So, I was sitting on the can a minute ago, leafing through the
Adult WEBSITE Tours* magazine I picked up in San Diego, reading about actress Jesse Jane's pre-porn life.
I've got the magazine folded in half, so I see only the text and a picture of Jesse in a bikini. The story provided a lot of background on Jesse -- army brat, cheerleader, her early modeling gigs, even about an impromptu sex romp she once had in a Hooter men's room. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself pretty aroused. The text and a bikini pic had done a pretty good job at stirring my usually lethargic masturbatory impulse -- and, no I didn't -- I decided to write this instead --
It hit me (
again, if from a new direction) that we're not paying enough attention to important opportunities on the Mainstream / Adult border. As I wrote in
XBIZ back in January, and as I've been saying pretty consistently every moment since, the answer to our legal imperilment is not JUST capable litigation and political lobbying (though those elements are essential), but inventing new businesses and changing the skin of old businesses all along that borderline.
As I read Jesse Jane?s risqué biography, I realized not only that it could make a successful movie, but that probably no one in our biz (the biz the story is set in) would make it. We?ve seen similar movies do well ? like Wonderland, Boogie Nights and the one where the playboy model got killed by the jealous boyfriend ? what the hell was her name?
Now, I?m not so much pitching the Jesse Jane bio-movie idea to you, as I am holding it up as an example of a whole spectrum of things we don?t much think about ? because they are on that border, and perhaps because we can?t justify tearing ourselves away for even 5 minutes from Porn?s Rich Teat.
Before the increase in legal-issue-oriented conversation we?ve seen these last coupla months, I would have said that I was worried most of you were short-termers, quick-buckers, or make-it-while-you-canners. But I am sincerely encouraged by the level of energy I?ve seen. That energy, while very auspicious, has ? I must say ? seemed a little un-focused to me, perhaps at times even hysterical.
We have this one traditional defense, and it?s a great one ? but I think that, for seeing in every threat of ?curtailment? only censorship, we have lost touch with some larger-picture aspects of doing business on planet Earth in favor of ever-grander Wizardries right in our own backyard.
Ladies and gentlemen, the golden goose is more productive than ever, but we are neglecting the barn that houses her.
It is the barn that people see when they walk past outside. It is our public face to the rest of the world, to other industries, to government, to the society we?re choosing to support by living in this country.
I?m going to be writing a little op-ed piece for XBIZ soon to pick this theme up from this point. In it, I?m going to suggest a number of truths to you from PR and Marketing Communications text-books, that it may profit us to re-learn.
Just to finish up the Jesse Jane movie idea ? Make films that are ?pre-scaled for profitability? using production resources we already have, talent we already pay and stories nobody knows better or has more of than we do. Sell those films to small broadcast and cable markets. Experiment aggressively with content tolerance limitations, by combining nudity/sexual situations with ?psychological enhancers? ? like I enjoyed merely reading about Jesse Jane?s early life, which was eroticized for me just because I knew she was going to become a porn star.
We have to look at examples like Reality TV (which I?ve discussed at length before, and), which I?ve described as thinly veiled BDSM ? we can?t show her bush, but we?ll stuff a bull testicle in her mouth while she wears a bikini -- examples like Law & Order ?Special Victims Unit? which is a police show that only deals with sexual crimes, and the list goes on and on.
Yes, the people producing that sort of entertainment are opportunistic, and for the covert, deniable mechanics through which they gratify their audience on a sexual level, but pretend otherwise ? they look sleazy as hell to us. How ironic, then, that those TV, Hollywood and publishing executives don?t lose any sleep worrying their neighbors will find out what they do for a living. That?s just us ? the folks who hold-up as their Magna Carta one of human civilization?s loftiest ideological arguments. As I said, it?s a great argument, but it suffers the vulnerability of all absolutes. It only has to fail us once.
To be flexible is not the same as to yield. Let?s empower our own industry with the flexibility necessary for US to tell our stories to the world, for US to influence what people think about us, for US to make the money now being made by others who are not us and don?t care about us, for US to carry out what looks to me like a triple-win:
1. An increase in the revenue footprint of our industry,
2. A reduction in our legal embattlement, (for the ?practitioners? in Adult being more vertically distributed than they are now, to include additional layers of workers it?s simply not practical to prosecute),
3. A healthier social environment for human sexuality than we?ve got now (because we?ve gotten involved with the selling and the characterizing of Sex OUTSIDE of Adult) --
2HP
*(Adult Broker, Lori Z. called this magazine a "print TGP", which I thought was both brilliant and a good idea -- )