Through A Glass, Darkly
By The Colonel
I recently came across a new book by Ken Auletta. The book is Googled: The End of the World As We Know It. Auletta examines the outsize influence Google had on the changing media landscape. He tells the story of how Google formed and crashed into traditional media businesses, from newspapers to books, movies, TV, telephones, advertising, etc. In addition, he shows why the worlds of new and old media often communicate as if residents of different planets; and there’s so much conflict of interest at work. The book discusses the positive and negative effects of the cyberspace on the old traditional media (i.e. reading news blogs instead of buying newspapers, downloading music instead of buying CDs, streaming and sharing web sites, etc.) While reading the book, I couldn’t help but thinking about what effects the Internet had on the adult industry in the past years, how the rules of the game have permanently changed, and how things will continue to evolve beyond anybody’s expectation and speculation. So I decided to write an article and discuss that further.
Let me make one thing clear before we get to the main subject: we refer to the business of making pornographic movies as the adult industry only for lack of a better word. There is no such thing as the adult industry, neither literary nor figuratively. What we have are a number of independent producers financing their movies out of their pocket and selling them in a competitive, dog eat dog, oversaturated market. These people have no such thing as a union, they don’t gather for annual meetings, and above all, they don’t share a same interest. They’re all small business owners, each with their unique ways of financing and distributing their product and profiting from it. So as you see, the term ‘Industry’ doesn’t exactly apply to this particular business. However, as I mentioned earlier we’re using the term ‘The Adult Industry’ for lack of a better word.
Now to the main subject: the adult industry is like a big, complex machine with countless cogs, each with a mind, agenda and will of their own: people who shoot porn scenes in the privacy of their homes with their wives/girlfriends and sell the same scene for as low as $500 cash to 10 different companies, distributors who operate in a garage and trade recycled content instead of producing anything new, girls who travel across the country, perform in a few scenes in Los Angeles, get paid in cash and go back home without leaving any trace of their transactions, agents who operate from their apartment kitchens with cell phones and don’t even have a bank account. Determining the true size of the adult industry is impossible, and it’s worth is anybody’s guess, even though it’s much less than the official $4 billion a year.
Ironically, this complex, giant machine is dependent on one supply only: content. Unlike the music industry, pornographers cannot perform live shows and sell merchandise. Unlike the mainstream Hollywood, pornographers cannot display their movies in theatres worldwide. Unlike TV stations, pornographers cannot sell advertising spots. Porn is mainly dependent on content, and once the content is being devoured for free, as it does today on infinite tube and file sharing sites, producers make less or no profit from their investment; and inevitably there comes a day when porn as a business can no longer continue. In that inevitable day in the near future, chaos will reign: there won’t be any quality scenes shot professionally starring the adult actresses. Pornography will consist of hazy, shaky, low quality short clips featuring obscure women fucking their fat, hairy husbands/boyfriends in their crumbling apartments; and the place to find porn won’t be your local store, online vendors or even VOD sites, porn will be randomly available at tube and file sharing sites, shot at no cost, presented for the hell of it. Small time amateurs, broke free lancers, cockroaches that will continue to breed and swarm the cyberspace in the world of tomorrow. It’s not a pretty picture, but soon it will be the reality. The world is changing, times are changing, and the best is over. The adult industry might be able to play gimmicks and borrow more time, but the end is coming. We pornographers are part of the old media, like the music industry, newspaper publications and evening news. Chaos will devour us, but until then, we gotta do what we gotta do.
The biggest dilemma the adult industry faces today is the content delivery. The primary method of the adult content delivery is through DVD distribution; but since tube and file sharing sites were formed, it’s been getting harder everyday to persuade consumers to pay for something that is available to them for free. As I explained in previous articles, some viable solutions are changing the primary method of content delivery from DVD distribution to cable broadcast, utilizing the potentials of VOD and clip sales, and creating additional revenue sources by broadcasting live shows, touring, etc. The business of porn has taken serious hits during the past few years, the recovery will be a long and stressful process, and the future is more grim and uncertain than ever. Pornographers must accept the facts and focus on solution rather than problem. Speaking of solution, I keep hearing people discussing how to fight online piracy by watermarking their product, omitting streaming/download links from various tube and file sharing sites, taking legal actions against such sites, etc. Personally, I’m not convinced any of that would work. The Internet is simply too big and too vast with too many tube and file sharing sites in too many cities and countries around the globe. All it takes is a basement lurking, degenerate masturbator to shred a newly released DVD to pieces and upload every scene into as many tube sites as he can with as many different titles and tags as he can. This is not something anybody can fight; this is the 21st century technology. I don’t understand how pornographers expect to overcome online piracy while the music industry and Hollywood have failed despite their weaponry in this war has been far more advanced and greater than the adult industry.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to discourage anybody. I’m just being realistic and I believe those who tend to fight online piracy are genuine in their motives and efforts. However, the cold, hard truth is that online piracy will continue to decrease producer’s profit, and it can’t be stopped. Period. So today if people choose to produce adult content, they might as well accept that online piracy as an indestructible parasite is here to stay. Producing adult content in digital age is like living with a chronic disease: survival is difficult and restricted.
At the end of the day, it comes down to each and every consumer, how they choose to use a product, and how that makes them feel about themselves. There are always people who feel compelled to pay for the product they consume, regardless of the nature of that product, and there are always people who steal it, because they can. For example, I’m a music fan, I have the option to browse file sharing sites and download what I want, when I want for free, but I don’t do that. I pay for my favorite music and support my favorite bands instead of stealing their product and contributing to their decline. Same with porn: people have the option to either buy DVDs or go to pay per view sites and pay as little as 8 cents per minute to watch/download what they want, when they want; or they can watch stolen scenes on tube sites and download the complete movies from file sharing sites. The only question is: how that doesn’t make them feel like scumbags?
Perhaps they should try to answer this question next time they prepare the bottle of lotion and the toilet paper roll to visit their favorite tube/file sharing site. It might make them think twice before clicking the mouse.
To each his own.
Damn straight Colonel. Sad thing about the internet is that it dilutes the quality of anything intellectual. That’s how mouth breathing scum like Matt Drudge, Perez Hilton and Glenn Beck hold weight with their verbal diarrhea. The internet is part of the reason concert tickets have gone up a 1000%, as its the one area where a band can make money. The other part of that is the record companies and their 1890’s Company town business style. I loved what file sharing did to those companies, I hated what it did to the artists. You’re dead on in that there is no industry. But look at the folks involved, from Leisure Time down to the Earl and Chrissy, there are very few decent people involved who succeed. There are still a few quality porners out there with some scruples but they’re dying out or leaving. As I’ve seen, people these days dont think twice about being scumbags, its free, too bad for the other guy.
I think the Earl has discovered the porn counterpart of band tours my friends, that solves it for agents and whores but not for the director or video crews.
chrissy says earl is the most powerful man in porn……..a powerful bottom
More powerful than Larry Flynt and Steve Hirsch??
“choas will devour us”; that sounds very poetic colonel, i like it, also 2012ish, maybe this is all part of the “end of the world” scenario the mayans, hopis and of late, the enigmatic nostradamas interpreters have been warning us of; “this is the end, my only friend”
the first song of the stones compilation “through the past, darkly” begins “I see a red door and i want to paint it black”…
when you spoke of “agents who operate from their apartment kitchens” i immediately thought of bad ass frank
chaos is devouring us… all the shit is spiraling down the vaccum toilet, maybe only the rats and cock-a-roaches will survive
prepare and repent- the end is cumming, in the meantime, get your kicks before the shithouse goes up in flames, smile though your heart is breaking, don’t worry be happy…. open your eyes and downsize, etc…
The industry is already dead. It has been surviving on artificial life support for about two full years now. The damage is irreversable, and the only thing left to do now is pull the plug.
So Colon el, please stand in this bucket of water and do the honors.
Colonel, as with every other industry since the dawn of time, this one will evolve too. Currently, the culling process is weeding out the weaker producers (the ones that haven’t cut their overhead to the bone) or those without significant means to finance future efforts (Adam & Eve, for example sells high profit margin toys to middle America).
Some feature directors and producers will team up with late night cable to finance more softcore versions, DVDs with additional footage and extras and/or VOD; guys like Will Rider & Scott David’s X-Play better able than mega-conglomerates that don’t give a flip about going the extra mile.
Others will thrive on doing privates, making tailored scenes for fans, feature dancing, website memberships, and selling items as they have long done in the past or yes, arranging discrete “meetings” with others in the business for a cut of the action.
And aside from those that remain, there is already enough strokable content available to satisfy those raincoaters for generations to come (or cum as it were). There might be fewer new performers making hundreds of scenes before “retiring” to the Bunny Ranch, Craigslist, or other sources of “dates” but as long as women will fuck for money, someone will be willing to pay for it and someone else will be smart enough to figure out how to grab a cut of the action.
And to draw an analogy, those concert tickets that went up 1000% might be akin to that “date” costing 10X more than the current release selling for $30 at Empire. I don’t expect to be doing a bunch of escort reviews for fellow two-pump-chumps but there is already a thriving market for rating such experiences (ask Harvey for more info). lol 😉
Hah, I saw the future and the future is privates!
Colonel, isn’t your argument flawed by the,
“I’m not convinced any of that would work.” statement.
It does work for Hollywood and Music, so why not porn?
Your industry just needs to evolve along with all other industries. Newspapers and magazines are not dead yet. People still want to read the paper over breakfast or on the commute to work. Books have not become obsolete because the new Kindle has come out.
If anything the internet has helped open the doors for more people to enjoy your industry. It is easier to go to a site and register and get porn that way, then going to your local video rental in a trench coat, and sunglasses to rent your porn.
I do agree your “industry” needs to do something together, and you don’t have to be unionized to start something.
As always beautiful writing.
No Don, the adult industry will not evolve like every other industry since the dawn of time; the adult industry as we know it will die. You know why? Because this industry is not like *every other industry since the dawn of time*. You’re a movie critic, I haven’t read any of your reviews, but I assume you’re doing a fair job. However, you’re not involved with the economy and particulars of this industry on a daily basis; therefore your point of view and opinion, although respectable, is limited. Let me explain: in recent years, the business of making pornographic movies has turned into a bottomless pit where you throw your money inside it and at the end of the day, you’ll be lucky if you break even on a new release, let alone making a profit. This cannot go on for too long, and eventually will come to the end.
Everybody are in this together, from top to bottom, don’t let The AVN fool you with the numbers they pull out of their ass. Few companies like Adam & Eve and Vivid that have investments in other markets such as toys and novelties may live a bit longer, but they’re in a world of hurt, too. Besides, I can’t see how a producer like me can benifit from porn whores making custom videos and doing private sessions. So going back to my main argument in this article, the adult industry as we know it will die, pornography in terms of filming tow people fuck will continue in other forms such as amateur homemade clips and cheap custom videos, although that’s not something anybody can build a business upon and make considerable profit from. Times are changing, but the change is not for the better. It’s for the worse.
Kay, my argument is not flawed, you need to read the article again. Besides, the music industry and Hollywood haven’t been successful at fighting online piracy for the same reason the adult industry hasn’t been successful: you can’t fight the technology.
As for reading newspapers while eating breakfast or on the way to work, apparently they still do that in small town New England; but everywhere else people’s daily lives start and finish with laptops, ipods and cell phones. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s why sales of newspapers were somewhat %50 down in 2009. I’m sure everybody at your *political magazine* knows that.
Also Kay, one problem that porn has with piracy and maisteram media do not have is the status of porn itself.
I do not see the FBI devoting the same resourses to pursue piracy in porn as in music or mainstrem movies.
I do not see foreign govements heading calls to curb piracy in porn as the do in the mainstream media.
Many countries what to curb and own favors to Hollywood but not to porners.
And the whores can whore themselves in private, maintream actors cannot do that.
Adam and Eve will survive because porn is not their main source of income and they just can do feature porn as a sideline.
Vivid, DP, AE and Wicked have the cable market. But I wonder how profitable it realy is.
Sounds like my business ! The internet changed everything…chaos rules. We talk about media and advertising everyday. I bought YellowPages for thirty years. When is the last time you looked in the book? Now I pay webmasters to get me some exposure on Google and Yahoo..along with thousands of other perps. Now we say..”we’ve served our time” Good Article.
There’s still ways to survive, you just have to rely on more than just content. The DVD industry will crumble, as well as websites featuring only content. But sites that feature live webcam chats, forums, and other forms of interaction will live on. And while technology makes piracy easy, you should also use it to create unique content that isn’t available for free.
You made many good points Colonel.
One notion I would like to challenge is that surfers upload most of the content to porn tubes. Even with a cable or DSL modem, it is unlikely a surfer would do this. Uploading speeds are far slower than downloading ones and a fan is not going to spend the time and money to transfer a 500mb file. It would take all day. Many tube sites have user uploads disabled though it appears that users are providing the videos. People are paid to steal and upload tube content.
A number of porn tubes are in fact secretly owned by content producers. They have the misguided notion that posting full videos of their competitors will help them (while only showing bona fide 3-5 minute clips of their own content). Of course this is a fallacy. It only means that in desperation their competitors will do the same thus driving down the industry even further. On the Internet you cannot “corner the market”. With virtually no “barriers to entry” in this industry, it will just become one big clusterfuck with big content producers leaving one after another.
The whole industry is collapsing at an amazing rate and anyone can witness it. Go to any adult webmaster board and you’ll find either people complaining affiliate commissions are way down (60-70% from 2008 highs) or declaring that they can’t make money and just leaving the business. If affiliates can’t make sales how long until the programs start to go too? You can only make so much money from pre-checked upgrades and cross sales.
I agree that live performances and such will be how the industry adapts. I also think that you’ll see a rise in “gray market” escorting. How? By way of more pornstars using their sites as a vehicle to meet clients either in private or in Nevada’s legal brothels. They also may encourage video taped “fan fucks” where an entry fee is charged. This I understand is done by some single girl sites already. There will also be money to be made in porn journalism, directories, cams and amateur communities. The only thing we know for sure is that two years from now this industry will look nothing like it does now.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.
It’s true; the internet and the piracy that goes along with it is so massive it’s hard to comprehend. There are some companies that are more proactive in combating piracy but it probably costs them more money than if they actually did nothing.
Changes are coming, you’ll see.
Thanks for the comments which I’ve taken in as positive a manner as possible. Here’s a few ideas for you in return:
Colonel, your assumption that the industry must necessarily revolve around your old-school conception of doing things has been part of the problem in the first place. All I pointed out in my “limited view” is that the industry (and we both seem to agree with the difficulty of defining it as a coherent industry) will evolve. That doesn’t mean it has to evolve in a manner that serves your needs, only the needs of those forcing it to evolve (hint: the consumers).
I’m quite aware that the production companies are taking it on the chin much like mainstream Hollywood and the music industry, hence my comments that performers will survive by mirroring their most successful attempts to cater to their fan base. And also contrary to your assertion, there will be sufficient profit to be had for those performers willing to evolve with the times unlike the dinosaurs that toss their money into bottomless pits.
Consumers never cared much for the “music industry”. only their favorite bands & music. Some bands ended up selling music directly, cutting out all the middlemen leeches, and depended upon customer loyalty (a number of bands thriving more than ever before in terms of the money they actually pocketed). A large number of performers have been emulating this approach quite successfully too, selling out of hard copy movies when feature dancing (you know, those discs you producers sell them at cost or as much as $5/@ for them to sell for upwards of $40 on the road); working as escorts for more tax-free cash than a scene that some of you auteurs take all day to shoot (said date typically finished in a very short time according to those that know), or providing various forms of entertainment online.
And for all the complaints about AVN and others associated with shows, every time you gather a bunch of porn performers into an arena, people come running with fists full of cash to spend. Granted, those that run the shows might want to consult with consumers to make them far more profitable but they are every bit as much of an “event” as any concert to those in attendance, covered by the mass media at least as well (if not better during sweeps weeks).
Given how many of you and your brethren have focused on a shotgun approach to marketing as well as flooding the market with generic fodder, is it really that surprising that so many consumers have given up wanting to pay for what y’all collectively refer to as “crap”? You want people to buy physical media or authorized downloads? Be prepared to treat consumers as something other than rubes to be fleeced because they are far more aware nowadays than ever before (and quite frankly, given your comments, they don’t really need you to get off).
Sex sells and will always sell. There will always be a market for it and a group of people smart enough to figure out how to profit from it. There may not always be a market for third tier women doing generic sex acts to fourth tier male mopes in the form of a DVD release but I’m pretty sure most producers have become aware of that, some more recently than others it appears. 😉
Somehow, the song Miracle by Leonard Cohen fits into the discussion about the death of porn perfectly, easpecially this part:
I dreamed about you, baby
It was just the other night
Most of you was naked
Ah but some of you was light
The sands of time were falling
from your fingers and your thumb,
and you were waiting
for the miracle,
for the miracle to come
Dammm COLONEL…another very good article!!! I bet JM productions(multimedia) will be the big giant in the Internet and website productions of porn and then come crashing down with all the others!!! very good sir !! keep up the good work and more to CUM!! LOL
Bleak picture of the future of Porn Valley…
Speaking of Auletta’s book, of which he’s been making the usual media rounds promoting it, one of the things in it that struck me as really interesting is how unlike Microsoft, Google’s founders lack the ‘killer instinct’ that most uber-successful business people have. Gates truly wanted to crush his competition, while Google seemingly wants to peacefully co-exist with their rivals.
Auletta also commented how engineers typically don’t grasp the larger political/social ramifications of their work. They simply solve problems and if those problems lead to more problems, they go about working on solving them (abet, now the tech genie is out of the bottle so to speak…so it’s not as easily done as said).
Applying those concepts to Porn, one might further theorize that part of the problems going forward with any kind of successful ‘new’ business model, is as The Colonel points out – lack of a ‘central authority/mentality’ in the business. You have a collection of entities of different size/power with the sole agenda of making profit. Period, end of story. Coupled with the taboo nature of the product, and there is a little redress to be had for a competitor using seemingly unfair practices (such as how a Jules Jordan or Vince Vouyer can consistently pay top dollar for female talent — while others have to make due with whatever loser skank is able to put herself together for a few hours).
Some like Vivid, were smart about their profit many, many, many years ago and so they pumped out glossy looking compilations like they were candy and cornered the hotel/cable ‘softcore’ market by either buying their own channel (Hot Network/Hot Zone), or teaming up with an established brand (Playboy) and being their main supplier of content, along with signing international distribution deals (Vivendi/Kirch Media). Others were obviously not smart about their bottom line, so now they’re scrambling to have any profit margin for the short term (even if it destroys their company in the process).
You simply can’t apply Hollywood or the Recording Industry to any of this, as they stupidly withheld a lot of their content from the internet (until they were all but forced to, kicking and screaming, start to put it online). For example, you still can’t get The Beatles on iTunes (except for their very, very, very early stuff). Similarly, there are tons of hit/classic movies still not legally for purchase digitally online as a download.
Porn eagerly embraced the internet to their own folly…but far to many pornographers thought that the internet would go the way of the introduction of DVDs. In that, their profits doubled overnight — as now they were selling the SAME piece of content (a movie) twice over as consumers were caught between the dying VHS format and the emerging DVD format.
For me at least, Porn Valley massively misjudged their consumer base. They thought that the average pervert really was watching the ‘whole’ movie, when most pervs needed was just a few minutes of jerkable material. The entire idea of ‘sampling’ a movie or a performer was the 1000 ton straw that broke the 20 pound camel’s back. Sites like Freeones will be remembered in the history books of Porn, as a cornerstone of the decade long decline of a once vibrant industry.
So when walking around New York,(yes that small New England town) those people with Newspapers and the man at the corner who still sells newspapers is just my imagination?
Yes sales are down. But people who what that same paper on their Kendle, ipod and laptops are up.
And who says that Hollywood and the music industry haven’t been successful? Have you tried downloading a DVD to youtube lately? Or downloading music to your ipod w/out paying for it?
Maybe it seems it is not drastic enough for you, but they have been successful. You want all the illegal pirators to be drawn and quartered on public streets.
You don’t need to fight technology, you need to be more creative. And yes that would mean you may have to think outside the box, or work a little harder.
I understand having a cell phone for an old man like yourself it confusing,tiring to text, and that new facebook thing too, but come Colonel man up.
You are always Chicken Little..with the sky is falling, or maybe your more like the boy who cried wolf, because Chicken Little was right the sky was falling from his point of view.
“going to your local video rental in trenchcoat and sunglasses to rent porn.” that might have been the norm thirty five years ago, heading down to the “dirty book store” but nowadays men and along with their women seem pretty comfortable browsing dvd,toys e.t.c. kay, have you and your husband ever been to a sex shop? buy your stuff on line?
The only thing that will work and the word “work” is stretching it, but the only thing that will slow down the spread of piracy, is if all of the tube sites and file sharing sites are held responsible for what is being uploaded on their sites.
That’s it.
If you were to upload a movie or album to Red Tube, megaupload, or rapidshare, or Pirate Bay and that content is found on their site and they are held accountable for it, based on how many times the content was downloaded, then it would slow it down a little bit, but that’s not gonna happen.
i personaly like freeones.com. they have almost have any pornstar there is from old school to current with a bio with link to their site or a twitter,myspace account. depending on how long they were around,or are still active, several pages on them. and agreed your normal porn fan-perv rents the dvd(or rents it on line) for a specific scene or two, or for maybe a particular performer he is interested in.
I guess Prez that is my question. Why not? Just because the “industry” isn’t really an “industry”?
No it is about profits and no one wants to share.
The one with the most porn when they die, wins.
I am just saying that I think it is an excuse, for The Colonel and Porn Valley to blame everyone else instead of looking to themselves first.
If I had content like what The Colonel has, I would make sure it doesn’t find its way to the free sites. Yes that is more work. So either step up and do the work or stop being the boy who cried wolf.
Life is all about choices. You choose to do nothing!
And pornfan again I was being sarcastic and trying to prove a point. No one has to go to the video store in a trench coat and sunglasses anymore.
Kayryan “I am just saying that I think it is an excuse, for The Colonel and Porn Valley to blame everyone else instead of looking to themselves first.”
Ergo, that’s the crux of the problem. Sure, pornographers could look deep in the mirror and realize they fucked up by thinking they’d have an inexhaustible stream of revenue simply because guys are never going to stop being horny 23 out of 24 hours in a day (and that last hour, they’re just lying to their girlfriends/wives lol).
Yet even doing that isn’t going to fix the deeper problems within Porn Valley in regards to a business model that both allows for new forms of distribution and different levels of quality. You have your Vivid/Wicked companies churning out fantastic looking features…that for many, is tepid and boring (yet they do deliver on the promise of seeing some of the world’s most beautiful women having sex on camera). Then there are companies like Jules Jordan or Anabolic who pump out high quality gonzo (which to many, is just way to explicit what with threesomes/mini-gangbangs, blowbangs, endless facials, ATM, et cetera).
For all I know, Vivid/Wicked are spending anywhere from $50K to $100K on their features. Jules/Anabolic are only spending a fraction of that, say $10 to $20K to get movies that are technically just as good.
Yet you then have guys like BangBros, RealityKings, Brazzers et cetera who are probably spending WAY less than even the gonzo guys to get their movies to look a cut above the guys who are in their budget range (aka other internet porn producers and say the WCP and Pink Visuals of the porn world).
Plus, they don’t have to rely on just making money from selling DVDs (as an outfit like BangBros is primarily an internet company, secondly an old school brick and mortar, retail outlet distributing porn company ). Ironically, someone like BangBros just took the model Vivid had a decade ago, and are releasing their ‘comps’ as full length DVDs with the thinest of unifying themes (Cougars, Horny College Girls, Horny Sports Girls, Cougars with Young Horny Girls, et al). Consumers are nonethewiser, unless they are heavy users of said site.
I don’t envy pornographers having to navigate the new retail terrain.
“President4Life Says:
The only thing that will work and the word “work” is stretching it, but the only thing that will slow down the spread of piracy, is if all of the tube sites and file sharing sites are held responsible for what is being uploaded on their sites.”
How do you sue someone who has their servers and business located in a third world country? You can’t.
By and large, surfers are not going to upload a 500mb video. It is the tubes themselves that are uploading the stolen content.
Sammy, many of those features shot at Vivid or elsewhere cost less than the Jules Jordan gonzo titles. Vivid might be shooting two or more movies at the same location and using a small cast while the JJV or Evil Angel double disc sets are paying top dollar to hire the best names available in a given genre. On the blockbuster titles, the costs go way up but otherwise, those quickie features that are churned out are not overly expensive.
Fair point — but are you talking about their Vivid Raw line or perhaps, their lessor director’s movies (everything not shot by Paul Thomas)?
Now, if you’re talking about Jules/Evil again…are you referencing a certain director (as I know that a few of them, are just not selling anymore…so why put the money into their latest release).
You would agree that on AVERAGE features done by Vivid/Wicked cost more than your average gonzo film with mid-level talent.
Thank you for your comments, guys. Online piracy and how it keeps eradicating old business models from the music industry to porn, etc. is a highly important issue that needs to be examined and discussed. However, all theories on how to fight online piracy aside, in reality there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it or reverse the damages it has already done. It’s all too little, too late. The old business models are crumbling; and the only model that will eventually replace them is chaos. Welcome to the future.
When good things are gone, they’re gone, son. – Stephen King
Sammy, I mean the vast majority of their features, basing my information on what several of their directors have told me over the years (including PT).
As far as the JJV/Evil double disc titles are concerned, surely some sell better than others (no question) but I’m talking costs to make them, not profits from sales. In general, and this applies to their average double disc title over the last few years, they spent more than the average mid-grade or less title from the feature companies to make.
This is a very interesting thread and many have brought excellent points to the discussion. I have to agree with much of what the Colonel is saying because nobody can compete with free. Free is not a good business model in any arena and the future is not good on any planet when you have to compete with free. I also think that President4Life brings forth the only gleam of hope of any type of meaningful financial future for the production of adult sex movies (and some mainstream entertainment for that matter) in his comments with some type of intervention. Most likely that will never happen soon enough for most but we can only hope. (Hint- Fed Government please enforce copyright laws)
Yes progress and technology is a good thing but giving away (or stealing) content is not a good idea for those seaking long term success. Companies such as Brazzers and all of their non-associated free sites, Freeones.com and some others are horrific for the overall health of the business. I always found it funny that producers would embrace freeones.com and make deals with them to get traffic. I would venture to say that 99.9% of the guys that visit freeones.com jerk off to the still photos or free video clips offered before they ever feel a need to purchase anything. How can that be good for the business of anybody other than hand creme companies and paper towel companies? It can’t.
I took a lot of heat last year from some in the industry when my company X-Play signed a big deal with AEBN but I looked at AEBN almost as if they were another DVD distributor (even though they are VOD). They paid a large amount of money in advance to have a window of exclusive access to our sitcums and it was as if we sold tens of thousands of extra DVDS because customers where paying AEBN to watch them by the movie and/or by the minute. The point is that cash was transacted all the way around which kept the business model moving forward. Now sadly, many of the big VOD companies are in the exact same boat as DVD distribution companies- all fighting against a world of free porn both authorized and pirated. I see good companies throwing in the white towel every month by either going out of business or by offering their entire library of movies on a free site in hopes of ‘upselling’ to one of their premium movies. Fat chance of that happening as all that does is add more glut to the free market.
I wish I knew what the answer was but I do not but whoever figures it out will be massively rich. In the meantime, my company (X-Play and sitcums.com) continues to sell big numbers of movies in all formats but we see the writing on the wall as this game is coming to an end in the next year or 18 months or sooner.
The really sad part is that even with technological advances it didn’t have to come crashing down like this but greed by a few have killed it and sucked the life right out of it. I understand everything evolves and we are in a transition period (possibly to something great) but it really sucks for me because I finally figured out how to get the damn lens cap off the camera lol. Plus where else am I going to have access to beautiful women like this? All I can say is that I better become a successful television producer because that is where I’m headed and I don’t like to go to dinner alone. I wish everybody the best of luck because we all need it. BTW Not the Bradys XXX Pussy Power! will be in stores November 24th and we STILL expect it to be a big hit. Flight Attendants already is so maybe there is hope yet.
Will, and unlike most of your peers that ride your coattails in the sitcum/porn parody market, you have a decent chance of transitioning to a dual model; selling Skin-e-max advance rights to show somewhat edited versions of your movies on top of the hardcore versions you will also release. Cable TV, even late night cable TV (maybe more so), has a voracious appetite for content that you can make cheaper (yet better) than anyone else in porn.
Will deals like that keep X-Play afloat forever? Maybe or maybe not but given how well you and Scott plan things out, stuff like that could make you one of the last men standing as the bigger companies bleed a tide of red ink and eventually throw in the towel. I won’t speak of the other revenue streams we’ve discussed or varied plans others need not know about but long after the doom & gloomers are gone, there will be a handful of folks left standing (and I hope you are one of them).
Evil Angel is dead in the water, 60-70% of their profit is DVD (John admitted it last year at an AVN panel). They have done a poor job of branding themselves on the web and have never built an online community around their product (like AEBN did with Xpeeps and their tube sites).
How do you sue someone who has their servers and business located in a third world country? You can’t.
But money can be allocated to pay off the local thugs to beat their heads in. Just a thought.
For me it has always been about the price of adult DVDs that is the core.
As it stands I own 1103 titles; of that only twenty-one are XXX.
100 million dollar Hollywood flicks sell for roughly $20 on DVD. A wait of three months or so after its release will see that price go down to fifteen or less. Wait a couple of years and see that title in the five buck Wal-Mart bin or the three dollar pallet at Big Lots (which is where I’ve been buying a lot of my DVDs lately). And to that, The Dollar Three. DVDs for… a dollar.
The current numbers going around for James Cameron’s “Avatar” is at $500,000,000 (that’s insane!); with global marketing, the movie will have to make $750 million just to break even. So?
When this movie comes to DVD, the MOST I’m willing to pay is twenty bucks (I don’t care how much it cost to make); excluding some kind of exclusive bonus disc. And I’m not really that psyched to see it. I’m more excited about “Tron Legacy” by the way.
I would own so much more adult DVDs if they were not so overpriced. Why should I pay $39.95 for a skin flick when I can buy “Battlestar Galactica: The Plan” for fifteen dollars? A feature which cost A LOT more to make than that blue movie.
I can understand that adult studios want a profit on their product. Perhaps, a slowing could be made by selling porn at mainstream competitive rates. I’m not talking about the stuff for five or three bucks. But at a rate that is equal to the average DVD.
I still buy CDs and downloads. But most of my CD purchases are from non-store sellers, an average of four dollars – new. I’m not paying $16.00 for a CD, screw that. Greed is killing the format. CDs should be priced at eight to nine dollars. Add to that mix, the fact that so much of today’s music is crap, $16.00 is asking too much. Sorry, wrong topic and rant.
Going back to blue. I like this quote from Sam Sugar, made a few years back.
Sugar: “People who steal content are those who don’t have any money (like kids) and those who don’t think a product’s worth paying for. In both cases, stopping piracy, even if possible, wouldn’t result in any sales gain. The poor can’t buy, the indifferent refuse to.” *nods*
I recall when “Soul Plane” came to home video they complained that bad sales are caused by piracy. They should’ve thought about a second reason; it was a shitty movie that people didn’t want to see nor own.
Man, I went all over the place with this post – you got my idea.
Colonel, the future is not over for porn but the industry is and will be far less profitable. It makes sense. Porn, in its was never invented to be lucrative just as the idea of sex is not inherently commercial. Colonel, the real enemy isn’t the tube sites or the pirates. Its the amateurs and their optimistic spirit.
The future will go to the performers and their community websites. IMHO.
Porn had a longer heyday than almost any other industry. 25-30 years of growth! It couldn’t go on breaking records forever…now the bubble is bursting.
Fabulous post Colonel, Piracy is a big problem for the adult industry and as you well said not only for the San Fernando Valley industry, Hollywood and the music companies are suffering this big problem too.
Of course is a big problem but I have to tell you that HUGE is the internet universe too, millions of people are connected nowadays and of course a lot of them are sharing files with porn, music and movies with programs like emule and torrents but internet is a microcosms with millions of people who wants to pay for what they want too see, I mean their particular sex goddess like Belladonna or Jesse Jane, I think that the golden era of porn has finished and never will come back but think this too…thanks to the that people who share files with porn many others could know about some girls that in any other way they could had known, people always wants more and if they love porn and if they are deviants and nasty more and more, they will look for their new Belladonnas wherever they are, tons of sites are now favored because her members one day saw porn chicks in downloaded scenes in emule or torrent and they want more from her. The same happens with the rock bands, you can download their last heat in emule but if you really like that band you will look for more and more from them and if you really like that band and you can’t find anything of them in the torrent or emule you will buy her cds in the stores or on line or in the Sahara’s desert Piracy is a great parasite but in other way are encouraging the consume of porn, nowadays I can see that more and more people watch porn in internet and not only sharing, paying for it too, member sites, movies on line, web cam girls, I still think that sex is a big business, piracy is getting bigger too but internet consumers are increasing day by day in all the world including South America and those countries that we call them the third world, so more piracy, but more possible clients too, the story is sad but not very much…
I only had to say one more thing, I am absolutely against piracy but the worse thing is not the sharing P2P programs, the big problem is the free content in X the tubes sites who use to put entire scenes or movies, the law should be punished them hard. I think the real problem is with the X tubes.
Great post Colonel as usual. 😉
Big Hugs from the old Europe.
P.S.
Sorry for my bad english 😛
Art, that’s was kind of my point. It’s gonna be hard to enforce those kinds of laws, but my point was that there are central sites, like Rapidshare, Megaupload, and there are tube sites and all of these places are located somewhere. Anything in the world can be traced. That’s how criminals are found everyday.
If the guys who own The Pirate Bay, Rapidshare, Megaupload, and PornTube and RedTube were sued for what’s being put up on their sites by the record companies, movie companies, and porn companies, it’s slow things down, because there wouldn’t be these centralized websites with solely stolen material on there.
And another thing that I think should be done is police the forums. You could go to any forum in the world and find links to movies, music, porn, etc.
If every time a link was posted on a forum, the owners of that forum were sued, or threatened with a lawsuit or jail, that would slow down, not stop, but slow down.
The problem with downloading is it’s too easy. The hardcore hackers will always find a way, but if you can stop the people who just surf for a few hours a day, or while at work from the easy access to links of stolen copywritten material, it’d make a big dent.
Origen says:
‘Colonel, the future is not over for porn but the industry is and will be far less profitable.’
That’s the main point of my argument in this article: once a profession reaches a point where it’s no longer profitable enough, it can no longer continue. As I mentioned before, porn in terms of filming two people fuck will go on, but it won’t be in it’s current tradition. It’ll be mainly in the format of amateur homemade clips and custom videos.
And Pepe, thank you and keep up the good work.
People still pay for entertainment. They pay for expensive cable, high speed internet, laptops, notebooks, PS3’s, Xbox’s, plus Ipods and Iphones.
People aren’t going to pay for CD’s and DVD’s, books, newspapers, and magazines anymore. It’s called a paradigm shift, all these entertainment and media formats are antiquated and outdated. People love to pirate this shit because it’s easy and they love to fill their terabyte hard drives with as much junk as they can.
Too bad the old shit doesn’t work anymore..something will fill the void; always has, always will.
I don’t get your logic Pornster. Sure, people pay for cable TV, internet, smart phones (of which the iPhone is just the latest). People ALSO still buy DVDs, CDs, magazines, books and newspapers…they just don’t do so in the same numbers that they used to (or in the same forms as they did, as people are now more inclined to read a book/magazine/newspaper online).
The “paradigm shift” is HOW said material is being distributed and sold. People might not buy a single copy of the daily newspaper…but they’ll subscribe to the same publication online to get it, along with access to archives and web-only content. Yet you’re lumping in hardware and content into the same argument; along with how new technologies has given rise to new forms of piracy (because let’s be honest, people copied VHS tapes and taped songs off of the radio to pass along to friends).
Nowadays, ones ‘friends’ is basically the world thanks to the internet.
Regardless of how Porn Valley combats piracy, or reinvents their distribution models, they STILL have to face the same major issue facing mainstream entertainment/media; an over abundance of content, has led to more choices than consumers can reasonably handle, along with diluting what had come before.
Why pick up a new album by a band of minor note, when you can just re-listen to the classics and/or your solid favorites. Especially, when the record companies have been so greedy, for so long, that it doesn’t make any sense to buy a new record for $20, and they cater to the demographics who are currently buying the bulk of their content. Same can be said for movies/TV; studios are cutting back on the number of films to make in a year and a network like NBC has given up programing scripted shows at 10PM (as it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to put a crummy talkshow in the slot five nights a week).
If current trends are not to your liking, why submit…when you can easily spend the rest of your life, watching the old that you do like?
Personally, I don’t see so much an end porn as we know it or some new rebirth. Rather, the same people will be around…churning out the same nonsense, at a much smaller rate. So instead of your average DVD having five to six or more scenes (if it’s a double disc), it’ll have four, perhaps three scenes and it’ll retail at say $5 to $10 (which is slightly more than a Playboy Newsstand edition). Or the same DVD is downloadable at the cost of $2 — or the scenes from that movie you can download separately at .50 cents.
Yet the days of selling a new porn DVD for anywhere from $16 to $40 are gone. Likewise, the days of a major company selling subscriptions to their online catalogue for $10 to $20 a month are gone.
Conversely, everyone will have to lower their payday. Talent can’t keep demanding rates under the ‘old business models’ — no matter how ‘big’ they are. I can envision a future where your average porn girl will get $400 for a B/G and $500 to $600 for a DP and anal. The top rate for something off the charts like a 10 guy gangbang will be a thousand. Period. End of story. I don’t care how many useless ‘awards’ you have at home. Directors won’t get their usual backend or however they get paid (say they’re getting two grand to direct a feature…now it’ll be $900).
Producers and distributors will also have to scale back — and again, gone are the days when you can just resell a softer version of your material to cable TV (as other companies already have a very strong foothold, and there will be no reason for a cable giant to pay someone new…when the people they’re dealing with, still have material and have likely redone their deals to keep the relationship going). TV is too fractured, even more so, today than it ever was for a new player to make much of dent in viewership habits. Again, ask yourself…if there was some kind of growing hunger for TV programing, why have the major broadcast networks given up programing television for Saturday night.
Answer — no one was watching.
Simply getting rid of the “dead weight” in the porn industry, won’t solve much of anything for those who manage to survive.
The profits in porn were never as large as people were lead to believe. The whole 8 billion, 10 billion,14 billion dollar indsutry were never true.
Sure, there is money to be made but there are very few who ever became wealthy in porn.
Those who are hurting the most now are the same ones who oversaturated the market in the last six or seven years with tons of crap content. And those same people did nothing when the free sites began showing up everywhere. Like most in porn, they just didnt know what to do. After all, youre not dealing with the most educated, business savy people here.
Yes, there wil always be porn, but the facade of the multi billion dollar industry is fading fast. It was never true in the first place, and given the economic realities, the porn industry just cant keep that myth alive.
Leisure Time and Vivid…I dare say, are two sides of the same over-saturated coin.
Hey Colonel, watch tonight’s Charlie Rose. Harvard economic professor, and co-author of “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”, Kenneth Rogoff is on. His debt-doomsday spiel is kinda optimistic…
Thank you for the heads up, Origen. Speaking of economists, one of my favorite economists is Paul Krugman. I always read his articles and listen to his lectures.
Oh man, Colonel. Krugman is great. I love how he’s a columnist and doesn’t take no shit from anyone.
His September 2nd article “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” is epic. I guarantee you it will be referenced in most of the Macro textbooks with next year’s new editions.
Honestly we are living in a great age of economic thinking–a post-structuralist age. Behavioral econ (associated with socio-economic and New Trade Theory approaches) is like quantum mechanics–turning a lot of Smith’s, Ricardo’s and Malthus’ ideas on their head. Robert Schiller’s book, “Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism” is really amazing.
I guess “irrational exuberance” is the story of porn…
Paul Krugman is one of the greatest economists in the world. He’s been warning about a global economic disaster long before the 2008 meltdown; turned out he was right all along. He was in Real Time with Bill Maher some weeks ago, and said: ‘There are days when I wake up and think America will eventually turn into a third world country.’ As scary as it sounds, but looks like we’re getting there, one step at a time.
In my opinion, what’s happening to porn and other old business models today is a part of a bigger picture: globalization. Old borders and territories don’t mean anything in the cyberspace age. You can have your office in Los Angeles and hire your employees in India. Consequently, someone in India can shred your latest DVD release to pieces and spread it all over the internet. When you look at it from that perspective, you see it’s all connected. We now have the technology to interact with each other and influence each other’s lives on a global scale; and yet our instincts and motives are primeval. That dangerous combination has gotten us in the mess we’re in today; and it’s not something that can be changed, reversed or tamed. It’s the human nature, we are our own deadliest enemies.
General: “The profits in porn were never as large as people were lead to believe. The whole 8 billion, 10 billion, 14 billion dollar industry were never true.”
The people that artificially inflated those numbers over the years appeared to want a “gold rush” mentality, perhaps figuring that the more people jumping into porn, the more capital would follow them. As it stands, anyone I’ve ever asked how such numbers were derived would hem and haw, tossing in all sorts of numbers from every conceivable “adult” business (including strip clubs, adult clothing, novelty gifts, hookers, motel room rentals, and a wide variety of things not making a single company in Chatsworth a penny). It has been reasonably suggested that industry sources did this for similar reasons; after all, if you don’t advertise, your competitor will and you’ll be left behind.
Sammy, while people copied tapes in the past, keep in mind that titles such as “The Devil in Miss Jones” once cost $300 (I have the back issues of Playboy and Hustler to prove it) with no extras, the later pricing tier for most adult flicks in the early 80’s going for ~$100. The best second generation copies also looked noticeably inferior while modern digital copying yields identical or virtually identical copies (though while possible, most internet copies I’ve seen haven’t achieved that all too often though). But weeding out the weaker players will help curb the excessive choices out there and those cable networks have already entertained a number of porn directors/performers to make content for them (take a look at the credits of some of them if you aren’t familiar with the last five years of performers).
As far as the wild eyed macro-economics professors selling their latest books on the end of earth, chapter 27, remember that under the “old economy” of post WWII, we were going to enter a new age of global dynamics where every country would compete based on their availability of resources. As predicted, all countries ended up legislating various schemes of tariffs and roadblocks to give themselves an edge that went against the idea but that isn’t as easy with the internet.
To control piracy (it will never end), one need only pass legislation sanctioning all those in the chain responsible for pirated content, from the uploading idiot thieves to the punks downloading the stolen content along with the companies providing them the bandwidth and the search engines responsible for helping them locate it. Draconian measures to be sure but countries like China have been largely successful in blocking out a great many websites so it can be done elsewhere too.
“Paul Krugman is one of the greatest economists in the world. He’s been warning about a global economic disaster long before the 2008 meltdown; turned out he was right all along.”
Paul Krugman was not the only one, most of the Austrian Economists, who Krugman dissmisses as a religion and who in turn dismiss Krugman neo keynesian model as pseudoscience were predicting a meltdown since 2003 or in some cases since 1999 when the Clinton administration changed the rules on bank mortages and lending.
One just has to read Ron Paul questions to Greenspan in Congress, and Peter Schiff advides to investor or Canadian Hungarian economics professor Antal Ferkete advice on gold and monetary policy to see that common scense predicted the disaster.
And Krugman is a bit of a opportunist, after helping create the Obama monster now he washes his hands on time before the disaster strikes. You have not seen anything yet.
The second row of even more serious meltdowns is going to strike again after the brief fake recovery.
As happened in 2007 the one of the first countries were disaster will strike will be Spain. A little bird predicts a serious meltdown in several months into the next year.
The Austrian economists are impractical and live in La-La Theory Land for the simple reason that they ignore the necessity of some social consensus for the foundation of the marketplace. They draw a chinese wall between the functions of the market and those of government. A tight money supply and extreme social inequality leads to political instability which in turn leads to the destruction of the market. Most importantly, we tried their shit before during the Gilded Age. It lead to numerous panics, depressions and social pressure for increased government regulation. If it didn’t work then, it would never work.
And I’m sick of people calling for govt. spending cuts. We can’t cut anymore shit to make a significant impact on the debt. We live in a representative democracy and spending entitlements have constituents (not to mention we are a nation at war). I’m sick of selfishness and Libertarianism is a joke that is ruining America.
And tell you again Harvey, read Karl Polyani’s “The Great Transformation”. It would change your life.
And I’m sick of motherfucking Ron Paul. If that man was President in the 1860s, I’d still be a slave. 1960s, and I’d probably be lynched by a mob for looking at a white woman.
It didn’t take a genius to know the economy was going to collapse. Still, most people didn’t know the evil forces (derivatives and credit default swaps) behind what will be known as the first wave of the worst economic collapse in modern history.
Origen: “And I’m sick of people calling for govt. spending cuts. We can’t cut anymore shit to make a significant impact on the debt. We live in a representative democracy and spending entitlements have constituents (not to mention we are a nation at war). I’m sick of selfishness and Libertarianism is a joke that is ruining America.”
Conversely speaking, do you think we can spend our way out of trouble ala Obama?
Seriously, when you spend more than you make, trouble ensues. Do it on a large enough scale and you take others down with you. There are all sorts of cuts that can be made on all levels of government that could reduce the debt. A popular one mentioned of late would be legalization; less resources devoted to all aspects of pot use means lower spending. Or decide that we don’t need to fight foolish wars and/or keep a standing military large enough to fight multiple wars at the same time. Or decide that subsidizing every despot dictator in the world to the tunes of tens of billions of dollars each year is a bad plan. Or stop subsidizing products known to cause harm…The list is endless.
How is the government gonna unilaterally decide to end the war on drugs or pull out of Afghanistan or pull the plug on FMF or USAID? It takes political will. All those policies you described have merit and constituents especially considering your allusion to our current conflict in Afghanistan. Frankly speaking, you’ll have an easier time raising taxes than legalizing marijuana.
Besides, Don. Cutting all the programs you mentioned will not really lower the debt–only a couple hundred billion dollars. The real burden lies with the entitlements (SS & Medicare).
Origen, I was responding to your assertion that we couldn’t cut spending enough to make an impact. I have no doubt that the political power brokers toking away on their blunts or drinking themselves to an early grave like things the way they are and will resist change. Still, that doesn’t mean change can’t happen if people decide enough is enough. It has happened in our past and will happen again when the very real choices confront the public that you can afford A and B but not C, D, E, F, and the rest of the alphabet.
And every couple of hundred billion dollars cut multiplied by years, translates into a step in the right direction. I’m not one of those that are politically to the right of Newt/Rush or to the left of Obama/Pelosi but in the long term, cutting back on the choices I picked above will have an impact on the entitlements too. Frankly, SS and medicare need to be reformulated for the modern age and placed on a sustainable model. There might not be the political will to do it now but eventually, there won’t be a choice.
I understand you feel that certain programs should be cut but I was simply making the assertion that most of the expensive programs have strong constituencies the ones that don’t we have cut already (ie welfare). Besides, who anointed YOU king to dictate which programs are wasteful or not?
And Obama WILL reform Medicare and SS. Its why he’s focused on passing new health care legislation right now so he can cut Medicare easily. And SS has an easy Robin Hood solution, remove the upper cap on withholdings. For the rest of the term, deficit reduction will rise in priority.
Ditto Origen01. It’s a political fantasy (of the Right) that you simply cut spending to such an extent, it leads to untold amounts of increased revenue. Likewise, these same jokers want to cut taxes (admittedly, for those in the upper income brackets). Again, this SOUNDS good on TV — yet these same ‘tax cutters’ never come clean to the fact, you ultimately have to PAY for ‘tax cuts’. Even their ‘hero’ Ronald Wilson Reagan knew this…which is why he had to raise taxes, after cutting them to spur the economy.
Heck, even socially inept nerds who play SimCity 24/7 understand this!
Oh and did I mention how the SAME people calling for tax cuts and lower spending always seem to leave ‘national security’ off the table and have no qualms with endless wars overseas, endless occupation of other nations (friendly and non-friendly), or buying weapons that don’t make much sense anymore for the enemies you’re theoretically going to have to fight in the future.
Recall how the Right/GOP were livid over Obama cutting Bush’s dopy European Defense Shield. They went on and on about how he was ‘selling our allies’ down the river…while brushing aside the basic fact the shield wasn’t going to do jack shit if Iran made good on her threats to wipe Israel off the map with one of their shiny new nukes. Instead, Obama is spending the money on a weapons system that will be installed CLOSER to the actual threat and better equipped to actually DEAL with said threat.
Of course, the Right/GOP are still illogically angry. Go figure, from a party who when they had the hands on the nation’s purse strings, spent cash like a drunken sailor on shore leave in a whorehouse having a 2 for 1 sale.
Right on, Sammy (lol, at the SimCity reference. I’m not a nerd!). I just don’t believe in this age of globalism that we have the ability to embrace libertarianism or paleoconservatism ala Limbaugh.
Origen, those were cuts made off the top of my head, not indicative of my pending coronation. 😉
At least I included programs from both sides of the political spectrum unlike the majority of people that get into the discussion. The easiest place to objectively cut from is always where the most money is going (ie: the military and social programs) though it takes a long time to realize such cuts when contractors help write the laws about new weapon system acquisitions, old folks lobby via AARP, and the poor have learned the power of the vote (bread & circuses). The flip side of that equation is that people want their cake and eat it too, blinding themselves to the reality that “free comprehensive healthcare” will be neither free nor comprehensive as they were told.
As far as what the president will or won’t do, last week’s elections and polls show him that he better act quickly because he is dropping in popularity (even in his own party) faster than many thought possible. And Sammy, as someone that believes the government should be cutting myself, I don’t hold the military off the table as you suggest. Trust neither political party or you will find out just how similar they are to one another…
Actually I do share the critique of tradicional Austrian economics, that the market does need social consensus, and remember to Austrian economic, the marked is social consensus.
But I do think there are in facts practical limits to the market, as Origen tell here; “A tight money supply and extreme social inequality leads to political instability which in turn leads to the destruction of the market.”
Many Austrian economist beg to differ, they actually say, and what is going to happen in the next months and years might prove them right or wrong, that money created out of thing air in the end is the recipe for a disaster and the real cause of panic and social inequality, that central planning is not death, it just moved to central banking. That the panic and sheep mentality cannot be avoided in the market and that govement intervention often has made those worse throught history. Again, the test is now!
“Ditto Origen01. It’s a political fantasy (of the Right) that you simply cut spending to such an extent, it leads to untold amounts of increased revenue.”
Such fantasy has worked very well in Eastern Europe, so well that even the Russians has tried it before the US. I have dinned with the former prime minister of a Eastern European Country and he told me some fascinating things! No wonder why Obama did not was in Berlin on the 9th. Reality bites!
“I understand you feel that certain programs should be cut but I was simply making the assertion that most of the expensive programs have strong constituencies the ones that don’t we have cut already (ie welfare). Besides, who anointed YOU king to dictate which programs are wasteful or not?”
I guess numbers and reason can anoint someone to say what programs are wastefull or not.
“Frankly, SS and medicare need to be reformulated for the modern age and placed on a sustainable model.”
Houston, you hit the problem here. No matter what the constituencies say, SS and Medicare are not sustainable in the future. Period. When the bubble bursts in the next decade, that it. No matter what the Democratic Party Constituencies say, you cannot defeat numbers, at least in this Universe.
“Sammy, as someone that believes the government should be cutting myself, I don’t hold the military off the table as you suggest. Trust neither political party or you will find out just how similar they are to one another…”
One of the things that I love of Ron Paul is his political insolationism, the US shall retreat from the world and stop playing Empire building. That is one of the places were Us conservatives falied horribly during the Bush years, he that ran on the plataform of being against nation building ended up doing so disastrously in the Middle East.
I do not see Premier Obambi changing that.
Ron Paul is just repeating all of the nonsense Pat Buchanan has been saying for at least a decade (if not more). Besides, I’d love to see Rep. Paul introduce legislation shutting down ALL American military overseas bases within the next five years. Which for those not keeping score at home, is roughly 700 bases in all corners of the globe. Friend and foe alike. If you were to have a map and use ‘dots’ to show the bases, in nations such as Italy and Japan you’d have to color in the ENTIRE nation and move on to the next place.
Fair points — so let’s see, the Democrats/Left always want to help those who, more often than not through little fault of their own, get a leg up in an unfair world. So lets cut education funding, social welfare, infrastructure spending and just let the great Free Market take care if all.
Because why spend money on our citizens to learn a few things about the world, or keep them in a semblance of stability if they lose their job, or make sure if they have a job they can actually get to work on a well-paved road or a bridge that won’t collapse.
Besides, the framers of the Constitution obviously didn’t want Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid…so let’s just end them all tomorrow and let old/sick people figure out how to save their own goddam money. If they’re idiots, or get taken by charming investment bankers, or contract a chronic illness, all the more better…as they say, a fool and their money are soon parted and only the strong survive.
ORIGEN,
Our system of government is a representative republic, NOT a representative democracy. HUGE difference. I love these political discussions here. Most of you dont even know your left from your right.
In fact I almost vomited when Premier Obama during his acceptance speech adressed the crowd as “people of the World” (!!!!?????!!!!).
Premier Obama was running as President of the World, now tell me about Empire Building!
Of course, the idiots of the Republican party want a small govement, except in the military and the police and the war on drugs and porn regulation and prostitution repression. And during the Bush years the proved as big government lovers as the Democrats, but at least the Democrats walk the walk and talk the talk.
Well, Im not an American Citinzen, nor I plan to being one. But what happens in the US affects me.
And I see the US well in the route to hyperinflation.
Lets see, a super duper deficits, bailouts, stimulis packages all with money created out of thin air.
And that does not count the future expenditures to bail out SS and Medicare went the shit hits the fan.
Add another bit of social experimentation with public option health insurance, doing social experimentation on the verge of a disaster and you got the recipe for a perfect storm (even Camille Paglia, a historic Democratic Party supporter doubt the wisdom of that, read this http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/index.html).
“Ron Paul is just repeating all of the nonsense Pat Buchanan has been saying for at least a decade (if not more). Besides, I’d love to see Rep. Paul introduce legislation shutting down ALL American military overseas bases within the next five years. Which for those not keeping score at home, is roughly 700 bases in all corners of the globe. Friend and foe alike.”
Well, Pat Buchanan might be a blowhard and a xenophobe but a damaged clock might be right twice day.
What is the fucking purpose of keeping all that military bases around the World after the end of the Cold War?
And about the friends of the US, who is waggin whom?
The US have curious alliances, it gets first the allies and in reward gets his allies enemies too!
I got Camille article wrong, is this one:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls/index.html
“I just don’t get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.”
Plus, it’s no great secret to anyone paying attention, that lawmakers purposely give massive military contracts to different contractors across multiple states.
That way, if anyone wants to kill these military ‘pork projects’ (as that’s what they often end up being, pork for the folks back at home), you’d have to persuade several different members of Congress to kill said project when priorities/enemies change.
Last I checked, most lawmakers were not all that interested in killing ‘jobs’ in their state — to help lower the federal debt.
Bears repeating here:
“With the Republican party leaderless and in backbiting disarray following its destruction by the ideologically incoherent George W. Bush, Democrats are apparently eager to join the hara-kiri brigade. What looked like smooth coasting to the 2010 election has now become a nail-biter. Both major parties have become a rats’ nest of hypocrisy and incompetence. That, combined with our stratospheric, near-criminal indebtedness to China (which could destroy the dollar overnight), should raise signal flags. Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
What does either party stand for these days? Republican politicians, with their endless scandals, are hardly exemplars of traditional moral values. Nor have they generated new ideas for healthcare, except for medical savings accounts, which would be pathetically inadequate in a major crisis for anyone earning at or below a median income.
And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the “mob” — a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.
But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration’s outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable “casual conversations” to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.”
No wonder why I’m cynical, negative and nihilistic!
But at least I spend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall slamdancing to Die Toten Hosen.
Sammy says.”…..Pat buchanan has been saying for a decade(if not more)
Maybe ALOT more. Buchanan first started working for Nixon in 1966. He’s been saying lots of things for alot longer than the last decade.
http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
The above link gives a quick lesson in our form of government, which several of you here are completely ignorant about.
Did you know that the Constitution, the Declaratiion of independence, and nevey single state constitution ever mentions the word democracy.
ANother quick lesson for you, Nazis, communists, and facists are LEFTISTS forms of government.
BTW Camile Paglia who is a capetmuncher says here that straight women made the best lesbian scenes!
Your opinion? Read the end of the article!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/07/08/reader_letters/index.html
“The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration’s outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable “casual conversations” to the White House.”
Whoever wrote this, is quite adept at twisting the facts. As these so-called ‘outrageous solicitations’ was over healthcare emails that were spreading outright lies such as Death Panels. In an effort to get people the ‘correct’ information, the White House stated if you got an email and wanted to know if it was true that if say the current healthcare proposals became law…would ‘grandma’ die, you could send it to them and they’d reply with what the bills being debated actually said.
I guess the writer of that OpEd piece doesn’t find it ‘outrageous’ that lies be allowed to spread unchecked. They must think it ‘outrageous’ to know the truth about a serious policy debate.
Wow!…”Porn is dead” Well, what is our dear “the colonel” to due? With his advanced age, no social skills or education..who is to pay his immense medical bills… Surely with someone of such great “knowledge” and expertise in everything he should know.
Camila Paglia who is a Democrat (read her books she rules) wrote that.
Also she said that Sarah Palin was right on death panels.
General, saying we live in a representative republic is redundant. We are a both a representative democracy and a constitutional republic.
“The United States relies on representative democracy, but its system of government is much more complex than that. It is not a simple representative democracy, but a constitutional republic in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law.” –John M. Scheb, An Introduction to the American Legal System.
“I guess numbers and reason can anoint someone to say what programs are wasteful or not.”
Okay. So instead on this thread descending into a political flame war of “who said what”, why don’t we focus on policy analysis and political strategy? Oh, that’s right. This is a porn blog, not Capitol Hill. 😉
“This is a porn blog, not Capitol Hill.”
Yes, back to porn guys, I come here to avoid politics dammit. Now the question, is Camile Paglia right on straight girls making better lesbian scenes?
‘What is our dear The Colonel to due?’
That’s not even a typo, that’s complete, utter ignorance. What third world shit hole do you come from, scumbag, and what is your primary language? Never mind, I’ll ask you mom when we get together to fuck this weekend.
HA HA
i would think that the girls who are bi or straight -up muff divers would be into better. the straight girls think og it as “gay for pay”, although g/g never really interested me.
Yes, yes dear “colonel” you should know. With Social Security bankrupt and you’re medicare reduced who is to pay for you’re sex change? You have always been a bitch and now you get the chance to really “live” out you’re deep fantasies. With no job, or prospects, you can now work Sunset Blvd without you’re dentures and make some decent money. As for my mother, lets face it..with a truckload of viagra you still couldn’t fuck jello! You only get “hard” thru rigor mortis,and Mrs. Dent shoving a toliet brush you you’re old wrinkled ass.
The Colonel Says:
‘What is our dear The Colonel to due?’
That’s not even a typo, that’s complete, utter ignorance. What third world shit hole do you come from, scumbag, and what is your primary language? Never mind, I’ll ask you mom when we get together to fuck this weekend.
HA HA
I detect here a obsession with homo sex, sex changes and ass licking.
Sounds familiar. Sounds like someone I do not want to know.
That’s right,Harvey, knowing Christian XXX is enough misery. You don’t need to know his ass licking, obsessed, faggot fan. Christian can keep his fan to himself and they can get a fucking room. I’m sure if this fanboy asswipe saves enough money in his whore jar, one day he will afford to pay for a private session with Christian and knock himself out on Christian’s cock and asshole. Damn, I feel sick in my stomach just picturing that.
Colonel that was sick! I could’ve pucked vision that!! How about christainxxx and Phoneix Marie in a bi sex scene and she fucks him with a strap-on and he shits non stop all over the set? Those poor PA’s…what a job…Have a good weekend and be safe and not sorry.
Stud, as a matter of fact Christian XXX has shit on set during strap-on scenes a few times, once it happened during an Evil Angel scene. But I hear you, this fanboy fucking scumfuck can break his whore jar and Pay for a bi-sexual custom video in which he, Christian and a strap-on wearing Phoneix Marie fuck each other’s skulls out. The only thing is since this fanboy is a broke, minimum wage earning loser, it’ll take forever for him to save enough money to shoot the video starring both Christian and his whore. He may just want to do the gay private with Christian for now.
Have a good weekend in sunny Florida.
Back to our main discussion in this thread, as I pointed out in a previous comment, I don’t see the decline of the old business models (the music industry, newspaper publications, porn, etc.) as an isolated, sudden incident. It’s all part of the complex globalization, and must be discussed and examined further. I’ll write a follow up to this article in the next few days and we’ll talk more about it.
“The end is coming.” That’s a good by-line for an “ass-gasms” video, especially these days.
Hey, btw, if someone’s gonna steal my ideas, at least give me a fucking scene for it, geeezz.
Ass-gasms, right on. I like that, man. How’s this for an end-of-the-world porn title:
‘A-Cock-O-Lips Now: The End Is Cuming’.
I’ll see you in court, Francis Ford Coppola.
On another note and speaking of Francis Ford Coppola, only if he could get his shit together, leave his fucking winery and go back to make The Godfather Part 4 to at least make up for the disaster that was The Godfather Part 3. I hate Part 3 almost as much as I love Parts 1 & 2.
He could remake Part 3 but with Duvall back, they should’ve just paid him the first time around. The casting was horrible, Keaton should’ve never been in the film, Garcia was a rotten choice as Sofia Coppola. The story didnt make any sense, what was with Eli Wallach’s character, waste of a great actor. Part 3 had the outline of a fine movie but it needed to be made by someone else. One day Part 1 and Part 2 may pass Citizen Kane as the best movie of all time, though what Welles did in 1941 was remarkable, and it wasnt even his best performance as an actor. I feel his perfectly slimy Harry Lime in The Third Man was his best acting job.
The main problem with The Godfather Part 3 is the plot: the whole *redemption story* just doesn’t make a damn sense; and some performances, most notably Sofia Coppola’s, are outright terrible. Francis Ford Coppola should make Part 4. Nobody expects him to surpass Parts 1 & 2, but he may succeed at closing the book on a more decent note. A cinematic legacy of that magnitude shouldn’t end with the disaster that is The Godfather Part 3.
As for Orson Wells, I agree with you, Larry. The best performance of his career was in The Third Man, though he only appeared in a few scenes. Another great performance he delivered was in Touch of Evil. His character Police Captain Hank Quinlan is one of the most memorable villains in the history of film noir.
Agreed. That GF3 by Coppola was crapola. Definitely not worth the wait after all those years and I still say “Whatsthematteryou?”. They threw that together just to make money but couldn’t pay the consigliere his piece of the pizza pie, so they write him right outta the picture. Vavanculo! I guess because he wasn’t a real Italiano he was outta the family business by GF3. If they had killed Sofia’s character early in the movie it would’ve been a little better. But, regardless, I say don’t bother trying to revive the Godfather. If you’re only as good as your weakest link then that chain already broke off at number 3. It’s a bad joke at this point so ‘fagettaboutit!’
True, Jeremy, the chain did break in The Godfather Part 3. However, there are many examples of filmmakers who screwed up somewhere during their career, and eventually redeemed themselves by making decent movies. Sylvester Stallone totally fucked up Rocky series by Rocky 5, even though the series was in trouble since Rocky 3, but Rocky 5 was simply inexcuseable. He finally came full circle by making Rocky Balboa, not a spectacular movie, but decent enough. I believe Coppola should do something like that for The Godfather.
For years, there were rumors about a 4th Godfather movie being secretly produced by Paramount; looks like everybody wants that to happen except for Coppola himself who is too busy with his winery and making artsy-fartsy movies every now and then.Tim Roth who played in Coppola’s latest movie Youth Without Youth, said in an interview: When Coppola approached me with the offer for this movie, I told him come on, man, what are you thinking? You should fucking make another Godfather movie.
“Pornography will consist of hazy, shaky, low quality short clips featuring obscure women fucking their fat, hairy husbands/boyfriends in their crumbling apartments”
This is where the old fag is wrong, and he knows it. He’s lying out his faggot ass to try to induce fear in porn viewers. Producing quality porn doesn’t take some great fucking skill only smelly failing mafia owned studio’s can manage to do right. I have and everyone else who wants it has, access to the exact same HD quality cameras that any studio can buy. There are beautiful teenage and up girls all over the world, who WANT to and ENJOY making sex tapes for FREE because it’s fun and popular.. Fact is the majority reside outside cali, and outside the filthy grasp of aging mafia whore-mongers. So, we amateurs have access to not only a greater quantity of girls, but also a higher quality of girls. We have the same HD cameras, we have better horny young girls, we have the same (but freely obtained via pirated sources) editing software, and the same light sources. The last being the most often forgot, but most important.. Hey, we’re still learning and developing techniques, but I fucking promise this old faggot, we have the same skill of shining a light up a girls gaped out anus that anyone else on this planet has. Thinking we don’t is further underestimating your opponent, and will only result in the dire picture you painted happening sooner.
In short, FUCK OFF; we’re the present and the future, while you and your worn out professional whores are now the nothing but the creepy past.
One thing I fear is that no chance taking Hollywood will remake The Godfather. Honestly I think Coppola is toast as a filmmaker, he made four of the greatest movies of all time(Godfather 1 and 2, The Conversation and Apocolypse Now) wrote the script for a fifth(Patton), but I think he lost his mind in the Phillipines and The Zoetrope disaster. Back to Depechey Modey(as Mojo Nixon called them), there was a great tribute CD made of bands covering their songs, For the Masses with Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, Rammstein and Meat Beat Manifesto among other acts. Colonel and Steele, what do you think of Melora Creager/Rasputina, who I think could have been huge if she wasnt so attached to her electric violin and 1890’s stage dress.
It certainly wasn’t the worst movie in the world but I don’t think “Rocky Balboa” was that interesting or exciting. The movie was sort of like a high school reunion. Nice nostalgia for the first 5 minutes and then you start feeling like it’s time to move on. Certainly the notion of redundancy was self-evident in avoiding the title of “Rocky 6”. I feel sorry for the “foe” character in the film, “Mason Dixon”, named after the border between north and south. It was a no-win situation for him fighting a sextogenarian.
I don’t think Rocky Balboa was very exciting or interesting, either. But it was a decent note to close the chapter on Rocky series. Sylvester Stallone said in an interview:
‘I felt compelled to do something for Rocky series. I just couldn’t leave it with Rocky 5 as the final chapter. I knew whatever I do, the outcome would be better than Rocky 5.’
He was right, Rocky Balboa is much better than Rocky 5; and that’s my point as well as everybody else’s who wants to see a 4th Godfather movie: if not anything spectacular, but it’ll be better than The Godfather Part 3. How do I know? Because Part 3 was so bad it can never get any worse than that.
First off, Amateur Bob, suck my dick. Second, let’s assume you and some other asswipe wanna be pornographers learn how to shine a light up a girl’s gaped out asshole, as you say, so fucking what? How exactly are you going to benefit from your product when DVD distribution, VOD and subscription web sites are falling apart and nobody feels compelled to pay for porn anymore? Tell me genius, how are you going to compete against free; and why should anybody pay for your particular product when there are tons of free porn available on tube and file sharing sites?
See faggot, it helps if you think before opening your mouth and barking like the leper dog you are. Here is the fact, whether you understand it or not: in the near future, porn as a business won’t be profitable enough to continue, but cockroache amateur pieces of shit like yourself will continue to infest and swarm the cyberspace with fuck videos of their sisters, wives and girlfriends. However, you won’t make any money off of it. You can keep doing that for the hell of it while keeping your shitty minimum wage daily job that pays your rent and your pathetic bills, but nobody cares. One day you might learn how to shine a light up a girl’s gaped out asshole, and that’s the future of pornography: a loser with a video camera he bought with his credit card and is paying %24 interest fee on it, trying to learn how to take a straight close up of a crack whore’s gaped out asshole in his crumbling, fucked up ghetto apartment. You just proved my point.
Have at it, scumbag, and while you’re at it, shove your HD camera deep up your ass.
Excellent response, my friend.
Too bad Lee Marvin isn’t still alive—*R.I.P.*—to play you in your bio-pic, man. Some of your dialog is custom-tailored to that great actor (and right up there with McQueen as one of filmmaking’s very best badass leading men). Keep ’em comin’, comrade.
You’re right, Larry, Francis Ford Coppola almost lost his mind in the jungles of Phillipines during making Apocalypse Now. In fact, the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse chronicles how Coppola’s Apocalypse Now was plagued by extraordinary script, shooting, budget and casting problems that nearly destroyed his life and his career. Having said that, somehow I still believe he’s got at least one more good movie left in him. If so, let’s hope it’ll be The Godfather Part 4.
As for Melora Creager/Rasputina, they had good potentials, but were too lost in the 19th century, trying to find a common ground for the classic and electronic music. While we’re on this subject, let’s mention another great rock band from the 80’s that never reached their potential: The Sisters of Mercy. Their 1987 album Floodland is a definite masterpiece.
God bless you, Third Axis. Keep up the good work, brother.
Yo, how about another porn parody: Rocky Balboner
Lee Marvin, another of those guys who was John Wayne for real, Purple Heart winning vet, tough guy, great actor. Same goes for Ted Williams, greatest hitter of all time, served in two wars as a fighter pilot. John Wayne was a pussy compared to these two. My favorite Lee Marvin flick is “Prime Cut”, great film. As for Bob, it may look easy but it isnt. Even a mouth breather like Johnny Thrust can shoot a scene better than you Bob.
Steele, Billy Glide could play Rocky and you could play Mickey, at the very least you are short enough. We’d need an acting coach for Glide forever, maybe Frank Stallone is available.
:I
The movies Godfather 1 and 2 were both from the book Godfather, written by Mario Puzo. There was so much material in the book that Coppola was able to make 2 movies. Godfather 3 was an abortion, obviously the well had run dry some 20 years earlier.
Now Puzo did write a decent “sequel” titled The Sicilian but one of the worst possible things happened on the way to making it a movie.
Michael Cimino got his feces stained hands on it!
That’s right, the director who’s ego was so huge he singlehandedly brought down a whole studio with the God Awful over bloated Heavens Gate. From Coppola to Cimino, thus the end.
In recent years, Mark Winegardner wrote 2 new Godfather novels: The Godfather Returns and The Godfather’s Revenge. The events of both books occur from 1955 to 1964, after the events of The Godfather Part 2 and prior to Part 3. While both books are decent, but there’s not much material in them that can be used for a movie. Besides, if they ever tend to make a 4th Godfather, it’s better if the story takes place in more current times in compare to the 50’s and 60’s. The 80’s would be a good era to depict.
Interesting Colonel how we share certain musical tastes: My bedroom ceiling is covered with various posters and one of them is Sisters of Mercy’s
“Body Electric / Adrenochrome”
Cimino can be at least partially forgiven for ‘Heaven’s Gate’, since he gave us ‘The Deer Hunter’. But you’re right, pornster, the rest of his work was studio crap.
Larry, ‘Prime Cut’ is an underrated action classic, and indeed among Marvin’s best films. Gene Hackman was also great, as usual, in that. Very good call*
Speaking of Hackman and Coppola, they made a great pairing for ‘The Conversation’, which Coppola both wrote and directed. It was one of Hackman’s defining roles. I don’t think that we’ll see another epic film from Coppola, however, because he’s just not driven to make one, nor does he have anything left to prove cinematically. The hunger is gone. Look at Kubrick’s last work to see what happens when genius runs dry, and no budget of any size can prop it up.
Right on, Jeremy. One of my favorite Sisters of Mercy CDs is Rare Obscurities: a collection of demos, live performances and unreleased tracks. Some of the unreleased tracks are so good ( i.e Red Skies Disappear) I wonder why they were not included in any of their studio albums.
And speaking of Lee Marvin, how could anybody be a movie fan and doesn’t love and appreciate Marvin? He’s one of the original Hollywood tough guys, along with John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Robert Mitchum. Prime cut is certainly a classic Lee Marvin movie. I have too many Lee Marvin favorites to mention, but here are a few: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Killers, The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank and Gorky Park.
They don’t make’m like they used to.
We did have Rockey X, where Jerry Butler was Rockey and I think Buck Adams was his opponet. Where is Jerry these days? I still crack up when I think of one of the funniest lines in his book, “Angel Kelly has a smelly pussy”.
The Godfather book and the first two movies told the story of the Mob from approx 1900-1950. Goodfellas mostly took it from there to the 80’s. The Sopranos more or less took it from there. Dozens of other less stellar movies try to fill in the gaps.
I think it’ll be awhile before they’ll figure out another era (or another angle?) to make a mob movie from.
Oh yeah, the last two (certainly the last season) seasons of The Sopranos were crap. It ended for me when they killed Adrianna.
Hey, this shit is funny:
Goodfellas did an amazing job at depicting mobsters of the 80’s; one of the best crime dramas ever made.
The Sopranos is my second most favorite TV series of all time, right after The X-Files. As David Chase, creator of The Sopranos says: What differs The Sopranos from the rest of crime drama movies and series is attention to details, variety of characters, their complex background stories and the focus on their personal relationships. I love the series from the beginning to the end, though I have to admit the first half of Season 6, where Tony Soprano is in coma and after he recovers and tries to be a reformed man was the weakest link of the series. Fortunately they realized that, and the series went back to it’s roots in the second half of Season 6. As for the controversial final scene, I loved it and thought it was genuine. Chase took a risk by avoiding any and all imaginable clichés (i. e Tony Soprano going down in a gun fight, his family members getting shot in front of him, Tony Soprano going to prison, etc.) What Chase did with the ending instead was different, risky and unpredictable; and in my opinion it paid off well.
Here is one of the most memorable scenes from Goodfellas:
Funny How: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXetDdYHgVA
Jeremy, that’s the best 2 min of dialogue Pesci ever delivered. “Casino” FTW! Best Cosa Nostra movie ever! Yes, better than “The Godfather”.
God, everybody was perfect in Goodfellas.
Classic***
I was thinking about your point above, that ‘The Godfather’ trilogy depicted La Cosa Nostra from the ’30s through the ’60s, then ‘Casino’ took it into the ’70s with the Vegas era and corporatization, followed by ‘Goodfellas’ into the ’80s, and then ‘The Sopranos’ to present times. There were also stops along the way with Scorsese’s ‘Mean Streets’ and Sergio Leone’s great ‘Once Upon a time in America’, and other notables like ‘Carlito’s Way’, ‘Miller’s Crossing’, ‘Donnie Brasco’ and scads of traditional “mobster” flicks going back to early Hollywood.
Just about every other ethnic gangster subculture has been explored in film, including the Irish in—thanks again, Marty—’Gangs of New York’ and ‘The Departed’; the British in ‘The Krays’, and the Guy Richie films, ‘Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels’, ‘Snatch’, and ‘RocknRolla’; the Australians in ‘Two Hands’ (a great early Heath Ledger appearance), ‘Chopper’, and the excellent 2002 film ‘Dirty Deeds’; the Russians in ‘Northern Promises’, and of course the Japanese “Yakuza” and Chinese “Tong” in innumerable movies by johnny To, Sonny Chiba and others. Black gangland has been covered from past to present as well, from “Blaxploitation” to hip-hop culture, and I’d put ‘American Gangster’ at the top of this genre. I’m touching on just a few of what I consider to be among the best here, and there’s a very long list.
I think the only major ethnic gangster group yet to be portrayed fully is the Mumbai mob, today run by former colleagues but now dueling overlords Chhota Rajan and Dawood Ibrahim. Now, there’s a Bollywood movie waiting to be made.
Has anyone seen the ’09 Turko-German gangster movie, ‘Chiko’? It’s about two Turkish brothers in the Hamburg underworld. It got good reviews, but I haven’t had an opportunity to see it yet. You can check out the trailer here: http://www.chiko-derfilm.de/EN/index.html#
BTW, I did a bit of research, and apparently there is a whole genre of Indian gangster movies. Who knew? I anticipate locating a copy of ‘Satya’, directed by the “eccentric” Ram Gopal Verma, considered to be ‘The Godfather’ of Bollywood. Also want to check out Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s ‘Parinda’, and Mahesh Manjrekar’s ‘Vaastav’. And Indian chicks are hot (Priya Rai)!
Right you are, Third Axis. All of the movies you mentioned are among my favorites; but I gotta say I have somewhat mixed feelings about American Gangster. I like the movie, but I feel something is missing, as if there was too much studio control and intervention; and because of that, the movie didn’t reach it’s potential despite it’s star driven cast. Or perhaps I was somehow disappointed because I had high expectations and wanted to see something on a par with Scarface, Goodfellas and Once Upon A Time In America.
While we’re talking about the foreign mobster movies, I need to mention an important Italian movie: Gomorrah. It came out in 2008, and is easily one of the best, most controversial movies ever made about the Italian mafia. It had a limited release in America, and will be available on DVD by the end of November.
Excerpts from the Guardian article:
‘Gomorrah has been hailed as the most realistic screen depiction of the mafia ever made, a gritty affair with an almost documentary like quality that has been tipped for Oscar glory after winning second prize at Cannes. But if the Italian film Gomorrah does pick up any Academy Awards, its director, Matteo Garrone, may be without a cast member or two to cheer him on. Since the movie opened in Italy, two have been arrested and a third is being investigated over allegations of real life mafia involvement.’
‘To maximise realism, Garrone cast a number of locals from Naples’s most crime ridden suburbs in several roles. Bernardino Terracciano, 53, who plays Uncle Bernardino in the film, was seized on Saturday on suspicion of extorting protection money and having ties to the Casalesi clan, part of the Camorra mafia, which has terrorised small towns north of Naples this year in a campaign that culminated in the shooting of six African migrants on September 18.’
‘His arrest follows that of Giovanni Venosa, who plays another boss in the film and who was detained in July on suspicion of playing the same role in real life. A third actor plucked from the streets of Naples to play a hit man, who is seen in the film bursting into a sun tanning parlour and opening fire, is being investigated for drug dealing, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported yesterday.’
I’ve seen some hokey versions of this kind of Sesame Street meets Joe Pesci thing, but this was done well. I couldn’t stop laughing at the end when Ernie goes to Bert “You Jew Motherfucker” and it’s a close up of Bert’s unibrow face looking like it’s stunned and Ernie grabbing Bert’s big nose, shaking him up, etc. I’ve had to watch that several times. Ha!
re: 113 Hey Colonel, this version is even funnier:
I wait for Gomorrah to fill my ganster movie collection. I have most of the ones you have mention, especially Marty’s ones.
Latino Cartels has not done yet by Hollywood in a proper way, only Scarface and Carlitos Way stand, and nothing on street gangs like MS 13.
So I add La Virgen de los Sicarios (if you do not mind the gay part of the plot), Rosario Tijeras, El Arriero, Maria Full of Grace, and the best I have seen on the Colombian drug cartels, Sumas y Restas.
Plus the soap operas the Cartel of the Snitches, Sin Tetas no hay Paraiso (the original Colombian version not the stupid Spanish remake) and the Queen of Queens. The Cartel of the Snitches has the avantage that was written by a former member of the North Valley Cartel, the ones that sends more that two thirds of the Cocaine that reach the US and is more like a Roman a clef disguised as a telenovela.
There is also a movie on MS-13 called Sin Nombre.
When Oliver Stone started working on Scarface rics there was outrage amongst segments of the Cuban community for allegedly making them look bad as a whole. That’s why the movie has characters repeat how the Scarfaces make the rest of them look bad.
And you know about the threats to Edward James Olma in “American Me”…
I guess it’s cool to be bad, now, sort of, depending…
That clip is awesome, Jeremy. You’re right, it’s even funnier than the original. Thanks, man.
There were many good foreign gangster/mobster movies made during the 60’s and 70’s that did very well in Europe, but are not very well known in America, for example Jean-Pierre Melville movies: Le Samourai, Le Deuxième Souffle, Le Doulos, etc. Thanks to the magic of Amazon.com, now they’re all available in Criterion Collection. So if you’re building a DVD library, these are among the must-have titles.
Thanks for that reminder, Harvey. The Latino gangster genre must have a fairly large representation, but I’ve only seen a handful of the Americano Norte offerings, with the above mentioned ‘American Me’ being a standout, along with 1993 movie ‘Blood in, Blood Out.’
I’ll make it a point to see ‘Gomorrah’, Colonel. I do remember reading a short article about it. Sounds very interesting. And I agree with your critique of ‘American Gangster.’ It was uneven, as with too many big studio projects, and lacked some of the genuine grittiness that I look for in crime films.
Interesting thread this has turned into, people; even though we’ve sideswiped your ‘Death of Porn’ post, my good Colonel – not to say that it wasn’t interesting by any means (looking forward to the follow-up). How ’bout those SD Chargers?
Thanks for that reminder, Harvey. The Latino gangster genre must have a fairly large representation, but I’ve only seen a handful of the Americano Norte offerings, with the above mentioned ‘American Me’ being a standout, along with 1993 movie ‘Blood in, Blood Out.’
I’ll make it a point to see ‘Gomorrah’, Colonel. I do remember reading a short article about it previously. Sounds very interesting. And I agree with your critique of ‘American Gangster.’ It was uneven, as with too many big studio projects, and lacked some of the genuine grittiness that I look for in crime films.
Interesting thread this has turned into, people; even though we’ve sideswiped your ‘Death of Porn’ post, my good Colonel – not to say that it wasn’t interesting by any means (looking forward to the followup). Now how ’bout those SD Chargers?
True, Third Axis, it’s interesting how a discussion about the death of porn has turned into a chat about the crime movies. I enjoy these kind of chats very much, and will post the follow up to this article in a few days. Probably the follow up article will eventually lead to a chat about the sci-fi movies.
Cheers to you, my friend.
The problem with the Latino ganster movies in the US is that they often ignore the diferences between the latino nationalities.
American Me was OK because it was about LA Mexicans and Edward James Olmos got it right. I do not recognized Puertorricans in Carlito´s Way and Cubans in Scarface, of course Al Pacino is a great actor but he is a Italian American playing to a Italian American audience.
Oddly I yet has to see a good Mexican ganster movie, Is like a taboo over there, Sin Nombre was a Mexican movie but was about MS 13 who is a Salvadoran street gang.
Colombias do great movies who are a bit subreal since many of the actors are often linked to the real Cartels. In one instance a actress who played the girlfriend of a drug lord was exposed as being the mistress of the rival drug lord who order a hit on her fictional boyfriend in the real world!
Oh I forgot Brazilian crime movies. City of God ruled and the lesser known City of Men also was good. And Carandiru.
As for the Latino gangster movies, I doubt any movie can ever comes close to Scarface.
On another note, there are many racial and social groups that are yet to be depicted in a truly good movie, for example The Hells Angels. I haven’t seen a good gangster movie about The Hells Angels yet which is odd, given their controversial, violent history.
I was thinking about your mention of Latin crime movies, Harvey, and it occurred to me that Brazil would be the one of the biggest producers, so thanks for these recommendations. I had heard of ‘City of God’ before and always wanted to see it; ‘City of Men’ I’m unfamiliar with, as well as ‘Carandiru’. Thanks again.
The Mexican crime scene is very real where I live in San Diego, which is 10 minutes from Tijuana, Baja California. The drug cartels have been in an all-out war for the last two years along the border, and not a week goes by that there isn’t a dozen or more mutilated bodies found in some vacant lot or dumped in the street. Lots of robbing and kidnapping of tourists too. I don’t go down there anymore, sadly.
Colonel, I’m looking forward to the upcoming sci-fi thread derail. Another of my favorite film genres.
Absolutely, Third Axis. Here is a hint about the upcoming article: it pays homage to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather of sci-fi genre.
Absolutely, the biker flick needs to be revitalized. I love all of the exploitation titles from the ’60s and ’70s (and how about our beloved Lee Marvin as the leader of the “Beetles” in ‘The Wild One’). However, all of the past movies have given a fairly cartoony depiction of the violent reality of the outlaw biker lifestyle. None have explored the fact of the H.A.s doing contract hits for the Mafia, or meth production, etc. The longstanding feud between the H.A.s and the Mongols would be an excellent storyline for a hardcore, gritty film. Of course, there’s the FX Channel’s ‘Sons of Anarchy’, which hits close to the real thing; in fact, its producers are being sued by H.A. prez Sonny Barger.
Forgot to mention the recent Larry Bishop/Quentin Tarantino biker flick, ‘Hell Ride’. That was entertaining, although straight-up exploitation viewing.
Come to think of it, The Hells Angels have such a bloody history it’s enough material for several, and not just one hardcore, gritty gangster movies: from the 1969 incident at Altamont Free Concert which resulted in stabbing some of the audiences to death, to 2002 River Run Riot in Nevada which led to a gun fight between the members of The Hells Angels and The Mongols, to ATF undercover agent Jay Dobyns’ efforts to infiltrate The Hells Angels and the RICO case which was the result of his 2 yeal long operation, etc. Hopefully filmmakers will start paying attention to this type of source material instead of re-making B flicks and adopting obscure comic book characters and video games for redundant, stupid movies.
Amen, brother*
I read somewhere that Dobyns’ book “No Angel”, was being made into a movie. If it is eventually, particularly by a major studio, you can bet it’ll be dumbed-down with cliches. It seems that, with very few exceptions, only truly indie filmmakers can create anything of genuine-ness and integrity to the source material these days. It’s a sad state of affairs when only a small number of films are standouts in a sea of schlock.
Yes, relistic gritty movies in the Outlaw biker gendre are needed.
I liked Scarface first but in lattest times I have seen it looks old, it looks like a melodrama. Nice classic lines by Oliver Stone and Al Pacino.
Third Axis, City of God is in my opinion the best latin crime movie ever. Its based on a real story like Casino and Goodfellas.
Btw, Bill Margold said “Casino” sucked, so that means we’ll all a bunch of idiots, I guess.
In contrary, I’m glad that Bill Margold didn’t like Casino; good movies are not intended for stupid people. However, I’m sure he’s a big fan of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. That figures.
To each his own.
On the subject of biker movies, Colonel, did you ever see the 1967 indie ‘The Born Losers’, directed by and starring Tom Laughlin? This was the first appearance of his soon to be well-known character “Billy Jack,” and is in my opinion one of the classics of the genre. While it is on the surface a standard-fare biker flick, underlying the story is an allegorical statement about the senseless Vietnam War—which was raging at the time of its release—and the societal impacts that war has on the actions of human beings. I was 10 years old at the time and saw this at the drive-in with relatives, who were horrified by some of its violent scenes and depictions of rape. Of course, I loved it!
Laughlin was one of the earliest indie-film auteurs in Hollywood, making pictures that attempted to educate as well as entertain. He had a rocky relationship with the powers that be, and bucked the system at every turn. I highly recommend ‘The Born Losers’ as a biker exploitation film with real heart and soul – and “Billy Jack” as a returning vet confronting a biker gang, kicks some serious ass.
Yes, Third Axis, The Born Losers is an indie classic. In fact I have The Complete Billy Jack Collection (Born Losers/Billy Jack/The Trial of Billy Jack/Billy Jack Goes to Washington) in my DVD library. What Tom Laughlin started with The Born Losers, was taken to the extreme by Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, another one of my all time favorite classics.
I agree with your point about how only truly indie filmmakers have the ability to create something genuine to the source material ; and unfortunately there aren’t too many of them around these days. The studio excecutives could care less about the artistic integrity and values, to them the only value is measured by how much a movie makes in it’s first weekend release; and that’s sad. The future of cinema is in jeopardy. For instance imagine a major studio getting hold of ATF undercover agent Jay Dobyns’ autobiography which chronicles his operation within The Hells Angels organization. I can see how the story will be dumbed down to a PG-13 movie, and probably some pretty face asshole like Ryan Reynolds will play Dobyns with Megan Fox as his slutty biker girlfriend in order to lure teenage boys to theatres and sell Jay Dobyns t-shirts and action figures. Our culture is truly fucked up beyond salvation.
“For instance imagine a major studio getting hold of ATF undercover agent Jay Dobyns’ autobiography which chronicles his operation within The Hells Angels organization. I can see how the story will be dumbed down to a PG-13 movie, and probably some pretty face asshole like Ryan Reynolds will play Dobyns with Megan Fox as his slutty biker girlfriend in order to lure teenage boys to theatres and sell Jay Dobyns t-shirts and action figures.”
Unless you got someone like Marty to do it.
Marty has done the East Coast Italian and Irish ganster thing but not plain Middle American white trash like the 1%ers bickers.
Maybe he can maybe not. Any others ideas on how can do it without selling out.
But I agree.