Sunday, May 02, 1999
Video technology brought porn home
BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
All the stars showed up in January for the big awards show at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas.
They stepped out of their limousines in tuxedos and formal dresses, pausing on the red carpet to smile for the cameras and wave to their fans.
Then they went inside for a $200-a-plate dinner and a ceremony that would decide which movie was best of the year:
Love's Passion, Looker or Debbie Does Dallas: The Next Generation.
More than anything else, the annual adult video awards reveal just how much the pornography business has changed in the past decade.
It is the biggest night of the year for an industry that now boasts 100 production companies, thousands of performers and more than $4.1 billion in annual sales.
“The videos seem to be part of the mainstream now,” said H. Louis Sirkin, the Cincinnati attorney for Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. “It's reached the point where it's something you can buy and not feel dirty about it.”
Mr. Sirkin may find out how mainstream the business has become when he defends Mr. Flynt against obscenity charges at his trial in Cincinnati.
The charges are based on 16 sexually explicit videos that were sold at Mr. Flynt's Hustler store on Sixth Street.
While the videos caused a stir in Cincinnati, they are considered routine in an industry that produces about 5,000 new videos every year.
Adult Video News (AVN), which sponsors the annual awards show, estimates that U.S. video stores rented nearly 700 million adult features in each of the past three years. That's an annual increase of about 250 million since 1991.
“I'm sure the prosecutors would like to think 700 perverts are renting a million tapes apiece, but that's not it,” said Paul Fishbein, AVN's publisher.
He said the boom began in the 1980s when VCRs became affordable to the masses, opening the world of adult film to a larger audience. Previously seen only in X-rated theaters or mail-order catalogs, porn films suddenly were on shelves at the corner video store.
Videotapes were not only cheaper to make and easier to distribute, they could be seen in the privacy of the viewer's home.
“In the old days, porn was an underground thing,” said Paul Cambria, another one of Mr. Flynt's attorneys. “Now these tapes are all over the place.”
But prosecutors and industry critics say the tapes shouldn't be tolerated simply because there are so many of them.
The Rev. Donald Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss., contends explicit videos dehumanize women and threaten families.
“It's extremely destructive,” he said. “Many lives, many marriages, many homes have been broken because of pornography.”
Mr. Fishbein, however, describes the tapes as harmless entertainment for adults. He said obscenity laws are antiquated because the Internet and cable TV have taken pornography out of the public domain and into private homes.
He said the videos in Mr. Flynt's case are a good example of the kind of videos that might be found in those homes today.
They include the porn world's equivalent of home videos (Pam and Tommy Lee, Hardcore and Uncensored), gay-oriented tapes (Jeff Stryker's Underground), specialty tapes (Oral Passions) and mainstream features like this year's adult video award winner (Looker).
Some feature no-name performers while others boast stars like Rocco Siffredi, whom Mr. Fishbein calls “the Arnold Schwarzenegger of porn.”
Mr. Fishbein said the video boom has dramatically changed the business. Top performers now command six-figure salaries and the top production companies battle fiercely for a share of the market.
And when they meet at the awards show every year, they compete for honors ranging from Best Film to Best Sex Scene.
“It's a very big deal,” Mr. Sirkin said. “They take it very seriously.”
Cincinnati vs. Flynt: The Sequel
Obscenity trials highly subjective
Video technology brought porn home
The players in Flynt trial
