The Fine Details of Directing Porn
I scan probably about thirty porno scenes a day. This is because I have a subscription to Videobox, which provides five full-length porn movies a day, split into scenes with multiple preview screen-caps, and I feel obliged to drop by and see what sort of filth is on tap for the morning. I can preview a DVD, and then download the scenes I think are hot.
I watch only out of obligation, of course. Why, I have mistakenly given my money to this purveyor of smuttery, for which I cannot procure a refund, so it’s only in my best interests to not let this expenditure go to waste! What a shame, Margaery, but let me reap some small guttering light of enjoyment in between my bouts of rickets and my inevitable demise to cholera.
Anyway, what I’ve come to notice is that I download scenes in clusters. You’d think I’d just download scenes according to my kinks, but most porn DVDs leave me cold, even if the subject matter is technically up my alley.
But a few DVDs, I’ll download every scene from. Further analysis shows that this is all due to the directing.
What’s fascinating is how personal porn direction is. And why not? The director is trying to put his hottest masturbatory fantasies up on-screen. I can usually tell, just by glancing over the screen caps for a given DVD, what turns that particular director on. In this sense, the porno director’s trying to connect with an audience.
There’s a lot of fine choices about what goes into porn, and the first one is “the women starring in the porn.” If you’re a woman watching straight porn, well, I feel sorry for you, because the men are usually this sort of blurry afterthought, reduced to a set of mushy abs and a cock. No, what gets the starring role is the female at the heart of it.
And I don’t doubt there are some real-world restraints in terms of who they can get, but most porno DVDs – at least the ones that aren’t compilations – have a very similar look in women from scene to scene. Even though there are three women here, featuring a blonde with a short bob-cut, a brunette with long curly locks, and a redhead with frizzy hair, all of them are so skinny they have that ladder-look between their boobs but quarter-bouncing tight butts. Or they’re all naturally stacked, with big lips and a bit of jiggle in the belly. Or they’re all white trash harlots, looking like they stepped out of the trailer park in jeans and a belly cut-off T-shirt. They all fit a kind of archetype, what the director (or perhaps the producer) says, “These are the women worth fucking.”
So if you have a DVD full of so-called MILFs who are actually thirty-year-old strippers with overinflated implants teetering around on high heels, that’s not gonna do it for me. I tend towards the slightly goofy natural look, women who giggle during the act, who can at least pretend to have a good time.
Then comes the story – do we have one? I like the ones where people talk for a bit before they fuck – yes, it’s artificial, but at least I know who these people are and am kind of invested. But we have the other range, where people are just naked and fucking from camera one.
Then: how do they fuck?
I feel bad that American society is so repressed, because if the world was a little more honest, we wouldn’t use a universal noun for “fucking.” Well, I guess we have two in the sense that there’s “fucking” versus “making love” – a useful distinction – but realistically, there’s so many styles of having sex that I wish we had a greater, agreed-upon vocabulary to describe it. Hell, there’s about ten different ways of approaching cunnilingus alone, from concentrating on fingering with a touch of tongue, to the “focus all the attention upon the clit” frenzy, to the G Spot Tornado, to the gentle tease… and while you can use and combine any of these techniques, it’s clear in watching porno that there are schools of fucking, and some directors subscribe to them severely.
For me, the number-one goal of porno fucking is “The woman has to look comfortable.” If I’m watching some poor girl balanced to hamstring-breaking proportions on a cold piece of wood, I think, “God, she can’t be having a good time” and something turns off within me. Please. Get that girl a comfy couch.
But some directors are clearly into porno fucking, which is to say you both swap positions every three minutes like some sort of dick-infested Chinese fire drill, contorting both women and men into these gymnastic methods that can only be done by the most physically fit. It’s a bizarre abstracted style of fucking, bereft of actual enjoyment, but very athletic. (And I’m sure some of you do enjoy this “All right! Stand on your head now while I squat!” fucking, but my sneaking suspicion is that if you do like it, you like it because it makes you feel like you’re in a porno film.)
Others are into “women as object” fucking, wherein the woman is a doll to be fucked, and any attempts by her to, you know, participate are actually annoying. I see that all the time in porno, and it vexes me – “She’s trying to suck your dick! Let the woman use her skill instead of you just grabbing her fucking head! She could demonstrate – oh, no, you’ve flipped her over the couch. Why not just get a RealDoll, you idiot?”
(This is different from, say, face-fucking, where the woman is expected to be used. You can see these poor porno actresses reaching for the cock, trying their best to actually pleasure the man, and being overridden. Worse, I’m pretty sure there are men who get off on this overriding.)
Still others are into a strangely gentle kind of porn, long slow grinds where positions are held for minutes at a time – a classic 1980s porn riff, usually to terrible music. This gets kind of boring, actually. I’m sure it’s nice for the woman, but I’m fast-forwarding.
There’s a ton of little bits. Is there kissing? What kind of kissing – genuine kissing, or that little snake-hiss you get when the actress actually doesn’t want to kiss anyone? Is cunnilingus treated like an actual act where the woman gets to react, as opposed to some sort of brief aperitif before the inevitable penetration? Is it all genitals, all the time, or can attention be given to, say, the back of the neck or the belly? And what the hell is wrong with the missionary position, anyway?
(Don’t even get me started on how imaginatively bereft most MFF scenes are. Having been in my share of the glory, I’m going to tell you that there’s so much bad MFF positioning that I can barely watch them. You have no idea where all the fun is, people.)
And finally, you can have all the elements for hotness and have it taken away by the directorial style. For example, what gets me off is watching women’s reactions. I enjoy the kind of naughtiness where the woman knows she shouldn’t be doing this, but oh, what s/he is doing to me is just making me fucking mad. That’s cool. So I watch to see faces.
So when I get mechanical close-ups of pounding genitals, it turns me off. I mean, everyone has those. If you watch porn, you’re gonna see more than your share of genitals. They’re not that exciting, particularly the dangling balls in close-up, boinging around like some constricted ping-pong tournament. But a lot of porn directors think that this is hot. A lot of people, including some I know, agree.
But the porno director focuses in on what they like. Hey, are they a big butt fan? You’re gonna know, even if this isn’t a big butt video, because hey, rear entry closeup. You’ll get a lot of headless body shots if they think that’s the stuff. And that can kill your porno-buzz right there.
Basically, what you come to realize is how varied and multi-tonal the human sexual impulse is. You’d think watching two humans humping would be hot, and it is at first, but as your personal porno tastes become refined and you see enough to see how others’ tastes trend, you come to realize that sex isn’t just one thing. It’s a host of many tiny things, like atoms aligning in the cell to create chemistry, and sometimes you wind up with a dead organism.
Sex is not sex. Sex is not necessarily sexy.
This is what happens when you get a damn Videobox subscription. And watch probably too much damn porn.
In Other Fine Cinema….
….Looper does not have the greatest death scene in movie history. That glory belongs to the Turkish movie “Kareteci Kiz 1973,” and it features this poor man getting shot. It is amazing in every way, yet perfectly work-safe.
…I feel that way some days. Most days, in fact.
Looper: The Mostly Spoiler-Free Review
All my science-fiction writin’ friends are in love with Looper, and it’s easy to see why: Looper isn’t a movie. It’s a science fiction book that’s been filmed.
See, the plots of movies are like a snake eating itself: the first half sets up all the elements in the movie – all the characters, mysteries, and plot points – and then you hit the tipping point and the movie spends the last half tidily wrapping up each element that it’s introduced. They usually shift the third act to a new location just so this pattern isn’t quite as evident… but once all the elements have been touched upon, the movie is over. Roll credits. It’s satisfying, but it’s also predictable – nothing wrong with a good formula, but you can use it a little often.
Whereas Looper is a lot like an Alfred Bester novel. It’s still introducing new concepts and mysteries when you’re halfway through the movie, and they turn out to be central to the plot. There are a lot of side journeys and toss-off concepts that aren’t wrapped up in a tidy way. Things are very messy, which makes Looper as unpredictable as a spitball.
That doesn’t mean it’s the best sci-fi movie ever, or even the best time-travel movie starring Bruce Willis meeting his younger self, but the novelty makes it something far fresher than the usual slew of pre-fabbed films.
The trick of Looper is that time travel has been invented, but it’s instantly outlawed. The mafia sends people back in time to be killed – it’s explained that technology has advanced to the point where they can’t hide a body in the future – and quite often, the Looper-hitmen are assigned to “close the loop” and kill their future selves. As Loopers are chosen from a bunch of hedonistic junkies, this is approached with a cynical fatalism – hey, I’ve got thirty years to party! And those who are weak and let themselves go encounter horrible, horrible fates as the Mob chases both of them to ensure that the future isn’t changed.
That’s the first sign of how unpredictable Looper gets. In any other film, the shocking twist that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has to kill his older Bruce Willis self would be the unique factor – he’s the only one who’s ever had to murder himself! Why? But making the self-destruction mundane is just one of Looper’s many hidden tricks. This subtle bit of worldbuilding actually makes things far better. If this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, then Young Joe would immediately sympathize with Old Joe and they’d team up to get revenge.
But no. Young Joe is infuriated by the way that Old Joe is fucking with his life now, sees Old Joe as greedy and selfish (which, yes, they both are) for not succumbing to the fate that he signed up for, and so the two of them are at odds throughout the film. They don’t like each other. They shouldn’t. Even though they’re the same person, they have entirely different agendas.
The acting is also top-notch. The makeup to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like Bruce Willis is a little intrusive at times, making him look a tab Kabuki, but both actors meld – you’d expect Bruce Willis, being the big star here, to be just Bruce Willis, but no, Bruce takes on just enough of JGL that it’s not quite the Die Hard of the Future.
Now, Looper has some serious flaws. People have called it an internally consistent time travel movie, which it most certainly is not – it’s the usual messiness of multiple futures, not quite explained. And while the characters are wonderfully defined and acted, their ends are not often well thought-out – Jeff Daniels plays a mob boss with such a beautiful affability I wanted to watch him all day, but in the end his character is almost literally discarded. If it was a book, it’d probably be a B-grade book – lots of great ideas, a weakish plot.
But as a movie, Looper is something interesting and new and worth watching just for a fresh take on cinema. I liked it an awful lot. I’d encourage you to go see it, if you like time-travel films.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves And The Way It Assists
So I was over at my friend Jen’s house, and she was talking about her cats. Well, specifically, her cat, since the others had been locked away from the party.
“She’s got this love/hate relationship with people,” Jen told me enthusiastically. “She’ll come up and just ask for ghost pets – holding and wriggling her face a foot away from your hand, then she walks away as completely satisfied as if you’d petted her! Madness. And then, you see her now, the way she’s sort of skirting around the edge? She grew up in a barn, I think she likes the company, but the actual attention scares her because someone must have done something bad to her while she was out on the streets. See how her back legs are bowed a bit when she walks?”
I just saw a cat.
Now, I’m not a cat person, but it was fascinating listening to Jen describe what was, to me, a Generic Cat – while to Jen, this cat had a history, a whole bank of quirks that were manifestly apparent. All of her cats were like this. When she looked at a cat, what she expected to see was a fully-formed personality expressed through various behaviors. When she was in her apartment with all four of her cats, she was in the middle of an ongoing saga, a soap opera of cats, wherein each of these highly charged personalities were banging off of each other and creating all these crazy plots and dynamics and entertainment.
I just saw a cat.
But you know, it’s not a bad thing to get that much entertainment from a set of rescue animals. Sure, I get bored watching the cats run around the apartment, but there’s something lacking in my interest that I don’t try to formulate stories when I look at kittens.
Likewise, I get really bored on long road trips. I put on an audiobook, and I drive, and my leg falls asleep, and it’s just really terrible.
Gini fucking loves long drives. She doesn’t even need music. And it took me a long time of listening to what, at first, appeared to be the strangest conversation starters to realize how she drove. Because she’d elbow me in astonishment to go, “That blue car just cut me off!” She was indignant. And I was like, yes, yes, cars will cut you off in traffic, this is what happens.
But no. What I didn’t understand is that she had passed this car on a downhill incline after tailgating it for miles in the vain hopes it would get the hint and speed up. And then, when she finally got the left lane open, she passed – and that fucker sped up. So she sped up, and they’d been going back and forth for the past fifty miles, never him zooming out of sight, but always speeding up at her approach, and now that bastard just got right in her face.
Oh, it’s on.
Why would you be bored driving then? Gini had a whole WWE subplot going on here, a tale of hubris and revenge, complete with villain and hero. Would she be able to put this arrogant laggard in his place before he got off at some exit, or we did? Where was this man going to? Why did he not know how to drive?
Film at eleven, folks. Film at eleven.
I think that a lot of people’s ability to withstand boredom actually comes from being able to construct narratives. I doubt I’d ever be comfortable sitting on my porch and watching the neighborhood, New England-style, but if you talked to those old folks I bet they’re keeping track of every jogger, every man toting home groceries, every local car, and weaving it into a narrative.
I kind of envy that.
Borderlands, Played With My Daughter
So I’ve been playing a fair amount of Borderlands 2 co-op with my daughter, which is an interesting experience. Usually, I need some game about every three months to obsess over – it’s how I relax – but now that Erin’s here, we’re mowing through it together.
Playing co-op when you’re both moderately incompetent is amusing. I’m sure there are players who coordinate strategies – “Oh, I’ll choose the skill tree that buffs warriors, and you’ll tilt towards AOE spells!” – but Erin and I just sort of run around in circles, asking, “WHERE ARE YOU?” During one particularly intense battle, I cleared out and finished an entire quest subtree while Erin drove around in a car trying to find me.
The stuff of heroism, I tell you.
Still, it’s fun to crack wise about the game as we play, and the company makes me feel not quite as reclusive. Even if I feel like we should, you know, flank or coordinate strategies or do anything aside from have two guns in the room instead of one. And the game is tilted towards co-op, mainly due to the awesome “Fight For Your Life!” mechanic, wherein when you die, you have thirty seconds in slow-mo to kill an enemy. If you do, you get “Second Wind!” and re-enter the game with limited health and shields. This means that when I’m down, Erin can help me out by accidentally killing the dude I was shooting at, thus dooming me to respawning.
And it’s also fun listening to others do the Equipment Romance, which has five steps:
1) (Optional) ZOMG THIS GUN IS SO BADASS I’M NOT EVEN LEVELLED UP TO USE IT YET. This is gonna be so awesome in two levels!
2) This gun kills God. In one shot. I will never ever not use this gun.
3) Whoo, these enemies are tough.
4) Why am I dying so much? It seems like I’m shooting a lot before I actually do damage. But this weapon has so many extras, like fire and explosions!
5) Christ, this gun sucks. I gotta get a new one.
Watching With Friends
When I was twelve, everyone agreed that Dune was a classic piece of sci-fi literature – and by “everyone,” I mean “my sainted Uncle Tommy, who I trusted implicitly” – so I tried to read it. I got thirty pages in before I gave up. But a year later Tommy was still reading the Dune sequels, so I tried again. And also failed.
Took me four times before I finally ingested all of Dune’s vocabulary and concepts and was able to enjoy the book.
I’ve also watched the first three episodes of The Wire three times now, because all the cool kids tell me it’s one of the best and most complex things to ever hit television. Teh Moast Brilliant Writing Evar! Except that it’s slow, and pretty humorless, and rather tedious. I kept flinging myself at this supposed genius, and bouncing straight off.
Then we started watching it with Erin.
It’s a better experience, I think, watching a show with fans of the show who want to enhance your experience. Because Erin will stop and go, “Okay, that’s significant,” and so I pay attention to something I might have otherwise missed. She tells me “This guy is cool,” and I immediately rearrange my watching experience to pay more attention to this guy, and like him more because of it. When I think, “Well, that’s kind of dumb,” Erin reinforces this thought by going, “Yeah, McNulty doesn’t seem to understand the chain of command, ever!” and I immediately comprehend that this is a character trait that I can safely associate with McNulty.
And when she laughs, it’s a laugh that I now get because she’s watched it through and can afford to laugh. The Wire’s a complex show, presented absolutely straightfaced, and sometimes I don’t see something as quite as cynically funny as it could be in context. She’s like my own personal laugh track. It focuses the show in a pleasing way, allowing me to summarize a cast of many characters in a satisfactory method.
This is what we did for her, watching all four seasons of Babylon 5: sympathizing when a script was terrible, bemoaning the actors, pointing out that this plot point would be coming up in the next season, noting that this plot could never have been used in Star Trek. And that got her through Season 1, and propelled her into loving Seasons 2, 3, and 4, which she devoured.
I know there are people who ruin shows by telling everything, but there’s a method to usher people into the love of a new show. You have to be respectful of the plot twists (let the viewer discover them, you nimrod), you have to not oversell the characters, you have to be sparing with the trivia that you know – and most of all, you have to let them watch. If you’re speaking up more than once every five minutes or so, you’re probably doing it wrong. And if you have something truly interesting to say, pause the show to deliver the spiel on Why This Makes The Show More Interesting, and then unpause when it’s time to return.
Even though television is ostensibly a passive process, like most things, it’s best when done with friends and shared love.