1) In her short “Matinee” Jennifer Lyon Bell has produced a cinematic, nuanced, and emotionally rich depiction of sex in a context other than love/commitment. She’s also completely blown away the idea that people who can act won’t have sex on camera. “Matinee” proves this completely untrue, provided you give your actors something they think is worth take such a big career risk. For Jennifer, this meant pouring vastly more time, effort and money into “Matinee” than any porn movie would ever risk. Can “Matinee” produce returns — tangible and intangible, for it’s investors and it actors — to justify the risks? Time will tell.

2) It’s worth remembering that the thing that fuel The Golden Age that gave us the “Classics” referred to in the previous post was a change in the law that allowed sexually explicit films to be screened in theaters, and gave producers of sexually explicit films the chance to earn theatrical returns. Only through of this shift in the distribution paradigm were producers given the incentive to invest the kind of money needed to produce films like “Misty Beethoven”, which even in non-inflated dollars, would be considered ultra-high budget by today’s porn producers.

I know, talking about money isn’t very sexy. But unless the financial questions involve in making and distributing sexually explicit films are answered creatively; the creative questions ultimately give way to financial considerations.