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Weblog Archive: October 30, 2005 to Nov 5, 2005 Friday, November 4, 2005
Though they may not all involve sunsets and panoramas, scenes like this are increasingly being repeated around town. After a long dormant period bordering on nonexistent, New York City’s adult-film industry has woken up—with a hard-on. Of course, the local industry—which includes at least nine companies, each producing a handful of movies a year—is still dwarfed by the business in the San Fernando Valley, where about 150 companies churn out 10,000 titles a year and rake in an estimated $7 billion. But in an age when anyone with access to a camera and the Internet can be an adult filmmaker, NYC has become a breeding ground for a distinctive brand of smut. “There’s a punk, underground attitude here, due to a lack of money, that you don’t get on the West Coast,” says Kenny Law, an editor at the newly revamped porn periodical Screw. “It’s real and relatable. It’s not just some palm trees swaying in the wind.”
One told the court Mr Brisseau often asked her to masturbate in front of him, sometimes in public places. She said she did 20 or 30 such "tests" between 1996 and 2001, some of them with another young hopeful. Some sessions were filmed by the director. "He said it was good to improvise all these things now, so as not to waste time on the set. And he said his eye was replacing the camera," she said. The investigating magistrate's report said the number of auditions, the fact they took place over several years, the conditions in which they were done and the fact Mr Brisseau masturbated in front of the actresses "excludes all artistic or cinematographic motive". It concluded: "It is abundantly clear ... that Mr Brisseau was seeking simply to satisfy his personal pleasure." François Blistene, Mr Brisseau's lawyer, said his client admitted doing a number of "short tests" with the women in hotel rooms, restaurants, a cinema and at his and the women's homes. But, he said, Mr Brisseau "vehemently denied" all charges against him. In an interview with Libération earlier this year the director said his idea of cinema was "to use sexual feelings in the same way that Hitchcock used fears". He added: "These erotic auditions are indispensable: I can work on the style and the acting before we film. They allow me to find out qualities and problems with their bodies and their acting." What a pig. An acclaimed, award-winning pig perhaps, but still a pig. And yet ... A lawyer for two of the women, Claire Doubliez, said outside court her clients were afraid "because they have broken the law of silence, and because it may look like they are complaining because they didn't get big parts. They want the court to acknowledge that they were manipulated and sullied, that they are not idiots." Couldn't the court conclude that they were manipulated, sullied idiots? Brisseau completed his film Choses Secrètes in 2002. Film Comment gave it a big thumbs up. Secret Things is an amalgam of genres bringing together an apprenticeship narrative à la Balzac (Lost Illusions is an explicit citation), softcore porn, a conte cruelle, and Hitchcockian suspense. The film describes the rapid social rise of Sandrine and Nathalie, two young women of now (and forever) who set out on a quest for power using sexuality as their principal weapon. They learn to arouse themselves, to control and simulate pleasure as needed, and to guard against love with a capital L, the main obstacle for aspiring femmes fatales. It may be the product of naiveté, and it certainly leads to a bloody catastrophe, but their program of political resistance is directly related to the imaginary. (In case you're wondering — yes, graduate students in film studies actually talk that way.) The film is available from Netflix, where one helpful reviewer writes: If you are in to watching beautiful women having sex, this is the movie for you. The opening routine is so artfully done, that I had to watch it several times. This is a wicked movie, but wonderfully so. These are really bad girls and I think I got some good ideas for myself. Great flick. Beautiful women. Artfully done so not to be cheap. Duly added to my queue.
Ken Slaby said he was in love with O'Toole five years ago. He even admitted he was devastated when O'Toole broke it off. So, when O'Toole invited him over to her Murrysville home to rekindle a friendship, he said he agreed. Slaby said O'Toole even went to his house in Pittsburgh to pick him up. But according to Slaby, the night took a turn when O'Toole got angry about Slaby's new love. Slaby said O'Toole waited until he fell asleep and glued his penis to his stomach, glued his testicle to his leg and glued the cheeks of his buttocks together. Then came the nail polish. Slaby claimed O'Toole dumped it all over his head. When he woke up, Slaby said O'Toole threw him out. He didn't have a car, so he was forced to walk one mile down Route 22 to call 911 and Murrysville police, Slaby said. At the hospital, oils did little to remove the glue. Nurses actually had to peel it off. But this is the best part: O'Toole's attorney said this was part of routine sexual activity between the couple -- acts that he agreed to -- incidents that should have stayed in the bedroom. Thursday, November 3, 2005
Shot over 17 days during Murphy and [ex-husband Jake] Schroeder’s 1999 Barbados honeymoon, the two-hour tape is said to feature the sun-kissed stunner getting acrobatic with the heavily tattooed Schroeder. Since those halcyon days, the couple has gone through a nasty divorce and a custody battle over their four-year-old daughter. Schroeder, a surf-shop owner, has repeatedly sniped at his ex in the press—telling Page Six, for instance, that “Carolyn is as fake as her new ta-tas.” We also hear that Schroeder, who claims the tape was “stolen,” is in for a hefty piece of the proceeds. Thank goodness for slimy, bitter exes. Wednesday, November 2, 2005
Though they've traded in cubicle life for flirting with sex kittens, Ting and Tran are still geeks at heart. Walking through the warehouse, Ting explains the numeric cataloging system he developed to speed the sorting and mailing process, scoffing at one company they acquired that organized its warehouse alphabetically. "It took them twice as long to sort half as many movies," he says. Tran's duties include working with the firm's $300-an-hour lawyer, trying to minimize the risk they'll be sued for breaking obscenity laws. (On advice of counsel, they don't ship to Alabama, Tennessee, or parts of Utah, Texas, and Pennsylvania.) They apply the same attention to detail to the site itself, which is considered by the industry to be the best of its kind. That's not too tough, Tran says. "These aren't the most tech-savvy people in the world," he observes. "When you ask them about backend systems, they're thinking anal." For all the diligence and expertise of its founders, WantedList has yet to turn a profit. According to Tran, that's only because it's spending heavily on marketing. Indeed, WantedList's competitors say that a niche DVD-by-mail service could break even with just 10,000 subscribers. At 25,000 subs, WantedList has annual revenue of nearly $7 million. Buying new DVDs eats up $1.2 million, and mailing them consumes another $1.8 million. Rent, labor, and marketing costs suck down the rest. "At any point in time, we could make money by cutting expenses," Tran says, though that would slow their growth. That could be healthy bravado - or it could be delusion. Even on the all-you-can-eat pricing model, customers watch less porn than Ting and Tran expected. WantedList subscribers average six DVDs per month, compared with eight or nine from Netflix. Why? "You watch porn in spurts," says Ting. "You don't watch the whole movie in one sitting."
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer’s nostrils.” Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers). The article also quotes this beastie-pedo passage from Libby's novel. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Ick. Less well-connected people get raided by the FBI for publishing stuff like that. UPDATE: Nerve runs more and longer excerpts from Scooter Libby's novel The Apprentice.
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan Duly added to my to-read-someday list.
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