The Naked Truth: A Night Out With Porn Stars

This piece originally went to air in episode 22 of The Outland Institute. You can hear it with added interview material and sound effects by downloading it from here, or why not go crazy and subscribe through iTunes?

Over the years, AIDS educators have tried many ways to get their message across. They’ve used fear, erotic photography, celebrity spokesmodels, real people’s stories, and even bowling. For the last year or so the Victorian AIDS Council has been using porn stars to inform and educate. Marco Blaze and Francesco D’Macho have already visited – probably not their real names – and last week Bruno Bond and Steve Cruz came to Melbourne. They were here to promote the VAC’s 2010 Protection calendar.

In the past, visiting pornistas have been used mostly for media promotion, and for live interview appearances. This time round there was something new. In what was possibly a world first, Cruz and Bond were to perform a live commentary on their porn in a gay sex club in Collingwood. It was an intriguing blend of private and public, combining the old world of the public gathering with the new world of the DVD extra. By extending the on-screen action into the audience it was oddly reminiscent of William Castle’s 1959 classic The Tingler, in which some of the seats in the cinema were hooked up to an electric current.

Incidentally, are all porn performers automatically “stars”? Is there such a thing as a porn “character actor”? Is anyone the William H Macy of porn?

So at 1am on Saturday the 28th of November I made my way to Club 80, for what promised to be a very special night. And let’s be upfront about this – partly I was genuinely interested in the idea of exploring the different ways in which audiences enjoy visual works, and partly I was hoping it would be hilarious so I could mock it on The Outland Institute radio show, like the angsty sarcastic self-loathing Gen X type that I am…

Great Literature Of The 20th Century: The Pop-Up Karma Sutra

Special guest Anne-Marie Peard pops up to talk dirty in this week’s Great Literature review… Beware, this article may not be suitable for minors, viewing at work, or people who don’t like Are You Being Served?

Sting does it, Annie Sprinkle won’t do it any other way, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood summarised it in one word – relax. It’s tantric sex week at the Institute. Sit cross-legged, breath deeply and feel the energy of the universe flowing through your chakras.

There are many long and complicated books based on the ancient Sanskrit text known as the Karma Sutra. Indian scholar Vatsyayana wrote the original, but the Institute considers this 1984 version by Bob Robinson and Jonathan Biggs to be the definitive version.

Even a quick glance though the yoni shaped window on the cover reveals the essence of tantric sexuality, as within the all-embracing yoni lies a lingam shaped window. Why Play School never adopted these window shapes, I’ll never know. It also seems to reveal a polygamist, and there’s another little lingam within the lingam window. Look at the little lingam…

To The Last Man

Dan Cardone recently worked on two epic productions – Steven Spielberg‘s The Pacific, the most expensive television production ever shot in Australia, and To The Last Man, a gay porn video for Raging Stallions. Here he talks about his experiences on the latter…

There is a good reason most pornography is shot in controlled locations and features minimal plot.

1. It makes shooting quicker and less expensive,
2. porn models generally can’t act (or memorise lines, or hit their marks, or in any way be convincingly human…) and
3. it’s all about SEX.

So San Francisco-based Raging Stallion Studios is taking a huge risk, to say the least, in creating their two-part period Western porno, To The Last Man.

To The Last Man features a huge budget for the genre, a large cast, an actual plot (with dialogue and everything), all shot an hour and a half out of Young, Arizona. For two weeks in August, the Q Ranch served home to seven crew, and fourteen ADD-riddled models as we strived to make art – hard-core art. Raging Stallion hopes To The Last Man will be the Titanic of porn. But it might end up being its Waterworld.

I was along as a humble grip – which in porn shoot lingo means The Guy Who Does Everything.