A Bit More on That HBO Porn Show

Yesterday I wrote on my Forbes blog about the news that David Simon has a "porn drama" in development with HBO, but I sort of left out the broader point I was trying to make, which is that it is very difficult, and I'm sure HBO knows this, to make a TV show or a movie about the adult film industry. Obviously, PTA did it deftly with "Boogie Nights," but you'll be hard-pressed to come up with other examples. And that's because it's very difficult to depict the pornography within the porn industry without turning your project into, well, pornography. Whether people are simulating sex or having sex in front of the camera, it has a hard time looking like anything other than that: people fucking. This is why people are always saying, "Someone should make a really great art porn movie," but it hasn't been done, because it's difficult to do. (The lone exception, IMO, is "The Operation," shot in infrared.) For porn, there is no gap between what it is and what it appears to be. Of course, the obvious way to dodge this quandary is to focus on something other than screwing: the storyline, the period in time, the characters. And that's where you see success. Sex, in the broadest sense, works best as background noise. For example, think of "The Sopranos" scenes that take place at Bada Bing! It's less naked chicks prancing around and more B-roll; it's scenery. But what happens when the scenery becomes the star? That's where things get tricky. As a journalist, I try to avoid doing what I call "going in through the front door"; that would be something like dealing with publicists. Instead, it's generally better to go through the side door. (Historically, when writing about the porn industry -- take, for example, "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?" -- I avoid the big production companies and seek out the mid-range entities because it is there that the truth resides, not in a meeting facilitated by a PR lackey.) In any case, to bring sex alive before the cameras as something other than what I'd be inclined to call straight up fucking, you must enter through the side door. Clayton Cubitt's "Hysterical Literature" comes to mind. (Not porn, obviously, but an exploration of sexuality that renders sex into something else altogether: desire?) In any case, I'm always optimistic that it can be done, and HBO, or Showtime, or Netflix is really the place to do it. Advertisers have really killed the effective distribution of thoughtful considerations of the porn business, and yet the outliers offer hope. Personally, I'd rather see something other than some tee-hee bullshit created by some chick from "Sex and the City" and something more knowledgeable than whatever gritty grind Simon will perhaps create. The thing to remember, as PTA did, is that it's always about heart. After all, porn isn't about fucking at all. It's about love, and intimacy, and how difficult it is for us human beings to navigate their slippery terrains.

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