(NSFW: sites linked in this post contain sexually explicit material).
Required weekend reading: “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?,” Susannah Breslin‘s bold and ambitious photo-essay on the recession’s impact in “porn valley,” the epicenter of the adult entertainment biz.
“Originally, I wrote it for a publication, but subsequently pulled it,” says Breslin. “When no other publication expressed an interest in publishing it, I decided to self-publish.”
The story and images unfold over ten online sections. Here is a snip from the part devoted to shock auteur Jim Powers:
Fascinating, horrifying, and amusing–oftentimes all of those things at the same time–Powers’ celluloid world is one populated by midgets, bald chicks, and crazed men outfitted with monster-sized papier-mâché phalluses which spew torrents of goo onto the naked bodies of supine women, movies in which everyone has sex all of the time, and in which, most of the time, no one appears to win.
Take, for example, “The Bride of Dong,” in which two young, unsuspecting women “inadvertently unleash the power and massive cock of an ancient fertility god when they decide to house sit for the summer,” the result of which is the “call[ing] forth an ancient being from another time and world who bridges the cosmos to shove his massive tool up their asses,” and the true star of which is neither the decidedly comely Gia Paloma or Julie Night but a six-foot prosthetic penis that belongs to an onerous, fanged beast that emerges upon a full moon. (An online reviewer noted dutifully: “It’s hard to possibly make anything of this, other than to say that it’s vintage Jim Powers,” adding, “I haven’t seen a prosthetic dong this big since ‘Boogie Nights.'”)
To decry Powers-helmed series–like “Gag Factor,” in which women, not infrequently, hang upside down and perform oral sex on male costars to the point of gagging and sometimes vomiting; “White Trash Whore,” in which seemingly innocent Caucasian women are gangbanged by roving packs of African-American men, and for which the box cover copy reads, “Mom, Dad … I hate you this much!”; and “Young and Anal,” again, the title here is self-revelatory–as “misogynist” is almost beside the point.
Read it all: theyshootstars.com (Note: site designed by Chris Bishop of “Obama Rides a Unicorn” fame). Photo: a man preparing for a bukkake shoot, shot by Susannah Breslin.