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from ammocity.com lifestyle
most of the skin flicks that i'd seen had typically been watched on hotel cable channels or once when i came across a friends stash while he was away, it turned out to be a collection that was exclusively 'chicks with dicks'. to tell you the truth it was all pretty grim and hardly worth the kleenex. a music industry mate once confided to me that "porn was all about finding your thing". the 'thing' being the thing that really gets your motors revving. in my other mate's case this must have been a predilection for finding meat and two veg where one might normally expect the furry cup. porn has always been big business but with deregulation and licensing of adult entertainment suppliers, who legally sell hardcore video and magazines, the big boys are moving in. the days of soho gangsters and paying off the old bill have pretty much left the adult entertainment business in the uk. the once seedy backstreet image of the dark windowed adult shop is also on the demise as retail outlets now attract a more upwardly mobile customer. although this might have something to do with the demise of tory mps.
we're not talking tupperware party ann summers here, harmony have some proper quality stuff and some of the most amazingly engineered 'vorsprung durch technic' vibrators. perhaps this is why when walking around their store you're more likely to see smart city chic women, couples and 'regular' folk than imagined dirty mack types. the staff there are helpful too and quite happy to advise on purchases once you get over the novelty of discussing vibration speeds, rotation vs thrust etc. i guess their staff training days must be a ball or two.
porn is a £7 billion ($10 billion) business and some of the world's largest companies are quietly sharing in the bounty. companies like general motors, aol time warner, bskyb and marriot earn revenue by feeding adult movies into homes and hotel rooms but it doesn't appear in the annual report. it doesn't appear on your credit card statement either. selling adult entertainment products to discerning customers is a demanding business and the quality of the goods is increasing as a consequence. nowhere is this more telling than in the hard core video market. many of the higher budget films are made in the u.s. where over 11,000 hard core porn movies are produced annually and where 30% of video rentals on the east and west coast are sex films. harmony, a major retailer and distributor also produce their own titles including films and a magazine that sells more copies than most of the british style press combined. harmony invited me out to a post-shoot dinner with some of the talent from the day's assignments. i met budapest resident frank gunn and his fellow actors, another guy from hungary and two girls from the czech republic. frank is a bit of a celebrity on the video circuit being hung like a horse and able to deliver the results, regular as domino's pizza. chatting over dinner it became apparent that the industry in which they work is very matter of fact. i don't know why i thought it might have been different. i was struck by the unity of the workers within the sex industry, there may not be an effective trades union but there is an effective network of support. it's difficult to get away with much in this industry. if you're a budding film director i'd advise you not to mess around with the talent, especially the girls, unless you want a short career and end up working as a brand consultant. frank and his fellow artists spend much of their time jetting to assignments all over the world. in the last month frank has shot in locations including st lucia, rio, los angeles,london and madrid. back home frank invests in property, buying houses in one of europe's most beautiful cities. he tells me that in budapest there is effectively a private members club, a sort of soho house, for industry artists mingling with the rest of society's elite.
in many ways dvd is a godsend to the porn film industry. convenient, durable and high quality it easily outclasses anything you can download off the net or that nth generation vhs copy you got off the ice-cream man with a 99 (sauce and nuts, wink wink). the format demands higher production budgets to make any difference, however. shakey shakey dv cam with a hood lamp by an mtv refugee won't cut the mustard anymore. with an almost exponential growth market for dvd sell-thru spending $5 million on a skin flick is now a reality where some big hit titles sell more than ps2 games. long before j-lo there was john stagliano, aka buttman, but there is no doubt that ass-obsessed stagliano is an avid admirer of our girl on the block. porn genius, stagliano is legendary in the porn film industry, perhaps its answer to stephen spielberg. john has been at it since 1979 pushing the boundaries and breaking barriers. stagliano has won more industry gongs than any other porn film director and believes that his work firmly pushes porn in the direction of art which is where he believes it always belonged. his latest masterpiece is the mighty, 'fashionistas'. by all accounts, this film has taken the industry by storm having been nominated for practically every award category in the porn industries annual oscars. at over 4 1/2 hours long it seems inconcievable that even the most ardent short stroker could keep tugging away for that distance. indeed a call to the local gum clinic confirmed that if you don't strain your wrist you'd get friction burns. a spokesperson for dolland & aitchison was unavailable for comment
there's a lot of fashion references and a huge amount of latex involved in this dark and kinky journey. the sex scenes are well directed and the talent pretty fit - no fanny's like a squashed hedgehog if you pardon the metaphor. acting wise it's somewhere between 'footballers wives' and 'family affairs' but shot on impressive locations and on 35mm film. audience wise fashionistas seems to crossover quite well from the raincoat brigade to couples and women. this, of course, could simply be wishful thinking along with the present preoccupation that western mass-media has in convincing every woman that she's bi-sexual. nice one, my son! a quick toss up around the ammo team indicated a reasonably high phwoar rating among members of both sexes. so maybe they're on to something. its got to be better than watching re-runs of ibiza uncovered on sky or jo guest flash her tits on men & motors for titilation. just don't eat wotsits while you're watching it. and now for our grand competition... win a dvd copy of 'fashionistas'. those wonderful people at harmony have provided us with 5 copies to give away, yes that's 1-2-3-4-5 copies. whey hey! to win one you just have to answer the following question: who wrote the story of 'o'? competition closes august 1st 2003. the first 5 correct answers we recieve will each be given a copy. you must be 18 or over to enter this game. winners will be notified by email and your prize will be dispatched to you in a big white jiffy bag with the word 'porn' written large with a magic marker and free handy pack of scotties.
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