Rated X – A Journey Through Porn
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Documentary: B
The XXX sex film and video industry makes billions of
dollars each year with the backing of major corporations despite the
repetition, glut and AIDS virus to contend with. After the exceptional Inside Deep Throat (reviewed
elsewhere on this site), was there another interesting story to show about this
business? Dag Yngvesson proves there
certainly is with Rated X – A Journey Through Porn, a 2004 documentary
that visits the XXX recorded sex business.
Instead of getting sidetracked by new developments that compete against
it, he finds the present in his past.
This begins with meeting Bill Marigold, a star in the
1970s in the business who is still involved.
He helps Dag get access to various current figures and some legendary
(and near legendary) names in his inquiry of why people still participate
(outside of the money) in an age of AIDS and how this even includes the college
educated and persons who were winning awards in the legitimate film and
television industry. Everyone is
matter-of-fact and all are consenting adults.
No one is being exploited, though this is really the upper part of the
industry when you get to the names presented and the white actors in this case.
Every time Dag realizes something like this, he decides to
ask more questions and that leads him to more interviews and locations. He visits several sets and the program does
not shy away from showing anything but the most explicitly close up graphic
hardcore shots of all. After all, the
product being shot is for sale at higher prices than this DVD. Everyone is surprisingly agreeable and not
because they know they are on camera.
They are just all used to this and at least slightly desensitized to
what is going on, but there is nothing ominous like in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie
Nights (1997) and none of it is predictable.
This is not a pro-XXX propaganda film for the industry
either, while Dag is very good about showing how the operations of shooting
work, even when he cannot figure out quite what to do when he agrees to be a
cameraman for pay on a shoot. This does
not compromise this work, it just makes it funnier and further deconstructs
this world he successfully enters. The
only way he lucks out is that he meets professional who are still shooting the
material on real motion picture film, with the endowments and good physical
condition of the “actors” further evidence of this. Rated X should not be taken as a portrait of how the industry
works in general, but how well it works in what is left of its prime production
condition.
The 1.33 X 1 image is a compilation of several sources,
while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is simple at best with no real
surrounds. This is all par for the course
for such a production and plays back just fine. Extras include a few stills, text on the director, a time-lapse
sex scene shoot, three interview segments (Jenna Jameson, Ron Jeremy, Nina
Hartley) of key figures who really do not appear in the feature and brief
deleted scenes. Dag includes on screen
text to explain things and all kinds of vintage film footage going back to what
one would now consider the industry’s silent era, but this is about the
industry now and one wonders when all is said and done if this might be the end
of an era or if the San Fernando Valley will continue to be the secret capital
of the industry’s prime product. See it
soon.
_ Nicholas Sheffo
