The Decade In Porn: Courtney Trouble Looks Back On 2000-2009

As the first decade of the 2000s draws to a close, Fleshbot's sitting down with adult industry influentials to learn how the business of pleasure has changed over the past ten years. Our next expert: queer porn maven Courtney Trouble.

You may know Courtney as the founder of indie porn site NoFauxxx.com; she's also one of the fine minds behind Good Releasing's Reel Queer Productions. And now, her thoughts on how the adult industry has evolved through out the '00s.

At left: Courtney Trouble.

Adult entertainment in 2009 looks a whole lot different than it did in 1999. In your opinion, what's been the single biggest change this decade?
I'm young, so the past ten years of porn have really been all I've truly experienced, but I've got to say that in the past ten years, I have seen so many independent porn ventures rise and fall on the internet. A good few of them, including my site NoFauxxx.Com, have really succeeded in creating a long-term brand and legacy, while others came and go like night clubs. With this whole do-it-yourself dot.com take on pornography, I think many subcultures have been able to create, sell, and experience pornography, which I could be wrong but I don't think that was happening in the 80s or 90s. Porn has really moved away from something that lives, breaths, and does payroll in "Porn Valley" and become somethign that anybody can do, and making a living from, all over the world. I think the single biggest change has been not just the internet, but the internet's ability to let subcultures and independant pornographers reach worldwide audiences, making limitless room for creative pornography projects. The big companies can complain all they want about how the internet has killed their profits, but the plus side is that people like me have a chance to do our work and gain visibility.

At left: Baron, shot for NoFauxxx in 2002.

You launched NoFauxxx in 2002. What was the industry like back in those days? What motivated you to start your own site?
I dind't have much part in the "Industry" until much more recently. Back in 2002, I was 19, living in Olympia as a tiny Riot Grrrl nugget, and rebellious against not only mainstream porn but alt porn that wasn't inclusive of people of larger sizes, varied genders, or racially diverse. SG lived in Portland and was still considered the most empowering porn out there, and it still didn't feel like enough - and that was really the motivation behind starting the site. The term "Queer Porn" didn't exists what-so-ever, even though a few things like Ssspread.Com and SIR Productions were making what I would consider "queer porn" back in the day. But nobody called it that until No Fauxxx hit the scene. So, for me, I was creating images for fun, not realising that what I was doing was creating a genre for my work and others to follow.

At left: Tom and Huck, shot for NoFauxxx in 2003.

How has NoFauxxx changed over the years?
It started out as such a tiny site, with just me and a few of my brave friends from Olympia. I was a phone sex operator and was really obsessed with having a balance of "fantasy" and "reality" in my work, so No Fauxxx became an outlet for me to make erotic art that showed the "reality" of the sexuality in my community. The photos were DIY digital on a bulky Nikon CoolPix, couldn't get them much larger than 600 pixels, and didn't even own a light set, studio props, or a video camera. I shot people's "realness," asked them to be themselves, and shot in very natural, intimate places. The goal of realness is still a factor these days, but there's a lot more tools of the trade and high-concept storyline on my set these days. I still really love shooting someone masturbating with no makeup on, that will never change - but I've evolved to use better tools to get that done.

At left: Trouble, shot for NoFauxxx in 2004.

Has it become easier or harder to be an indie pornographer since the beginning of the decade?
In my case, easier. People have really caught on to the indie and queer porn movements, and I feel like investors/producers are more open to picking up DIY film makers to make porn for them because they've realise that, "Hey, these Porn Valley DVDs aren't selling like they used to, but this tiny little company's movies are flying off the shelves." I don't disrespect the work that L.A. performers and directors do, but I do think that the "market" is looking more now towards the kinds of porn that I make - indie, chemistry-driven, fun, creative... The generic stuff just isn't catching the consumer's eye anymore. As far as self-promotion and marketing go, at the beginning of the decade, being active on message boards, link exchanges with other sites, and buying web and/or print ads were really crucial to the success of a small porn site, but now with all the social networks like Twitter and Facebook, just being there, being personal, and being generous with freebies has been enough to keep new visitors coming to my site all the time.

At left: NoFauxxx in 2005.

How has the SF porn scene evolved over the past decade?
Ten years ago, SIR Productions was making films and Good Vibrations had a few titles. SIR even won an AVN Award for Best All-Girl Feature. There really wasn't much going on here aside from that, and hadn't been since the "Golden Era" of SF porn production with the Mitchell Brothers and all that stuff. I musn't forget to mention that GAY porn has ALWAYS been in SF and I don't know much about that industry or how it's changed in the past decade, except with their self-imposed mandatory condoms (wish I could say that about LA) and of course, evolving with the internet just like the rest of us.

Now, you've got all sorts of things going on. To break it down there are 3 main directors; Myself, Shine Louise Houston, and Madison Young; and then the production company Trannywood Pictures, and of course, Good Vibration's Good Releasing launch just this year. (I am the headlining director for the Reel Queer Production line under GR) Now we are seeing porn media from LA and New York take interest in our movies and our stars. A year ago we were breaking into parties at AVN, handing off our burned copies to people like Fleshbot and XBiz. Now they come to us, and this year, nobody's gonna kick anybody off the red carpet at AVN for being a dyke. Just in this past year we've really made it happen, and I think more and more people are looking to SF for great porn of all kinds.

At left: Madison Young, shot for NoFauxxx in 2006.

Has Porn Valley become any more accepting of different body types/genders/etc? If so, what's been the motivating factor?
Kind of. Belladonna cas cast SF queers like Syd Blakovich and Jiz Lee, and hot fatties like April Flores just recently, and some other production companies have accepted them with open arms as well - sought them out even. Vivid has a Vivid Alt division run by artist & pornographer Eon McKai and that has brought more subculture flavor, diversity in the types of women you see in porn, into the spotlight. I don't think you saw many brunette tattooed hipsters in Vivid movies in the 90's. Our subcultures have become porn genres, and again I think it has a lot to do with growing presence of independent adult work and art on the internet.

At left: Avarice, shot for NoFauxxx in 2007.

The internet has obviously had a huge impact on the adult industry. What's been the best change the internet has brought to the adult marketplace? The worst?
The two biggest changes I think have been of course, peer-to-peer file sharing, and social networks. A big company might say that tube sites, torrents, or P2P will be the death of them, and it sucks for the performers to have their scenes blasted for free all over the internet, but I don't think that the tube sites are really hurting the smaller companies at all. It's kind of like when Napster came out and everybody was getting free music, it was almost a socialist thing - the big companies were loosing money, and the small companies and independent artists were getting more exposure, more fans, and more people buying their records and concert tickets. It all really depends on how you look at it, or where you are on that spectrum. And as I said before, having social networks around allows us to market ourselves for free and with a truly personal voice, and that's something I'm sure seemed absolutely impossible 10 years ago.

At left: NoFauxxx in 2008.

Any thoughts on what the industry will look like at the end of the next decade?
I'm seeing events like the Feminist Porn Awards, and the Berlin Porn Film Festival, become more prevalent. I think we could be headed into another "Golden Era" like the 70's when porn was revolutionary, shown in theaters, talked about in colleges, and not taken so much for granted. There are brilliant artists making films and independent companies coming out from their "underdog" status. I think at least for the next few years, porn will be seen more as Art than trash. I can't say it will last another ten years, but I am happy to be a part of it for the long haul.

At left: NoFauxxx in 2009.