Hard Times in Porn Valley

Snip from the latest entry on Susannah Breslin's blog, a roundup of the neverending payperview apocalypse that is pornland:

It's hard times in Porn Valley. On September 19, Christopher Jack Reid, aka porn star Jack Venice, turned himself into Washington police on burglary and rape charges related to a series of incidents at Washington State University sororities. On September 29, Inkyo Volt Hwang, aka adult video director Chico "Wanker" Wang, was found dead in a Morgan Hill, California, motel room, and, on August 21, Maryam Irene Haley, aka adult film actress Haley Page, was found dead in King City, California.

And that's just the half of it. Link.

[#1 posted by Stranahan , October 16, 2007 11:44 AM]

The dead people part isn't good. But as for the porn industry being in trouble...whatever.

Like the music industry, they did it to themselves by being so boring and focusing on easy short term money and by having a factory mentality. Sex is a perfectly valid topic for art. It's both completely universal and completely unique to each individual. I've been creating erotica and distributing it free for over a decade (plug - IntimateArts.com) and now I'm switching everything I do to a Creative Commons license.

There's still going to be room for people to make a living but the middle man is going to be cut out because they deserve to be cut out.

[#2 posted by DragonPhyre , October 16, 2007 11:57 AM]

@stranahan: I don't think so. Sure, there will always be the 'underground' films that are basically nothing more than glorified whorehouses...

But for the bigger companies, it really isn't that big of a deal. Actor/Actresses get tested for diseases and drugs regularly, they get a choice on who to work with and what types of films... It's a job.

Plus, when was the last time you made 8-thousand dollars for 8 hours of work? I seriously doubt your plug is going to generate that kind of cashflow.

More to the point, the problem isn't so much that the industry makes it seedy--it's the clientele. old-school porn (cheesy storyline, bad soundtrack, no acting abilities whatsoever) just isn't appealing to people now-a-days. They want quick, hardcore acts of porn.

[#3 posted by Stranahan , October 16, 2007 12:10 PM]

I'm not sure what you mean by you don't think so.

And no - I don't think that a plug to a free site with no ads will generate thousands of dollars.

[#4 posted by Cougster , October 16, 2007 12:42 PM]

There is more on Jack Venice visiting Pullman (where Washington State University is) including his cached myspace page (he deleted it) on Cougster.
see:
http://www.cougster.com/site1/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/limit,9/limitstart,9/

(scroll down once there, there are a few different posts on the matter)

[#5 posted by FrankenPengie , October 16, 2007 7:39 PM]

"Jack Venice, turned himself into Washington police"

I thought he was a porn star, not a magician.

Personally, I thought Ron Jeremy did pretty good acting, at least compared to most of the others. But I think many of them did better when they worked with him. He could say some pretty funny stuff.

I don't know about the rest of the clientele, but I like a break in the action once in a while. If you're with somebody and both enjoying it, you need a break sometime, or a change in tempo.