Jim Lewis has written a brilliant piece on art and porn: "Dirty Pictures." His focus is on "Destricted," a collection of seven short films described as "'explicit chic' for the 21st century." In Larry Clark's "Impaled": "The artist interviews a series of young men who want to break into the porn industry, and chooses one. Together, he and the winner interview a series of women who are already porn stars; the kid picks one; and they have sex. The whole thing lasts 38 minutes, and when it's over, you just don't know what to think." Here, the reality behind pornography is unmasked. And, it isn't pretty. Anybody who has been on the set of an adult movie has witnessed this. Sometimes, people ask me why I am interested in pornography. I am not interested in the product. I am interested in Porn Valley, the moments of uberreality in its extreme surreality: the girl over the barrel with flames shooting up all around her, the man with the chainsaw smile whose T-shirt reads "Can't Hold Back the Demons," the moments of beauty in the midst of all the rubble.
