Why buy the cow when you can get the tit for free?

The night before I moved out to Los Angeles, my mom had the misfortune of catching a late night showing of Boogie Nights on Cinemax.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a great movie.  But to my conservative, Republican, Cuban mom, it was a horror film.  As soon as it was over, she ran into my room and woke me up to make me promise I’d never fall victim to the allure of the porn industry.  At the time, I just laughed it off.  However, after my recent involvement with Blue Movies, a web series about the porn industry, I’m thinking twice about the adult entertainment industry.  I don’t want to make porn.  Porn wants to make movies.

For such a taboo industry, it has publicly led the way for some of the biggest technical advancements in home entertainment.  It’s attributed with deciding the verdict between VHS and Betamax in the early 1980s.  It’s responsible for the upsurge in Internet usage – entertainment, e-commerce and community – in the 90s.  Most recently, it was responsible for ending the DVD wars between Blue-ray and HD DVD.  Still, it is susceptible to the same challenge facing its more respectable counterparts in film, TV and music – the Internet.

The Internet began as a tool for increased accessibility and convenience; but Linux-based databases have given way to Apple’s integrated iTunes entertainment library and Windows 7 Media Center with Internet TV.  With consumers savvier and more trustworthy than ever, they’re buying goods on Amazon, selling goods on eBay and making goods on Café Press.  And if that wasn’t enough, they’re downloading illegal music on Limewire, watching illegal movies off BitTorrent and posting illegal playback of both on YouTube.   To be more specific, it hasn’t been access that has endangered so many industries – its piracy.  And like all entertainment trends, porn followed swiftly and aggressively with YouPorn, Tube8, PornoTube, Pornhub and RedTube – all opportunities to watch pirated clips and movies.  How do you combat the snowball effect of tech-savvy, insatiable consumers?  Apple responded with iTunes, Viacom sued YouTube and the porn industry … they produced cheaper porn and more of it.  Somehow the porn industry thought it would weather the storm by doing more of the same.

While porn was looking to economize, TV began to reap the benefits of an underserved market – high-end, scripted, provocative storytelling.  With 25% of all searches porn related, 8% of all email porn related, and 12% of all websites porn related, no one in entertainment can afford to ignore the porn industry.  Although cable television has embraced sex and pornography as part of its programming schedule in the past, most recently, it’s become a mandatory characteristic of its lineup.  Some of us may remember the success of Red Shoe Diaries in the 90s but that doesn’t compare to the current mainstream embrace of HBO’s True Blood and Showtime’s Californication and Diary of a Call Girl – show’s rife with sex, deviant behavior and violence.  In fact, pay cable seems to violate the Cambria List (a list of sex acts pornographers should avoid so as to dodge possible legal problems with the U.S. Government) more often than actual porn does.  Porn embraces the Internet and suffers while subscription-based television embraces sex and wins. How ironic.

One economic depression later, the porn industry is hurting and being a little more creative about finding a solution.  In fact, Hustler’s Larry Flynt asked Congress in January for a $5 billion dollar bailout of the adult entertainment industry.   “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” says Flynt. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such, but they cannot do without sex.”   Although the plea didn’t work, the real fact that Flynt highlights is that porn isn’t going anywhere.  It is a part of our culture and too big a business to fold over.  It’s an entertainment staple, and this is exactly the sticking point that top porn companies like Vivid and Digital Playground have embraced and are using to find solutions to their industry’s problem. If you can’t beat them, join them.

Last year Vivid was the first porn company to sue for rights violations.  Their suit against PornoTube was in line with Viacom’s previous retaliation against the use of copyrighted material on video-sharing sites.   Rival, Digital Playground, is not only preparing their own set of lawsuits, but they’re taking a play from the Hollywood studio handbook: spectacular, expensive sequels.  In 2008, it produced the feature film, Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, for a whopping $10 million dollars.  At 500 times the budget of an average porn film, Pirates II is the most expensive adult film ever made.  Moreover, according to Ali Joone, the company’s founder and the film’s director, it is the biggest-selling adult DVD of all time.  The real magic behind this success was not just selling more adult DVDs than ever before, but repurposing the video to a multitude of markets (with different ratings).  In fact, a special edition was created for distribution at Blockbuster and Borders that boosted sales close to one million units. “For years the industry has created very mediocre product, and it has sold well because the consumer had no choice,” says Joone in a 2008 Financial Times article titled, Rude Awakenings. “Now, the consumer has a choice and can get the mediocre content for free or for a very low price. We have to give consumers something they are willing to pay for.”

PIRATES II: Stagnetti’s Revenge:

With porn upping the ante on production quality and mainstream media embracing sex, I think we’re going to see a lot more programming that blurs the line like the old school film 9 ½ Weeks.    Current examples: Sasha Grey in Stephen Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and Jenna Jameson in Robert Englund’s Zombie Strippers.  I could continue rattling off titles, but I’m starting to feel kinda dirty.  I should go call my mom.

The Girlfriend Experience:

Marti Resteghini is VP of Network Programming and Acquisitions here at KoldCast TV. Formerly, as vice president of development and production at Warner Bros.-based production company, HDFilms, Resteghini oversaw the development, production and distribution of feature films, television and new media content across multiple platforms.  In this post, Resteghini produced many high-profile Web series including “Chadam,” “Creepshow: Raw,” based on the 1980s cult classic feature film, and Crackle’s “The Jace Hall Show.”