Pornucopia, it's a wrap

It never occurred to me that viagra would revolutionize the porn industry. In this day and age where you can have anything your way, right now, on demand (fast food, video-on-demand, instant coffee, up-to-the-minute car insurance quotes) why not an instant hard-on?

For every guy out there who thinks he can be a porn star, Jenna Jameson said you got to be able to whip it out and get hard in about five minutes. Then, according to Evan Stone, you have to be able to keep the hard-on for 45min or so of foreplay. The guy has a wife and a “girlfriend”. I figure he’s either very good at this from practicing OR he’s getting worn out. That little blue pill must be a god-send.
I could’ve done without the singing penis, though.

Quote of the episode: Paul Fishbein (commenting on the Adult Video News staffers who have to go through mountains of video in selecting AVN award nominees) said, “They work really hard.” I can imagine.

I thought HBO, Real Sex, and everyone involved did a bang up job (no pun intended. Okay maybe a little bit), as usual. For those of us who don’t get Cinemax, Playboy channel, or Spice channel, we got a chance to see some of our favorite performers on TV. I thought the women, for the most part, were all gorgeous and sexy. I thought Jenna Jameson had some particularly funny things to say, some of the directors (e.g Larry Paciotti, Blue Blake, Jonathan Morgan) had some especially pithy remarks. At first, I didn’t like the vintage pieces they did in each episode regarding the history of porn (I thought they got better towards the end of the series). But I liked the way they spliced each respective vintage piece within the narrative of the particular episode. Again, kudos to HBO and co!

Fetish Porn

I thought the third installment of Pornucopia on HBO was a little bit on the short side (about 22 mins).

Is it me or was that transsexual Vanity one of the finest looking people, man or woman, that you’ve ever seen? I’ve always considered myself straight, but…….dayum! Anyway, there is one stat from the show that I wanted to bring up.
In the episode, they mentioned that 10% of the porn market was fetish and “specialty“. Was I reading that right? Only 10? By ‘fetish and specialty’ I assume they’re referring to different niches such as mature, bbw, foot. I would think that ‘fetish and specialty’ held a bigger share, considering that there are over 100 genres in porn. Maybe that doesn’t include ethnic porn (Black, Latina, Asian, Indian), which might comprise the bulk of niche content. Since ethnic porn wasn’t mentioned at least once in the piece, perhaps it’s not considered a “specialty” or fetish.

By The Way 1: Why isn’t porn involving people from Russia and people from India considered Asian porn also?

By The Way 2: The bbw cookie dough scene was one of the funniest I’d ever scene in porn. And I’ve seen some funny things.

Also, let’s hear it for Dave Cummings. Here he is, a source of inspiration to young men everywhere, having sex with women one-third his age. When I grow up, I want to be just like him.

Inspired by the episode, I’ve decided to really brainstorm and come up with the next big niche in porn. So far, the only thing I‘ve come up with is this: older, big, beautiful, ethnic women with big boobs and big dicks (transsexual) who are smoking while wearing latex panties and getting their toes sucked by someone just like them (homosexual); all the while being watched. :-)
I’ll let you know what I come up with.

Homosexual Porn

If there is one thing that I like about the Pornucopia series, currently running on HBO, it’s all the statistics they give you about the adult industry. Whether the statistics are entirely accurate, or just figures the powers-that-be want you to believe, is another matter. I wouldn’t blame you if you took those figures with a grain of salt. But, I’m a stats kind of guy, and I love number-crunching. I’d like to touch on 3 or 4 stats they mentioned in the third episode.

I’d often seen gay porn stars on video covers and wondered if they were really gay. You know how men think when they see another good-looking guy. :-) I used to think, well if some of these guys are straight, they must be doing gay porn because they want to be adult stars, but there’s no more “room” in straight porn. Maybe there‘s even a little more money in gay porn. Well apparently, they’re not all gay because (1) 25%-50% of male stars in gay videos are actually straight. And they’re not doing it for the reason that I thought. According to the episode, (2) Gay male stars make about ten times more than their straight counterparts. (Roughly $3000/scene vs. $300/scene). Why so much more, you ask? Because their field is such a niche category.

Personally, I wouldn’t compromise my sexuality (being straight) to perform in a gay film. My sexuality is too integral a part of who I am. However, I can sort of understand why a heterosexual man, who makes a living solely doing adult films, would do gay porn for ten times the money (if the figures are to be believed). That’s not your typical male-to-female pay scale difference for doing the same 9-5 job. It’s ten times! Blue Blake delivered the funniest line in the episode when he was asked , How can an otherwise straight man get hard enough to do another man? Think of the money, of course! With that in mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if that percentage figure mentioned above were more toward the 50% range.

(3) It was mentioned that 95% of lesbian scenes are shot for men. Real lesbians like all-female porn with some sort of seduction and with something called a plot (what‘s that?). An ABCNEWS 20/20 report mentions the same thing in regards to the plot.

By the way, am I the only one who finds it a little disingenuous when porn stars try to create some controversy or mystery over whether they’re gay or straight? Take Jeff Stryker, for instance: is he gay or isn’t he? In the episode, he leaves it up to the viewer to decide. But, like someone pointed out (it might have been he himself or director Paciotti), he sure acts the part well. Yet, in a previous article that he wrote himself, he says he’s gay.

Similarly, Jenna Jameson said in the episode that she thinks she might be bisexual, but she's said before that she’s totally hetero. I admire Jenna as much as the next 10-hour-a-day porn downloading guy, but I wish she’d make up her mind. To both Jeff and Jenna I say, I know it’s your job to sell yourselves, and keep the mystery alive in a highly individualized profession. However, each of you had done gay and straight scenes, as of the time your respective articles had been written. Each of you should have just said you were bi-sexual from the very beginning and called it a day.

As much as the porn industry is a female-driven field, it’s interesting to note that high-end (seriously, no pun intended) gay male performers make more than top female stars. Furthermore, while male stars earn (substantially) more for gay scenes vs. heterosexual scenes, female starlets earn less for lesbian scenes vs. straight. What does it all mean? I guess, the more penises in the movie, the greater the earning power; of each penis and the movie, as a whole.
And that’s the bottom line.