want anyone to know their real name." Variations on this
theme were visible everywhere I went in the Valley. Receptionists
at porn companies tend to answer the phone generically: "Production
Company" or "Corporate Office."
Typifying this ambivalence is Steve Orenstein, 38, the owner of
Wicked Pictures. He made his accidental entrance into the porn
business through his mother -- who got him a part-time job when she
worked as a bookkeeper at an adult-book distributor and he was 18.
But he does not seem eager to reveal his calling to his 9-year-old
stepdaughter.
"Being in the business you walk that line all the time -- do you
say what you do or not?" he says. Orenstein has revealed his true
profession to only a handful of people whom he and his wife have
met on the PTA circuit. "I'm comfortable with what I do," he says,
"but I don't want parents of our child's friends saying their kids
can't play with her because of it." His stepdaughter has noticed
the Wicked logo on his shirt. "She knows I make something only
adults can see."
The Orensteins have spoken to a therapist about the inevitable day
of reckoning with their child. "The counselors say don't tell her
yet," he says, "don't overexplain." But surely she'll guess by
adolescence? Orenstein, a slight, nervous man with a reputation as
a worrier, merely shrugs. For the moment, he's more concerned about
protecting the child from prime-time television, citing a recent
episode of the sitcom "The King of Queens" on CBS. He recalls: "The
guy's rolling off his wife, and my 9-year-old asks, 'What do they
mean by that?' Should I be letting her watch it?"
Russell Hampshire's gambit is to tell strangers he's in "the
video-duplication business." Allen Gold, a VCA executive with
daughters ages 1 and 3, says he's "in the DVD business." Paul
Fishbein doesn't bring either AVN or adult product into his house.
Michael Raven and Sydnee Steele have decided for now not to have
children.
I ask Veronica Hart, whose two teenage sons are at magnet schools
for the highly gifted, what they have made of her career. "It's
horrible for them," she says. "I'm their loving mommy, and nobody
likes to think of their parents having sex and being famous for it.
I'm not ashamed of what I do. I take responsibility for who I am. I
chose. From the time they were kids, my stripping gear was washed
and hanging in the bathtub. At the same time I apologize to my kids
for how the choices in my life have affected them. They're well
adjusted and can joke with me about it: 'I know I'm going to spend
the rest of my life on the couch."'
o wonder the porn industry has its finger on the pulse of American
tastes. Not only do its players have a lifestyle more middle class
than that of their Beverly Hills counterparts, but in their desire
to keep their porn careers camouflaged in a plain brown wrapper,
they connect directly with their audience's shame and guilt. Still,
the next generation of porn consumers and producers alike may break
with that puritan mind-set. The teenagers who grew up with cable
and the VCR "come to the table already saturated with sex," says
Bryn Pryor. "They've never known a time without Calvin Klein ads
and MTV. By the time they see porn, they've already seen so many
naked people they're pre-jaded."
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:13 PM
This may explain why Americans are clamoring for ever more
explicit fare. In mainstream TV, sex is no longer sequestered on
late-night public access shows like "Robin Byrd." At HBO, Sheila
Nevins, the highly regarded executive in charge of its nonfiction
programming, has been stunned by the success of sexual
documentaries like "Real Sex," now in its 11th year, and "Taxicab
Confessions."
Focus groups complain to HBO that another hit series,
"G-String Divas," doesn't go far enough. "They know what really
happens in a strip club," Nevins says, and find HBO's version "too
R-rated." Though HBO, known for its heavy promotions of "The
Sopranos" and "Sex and the City," spends nothing to advertise its
sex series, they always are among the network's most watched. "I
can do all the shows I want about poverty in the Mississippi
Delta," Nevins says, "but this is what hard-working Americans want
to see. At first we were embarrassed by the sex shows, and
producers didn't want their names on them. Now we have Academy
Award producers, and their names can't be big enough."
At Playboy, Jim English, the head of its TV division, and his
boss, Christie Hefner, have felt the heat. Its Playboy and Spice
channels have been squeezed from both sides in the cable-satellite
marketplace. The softer, if X-rated, cuts of hard-core movies that
it runs are no longer much more explicit than regular cable
programming at HBO, Showtime ("Queer as Folk") and MTV ("Spring
Break").
Even the Learning Channel (with "Bra Wars" and "Wild
Weddings") and the History Channel (with its four-part "Sex in the
20th Century") are testing the waters. Meanwhile, erotic networks
like Hot and Ecstasy, which run XX films, are cannibalizing
Playboy's audience from the other end of the erotic spectrum. The
result: This summer Playboy plans to start "Spice Platinum Live,"
which edges toward XXX. (I'll leave the codified yet minute
clinical distinctions separating X, XX and XXX to your
imagination.)
Even in an economic downturn, everything's coming up porn. Newly
unemployed dot-com techies who can't find jobs in Silicon Valley
are heading to Silicone Valley, where the work force is expanding,
not contracting. "Vivid overall has doubled, tripled revenues and
profits in the past couple of years," says Bill Asher. While he
says there's no such thing as a Hollywood-style "home run" in porn
-- unless another celebrity like Pamela Anderson turns up in a sex
video, intentionally or not -- he sees potentially "a tenfold jump"
in profits as distribution increases through broadband and
video-on-demand. (Porn executives are no less fuzzy than
Hollywood's as to when this might be.)
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:15 PM
"There are opportunities
here that Paramount will never have in terms of growth," Asher
says. "Our product travels well internationally and is evergreen.
Five-year-old product is still interesting to someone; it's not
yesterday's news like a five-year-old Hollywood blockbuster. Our
costs are relatively fixed. As there's more distribution, 90 cents
of a dollar hits the bottom line." The absence of adult retail
stores in conservative pockets of the country is no longer a
barrier. "You can get a dish relatively anywhere," Asher says, "and
get whatever you want."
When Vivid took over and expanded the Hot Network in 1999, Asher
says, "there was no outcry. We got thank-you letters and sales
boomed. We put up two more channels in months. Cable companies were
begging for them. It doesn't take a genius to do this. Literally
the customers say, I like what you've got -- give me some more of
it." Entertainment-industry executives not directly involved in the
adult business confirm its sunny future. Satellite and cable
companies have found that the more explicit the offerings, the more
the market grows.
AVN reports that TV porn may actually be
increasing video-store sales and rentals rather than cannibalizing
them -- by introducing new customers to the product. Though some
cable companies say they don't want adult, only one of the
country's eight major cable providers, Adelphia, forbids it. The
others are too addicted to the cash flow to say no. The organized
uproar that recently persuaded a teetering Yahoo to drop its adult
Web store -- but not its gateways into other adult sites -- is the
exception, not the rule.
And despite a rumor that one porn mogul keeps a Cessna waiting at
Van Nuys airport to escape to Brazil if there's a government
crackdown, the odds of that look slim. Too many Fortune 500
corporations with Washington clout, from AT&T to AOL Time Warner,
make too much money on porn -- whether through phone sex, chat
rooms or adult video. At the local level, the Supreme Court's 1973
"community standard" for obscenity may be a non sequitur now that
there's a XX national standard disseminated everywhere by satellite
and the Web. A busted local video retailer in a conservative
community can plead that his product is consistent with what the
neighbors are watching on pay-per-view -- as one such owner
successfully did in Utah last fall.
Should John Ashcroft's Justice Department go after porn, smart
betting has him pursuing shadowy purveyors of extreme porn on the
Internet (though it's not clear that the actionable stuff
originates in the United States) and child pornography, all of
which is condemned by the professional adult industry. "No one in
this business will complain if Ashcroft goes for the kid angle,"
Fishbein says.
im English of Playboy suggests that one way to meet the typical
American porn audience en masse is to accompany him to a live
broadcast of a hit Playboy show called "Night Calls 411."
Fittingly, "Night Calls" is televised from a studio in Hollywood,
right by the old Gower Gulch, where low-budget studios long ago
churned out early features in bulk much as the adult business does
now.
Two underclad hostesses, Crystal Knight and Flower, intersperse
wisecracks and sex tips with viewers' phone calls. Though only a
few callers get on the air, as many as 100,000 try to get through,
with still more deluging the show with "Miss Lonelyhearts" e-mail.
|
| ashu |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:15 PM
It's not "Larry King Live," but in some ways it could be an adult
version of the "Today" show, whose fans cross the country with the
hope of being in view as the camera pans Rockefeller Center. The
"Night Calls" devotees go further: many of them are engaging in sex
when they call. "Having sex is not enough of a turn-on in America
-- you have to be on TV too," jokes English. The callers often ask
that the hosts talk them through to what The Starr Report called
completion, and the women oblige -- hoping for slam-bam speed so
they can move on to the next caller. I'm struck by how much the
male and female callers alike mimic porn performers, with their
cliched sex talk and over-the-top orgasmic shrieks. The adult
audience apes its entertainers as slavishly as teenagers do rock
idols.
By now, I've become intimately familiar with the conventions of
adult entertainment, having asked those I met in the business to
steer me to their best products. I've watched Wicked's "Double
Feature," a multiple winner of AVN awards, among them Best Comedy,
and found it full of erudite cinematic references, including a
campy spoof of Ed Wood films. I've seen Vivid's new "Artemesia," a
costume drama set in 16th-century Italy and given AVN's highest
rating; it is laced with high-flown ruminations on the meaning of
art, somewhat compromised by the tattoos on the performers. From
Video Team, a company specializing in interracial porn, there is a
thriller called "Westside" with a social conscience reminiscent of
"West Side Story," a soundtrack that features music by Aaron
Copland and a take on the drug wars that wouldn't be out of place
in "Traffic."
It's no wonder, though, that Stagliano's gonzo, in which the
performers just get it on, has such a following. All the plot and
costuming and set decoration and arty cinematography -- why bother?
The acting -- who needs it? (In "Flashpoint," Jenna Jameson, cast
as a female firefighter, sounds the same when sobbing over a
colleague's death as she does in coital ecstasy.) The films are
tedious, and I'm as tempted to fast-forward through the sex scenes
as the nonsex scenes.
No matter what the period or setting, no
matter what the genre, every video comes to the same dead halt as
the performers drop whatever characters they're supposed to be
assuming and repeat the same sex acts, in almost exactly the same
way, at the same intervals, in every film. At a certain point, the
Kabuki-like ritualization of these sequences becomes
unintentionally farcical, like the musical numbers in a 30's
Hollywood musical or the stylized acrobatics in a martial-arts
film. Farcical, but not exactly funny. All the artful mise en scene
in the world cannot, for me anyway, make merchandised sex
entertaining or erotic.
I tell Bryn Pryor of AVN and "The Money Shot" my reaction. He's a
professional porn critic. Is this the best that adult has to offer?
"The top of the heap in porn is the bottom in mainstream," he
says. "The sad fact is that while consumers are more aware than
they've ever been, nobody cares if it's a good movie, and we all
know that. They care if it's hot in whatever subjective way it's
hot to them. Most porn directors don't even watch the sex; they
just direct the dialogue. They tell the camera people they want
three positions and then go off and eat."
He continues: "Porn is not a creative medium.
Everyone in the
porn industry says he's on the way to something else, like waiters
and bartenders, but it may be that most of us belong here. If we
were really good, we'd be doing something else."
Pryor envisions a day when adult and Hollywood will converge, but
in a sense that's already the case. If much of porn ranges from
silly to degrading, what's the alternative offered on the other
side of the hills? The viewer who isn't watching a mediocre porn
product is watching -- what? "Temptation Island"? W.W.F.?
Moralists like to see in pornography a decline in our standards,
but in truth it's an all-too-ringing affirmation of them. Porn is
no more or less imaginative than much of the junk in the
entertainment mainstream -- though unlike much of that junk, it
does have an undeniable practical use. In that regard, anyway,
there may be no other product in the entire cultural marketplace
that is more explicitly American.
Frank Rich is an Op Ed columnist for The Times and a senior writer
for the magazine.
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT available anymore for free.
That is why the entire length.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/magazine/20PORN.html?ex=993803994&ei=1&en=82b7\
95ba494358e8
|
| hmmm.... |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:23 PM
anepalikt: PORN sucks, you got that right! Good looking women sell their face to the TV, ones with good legs sell them to Movies (remember Pretty Woman). I guess they are not humiliated, but those who sale sex are humiliated, why? Why because of people like you who do not value these people. You are the one who is humiliating these sex workers. If they were thought of as "apsaras" like in the ancient times, we would not have so much of a trouble would we?
Ashu: Nice read, but what's your point?
Hoohi
hmmm....
Hamrika
|
| body hammer |
Posted
on 28-Feb-02 11:32 PM
Porn Exists and will always exist Deal with it. That is the reality. Perhaps it will clue you better if you know that prostitution is the oldest profession. Doesn't mean that that I am condoning it, although if a woman in her free mind "without restrictions" or even a man is willing to sell his/her body should be allowed to.
What I am talking about here is getting off, not by roaming in the redlight district of Calcutta but by getting rise out of Penthouse or hustler. Surely you do not think the women that appear in such magazines are aching over what they are going to feed their kids the next day. Does Porn breed negative propensity? sure it does. Everything in life does from obesity to corrupt officials. Just as you do not shy away from election because some officials may be sorrupt, we are not going to stop enjoying from acceptable porn because some sick individual doing doing something bad somewhere. We think erection is good. We like getting off because it clears our mind and helps us relax. Porn helps us do it. In fact I have talked to women who also feel the same way. And we are not taking about some shack in thailand where a ten year girl is getting screwed. We know and unqualifiedly recognize that as sick. So know the shot before you try to take us on a guilt trip.
By your standard perhaps every one should stay home reading gita, bible or whatever not and I suppose that would be higher reality that you profess to be a master of. Or perhaps the "high social life" one could only get in Austen novels. But I do not know if this perception qualifies as "real" I view it all as a healthy outlet for biological and hormonal needs of so many people. I'd rather see people shooting off their loads in their rooms rather than thought police following them in every corner and having to deal with some other uglier manifestation of pent up desire.
What is cognitive dissonace? What standard do you put in for integration? It is perhaps at the opposite pole of your philospohical inquiry of what is the nature of the beast or of the human. Any limitation of free expression by the guise of moral high ground is just a deep seated ugly desire to assume authoritative control.
|
| HahooGuru |
Posted
on 01-Mar-02 12:09 AM
The biggest trouble with sex workers "prostitution" is probably
"SEX with anyone who can pay money", will probably bring
1. Off-springs ? Who is going to take care of them? Social problem.
A kid without father will find street corner as his best time pass.
2. The disease transferred by SEXual intercourse is quite a big
problem to whole society.
While being pretty woman (facial and leg) will hardly have direct
-ve impact on the performer. It should be the demakation line
between why prostitutes are not regarded in society. Because
the result of their cheap SEX is, tremendus to the society.
Do you Hahoo! advice?
Contact Hahoo!Guru
|
| HahooGuru |
Posted
on 01-Mar-02 12:09 AM
The biggest trouble with sex workers "prostitution" is probably
"SEX with anyone who can pay money", will probably bring
1. Off-springs ? Who is going to take care of them? Social problem.
A kid without father will find street corner as his best time pass.
2. The disease transferred by SEXual intercourse is quite a big
problem to whole society.
While being pretty woman (facial and leg) will hardly have direct
-ve impact on the performer. It should be the demakation line
between why prostitutes are not regarded in society. Because
the result of their cheap SEX is, tremendus to the society.
Do you need Hahoo! advice?
Contact Hahoo!Guru
|
| anepalikt |
Posted
on 01-Mar-02 09:31 PM
So here it is ! The thread. Ashu tosh of course posted a book in response! Why can't you simply attach a word document?
hmmmmmmmm.... Apsara, huh!? Well the idea behind Devakis were supposed to be the same... women dedicated to the glory of the devine. IN reality thery are most frequently mistreated women from poor families who get abused by teh rich men and partriarch of the village! And apsaras?? The apsaras are different from the gandharvas! I woudl have the gandharbas any day....... The apsaras were chattel, they were used an tools to distract and do the diryt work of Indras and the Devtas, like what's her name distracting that sage from his tapasya, remember that? I guess she is still not as bad as Eve who caused man to fall from Eden, but still.
And body hammer, yes porn exists. And that is a reality tht I don't have to like or support. Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world just goes to show for how long women have had the raw deal. And before you go on to say, why men too prostitute themselves, note, women prostitute outnumber men by a great many more percentages!
And you are right, the women whoe appear in Penthouse or hustler probably don't have to worry about their kids next meal, at least not just then. When they have that body to sell. What pornography says is, a woman is valuable only because of how useful she is to a man... i.e. how beautiful and how successful in arousing men. Pornography says a woman is of value only till she has a good body, only till she is useful for men. Pornography says a womn is a commodity, an object to use, consume and discard.
No one is asking you to stop enjoying porn. But I do think that consumers of porn need to ask why they are sitting at home watching porn and getting off rather than spending the time to get to know a real women and have a relationship with her, that hopefully will be a sexually gratifying for both. iF sex clears your head and helps you relax, why not a real person, why not simply have sex (without an exchange of money) with someone wihout having to be in a long term relationship, for those who are not ready for a committment.
You tell me!
I am not trying to guilt trip anyone. But if you feel guilty, well whatever. That's your deal. Not using pornography does not mean being a straight arrow, being asexual, or being a religious freak! Sex can and should be fun and liberating without having to be dirty and a mere commodity. If pornography is a substitute for those people cannot deal with their desires and the frustration they experince when those desires are not fulfilled without having to go out and raise hell on the street, well! What does that say about pornography!
I am not arguing that pornography should be stopped or whatever. I am not saying there is no place for the public expression of human sexuality. What I am saying is that as it is right now, pornography is exploitative and base.
Maybe as more and more women start taking control of their porn careers, maybe as more women start defining what is sexy, erotic and sensual, the way women are treated by the industry will change.
Think about Vanessa Williams! She had tp give up her Ms.America title because of her nude pictures. What does that say to you? How respectful must it be?
If you don't know what cognitive dissonace is, ask someone else.
And I don't give a crap that you think that you think I am some conservative authoratarian freak. Pornography is exploitative! Exploitation is a human phenonmenon. If we were simply beasts, there would be no pornography, just sex!
|
| so? |
Posted
on 01-Mar-02 10:43 PM
pornography is exploitive, so? will that change anything?
|
| body hammer |
Posted
on 05-Mar-02 10:41 PM
Porn rules over intellectual masturbation anyday.
|
| body hammer |
Posted
on 05-Mar-02 11:05 PM
Nepalikt,
I know what cognitive dissonance is therefore I asked you what integration is? If you paid attention to details instead of floating in your intellectual bubble, may be you'd notice that there is a fundamental philosophical distinction in what we say. I recognize that I cannot change the world and I do not want to change the world- to begin with I do not fancy cleaning up somebody elses mess. But this seems to be your fixation, your fetish in industry terminology. I am no Gandhi, I am not even Kofi for god's sake. Just polishing a pristine sounding argument, by loading it with drivels and looping it just right to make people think that you are better and holier than all, is superficial at worst and mediocre of a spin at best. Well perhaps in your world of panel discussions and brown bag lunches it works, but no sell chika.
I take the world as it is and I do the things I enjoy, good clean porn being one of them. This is called enjoyment. I do not feel pangs of guilt or feel the need to self lacerate myself for enjoying these things. The bafflement and the air of disgust that you portray is merely a product of a mind deficient in these areas. Well educated none the less, in the Feminine studies 500 and Sociology 201 sense of the phrase.
And no I have never stopped myself from taking a second helping because a kid in Africa is dying of starvation.
Unlike you people like me do not create problems where it doesn't exist. Cognitive Consonnace doesn't necessarily mean that everything is a noodle of a lump and intricately mixed. Maybe failing to realize this you make always arguments that are arid all the time. Or dare I say that only you have deciphered the holy truth and the specific balances and the enjoyment that people have learnt to eke out of life is well! I am shocked just doesn't cut it with you.
By the way I never fell for that contrived feminist theory as a way of politicizing every issue. Not that I am a woman hater, hey I love them that's why I like to watch them. Without porn a fluff bimbo would never have gotten the prominent exposure. I suppose you consider nothing of contributions of People like Hugh Heffner that put women in a whole another league. That they can and have been able to come out and flaunt whatever they have got like men can.
If you could get out of that sterilized world filled with depressing "issues" and pepper it up a little bit more. Maybe then we can have a real talk.
|
| krishna |
Posted
on 08-Mar-02 03:08 PM
anepalikt,
don't expect the butt-crack addicts like mc meathammer and things-that-make-u- go-huh? to lobby against their drug of choice. they'd love it over in kando-whore, aphnogundastan, where omar and his moollah buddies would luvz these leettle boyz LONG TIME!!!
|
| horny_for_nepali_kanchi |
Posted
on 09-Mar-02 09:03 AM
please post some new neplai porno photo or snaps of hot naga gals or manipuri gals
|
| BIG_DICK |
Posted
on 09-Mar-02 11:38 AM
SEX SEX SEX EVERYWHERE HE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIFT OF GOD ENJOY GUYS.
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