XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (3 page)

Those consumers who wanted hardcore pornography with more extreme images of violence could still find it-but only from expensive imported tapes. Expensive, because their importation was illegal.

As to coercion into pornography-the claim that women are forced to commit sex acts for the camera-Stagliano described how his company, Evil Angel, screened the women they hired as actresses. At casting calls, he and his partner Patrick asked the women which sex acts turned them on. From their answers, the two men knew the roles in which to cast the women. "Only if a woman enjoys what she's doing," Stagliano assured me, "can she give a convincing performance."

As an example, he recalled a shy woman who had come in on an open casting call earlier that week. Physically, she was what he considered perfect: young, a good hard body, a pretty face.

But, after the first few questions, he'd decided not to use her. She didn't seem comfortable enough with sex to project real enjoyment to a camera. Then, Patrick asked her about bondage and she reportedly "came alive." The woman was hired for a bondage scene.

When I pressed on about the possibility of coercion, Stagliano readily admitted that the industry was huge. Some women were almost certainly abused or misused. "This happens in every business," he explained, "from Standard Oil to banking." The most common abuse came from producers who manipulated women into performing sex acts to which they have not agreed in advance. Usually, the manipulation was in the form of peer pressure. For example, the director might comment, "No one else objects," or "You're holding up production for everyone else."

11

Stagliano had heard of a producer who refused to pay a woman for past work unless she performed a sex act to which she objected. The woman knew it would be useless to sue, because courts do not have a track record of sympathy toward sex workers. This gave the producer a strong hold over her.

The conversation drifted on to whether or not there was such a thing as a snuff movie. This is a movie in which someone is actually killed in front of the camera during a sex/torture scene. (My question had political significance. In New York, over a decade ago, when a porn movie purported to be a snuff film, feminists had almost rioted outside the theater in which it played.

This incident was the beginning of the "Take Back the Night" movement, under whose banner feminists still march through the streets of major cities to protest violence against women.) Stagliano had no first-hand knowledge of snuff movies. But "a reliable source" had assured him that the movie that had caused such a sensation had been a scam. The producers had wanted to make more money. They thought a simulated killing, advertised as real, would make the ticket price skyrocket. They were right.

Stagliano interrupted Leslie's preoccupation with food to ask if
he
knew of any snuff films. The answer was no, but Leslie conceded the possibility of amateur snuff films. As he put it, "There are a lot of really sick sons-of-bitches out there." But no one "in the industry" would be stupid enough to put a murder on tape so that it could be used against them in criminal proceedings. In over thirty years in pornography, Leslie said he had never seen a snuff film, even though he had seen almost everything else, including what looked like real violence in Japanese videos.

As to the original film that caused such a furor, Leslie informed me that if I took the time to watch the video, I would see how the postproduction editor had simply spliced new scenes into an old movie. The older movie was Mexican or South American, he couldn't remember. "It wasn't even good editing," he said, shrugging.

Next, I opened up the subject of contracts by asking how they were negotiated with actresses.

Did the women usually sign whatever was put in front of them? Did they argue over fees or residuals? Did agents get involved?

A friendly dispute broke out at the table. Stagliano claimed he didn't sign contracts before shooting a video because he felt it might hinder the creative process. He didn't use scripts either.

Instead, he relied on "concepts" which evolved during production. This meant his videos assumed a life of their own, in the style of cinema verite. He insisted that a contract that specified acts in advance could interfere with his method of production.

(I discovered later that Stagliano was one of the key producers who spanned pornography's transition from large-budget films to the currently booming amateur, or home, porn. During the seventies, porn films like
Behind the Green Door
and
Emmanuelle
had substantial budgets, trained actors, high technical values, and complex scripts with intricate plots. Today, the fastest growing sector of porn is home videos. These are videos that are shot by "regular" people-husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends-who then sell them to distribution companies.

The final tape combines several of these short amateur presentations under one label.) Stagliano seems to fall between the two extremes of the seventies: big-budget and home porn. As a producer, he prides himself on technical values, especially on camera angles. The opening scene of
Face
Dance I
still leaves me open-mouthed. But his videos do not have large budgets, prepared scripts, or the other trappings of the major productions of yesteryear.

As Stagliano explained why he didn't sign contracts in advance, I flashed on the antipornography ordinances which radical feminists had tried to push through various city councils a decade before. Under these ordinances, a woman who had performed a pornographic act could 12

later bring a civil suit against the producer for "coercion into pornography." This would not have been a criminal charge. But it could have resulted in huge settlements for the woman. I wondered if Stagliano realized that his devil-may-care approach to contracts could have placed everything he owned in jeopardy.

Clearly, pornography had grown up as an underground industry. It had evolved by working outside the judiciary-outside the context of courts and contracts. The police and the legal system were still seen as hostile forces. And rightly so. If a contract was violated, it was touch-and-go whether a judge would even hear the case, let alone take it seriously. Women in porn were more likely to be mistreated by the police than protected by them. No wonder legal paperwork was given low priority.

"So far I haven't needed contracts." Stagliano seemed puzzled by my concern.

"What if you end up in court?" I asked. "If you don't have an enforceable contract, what are you going to do?"

"Why would I go after these people, Wendy?" he replied with a disapproving frown. "They don't have anything." He obviously thought I was heartless.

Before I could explain that these people might go after
him,
Leslie interjected, "I always sign contracts and releases in advance, just to get rid of the paperwork." Apparently, he was exhausted by the end of a project and didn't like to spend time at that point on loose ends.

The discussion of contracts quickly devolved into a heated denunciation of what Leslie called the "studio system." This is a system by which certain companies place aspiring porn actresses under exclusive contract. Typically, the contract promises the woman $5,000 to $10,000 a month. In exchange, the actress agrees to appear in some defined number of movies each month over a period of time, usually running from six months to a year.

Both Stagliano and Leslie loudly lamented this system. Why? Because it attracted the best-looking and most talented women. This kept the actresses out of the "job market"-that is, out of
their
videos. To add insult to injury, the offending companies invariably produce "tame"

material-an artistic choice that elicited scorn from the table.

(By "tame," they did not necessarily mean soft-core. Companies like Vivid Video do produce hardcore movies. But they are so sensitive to implications of violence against women that they shy away from even the suggestion of dominance, for example. Moreover, Vivid's hardcore videos are routinely edited down to soft-core versions for sale to adult cable channels.) To me, the studio system made sense. It provided real benefits to the women who signed on. Not the least of these benefits was a decent, steady income over a predictable period of time. This allowed the women to make plans-to go back to school, for example.

Later I learned that a porn actress on her own earned only $150 to $600 for a day's work. I became even more impressed by the studio system. After all, most of the women who signed those contracts had limited education and limited job opportunities. And the fact that the movies were "tame" meant the women had a better chance of moving from porn into "legitimate" film.

No wonder the studio system attracted women with talent and beauty.

I refrained from making such comments, however. My perspective was clearly out of step with the rest of the table.

I did continue to steer the conversation on to the broad subject of women in the industry. Did they like their work? Did they enjoy the sex scenes?

I asked the two producers what percentage of female orgasms in videos did they think were real.

Both men immediately volunteered that one hundred percent of women's orgasms in soft-core videos were faked. But they disagreed radically about orgasms in hardcore porn. Leslie claimed 13

that ninety percent of them were real. And that he could always tell. Stagliano estimated that ten to twenty percent of the women's orgasms were real. But he added, "The important thing is not the orgasm, but whether the woman shows real pleasure." He thought most women got involved in pornography to indulge a strain of exhibitionism within them.

I asked if the actors were also into "exhibitionism," or did they get something fundamentally different out of performing for the camera? Two comments shot straight back: Men get less money than women do, so money was less of a motivation; and, male orgasms are always real.

Do you think men and women enjoy different types of pornography? I asked, and the table fell silent. My husband came to the rescue by mentioning a magazine article that claimed women prefer "softer" movies, with more plot development, romance, and foreplay. Stagliano thought there might be something to this theory. His tentative agreement was overruled by Leslie's insistence that men and women reacted in
exactly
the same manner. As proof, he elaborated on how orgasms have the same effect on both sexes: an intensity in the eyes, flared nostrils, heavy breathing.

At this point, the pasta had been eaten; the wine had been drained; it was time for dessert.

Conversation drifted away from my priorities and onto Leslie's extremely graphic reminiscence of a Scandinavian girlfriend. I remembered the words with which Stagliano had ushered me into the restaurant only an hour before:

"Now you'll get a candid look at the psychology of pornographers."

I also remembered my husband's comment on Howard Stern's book
Private Parts,
over which I had been laughing the night before. "This is how guys talk about women when they are just hanging out together," he had assured me. As Leslie warmed to his topic, I put my notebook away and began to eavesdrop.

At some point, I must have turned beet-red, because Stagliano leaned over and whispered, "Don't be embarrassed." Before coming to CES, I had resolved not to be prudish. For one thing, my background was hardly that of a wallflower. For another thing, I knew that sexual morality was largely a matter of geography and of the subculture you happen to be moving in.

Nevertheless ... I
was
embarrassed, but not by the explicit language, or by what antiporn feminists would call "reducing women to sexual parts." I was embarrassed by the loudness with which Leslie described "a fuck in the alley." At every table within listening distance-and that included a fair number of people were gawking at us. Conversation in our end of the restaurant had ceased, except for the pointed jokes and comments being muttered back and forth, all aimed at our table. Two women made their disapproval clear through glares and scowls directed, oddly enough, at me! I was thankful there were no children within earshot. At Leslie's description of "jerking off" to a phone call, another few tables fell silent.

As the blood pounded in my cheeks, I did what usually helps bring things into focus: I switched into critical mode. I analyzed the situation. I reached my first conclusion about the psychology of pornographers. They do not consider sex to be a private matter. This may seem to be a facile and painfully obvious insight. But-until then-I had thought pornography might be a business that shut down at five o'clock, like a post office.

This conclusion was confirmed as the convention progressed. People in the industry kept telling me intimate and unsolicited details about their sex lives. I realized that pornography was as much an attitude or lifestyle as it was a business. The line between private and public was sometimes blurred to the point of being erased.

The attitude toward sex in porn circles was like a brass band, with red tasseled uniforms, blasting its way down Main Street. The attitude was: Sex should be flaunted; conventions are to be 14

scorned; shocking people is part of the fun; and, we are the sexual sophisticates, we are the sexual elite.

Yet, mixed up with this in-your-face approach was a strange eagerness to be understood and to be taken seriously by the regular world. Several times in the middle of a conversation, I suddenly realized it was important to the people I was talking to that I accept them, that I like them.

As Leslie talked, I reached a second conclusion. The porn industry reminded me of the gay community, in which I am lucky enough to have a few good friends. Before I'd been adopted as a "sympathetic" outsider, I had encountered a strange blend of suspicious hostility and total openness. This mix was sometimes manifested in the same person within the same ten-minute conversation. People in porn reacted to me in a similar manner. And probably for a similar reason. They were used to being rejected, even despised, by the people around them. On one level, they hungered for decent treatment and acceptance from the "legitimate" world. On the other hand, they had acquired the survival skill of automatically treating others with the contempt they fully expected to receive back.