TODAY'S SCENE

OVERVIEW:

As the "Golden Age" of adult film wound down, it was replaced by the "Video Era". These two very different phases of porno actually overlapped for many years and were curiously co-incidental.

By the late 1970's video equipment became available that enabled the shooting of movies in this relatively new medium. And indeed a few porn makers started using video cameras at this time. Very few. It is amazing how the tradition of celluloid persisted so long -- and the tradition of the narrative feature.

By the mid-eighties video porn was a going concern -- while yet the adult film industry still thrived. These early video features are (most often) awful. The sound is hollow and tinny, the image looks cheap and flat. The editing is pathetic. In some cases this is because the people making video porn knew nothing about movies and were just jumping in, since it was relatively easy to start up a porn video operation. But the video features made by experienced filmmakers were also mostly crap in the 80's. Of course, that putrid synthesizer soundtrack sound and those home-made video credits made it all that much more difficult for a movie to even appear decent.

While the porn industry was miles ahead of Hollywood in embracing the alternate movie technology, no one had thought it through as a different visual medium. Video was nothing like film. Yet the people wielding the cameras hadn't yet realized it.

So what you get in 80's video porn are really bad movies. The idea of plots and narratives was there - but it looked bad and cheap. It's fascinating to realize that in a year like 1986 there were high-budget, high-class and high quality 35mm films, and there were goddawful el cheap-ass videos. By the way, if you don't see the difference, it might be because you've only seen the 35mm film classics on el cheap-ass 80's videos. The video companies dumped the 35mm stuff onto 3/4" beta masters which they duped onto video, so they ended up looking not much better than the video source stuff. Often they even replaced the original credits with video-generated ones, to keep that then-contemporary "video look". Now that the DVD re-issue wave is rolling, some of these companies are scrambling to find 35mm masters and negatives for their old films, negatives which they might have junked back in the video boom.

Curiously, even though adult filmmakers hadn't found the forms that fit this new medium, the real films that were still being made often contained creative uses of video. Blow-Off, The Voyeur, The Younger The Prettier (original title; The Younger The Better) and others all utilized the concept of video within a traditonal film. They were just a little ahead of Canadian art-film maker Atom Egoyan and his measured exploration of video imaging (often in a sexual context), beginning with Family Viewing (1987). Yet a little behind Canadian David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983)?

Eventually film died out almost completely, and it was at this point that video began to come into its own as medium. I am referring to creative forms suggested by the technology. Filmmakers started making videos, moving images that were not like movies. What were these? You've heard of gonzo porn? Intimately connected to amateur videography, gonzo is just picking up a video camera and shooting. It contains the same seed that eventually fuelled the mini-DV indie movie-making boom and reality TV.

The inventors of gonzo are considered to be Jamie Gillis (On The Prowl), John Stagliano (Buttman), and Ed Powers (Bus Stop Tales, Dirty Debutantes). It is worth noting that Stagliano's first Buttman tape -- The Adventures of Buttman (1989) -- contains fictional scenarios and acting roles, so is not purely gonzo, as Gillis' On The Prowl (1989) definitely is. We might also note that Gillis appears in all three of the foundation projects of gonzo.

Interestingly, The Adventures of Buttman contains a blatant video-version of the famous dead-body-in-the-photograph sequence from BlowUp (1966), the latter being about the photographic world and some cute female models, while the former is concerned with videotaping the world of female asses.

Review by Dm Otis of the 2001 documentary movie on Ron Jeremy.

Ever since Boogie Nights stormed Hollywood in 1997, mythologizing the infamous, over-endowed John Holmes, porn has been a mainstream subject, with porn documentaries becoming as ubiquitous as environmental ones were in the 80's. Thus the only surprise about somebody doing a doc on Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy is that the title wasn't taken. PORN STAR is fun, snappy, and visually stimulating, with lots of film clips and behind-the-scene glimpses. Some great pornosonic music too. Special kudos for its brevity - whereas too many documentaries drag on in search of meaning, PORN STAR is just right at 76 minutes. The filmmakers make no oppressive, maudlin attempt to force some epiphanic structure onto the life - where there is a little sadness they include it, a little controversy, it's just in there with all the rest. One reason for this absence of arc is that Jeremy is simply not a tragic or complicated figure. He doesn¹t drink or do drugs, he's not estranged from his family or friends. The big revelation apparently is that he really does have a great fuckin' life of porn babes and celebrity parties. He has his problems, but not with sexual guilt or torment, which makes him freer than probably 90% of his audience. If there is a meaning to the public¹s enthusiastic embrace of Ron Jeremy, it may be that his earnest-yet-humble sexual proclivity floats above society¹s obsession-repulsion with genital pleasure. As such, he functions as icon for Everyman¹s dream of fulfilled sexual being ­ and with the moral freedom to actually enjoy it. And while the doc devotes an entire section to the Hedgehog as unappealing to women, the visual record shows that gals just love to hug - and fuck - him. With his unassuming smile, antiquated long hair, mustache and sideburns, and soft, food-lover¹s girth, Jeremy appears to have truly become a cute, furry creature like his long established nickname. Innocent of sexual conflict, Ron Jeremy is a teddybear with a 9-3/4 inch dick. Is that a formula for What Women Want?