The Porning Report

Deep Inside Porn Web Marketing

A new trend has emerged in the adult film and video world: marketing porn movies via exclusive Websites, signifying a new age in online marketing and promotion for adult productions. In the past, a production company used their Website to house advertising and marketing tools for each title. So at Adam & Eve Productions' Website, you might find individual web pages for each of their titles. Now, a cadre of porn studios are launching individual Websites for their priority titles, where tons of exclusive information, content and marketing tools can be found.

Studios like Private North America, The Simon Wolf Organization, Adam & Eve Productions, Wicked Pictures and Gwen Media are among the companies delving into title-specific sites. For instance, Simon Wolf Organization promoted "Naughty Bedtime Stories 2" at www.naughtybedtime.com, and "E-Love Wanted" at www.E-LoveWanted.com, while Private's Cleopatra (www.private.com/cleopatra), "Scottish Loveknot" (www.private.com/scottish) and the gay epic "Marc Anthony" (www.man-size.com/marcanthony) all have their own sites too.

"The sites are completely devoted to one feature," Private Media Group Press Officer Richard Sharp told me recently. "The visitor can access, with absolutely no charge, a whole range of information and material related to the movie. With screensaver, PC wallpaper, production notes, interviews, photos, and other downloads including the movie trailer, it is a unique virtual space providing a wealth of information that offer a huge added value for fans."

The purpose of the site is the sell the feature by putting enough content into the site to stimulate a demand for buyers to see the feature.

Another way to promote porn on the Web is by encouraging deep linking (get your mind out of the gutter, people!) Deep linking is the practice one site providing a direct link to specific content on another Website, which often has the effect of making the surfer think that a Webmaster is actually hosting the trailer when they are actually only linking to it. This way, Webmasters can avoid the sometimes-prohibitive costs of bandwidth that often goes with promoting video projects, but still "provide" the video that surfers are looking for. Digital Playground is promoting Robby D's new feature "Repo Girl" by releasing a trailer that they are offering as a deep link to for all distributors, retailers, affiliate and fan Websites.

So be it via title specific site or deep linking, porn makers continue to develop interesting ways to sell their product on the Net. Take that, music industry!

For Women, By Women

In the world of pornography there is little ground that has not been covered. Practically every genre or fetish one could imagine has been captured on film or video at one point or another. Yet, amazingly, one area that has barely been tapped by porn is women! Don't get me wrong, MANY women have been "tapped" by porn, but as performers, not as an audience demographic. Who is making porn movies for the ladies? Why is there not a bigger market for adult cinema aimed at what women want? Surely most women don't want to see themselves degraded and humiliated on screen as is the case in many porn movies, especially in the gonzo and anal genres. There must be porn meant for the ladies that is softer, sexier and more passionate, right?

There is, it's just that until now the genre has been only quietly making headway, with female directors like Veronica Hart, Chloe, Candida Royalle, Toni English and Anita Rinaldi creating hardcore vids for the opposite sex. They've been doing it for years, but only recently has the trend garnered some genuine heat.

"It's still the boys club," Hart admits. "But there's a couple of us out there who are throwing wrenches in their spokes. It's about being a smart enough woman and being able to find a place for yourself and work well."

Hart is a torchbearer in a growing group of women who are selling "female-empowered" adult entertainment to other women — the kind with plots, foreplay and cuddling that focuses on women's tastes and pleasure.

Likewise, Simon Wolf Productions recently announced they will be producing a line of adult videos aimed for the female audience in response to the success of their title For Women Only. The first in this new line, Woman’s World, will street March 16.

"For Women Only is our third or fourth biggest selling title and it was targeted directly at women," Simon Wolf Productions owner John Chambliss told AVN.com. "And re-orders today are phenomenal on the show, because as the female audience grows … There is a lot of intimacy, especially with eye contact. The sex is hard, very dynamic, but there is much more kissing and fondling and playing."

But what about the ladies who shudder at the thought of seeing women degraded, yet don't like the kissy-kissy romance stuff and do want to see hardcore, even anally-charged, sex? Well, female auteurs such as Brittney Foster have that area covered as well.

"The girl-girl videos that I've seen only get hardcore to a certain extent, they are usually too soft" says Foster of her ultra-hardcore, all-girl, fetish-themed Britney Foster's Disturbed. "So I'm taking it to the next level. There's fisting, double anal, double vag. It's has a fetish look and is extremely hardcore."

Meanwhile, you have male directors like Andrew Blake and Michael Ninn, who are making high-fashion, glossy porn that combines hardcore sex with a slicker, more artsy look.

Many women are beginning to see the sex industry as a viable area to make a legitimate living. Experts say demand by heterosexual and lesbian women is driving the growth of many sex-related ventures, from stores to catalogs to sex toy companies to adult Websites, porno films and cable TV programs.

In fact, there is even a movement of female porn Webmasters. Carlin Ross and Christina Head, a lawyer and a documentary filmmaker in New York, recently teamed up to plot new careers as Webmasters of a soon-to-be launched site that features "sex and love from a woman's perspective."

"It's all about empowering and educating women and, of course, I enjoy sex," the ironically named Head told the NY Times. "We're women. We enjoy sex."

The Last Dirty Picture Show

Last month, the San Mateo Planning Commissioners voted to tear down the Palm Theater in San Mateo, California, one of the last porn theaters in America. Though many supporters were drumming up support to have the 1950s art deco building added to the California Register of Historical Resources, which would have saved the theater, the Planning Commissioners sided with the many protestors of the buildings existence and decided to have it leveled instead, despite the fact that the Palm is one of the last neighborhood theaters in the Bay area still intact (Yeah, I suppose declaring it a Historical Resource would be sort of like saying, "Porn is okay once it's been around long enough," which would be akin to them declaring 'Deep Throat' a classic just because it was made a quarter of a century ago.).

The Palm Theater originally showed mainstream films but switched to adult films in 1972. With the advent of video, the theater began to show videos instead, which quickly became its of format choice. The Palm showed adult videos seven days a week, with women always admitted free. In the wake of it's destruction, a 19-unit apartment building with 38 parking spots will go up in its place. So now instead of parking their butts on sticky seats, local resident will park their Buicks in a soon-to-be sticky lot. Wow! What an improvement!

What's amazing is that after three years of debate, with Palm supporters pointing out that the building is a historical site despite how some folks feel about the content of the movies shown there, the Commissioners still decided to knock down the old-fashioned, single-screen theater. One of the last of its breed, the Palm represented a different time in porn, and therefore in society. These were the days when porn itself was much less accepted by mainstream than it is today, yet to see a porn movie you had to go out to a public theater and watch it surrounded by other creepy men. These were the days when watching a porn movie could get you harassed by police or even arrested if you happen to be touching yourself (just ask Pee Wee Herman). This was before porn was discussed openly on the radio and on TV, yet wasn't confined to the privacy of your bedroom or hotel room. Back then, watching porn in closed quarters wasn't often an option. So you had to be out of the closet just to get in it, so to speak.

Bob Dylan once sang, "The times they are a-changing," but I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking porn theaters. Maybe he should have been…

Tabloid Unearths Past of German Actress

Turkish born, German raised, 23-year-old actress Sibel Kekilli might have been celebrating her Golden Bear win the Berlinale 54th Berlin Film Festival for her role in the award-winning film "Head-On" without a care in the world, were it not for the fact that the 23-year-old actress is embroidered in a sex scandal centered around her porn-laced past.

It seems that German tabloid Bild recently published details about nine pornographic films Kekilli made before she went legit and became a critically acclaimed actress with her clothes on. The newspaper even printed photos from the films of Kekilli in action. These weren't movies a young, naive actress new to the biz did a decade ago -- she is only 23 -- these were as recent as autumn 2002.

"Yes, I did make these (porno) films. But that's the past. What counts is the Golden Bear," Kekilli told Bild. Her family and the media doesn't see it that way; both have condemned her publicly.

"Thanks to the media, she can't even go out of her home. She's totally besieged," Berlinale's director Dieter Kosslick said to Bild.

What's amazing here is that Kekilli was able to get as far as she did without her past coming up. No one involved in the film or the awards raised an eyebrow about her porn background -- and most admit they knew about it -- and she was critically acclaimed until the tabloids dug deep and outed her. In America, she wouldn't have gotten three feet into the casting director's office before someone recognized her, tipped off the casting agents and had her pulled from the picture.

In America, if we give porn stars screen time in mainstream films, it's only minor roles as strippers and, well, porn stars, in mainstream films (Traci Lords and Ron Jeremy being the exceptions). Kekilli woulda been run outta the picture long before she proved to the world that her past was just that and that she actually had genuine talent.

As German actor Mathieu Carriere pointed out, "The fact that Sibel Kekilli had starred in pornos is unimportant. Better to go from pornos to the "Oscar" than the other way round."

Will Mickey Get a Hickey?

You may have read the headlines last week about cable distribution conglomerate Comcast's bid to purchase Walt Disney Company. Big deal, right? Yet another corporate takeover in world full of 'em, eh?

Well, what you likely haven't read about is that Comcast is one of the nation's largest cable television distributors of porn movies, adult channels, and pay-per-view programming. According to reports, last year Comcast earned an estimated $50 million from porn.

Many porn industry insiders are wondering whether Disney's conservative investors and board of directors will get past Comcast's porn background to do business with them? And beyond the folks at Disney, what about all of the family advocacy groups who enjoy protesting indecency so much? Their heads must be exploding with protest-happy glee at this news!

Yep, they are.

"A lot of us have concerns about some of the things that Disney does, but they still produce a lot of positive family-values movies," the president of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families told the Chicago Tribune.

"We don't believe Comcast is family-friendly," he continued. "The management of Comcast has shown no hesitation to distribute hardcore and softcore pornography. So what does that say about the product and environment of what Disney's going to produce in the years ahead?"

Indeed. What types of product will Disney be producing out after this merger? They've already lost their Pixar deal, which brought in most of their highest grossing animated films in recent history. They've already re-released most of their animated classics and milked their vaults for all their worth. So what's next? Maybe the Comcast crew will start making some creative suggestions: "Snow White and the Seven Giants"? "Two Ladies and a Tramp"? "Sex Toy Story"? I could go on...

Music Biz Allows What Film Biz Eschews

French electronica band Air's racy new video for "Cherry Blossom Girl," directed by porn auteur Kris Kramski (Models, Klimaxx, An American Girl in Paris), is the latest in a string of music videos that have recruited directors from the adult film world.

It's not too surprising pop stars would turn to porn directors to helm their MTV clips, as these folks represent one of the only remaining arms of underground or alternative cinema that have not been absorbed by mainstream movie studios. Porn is hip, chic and cutting edge these days. But it is a little surprising that these filmmakers are so shunned by the mainstream movies industry, yet so accepted by the mainstream music industry, two businesses that usually go hand in hand. Record labels have no qualms about employing pornographers, yet movie studios ain't handing Michael Raven or Paul Thomas (NSFW) a deal any time soon (despite the fact that these two gents in particular could likely make a better flick than most Hollywood directors).

It will be interesting to se the reaction from Hollywood when lauded "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" creator/star John Cameron Mitchell unleashes his promised mainstream porn film (mainstream in that he's going to try to get it released theatrically, porn in that it will feature hardcore sex and penetration). Will he be heralded as a visionary, taking chances and breaking barriers, or will he be edited out of the business?

Watch-ing Porn

Porn production company Pleasure Productions (NSFW) has found a unique way to market their contact star, limited edition Pleasure Girl Watches. Yes, now you can wear the sultry image of vixens like Krystal Steal, Gina Lynn and Nikki Benz around your wrist and make it on time to those important appointments.

For only $39.95 -- about as much as a new adult DVD (NSFW) costs -- porn fans can own this nifty timepiece keepsake and know they are indeed wearing something special, as they are limiting each design to only 250 copies.

The Pleasure Girl watches will be released in the near future on various NSFW Web sites including Pleasure Productions.com, Pleasurevip.com, Shopnikkibenz.com, Krystalsteal.com, and Shopginalynn.com. Pleasure is considering widening their distribution to wider a consumer base soon after the initial launch.

"It's fun and it's different," Mitch Mitchell, spokesman for the Hightstown, N.J., based studio, told AVN.com. "It's a collector's item that makes sense. It can help brighten up one's day when you sneak a peek to look at the time and see a sexy girl's face looking back at you."

Indeed. And this isn't the only creative and mainstream way pornographers have found to market their companies and contract stars via traditional consumer goods. Companies like Vivid, Wicked and Adult Superstar Action Figures (Note: The related items on this toy site are surreal and disturbing) have been churning out sleek, detailed Todd McFarlane-influenced action figures for the last year or so to much success. Jackson Guitars recently enlisted Jenna Jameson -- who also recently graced the cover of Guitar World magazine's 2003 Guitar Buyer's Guide catalog -- to market its line of clothing and accessories. Jameson and fellow Vivid girl Mercedez also posed for a series of Pony print and billboard ads last year to much protest. There's even porn bobble head dolls now, for crying out loud! (Though why it's advertised as "anatomically correct" is a mystery...)

The Screenwriter Next Door To The Girl Next Door

Last week, I mentioned that "24" star Elisha Cuthbert is portraying a porn star in the upcoming movie "The Girl Next Door", a movie from Regency to be released via 20th Century Fox on March 12. The flick tells the tale of a high school senior, Emile Hirsch ("Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys"), who falls in love with the girl next door only to discover that she's a former porn star still trying to get out of the game.

One porn journalist and adult screenwriter, Gene Ross of AdultFYI.com, is up in arms about the film, claiming that 20th Century Fox "ripped off" the idea from a script he wrote.

The twist is that the original idea allegedly came in the form of an actual porn movie with the exact same title. If true, this means that a big, mainstream monolith movie studio might have swiped their idea from a small-scale porno movie. Now, if that doesn't show how porn is seeping its way into pop culture, I don't know what does -- movies have certainly been made based on everything from paintings to theme park rides, but porn's a first.

Video Team's "The Girl Next Door" (NSFW) starred Lexus Locklear and was directed by Mitch Spinelli in 1994. It was penned by Ross himself. The plots are nearly identical, he says, and Cuthbert even shares a resemblence with Locklear (who has since retired from the biz) -- though it's not surprising that both might be mistaken for porn stars, considering that's how they're cast.

"It's the same title," Ross told me via email this afternoon. "It's about the same identical subject matter. They can argue coincidence, but it can also be argued that it's more than that. Mainstream has attacked porn in the courts for ripping off ideas. Maybe it's their turn to squirm."

Regency had no comment on the situation.

What's next? A "Debbie Does Dallas" remake starring Charlize Theron? Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon in "The Devil in Miss Jones"? The real twist will come when mainstream rips off a porn-parody of a mainstream movie. Coming soon to a theater near you -- Ashton Kutcher in "Edward Penishands"!

'Girl Next Door' Depends on Where You Live

She's not a porn star, but she acts like one.

Actress Elisha Cuthbert (Fox's "24") is portraying a professional adult entertainment actress (that is, porn star) in the upcoming movie "The Girl Next Door" set to be released via 20th Century Fox on March 12. The flick stars Emile Hirsch ("Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys") as a high school senior who falls in love with the girl next door only to discover that she's a former star of raunchy movies. It turns out she has one film left in her contract and is trying to figure out if she can get out of it or whether she has to go back to the biz of being on her back.

The twist is that the film also stars a gaggle of real life porn stars such as Steven St. Croix and Angel Cassidy, and features scenes shot at AVN Adult Entertainment Expo convention. In fact, in the film's trailer, she appears next to an Adam & Eve booth. The Wicked and Vivid Girls also shot scenes for the film. For some reason, the real life porn cast does not appear in the official credits yet.

The irony here is that 20th Century Fox is billing the movie as a "teen romantic comedy," and that the screenplay reportedly has an upbeat, positive view of the adult industry. Teen romantic comedy? Since when are movie teens supposed to be watching porno movies and having crushes on porn stars? You know, like they do in real life?