Today’s NY Times Business section has an article on, of all things, porno plots—and, more specifically, their disappearance from modern porns.
As the Times sees it, plots were big in the ’70s, resurged in the ’90s, and have completely fallen by the wayside in the modern era, as studios focus far more on all-sex releases that can be easily chopped up into scenes for online and VOD distribution.
They’re sorta right, but they’re also missing a very big part of the picture.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: plot-driven porn movies (or features, as they’re called in the industry) aren’t going anywhere. For one thing, there are enough people who like them to make them worthwhile; for another, they’re incredibly important PR and marketing tools. Digital Playground can screen “Pirates 2″ at UCLA, but we’d wager that the administration would be far less friendly to a screening of “Filth Cums First 4.” Or, better yet: New Sensations may primarily produce all sex fare like “Girls ‘n Glasses” (cited by the NY Times), but “Scrubs – A XXX Parody” is what got them on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
There’s also the fact that—for the time being, at least—features are still worth buying on DVD; and as long as studios can still make a profit off DVDs, they’ll be more than happy to sell them.
At the same time, however, there are many people who are buying their porn primarily for the sex (and let’s face it: even those of us who like features are still in it primarily for the sex). And for those people, the DVD model isn’t the most economical way of getting what they need: why pay for four hours of sex, when all you really want is that two minutes of Gianna Michaels humping her way to heaven? And it’s these people who are driving the trend towards content that is, well, primarily sex—and, more importantly, can be cut up and repackaged without losing that certain something.
What we predict is that we’ll end up seeing a split system: a smaller number of high budget, easily marketable features available on DVD for one section of the porn viewing public; and a larger number of sex-focused scenes, perhaps on DVD, but primarily online, for the rest.
And frankly, we think that could be for the best. Imagine if studios took their features really seriously, casting performers who could act as well as they fuck, crafting a movie with a plot that’s actually worth watching, while allowing performers whose talents lie in a more prurient direction to simply focus on their fuck craft? You may say we’re dreamers…but we think it could be a beautiful thing.
· Lights, Camera, Lots of Action. Forget the Script. (nytimes.com)
· Thumbnail: Gianna Michaels and Faye Reagan ponder the future of porn (nsgalleries.com)
