Autumn Sonnichsen has a great post about visiting the set of a porn movie in Brazil over at her blog on Nerve. In "Lucky Girl," she tells a frank story about what it's like to be standing right there in the room, watching two people fuck for a living. Brazil's Porn Valley is far more hardcore than Porn Valley, USA--but her observations are universal.
I’ve not entirely sorted out my feelings on porn. I love it instinctively, as well as out of principle, but I have a hard time loving it without being depressed about it... I went to see a porno being filmed the other day. It was terribly fucking depressing... The first guy showed up in a bad mood. He wasn’t getting hard, yelled at the girl, told her she wasn’t sucking his dick properly, etc. Then the crew and I hid in the bathroom and drank beer while they turned themselves on again. I put the lid down and sat on the toilet. The paint was flaking off the ceiling. There was an empty Viagra packet in the trash can. The floor of the shower was black and green with mold... In the US a lot of girls make porn movies so that they can go on the road as strippers and do feature shows and dress up and prance around on stage in Lucite heels while the men put twenties into their sparkly g-strings. Here the girls make porno so that they can make a hundred dollars an hour for anal instead of ten... Life is perhaps a little bit less sparkly.
