The Pornographer (1999)

Purely Joyful Movie!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Have you ever been talking to someone and halfway through what you were saying, you forgot the point you were trying to make? That's what this movie is like. It starts out as the story of a socially dysfunctional young man turning to porn to try and find normalcy but then turns into an Afterschool Special on the evils of XXX entertainment.Paul (Michael DeGood) has a problem. He's so incapable of relating to women in any normal way that he substitutes porn and prostitutes for healthy romantic relationships. He has a massive collective of porn tapes he keeps in a locked cabinet, is a regular customer for a local call girl (Kelly Stone) and frequents strip clubs to such an extent that he's on a first name basis with every girl who works there. One day, while returning some XXX tapes to the video store, Paul complains to the clerk about the quality of the porn. The clerk tells him that if he doesn't like them, Paul should make his own. A light bulb practically goes off over Paul's head, and he decides to make his own amateur pornography. He hires his regular call girl and her friends, but Paul doesn't film himself having sex with them. He genuinely wants to be behind the camera and hires a pot head named Tom (George Hertzberg) to sexually perform with the whores while Paul tells them what to do, like a little girl playing with her Barbie and Ken dolls. Except these dolls are life-size and have working genitals.Making these videos consume Paul's time and energy and they're good enough, by porn standards, that he's able to catch the interest of Mr. Spano (Craig Wasson), the head of an actual porno movie company. Spano says he can make Paul a professional director of adult films, as long as Paul can bring him a new, fresh faced girl to be in those films.Now, up to this point in the movie, The Pornographer was kind of interesting. It's one of these painfully cheap films that get made in a couple of weeks and outside of Craig Wasson, none of the cast can really act. However, there's actually something to this story. It's about a guy trying to find where he fits in the world (which is not a double entendre because this story is about porn) and I wasn't sure where the film was going to go. Was it going to be provocative and have Paul find fulfillment in this denigrated subculture? Was it going to be moralistic and show Paul finding nothing but betrayal and cruelty in the world of adult videos? Was it going to go in a completely unexpected direction? I had no idea and somewhat mildly wanted to find out.But then everything established in the movie is abandoned without a backward glance. The story ceases to be about Paul and his search for contentment and instead becomes a litany of the clichéd evils of the adult industry. We see the aging porn star who's been hardened by her years in the business, the young porn star reduced to the gutter, the struggling young actress tempted by the money and emotionally manipulated into doing porn. There's even a scene where a character rattles off a bunch of anti-porn statistics. It ceases be about Paul and his inner conflict, which was the only noteworthy thing in this whole production. It's almost as though writer/director Doug Atchison wrote the first half of this script, stopped and forgot about it for a few years, then wrote the second half of the script without remembering or bothering to re-read the first half.There is some okay nudity and a few sex scenes in The Pornographer, but not nearly as much as you'd expect given the subject matter. The acting, as mentioned before, is almost uniformly poor and the dialog is undistinguished. The first half of the film does have a few scenes where Paul's emotional and sexual frustrations are explored with a nice touch, but then all that is discarded and there's nothing of interest that replaces it.You'd think a film called The Pornographer would make a big impression on you, either for good or ill. But this movie never amounts to anything of consequence, either positive or negative. Unless you're friends with one of the people who made this film, I can't think of a reason you should watch it.

Having had a repressed upbringing where sex was taboo and never discussed, Paul's first contact with porn both disgusted and aroused him. In his mid-twenties he is insecure around women, has a large porn collection and regularly uses prostitutes and attends strip bars. Having had zero luck with recent attempts to get a date, Paul falls deeper into porn and gets critical of its low production values on the whole. Buying a camera, Paul starts to make his own porn movies with prostitutes and a male friend and decides to take his videos to a production company – however offers of a contract seem to depend heavily on Paul bringing a fresh, unfilmed girl with him to the studio.This film was put on late night Friday on channel 5 in the UK – a slot that is usually filled with cheap softcore movies with vague plots and were it not for the reasonably interesting plot summary I would have just ignored it as with so much trash. In terms of softcore action there is a fair amount of nudity but it would be unlikely to satisfy those looking for cheap thrills because, although it looks low budget, it has nothing in common with the pure titillation stuff. This left it open to be a lot more interesting and morally complex and it does do that reasonably well even if it isn't totally convincing in the way that the plot still tries to be a narrative in its own right. It is the story development that is a problem but it still lingers in the murky and rather shameful world of porn long enough to have value as an interesting film on the subject even if it fails to go deep enough into the material or the characters to really stick in the memory.The direction is pretty cheap and not that interesting; his writing is good but his budget never allows him to make it look like more than it cost. The cast is limited as well although some of them are good. DeGood is interesting and his narration helps his performance rather than replacing it – also, it isn't his fault that the material develops his character too quickly and in unlikely ways. Wasson is basic but effective while Cain is sweet and clumsy (an effect that is either deliberate or caused by her not being that good, not sure which but it works either way). The rest are very much video actors and felt clunky; this didn't damage the film that much though because it already had a low budget feel.Overall the film had enough murkiness and comment to be of interest and it is this aspect that you will enjoy. The narrative is little more than a frame but at times the film makes the mistake of making that the focal point and loses sight of the themes within it. Add to this a low budget feel in terms of acting, directing and sets and it is hard to take it totally seriously. Worth seeing once though for what it does well.

It doesn't take much thinking about the porn industry to realise that the issues involved with it are complex. To its credit this film manges to present most of the issues lucidly and without moralising. There are a heap of problems with the coherence and logic of the script, but the characters are strong and credible, which helps to overcome this to some extent. The film attempts to analyse users and makers of, and participants in, porno videos and continues with this as the theme throughout until the concocted ending, which like a few other situations within the plot (for example the arranged second meeting with the girl in the park) is quite irritating. No doubt like a lot of other viewers I kind of wish that I could have taken the script and ironed out the problems with it, as it does have a lot of strengths.

After seeing this I was impressed by so many things, but it felt so After School Special, and here's why: The writing is really good, and the writer Doug Atchison did a wonderful job of getting some amazing performances out of his actors, but the whole damn thing is lit like a sitcom. There is absolutely no MOOD, or AMBIENCE or TONE. Like in Boogie Nights. The shots are all really flat, and lit like a sunporch. The camera wasbasically locked down and aimed at the scene. That is a real shame, because this movie could have been even better. Doug, you;re an amazing writer, but PLEASE, let someone else direct it next time. You need someone who has a visual style. Like Alan Ball had Sam Mendes on American Beauty. The writing was stellar, but the director put it together visually. I hope you make more films, you did an excellent job.