The “Smut Glut.” How the Porn Movie Industry almost Destroyed Itself Part 1: Stupidity

The distributor was screaming obscenities so fast in his New York accent that my office manager, Allyssa couldn’t understand him.  She had phoned to ask when Superior Video could expect overdue payment.  Between F-bombs, Allyssa managed to learn that the man’s partner had just been murdered. Sixteen .22 slugs in the head—the result of a much more serious unpaid debt.  Another of Superior’s distributors had just lost his warehouse to “arson.” (“For the insurance,” Allyssa guessed.)   And Ferris Alexander of AB Distributors in Minnesota, also in arrears, was preoccupied with the aftermath of an anti-porn demonstrator immolating herself in one of his bookstores.

In 1986, the porn video business became afflicted with three crises: the Traci Lords scandal (Chapter 12 in SKINFLICKS), the newly-declared War on Porn (the fried demonstrator being an extreme manifestation of the hysteria) and—the worst of the three—the “Smut Glut,” for which the industry had only itself to blame.

(Passages from SKINFLICKS are in italics.)

We were entering a time of rip-offs, lawsuits, arsons, and even murders; a time of bitter price wars, when even large, long-established companies would go bankrupt; a time when production of big-budget X-rated motion pictures would end.

The cause?  The same thing that had made Superior Video, Inc., successful.  We were the first to shoot full-length adult features entirely on videotape, with budgets of $20,000 instead of the $60-70,000 it would cost to shoot the same movies in 35 millimeter film.  For the first half of the 1980s, we produced hits like All the King’s Ladies, Physical, Night Moves, Running Wild, Chocolate Cream and our most lavish production, Deviations ($35,000 budget).   Our philosophy was to create adult movies as good as the 1970s “Golden Age of Porn” films. (Such as The Opening of Misty Beethoven, Sex World, and Behind the Green Door.)   When our competitors discovered the ease and economy of shooting in videotape, they didn’t share Superior’s philosophy.

Instead, they followed the pornographer’s dictum: If it works once, do it a thousand times. They began cranking out cheap videos.  Adult Video News noted that the number of porn video releases soared from 400 in 1983 to 1100 in ’84 and 1610 in ’85.  The market couldn’t absorb them all.  “There used to be 25 new titles a month and the store owner would buy 15 or 20 of them,” lamented VCA’s Russ Hampshire. “He’s still buying the same number of tapes, but now he has hundreds to choose from.”   Retailers began buying those 15 or 20 videos based on price alone.  As prices plunged, so did pornographers’ profits.  Companies had to crank out more titles to maintain their cash flows: a vicious cycle.  Something had to give, and that something was quality.

“What’s the difference between the old silent 8 millimeter loops and the video features of today?” asked reviewer Steve Austin in the February ’91 AVN issue. His answer: “The guys take their sox off now.”  

In the mid-‘80s, director Bruce Seven groaned, “What kind of quality can you turn out in two days?”  By 1993, the “one-day wonder” had become standard, and AVN editor Gene Ross recalled Seven’s earlier complaint: “Seven, as any other director in the business, would probably kill for that kind of latitude nowadays.”   Then, even one-day wonders became too expensive.

Henri Pachard was forced to crank out three features in one day! (Not as impossible as it sounds: the trick is to shoot three separate dialog scenes with the same cast on each setup, to fit three separate stories.)  

The demand for tons of titles at micro-budgets led to the Stallion Productions debacle of 100 titles in thirty days, after which the producers and their tapes disappeared without paying cast and crew.  AVN’s Gene Ross made the sarcastic prediction that “thanks to new Japanese technology that actually condenses time, some adult video company will hit on the brilliant concept of producing 100 videos in thirty minutes.”

As the downward vortex continued, porn companies resorted to cutting out production entirely.  The “Smut Glut.” Part 2: Scams will discuss “wraparounds,” re-titles, Hollywood rip-offs, Disney lawsuits, “borderline” child porn, bankruptcy epidemics, and desperate promotions such as pubic hair in cassette boxes.

Getting It Up the Hard Way: Odd tricks for “getting wood”

A pornographer’s worst nightmare is the actor who can’t get erect.  The moviemaker must then  either shoot  the scene “sim (simulated)” and cut in hardcore close-ups from previous shoots or pay the flaccid actor a “kill fee (a small goodbye payment)” and hire a replacement.  At least the pornographer has options.  But the poor guy who can’t perform suffers a worse fate: no more work.  Men have suffered nervous breakdowns over penis limpus and at least one (Randy Potes—AKA Cal Jammer) has committed suicide.  To continue in a lucrative career, porn studs develop unique ways to get aroused.

(Note: Passages from SKINFLICKS are in italics)

Having a beautiful woman available may not work.  She was every surfer boy’s fantasy: blonde and petite, with breasts that stood out from her tan like scoops of ice cream fallen on smooth sand.  But Gayle Monica’s patient fellatio didn’t “fluff up” her porn-partner husband.  He wasn’t looking at her. (Too familiar?)  Instead he stared at Boobs ‘n Buns magazine. It didn’t help. Then, male star Mike Ranger strolled into the room, sat on the bed and began fondling Gayle.  Her startled husband suddenly became hard.  Lesson: The unexpected can work wonders.

On the same shoot was a guy whom Ranger derisively dubbed “Right Sider.” He had to lie on his right side and masturbate in order to function.  When ready, he’d scramble to get in a few pumps with his female co-star before he lost it, then he’d revert to his right side.

Willem Lowen, Cindy Carver, voyeur in Nixon Mask, from NIGHT MOVES

With big bucks dependent on male performance, the “reliables” hogged all the stud work. (My favorites: Jamie Gillis, Billy Dee, Willem Lowen, Joe Elliot.)  One of the best, the late John Leslie, insisted that his craft was a form of method acting—drawing upon emotions and memories to play a scene.  In one of the first loops I ever shot (in 1977), Leslie demonstrated his “method.”  Ignoring his female co-star, he’d close his eyes and stroke himself up.

A man whose performance depends upon the charms of his partner won’t have a long porn career.  The best men rely on fantasy imagery, ironically doing exactly as the fans who envy their access to porn queens: they’re masturbating.

Billy Dee and Juliet Anderson. PHYSICAL

 

Richard Pacheco learned this lesson during his porn debut, in Candy Stripers.  In an Erotic Film Guide article, he described going limp after seeing Nancy Hoffman grimace from 45 minutes of kneeling on concrete: “People were lying around sleeping, snoring, just plain waiting for me to get it up…Nancy even fell asleep on my thigh…I sat there masturbating myself and praying for the Russians to launch a surprise attack.”  Finally, Pacheco had an inspiration: “I closed my eyes and started all over…I was back on the couch of some rec room with the first girl who ever let me finger her.  I could hear the Kingston Trio on the record player.  There was life in that old memory yet.”  When Pacheco reached his climax, he “heard the cheering of millions.”

The late director Henri Pachard claimed that the best way to treat stud failure was through ridicule. “Point a finger at him and go, ‘Ha ha ha! Look at this wimp! Look at that shriveled little putz!  Guy thinks he’s a stud; he couldn’t get wood in a lumberyard.’
“You get the guy mad, get his blood pumping. Next thing you know it’s ‘wood city.’ Works every time.”

The Pachard theory reportedly worked when Matt Daniels failed during Anthony Spinelli’s The Party.  His screen partner—and real-life girlfriend, Heather Lere—cussed him out and according to witnesses, the agitated actor slapped her butt and proceeded to—in Lere’s term—“spring board.”

The most unusual hard-on aid I’ve ever witnessed was moi !  That’s right: yours truly.  I was working “boom.”  The job is physically taxing. You stand there with arms raised, holding one end of a boom, which is a long pole (“fishpole”) that has a microphone on the other end.  The mike is suspended over the scene, above the camera frame but still close enough to capture crisp dialogue. Holding the pole in position is damn tiring.  I was standing on a chair, near the ceiling, the hottest part of the room.  I was sweating, muscles straining. I had a weird feeling of being watched.  I glanced down and into the eyes of an actor (a known bi-sexual) who was furiously stroking himself. And staring hard at me!  I turned my gaze to the microphone, and froze in position, like a statue. (Literally a “statue of David,” but thankfully with pants.)  The actor was able to perform with his designated actress.

Glad I could help.

My All-time Favorite Stars: Shanna McCullough

A buzz went through the audience.  The singer had stopped singing, but her voice continued.  She called out to someone offstage, “That’s the wrong cut!”
During the previous five takes (needed for changes in camera angles) the “singer” had been lip-syncing so perfectly that the audience had thought she was actually doing the singing.  As they realized that this woman—a porn actress no less—was turning in a great performance, the crowd burst into applause.

Shanna McCullough, “singing” in Deviations

When I cast Shanna McCullough for a lead role in my 1983 extravaganza, Deviations, I was taking a chance.  Women who are new to porn might freeze up or panic when they are called upon to have sex under hot lights, with a crew watching and a director barking orders.  Standard practice had been to break in ingénues as “nude extras,” who shed their clothes in a film but don’t have sex.  But when I met Shanna at agent Joe Elliot’s casting session, I had a hunch that she was one special lady.  I was so right!

This redhead with the creamy, alabaster skin and luminous eyes was much more sexually sophisticated than most porn newcomers. Shanna and her husband (at that time) were swingers. She had a wardrobe of kinky outfits. She was a professional actress, starring every Saturday night in a Berkeley stage production of The Rocky Horror Show.  She also had an eight-foot boa constrictor that crawled all over her nude body in Deviations.

From SKINFLICKS: The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry:  Her “screen cherry” debut with Mike Horner was so sizzling hot that during a break, I swore I saw steam rising from her bottom.

Shanna McCullough in Night Moves

Of course, I gave her the starring role in my next video, Night Moves.  Shanna McCullough would go on to make over 200 movies in the next seven years, establishing herself as one of porn’s all-time great stars.  She was an inspiration to others: In his speech at the 1991 AVN Awards, Rick Savage said, “I want to thank the first actress I ever had sex with in a video. Because if she hadn’t been so hot and such a fucking inspiration, I may not have ever made another video. So thank you, Shanna McCullough!”  (In contrast, a future post will recount how the bitch-goddess Barbara Dare had the opposite effect on another would-be screen stud.)

As described in SKINFLICKS, Shanna’s performance in a Henri Pachard flick, left one of porn’s prima donna-type actresses puzzled: “So that was Shanna McCullough.  She’s a big star.  But she didn’t act like a star.”  Pachard sighed. “The real ones never do.”

Shanna’s retirement in pursuit of a mainstream career was another class act.  Unlike most adult actresses who skulk away licking their wounds and snarling invective, Shanna wrote a letter to AVN (May ’91 issue), thanking readers for voting her into the magazine’s Hall of Fame. “I had such a good time when I made my first movie, Deviations,” she wrote, “that I wanted to do it again.”  She thanked directors, actors and porn fans, adding, “I got a chance to live out many of my fantasies…I met a lot of great people, made some close friends and got to travel around the world. What more could you ask for in a job?”

Evidently she could ask for more.  Shanna McCullough “unretired” and went on to choose certain, select roles in adult movies throughout the next decade.

HOW TO THINK LIKE A PORNOGRAPHER AND WHY YOU SHOULDN’T

Ron Jeremy had a great idea for a sex scene.  As he described it in Hustler:  “I’d like to do a hang-gliding scene in an X-rated film.  I see this great shot of me standing on a hill with my dick sticking straight out, hard as a rock.  Then I take off and start gliding downward.  There’s this gorgeous girl at the bottom of the hill pointing her little butt right at me.  The master shot would look as if I’m going to dive right into her ass at top speed.  But the final shot would cut to a camera zoom of my dick making a safe rear-entry landing right smack in the middle of her pussy.  I’d like to see James Bond do something like that.” (excerpt from  SKINFLICKS: The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry)

As absurd as Jeremy’s scenario sounds, it is indicative of how pornographers think.  In SKINFLICKS, I detail such pornographer’s brainstorms as sex in a vat of spaghetti and in a tub of chocolate; three-somes balancing precariously on toilets; prosthetic penises mounted in unusual places (Paul Norman’s Cyrano and Edward Penishands); scenes featuring octopus tentacles and snorkel cameras; and gang-bangs with one woman taking on up to one hundred men. When I produced E.X., I used my special effects generator to show aliens with three-foot-long members performing double-penetration on Lilly Marlene.

Why do pornographers go to such extremes?  Because they have to.  Psychologist Neil Malamuth of UCLA said, “Our research shows that every time there is a satiation of themes, people to some degree lose their ability to be aroused by it.  Therefore, newer themes are introduced, breaking new taboos.”  The late porn director Alex DeRenzy put it more simply. His biggest problem, he said, was “beating audience boredom.”

Regardless of how resourceful they are, pornographers are stuck with the fact that all sex scenes come down to the same half-dozen positions.  If the chemistry isn’t there, no director, regardless of competence, can make a scene sizzle.  On the other hand, when performers are hot for one another, even the dimmest of directors can end up with a great scene. Being at best skilled documentarians, pornographers hasten to proclaim their uniqueness.  (This was especially true when an avalanche of new titles descended upon the industry during the “smut glut” era of the late 1980s and early ‘90s.)  Thus, Scotty Fox, director of Ass Backwards and My Bare Lady, became porn’s “King of Comedy.”  The late Henri Pachard, famous for staging sex on bathroom fixtures, was dubbed “The King of the Commode.” With Shape Up for Sensational Sex, Gail Palmer declared herself “the Jane Fonda of porno.” The late Anthony Spinelli had no interest in directing sex, which he turned over to cameramen such as myself while he took a nap. Spinelli became famous for the miraculous acting performances he managed to wring out of even the most unmotivated of cast members. At Superior Video, my co-director Joe Farmer and I took pride in making low-budget videos look like more expensive ones (that special effects generator sure helped).

The downside of thinking like a pornographer is when it comes to dominate your outlook—especially when you’re cranking out one sexvid after another.  As veteran pornographer Bill Margold observed in a 1982 Adam magazine interview, “You can only live in a fantasy land just so long before it starts driving you crazy.”  When real life runs counter to that fantasy land, disaster beckons. “Pornographer’s disease” is another name for impotence.  My friend Ace Walker said that after he quit shooting and acting in porn, it took him two months before he could enjoy a normal sex life.  Actor Cal Jammer was not so fortunate. Said to obsess about his erections, he couldn’t recover from bouts of penis limpus. He wasn’t the only failed stud to commit suicide.    

Thinking like a pornographer extends beyond those directly involved in production.  Superior Video’s receptionist Alana told me, “I can’t read Vogue (magazine) without thinking of the commercial possibilities.” She provided the idea behind our video Diary of a Bad Girl.

Bristling with erotic visions, pornographers frequently clash with performers pushed beyond their limits. As actor/director F. M. Bradley said about bombastic little porn impresario Jerome Tanner, “If you can take four cocks at once, Jerry will want five.”

A constant battle in the world of pornography is the often rancorous, push-pull negotiation between porn directors and cast members. After weathering one struggle after another, both sides come to the set prepared to go to war.  But that is the subject of a future blog entry.