Playboy: The Story of X (1998)
The Story Of X takes you to the earliest days of adult films when men peddled stag reels and projectors out of the trunks of their cars, then through the movie house years to the arrival of the home video business, and now the Internet. Meet the men behind the camera, such as "King of Sexploitation" Dave Friedman and the preeminent breast man Russ Meyer. Considered pariahs at the time, they're now hailed as pioneers in the fight against censorship. The Story of X visits the 60s when women's rights, not nudity, became the issue and recounts porn's arrival in Hollywood, led by director Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris. In the 70s, several groundbreaking films, including Behind The Green Door featuring Marilyn Chambers and Deep Throat featuring Linda Lovelace, took the genre to a new level.
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You won't be disappointed!
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Did you people see the same film I saw?
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
This would've been interesting as a 2 or 3 hour topic on "Frontline". However, Playboy didn't do the subject any justice. They don't delve too deeply into any topics. Several things such as theaters being raided, anti-pornography groups protesting, studies done showing effects of viewing pornography, or the whole fiscal aspect of the industry are barely mentioned. They would just scratch the surface of a topic and move on which results in a real fluff piece. Since this is produced by Playboy, they would obviously have a conflict of interest in reporting any negatives regarding the porn industry. I'm against censorship and I fall on their side of the fence but treating the XXX industry with kid gloves makes for extremely dull viewing. 2/10
this documentary has humor, a bit of poignancy, and seemingly, the desire to turn the viewer on to it's flip-side of the film industry. to call this a GREAT film, would be to give REAL documentaries a kick in the pants. to totally disparage it, would be to give this otherwise fine work a grave disservice. It WORKS because it leaves the viewer with an impression of the industry. I felt the shame and humiliation these individuals must have felt, sitting there, watching it. especially of interest is the early portion of the piece, when it explores PORN'S early days, and it is during this that the "film" generates much of it humor. All in all, it gave me much to think about. there are interviews to spare, with those both in and out of the industry. what they have to say is very revealing, to those who know little of this subject. it is not as if this came as a TRUE revelation to me, but it was nice to know that not everybody involved in adult films are utter trash. though rated X, the film shows no less than the average NC-17 film, although when people engage in sex in this, it is real, not faked. all in all, what will most likely go down in history as the best sex documentary ever made.