SKINFLICKS The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry (English Edition)

"...the best and most realistic depiction of the modern world of pornography written in book form to date.." said Adult Video News publisher Paul Fishbein in 1999. UCLA Film School graduate David Jennings entered the porn business to research and write about it. When he began working for a large Mafia-connected pornography distributor in 1977, he planned 6 months in the porn industry, not 12 years. But after pioneering the first adult features shot DIRECTLY on videotape, his own company, Superior Video, Inc., weathered threats from his former bosses and helped lead a revolution in the 1980s that widened porn's audience from "raincoats" in sleazy theaters to couples in their bedrooms. Based on Jennings's true-life adventures as a writer, director, producer, manufacturer and researcher, SKINFLICKS explores an era of mobsters replaced by yuppie porn kings, cops raiding homes to seize videotapes, porn queens becoming corporations and AIDS panics closing movie sets. Going behind the scenes on over 100 porn shoots, Jennings answers the frequently-asked question, "What are these porn stars really like?" He contrasts the hippie-spawned female stars of the celluloid age, for whom porn acting was a sideline, with the starlets getting rich in the fast-fame world of video. Theirs is a marathon of ruthless competition, of sex coaches and "porno stage mothers," of multiple breast enlargements and sales of "unwashed" panties. Non-stop schedules produce burnouts, breakdowns and suicides. Jennings recounts dealing with tantrums, drug zombies and truculent boyfriends. He also describes his favorites, such as Adult Video News Hall of Fame inductees Nina Hartley and Shanna McCullough. Ironically, one of the most poised and mature-appearing actresses Jennings directed turned out to be that industry disaster, the secretly underage Traci Lords (he shot 3 Lords videos). A chapter on porn studs reveals the methods these men use to remain "reliable" during the multi-scene days of video shoots. In 1986, alarmed by adult tapes in shopping malls, the U.S. government launched a massive "War on Porn." Chapters covering this onslaught introduce thundering politicians, crusading vigilantes, porn-addicted preachers and an odd alliance of radical feminists and the Religious Right. These passages detail landmark court cases, obscenity laws, sociological studies, staggering prison sentences and bizarre clashes between prosecutors and First Amendment attorneys. Though some content in SKINFLICKS is necessarily graphic, this is a book about pornography, not a pornographic book. 432 pages with 31 photographs.