SASHA GREY’S “NEÜ SEX”

NOTE: Between the time I began reading Neu Sex and beginning this piece and the time I finished it, Sasha Grey publicly announced her official retirement from the adult video industry. If there is a certain bit of schizophrenia that follows below, this might account for that.

I’ve noticed a recurring theme in the criticisms that have awaited the publication of porn star/legit actress Sasha Grey’s first book of photography, Neü Sex: this book would never have been published if she wasn’t a hardcore porn performer; she’s whoring her body to gain publicity; there are so many other talented young photographers who deserve to be published before her; blah, blah, blah. Yes, Neü Sex may be an intermittently alluring, admittedly minor debut book of photography from a young artist struggling to find her specific voice, but it’s more valuable in its choice of subject matter (her) than as a portrait of a young visual artist (again, her). And if this assessment still seems somewhat unfair to those who resent that a 23-year-old performer-turned-photographer has secured a major publishing deal when so many of her peers are struggling to gain recognition for their craft, then you’re missing the point. Sasha Grey’s most noteworthy cultural accomplishment isn’t that of a porn star, a model, a musician, an actress, a writer, or a photographer — her most impressive body of work is, quite simply, the creation of Sasha Grey.

It would ideally be preferable to discuss the work of an artist without feeling the need to summarize his or her life prior to that analysis, but, again, since Grey is her own most powerful creation, the two are pretty inseparable. Born in 1988 within a lower-income Sacramento household, Grey could barely wait until her 18th birthday to embark on an ambitious career as a prolific hardcore porn performer. She wouldn’t be the first young woman to leap into that vocation, amass a considerable savings account, and retire early after demonstrating little sincere effort in her on-camera endeavors. But Grey was different — when she proclaims in the few sparse pages of her … Read the rest

PORNFILMFESTIVAL BERLIN

As a filmmaker who makes G-rated porn I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being thoroughly excited when I learned that a festival devoted to celebrating sex onscreen had filled its opening night slot with a flick that contains not one sex scene. And writer/director/producer/editor Zach Clark’s SXSW 2009 hit Modern Love Is Automatic (pictured right), a refreshingly respectful and poignant comedy that centers around a jaded nurse who moonlights as a dominatrix and her aspiring (or rather delusional) model roommate, wasn’t the only selection to subversively screw with the very definition of porn. This year’s fifth edition, which concluded on Halloween, included some highly improbable subgenres in the mix — gay zombie and vampire porn and even a porn musical retrospective.

And Rambo porn. Or rather one critical essay in the form of my short, The Story of Ramb O, in which I’ve juxtaposed images from Rambo First Blood: Part 2 with text from The Story of O (to show that a soldier is forever the government’s bitch). Interestingly, my arrival in Berlin to both cover the fest and to support my own film seems to have coincided with a minor NYC cinephile immigration of sorts. While I’ve recently decided to set my bags down in Amsterdam film critic and distributor Andrew Grant, a.k.a. Filmbrain, who along with his Benten Films business partner Aaron Hillis is representing Modern Love, is now based in Berlin. As is producer/filmmaker/writer and now N.Y. ex-pat Pamela Cohn who joins Andrew in their first European venture called Kino Satellite, a cinema series that opened at the Das Direktorenhaus art and performance space just this month. (But I’ll have more to say about Kino Satellite in an upcoming interview with Andrew so, for now, back to porn.)

Since I’m used to covering the impersonal cattle drives of NYC’s big festivals, where the flicks too often play second fiddle to the events themselves, the “intimate” Pornfilmfestival Berlin, more sophisticated than sexy, felt like a back-to-basics oasis to me. Biding time between sold out screenings in the cozy filmmakers’ lounge at Moviemento, … Read the rest

CONSIDERING “THE BIG LEBOWSKI: A XXX PARODY” |
By Lauren Wissot

In retrospect it seems inevitable that some enterprising pornographers in Hollywood’s shadow industry would look to the Coen brothers’ quintessential Venice Beach bum The Dude for inspiration. Not only is southern California the hub of the sex biz, The Dude is SoCal made flesh. And now a company called New Sensations has done just this with The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody, a passionate, nearly shot-for-shot recreation that shows that cute porn is not an oxymoron. Sure, New Sensations has already tackled pop culture with 30 Rock: A XXX Parody and Seinfeld: A XXX Parody, but The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody really does feel like something different. This isn’t some mainstream TV touchstone the company is tackling, but a cult film from bona fide indie auteurs. A few years back Lucas Entertainment was the darling of the GAYVN Awards with its serious porn remakes of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (and Dangerous Liaisons prior to that). In its own way The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody feels closer to those earnest gay versions, more tributes birthed from true movie geek love than of-the-moment knock-offs.

In director Lee Roy Myers’s alternate Lebowski events are set in motion when an “Oriental thug” (as opposed to the original movie’s Persian rug…ouch) ejaculates on The Dude’s new VHS tapes — “the tapes that really tied his porn collection together.” But what’s most shocking in the action that follows is not the abundance of hardcore sex scenes, but how well they blend into the Coens’ original film, which, remember, features a pederast, a porn starlet and a conniving seductress. After all, Tara Reid’s Bunny Lebowski solicits Jeff Bridges’s stoned and horny Dude right from the start. It actually makes perfect sense that in this version he’d pull out his checkbook and engage in some poolside fun.

Fun seems to be a priority for this production company, which is pretty damn refreshing in an age when, following the sober-minded art porn of the 70s, and the cheesy VCR revolution of the ‘80s into the ‘90s (this version’s Dude is adamant that his tapes be … Read the rest

ARTISTS ADD PORN TO THE iPAD

By Scott Macaulay

Looks like Banksy’s Exit to the Gift Shop is influencing folks out there. This viral campaign by a group of San Francisco artists, Freedom From Porn , who are protesting the ban on adult material within Apple’s walled garden, clearly cops a few licks from the British artist’s great new movie.

Freedom From Porn from Freedom From Porn on Vimeo.… Read the rest

SPARROW SONGS, GOD, KAROKE AND BANKSY

By Scott Macaulay

Sparrow Songs is a documentary project by filmmaker Alex Jablonski and d.p. Michael Totten, who are making and posting one short doc film per month on their site for a whole year. They are six episodes in, and the films are quite wonderful. Averaging about eight minutes, they are poetic essays that capture the essences of specific places, people, and moments, and that then, without pretension, build these observances into larger statements about love, truth, community, and the ways we are choosing to live our lives.

The films include Porn Star Karoke, about the crowd that gathers weekly at an L.A. club for an evening of karoke with adult movie stars. In Donut Shop, the filmmakers insert themselves into their film as they wonder why more people won’t talk to them during a night spent at a 24-hour donut joint. In the most recent, L’Arche, the filmmakers visit a home for the developmentally disabled in which the residents are cared for in a warm, non-institutional environment; they focus not only on the residents but also on the caregivers, who include a young woman who has just left a monastery. With their artful framings, precise editing, and sensitive use of sound and music, Jablonski and Totten capture the quest of everyone at L’Arche to find purer, less complicated ways of living.

Sparrow Songs is a beguiling project that gains its power by the commitment shown to it by its filmmakers. Their web page contains thumbnails of the six episodes finished so far and blank spots for the six that are yet to come. The knowledge that these are not just disparate short films but rather installments in time-based project give Sparrow Songs a quiet gravity. Watching these films, you find yourself drawing connections between them. You watch — and wait — for themes to develop, and you project onto the filmmakers an evolving recognition of their authorship. It is slow-motion filmmaking dispensed in short, elegantly realized segments.

After watching L’Arche, which I’ve embedded below, I visited the Sparow Songs site, signed up for the newsletter, and … Read the rest

PORN PARODYING “THE BIG LEBOWSKI”

By Scott Macaulay

Okay, it’s the weekend, so I’m allowing myself a frivolous but funny post. Filmmaker was invited to the set of this film just a few weeks ago. We weren’t able to send anybody but I just came across this entirely safe-for-work trailer of the porn parody of The Big Lebowski starring Tom Byron as “The Dude,” Peter, um O’Tool eerily accurate in the John Goodman role, and Kimberly Kane channeling Julianne Moore’s performance artiste. Porn parodies have come a long way. Some of these set-ups compare to the original pretty well.

From the press release we received:

New Sensations, the 2010 AVN award-winning studio for Best Parody is filming their next big hit THE BIG LEBOWSKI – A XXX PARODY. Tom Byron (The Dude) will lead the cast of adult superstars including 2010 AVN and XBIZ award winner for Best Actress, Kimberly Kane (Maude Lebowski), in the highly anticipated Lee Roy Myers directed satire.

Porn Icon and multiple AVN award winner TOM BYRON will lead the dynamic cast of “The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody” in one of the biggest acting roles of his career as The Dude from 1998 Coen brothers cult favorite “The Big Lebowski.” Directed by the Prince of Porn Parodies, Lee Roy Myers, the sexy send-up of the original will be the first ever porn parody to include “fan roles” hand selected by Myers from submitted audition videos.

See Lauren Wissot’s review of the movie here.… Read the rest

PORN LEADS

By Admin

Pornographers, from churning out naughty stories on early printing presses to cranking out adult video tapes, have always been early adopters of technology. The Los Angeles Times reported that the porn industry once again has stepped ahead of traditional media by selling downloadable movies that can be burned to DVD, a move that film distributors have been very wary of. Right now consumers can download films, but they can only be played back on computers. Starting on May 8, Vivid will sell its DVDs (cover art, movie, and extras) via a new internet technology. If porn really is a technological crystal ball, the head of Vivid offers an interesting look forward:

Three years ago, DVDs were responsible for 90% of our income,” said Vivid’s Steven Hirsch, who founded the company in 1985 with David James. “This year, it will account for 30% of our sales. With the Internet there is no distributor between you and the consumer, so you can keep a larger part of the revenue stream.

… Read the rest

DESTROY HOT ACTION!

By Scott Macaulay

The folks at Fleshbot linked to this totally genius video blog, Destroy Hot Action, that is both web-based art and a Quicktimed portfolio of personal empowerment. In these short clips, posted daily, Philip Clark samples hardcore porn streamed over the internet and scrambles short bursts into totally abstract and strangely hypnotic video art. What’s more, he’s compellingly literate about the childhood roots and contemporary rationale behind his project:

“My earliest encounter with hardcore video porn happened at a friend’s house, also late at night. They had cable at their house and my friend was scanning through some channels with really high numbers, like 56 or 57 or something. Some of these channels were showing scrambled porno movies.

He whispered, ‘Sometimes it comes in clear for a while, and you can just see everything.’

Sure enough, every now and then the signal would come through and you’d get a glimpse of a heaving breast or a thrusting buttock. Then the screen would lapse back into the wavy black lines of interference.

I found the movies just as fascinating when they were scrambled. Naked female flesh rippled and pulsed across the screen in random, abstract patterns. The video had a strange sharp quality that didn’t look like anything else on television.

I felt hypnotized, as if the patterns on the TV were telling me everything, transmitting a message that would allow me to decode the mystery of sexuality.”

After explaining a bit about his decision to vlog contemporary internet porn, Clark outlines its possibly therapeutic effects:

“If you remove sex from its context, and then strip the sexuality from sex, what are you left with? Absurdity. And yet the brain responds to it. Pornography is compelling when it seems like there’s no other action to be had.

You might claim to have no idea what I’m talking about; fair enough. But for millions of people, I’m describing the erotic landscape of their lives.

I’ve lived in isolation and felt the effects of porn addiction. I’ve written about it before. You can spend all evening clicking around, clicking and waiting, always two clicks … Read the rest

THE SKIN GAME

By Scott Macaulay

Filmmaker has been on press the last week so that has meant that we’ve been slacking on the blog. But one of the things I’ve been meaning to post about is the government’s new “2257″ regulations which, on the sheer basis of their audacity, should be provoking outrage in the independent world. Strangely, though, our indie sector has been quiet on this government intrusion on content creators, probably because it specifically targets adult entertainment.

Anyway, this Newsday editorial does a far better job than I could have explaining why you should care about these new regulations. Here’s an excerpt:

“Regardless of one’s feelings about adult entertainment, the situation is a disturbing illustration of a larger trend in the Bush administration: the use of regulatory powers to advance a conservative moral agenda.

Part of a revision to the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, the new regulations were quietly published last year and target a seemingly mundane part of the porn business – record keeping. While huge corporations such as Time Warner make a hefty profit broadcasting adult entertainment, porn is largely produced by smaller entities, often operating without even an office.

Individuals and small companies producing adult entertainment will be devastated by new regulations requiring them to provide copies of government-issued IDs for performers retroactive to 1995. In addition, these small producers, perhaps operating out of a garage or second bedroom, will need to have a public office, open at least 20 hours a week, where their records are available for inspection….

By focusing on regulatory enforcement, the Department of Justice cannily avoids repressing adult entertainment on the basis of content, knowing that the First Amendment presents a challenge that probably cannot be overcome. But the effect – suppression of protected speech, whether or not it is deemed obscene – is achieved outside the normal checks and balances of American government.

The Bush administration has a track record of attempting to regulate morality behind a smoke screen of law enforcement, bureaucratic rules and scientific research. These efforts are often focused on unpopular issues, where the administration is fairly … Read the rest

ANDREA DWORKIN

By Scott Macaulay

Feminist author and anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin died last Friday of complications from surgery.

As author Susie Bright writes in her weblog, Dworkin was the first woman to take porn seriously. “She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye,” Bright notes. “She made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire. The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions that Miss Dworkin. We saw the sexism of the porn business… but we also saw some intriguing possibilities and amazing maverick spirit.”

Dworkin was a complicated figure, known as much for her unruly appearance as her writings. She was a woman of enormous paradoxes; her own writing, for instance, owed heavily to the Marquise de Sade. Bright obviously wrestles with complicated feelings in her obit, even resorting to Googlism to author part of it. Still, she ends brilliantly:

“I’m sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. She never got to see people like me, Carol, and the rest of us little protegees who took her inspiration and flew to a new dimension. She got stuck, and then she got sick, and when you’re famous for one thing, no one wants to see you change unless you repudiate it all, like a pathetic sinner seeking redemption. She was too stubborn and too old-fashioned for that. Andrea Dworkin never would have admitted that she was a superstar. She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her.”
.… Read the rest