TOM JOAD here with another review from SXSW... Beginning with last year's "SEX: The Annabel Chong Story", and "Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes" this year the trend of sex-related documentaries continued with "Live Nude Girls UNITE!" and "Rated X: A Journey Through Porn." Always fascinating, and always offering something new, RATED X proved to an incisive look into the world of adult entertainment…
Bill Margold believes "The primary reason that the X-rated industry exists is for the vicarious form of revenge against the women that the men couldn't get when they were growing up. By watching women taking cum shots in the face, they are jacking off in the face of the cheerleader they couldn't get when they were growing up. It is absolutely the bottom line why we exist." Such a colorful remark, from such a colorful man.
Director Dag Yngvesson saw Carnal Encounters of the Barest Kind starring Bill Margold, back when he was a teenager. Now, as a young twenty-something, Dag tracked down Bill Margold a call in efforts to set up an interview. Dag sets out to make a documentary on the porno industry.
Bill immediately sets Dag straight on the term pornography: "Since 1988, in California, we have been referred to as the adult entertainment unless your mind is dirty when you think of adult entertainment." Bill agrees to help Dag with his documentary of the adult entertainment industry and Dag is sent to meet Jim South.
Jim South, a Texas native, has set up a talent agency that assists women with getting work in photography, and if they desire - into making adult movies. Here we meet Selena, an eighteen year old starlet not a week into the business. Her naiveté is obvious as she discusses her reasons for joining the industry and her half-hearted concern for HIV and AIDS. "I can be a cop and get shot and die at any moment. Or I can get a disease in the industry and die slow." Selena's father is some piece of work as he explains to his daughter to protect herself as her own investment. As though she, "were a race car or a truck." With that statement, more insight into the way this girl was raised, and raised to think, than any other is presented. On the subject of black girls, Selena's father made the intelligent statement: "I couldn't stomach being with a black girl. In the night I want to see what I'm looking at and with a black chick you ain't gonna see nothin'!" Jim South seems like a straight-shooter, as he seems to have the women's best interests in mind. Very much his polar opposite is Regan Senter, who Bill sends Dag to meet next.
Regan Senter runs Beautiful Models International, a talent agency that corrals young women into the industry. Regan Senter is referred to lovingly, "as a cockroach. A cockroach will survive longer than the weasels and the sharks." Regan has an interesting gig going. He is the only employee of BMI and he regularly books appointments with young ladies interested in the business. His angle, and how he seems to have fashioned a dream-like life for himself, is that each meeting with each of these young turns into a sex scene with him, for free. Regan videotapes these sessions, claiming that showing these tapes to producers is the best way to get work for new talent. Basically, Regan wakes every morning to the sound of a young woman's voice that he will soon have sex with - even if they don't know it yet. This provides him with the motivation to get out of bed for work and to look for work for his talent, and in doing so, is deemed perfectly ethical by Regan himself. Interviewing Regan presents the race card. Why are there so few black, asian, and minority superstars in the industry? Dag goes to meet Sean Michaels - the number one black superstar in the business.
Sean Michaels proves to be an intelligent man with a well thought-out plan. Sean believes that higher quality porn involving minorities is financially viable - contrary to the long-running opinion in the industry that, 'blacks don't sell.' Sean's plan to own his own production company would give him the first black owned distribution company in the history of the industry. Creating a fully independent business that will slowly be cornering a certain part of the market.
JOAD NOTE: Sean's dream is now a reality as he owns distribution company: Sean Michael Productions. Sean also won Adult Male Star of the Decade at January's AVN Awards in Vegas.
We're then introduced to Geoff Coldwater, a young actor, director, producer, who believes that he will be able to break into Hollywood after a start in the X-rated industry. Coldwater offers Dag a job as cameraman on an upcoming porno movie of his. Dag calls his mother and tries to get her to approve. Likening the experience to the time his mother joined the fishing industry of a village for her dissertation. Coldwater assured him of the formula to shooting porno: Penetration, Reaction, Long Shot, Transition... repeat, etc. Dag's experience doing this provides plenty of insight into the non-performer's side of the industry.
We discover that porno movies are made two ways: SOFTCORE - no overt genitalia or penetration "Erotica" for cable TV. HARDCORE - genitals and penetration "real pornography", for sale on videotape only.
This explains the onslaught of films flooding your video store shelves. With over fifteen full-length porno movies being made every day, that number can be doubled if the numbers of softcore copies are included. Curious about men in the industry? Through meeting Alex Sanders, we're introduced to the facts. Men are among a group of fifteen people regularly paired with the pool of over one thousand HIV-tested women. What weeds out most male performers? The fact that one must perform three to four times a day (an hour apiece), five or six days a week. This alone keeps many from making this job a career.
Dag is a pretty straight-forward guy, his documentary is more of a slice-of-a-life, like a moment of time in the industry captured to be extracted and studied. We're denied a broad overview of the entire business as we glimpse into various, smaller parts of the industry. At times, you will find yourself leaning toward the screen, alternating between wonder and awe; while at others you will wince at the honesty portrayed here. This is not for the squeamish - you've been warned.
The unflinchingly obvious stand taken throughout this documentary is that no one is afraid of HIV. No one who is interviewed has any true fear of the killer that lurks just under the surface. In an industry where HIV should be the number one concern, many seem unwilling to ensure safety for realism. On condoms, Bill Margold summed it up, "This is some sort of aberration probably drug related, possibly gay related and possibly even minority related. You know my feelings about the entire HIV situation. HIV is a chemically and genetically bred form of eugenics perpetrated upon society by the government's desire of ridding the world of three factions: gays, drug-users, and minorities. Seeing a rubber in a movie has no business in the x-rated industry."
