BDSM is a sexual practice, and porn is about sex, so why don’t they ever show the two together? Those who practice and play with S/M know how hot and sexy these two great tastes are together, and renting an S/M tape with sexy players who do nothing more than spank each other in rubber outfits can be pretty disappointing. I mean, the sexy latex-wrapped sirens in the Ivy Manor series are way hot, but would be even hotter if they fucked and came like screaming banshees. Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, anything outside of vanilla sex is considered “edgy” content — even though many regular folks engage in S/M sex games every day.

The problem is, many lawmakers believe that S/M and other “extreme” sexual practices such as fisting are harmful — they simply don’t understand what these practices really are. And contrary to what the lawmakers think, what S/M isn’t about is abuse, degradation or nonconsensual violation.

In reality, the sensual rituals and games that fall under the name “S/M” are for people who love, respect and trust one another. When a couple engages in S/M, they experience the thrill, rush and arousal that come from an agreed-upon exchange of power. One lover holds down her sweetheart’s hands while she administers loving spanks to his naughty, gleefully wriggling behind; two lovers can dress in leather, lingerie or uniforms and play erotic games of dominance and submission with sexual rewards; one partner can enjoy surrendering to the feeling of restraint and allow herself to be sensually whipped into erotic bliss that can only come from surrender, fantasy fulfillment and intense physical stimulation. Sex and S/M in combination can make for the most unforgettable, mind-blowing, pivotal, emotional and even spiritual sexual experiences.

The state of the law in the United States about sexually explicit material revolves around keeping pornographers and retailers on their toes, never knowing for what, or when, they might be prosecuted for offending “community standards.” You see, the law in the U.S. states that something is considered “obscene,” and therefore illegal to create or distribute, if a court somewhere says it is.

You might hear people in and out of the adult industry say things like, “Showing urination is illegal,” or “Showing S/M with sex is illegal,” or “Portraying Joan Rivers as a fashion expert is illegal” (and if isn’t, it should be), — and all of these cautious statements are incorrect. In fact, there’s only a single test, which is whether a court in any of the 50 states decides that a particular thing (tape, book, picture, washed-up comedienne, whatever) is, by the “standards of the community,” obscene.

No one making S/M videos knows if what they are doing is illegal or not. That is, until they receive a sweet invitation called an “indictment” and attend a party just for them called a “trial,” followed by a big hangover called a “conviction.” Then they’ve been (albeit arbitrarily) bad. This situation, reminiscent of organized crime tactics, is not an oversight; the U.S. Supreme Court is quite aware that the only way that retailers and pornographers can really be sure they won’t be prosecuted for selling “obscene” material is for them to avoid portraying activities that might possibly be interpreted as obscene — anywhere.

Meanwhile, the courts seem smug and pleased with themselves, conservative politicians can trot out a pet cause when the polls are flagging, and the retailers and creators of the most widely recognized product (outside the 99-cent hamburger) in America sweat through every single business day — while the government never actually makes smut categorically illegal. Based on caution and court cases, adult retailers know that they cannot ship S/M and sex videos to Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah as well as the northern district of Florida.

The topic of obscenity is, put lightly, a slippery slope. If you’re like me and you survived the National Endowment for the Arts debacle where performance artist Karen Finley faced off against ultra-ultraconservative U.S. Senator Jesse Helms’s frightening stance on obscenity in art, then you’re likely to be wary about the notion of others defining your individual standards of obscenity.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “obscene” as “1: disgusting to the senses: repulsive; 2A: abhorrent to morality or virtue; specifically: designed to incite to lust or depravity; B: containing or being language regarded as taboo in polite usage; C: repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles (an obscene misuse of power); D: so excessive as to be offensive (obscene wealth, obscene waste).”

In a court case for obscenity, the accused is held to whatever the local community’s standards are for obscenity, as determined by a jury. The real question is, whose morality or virtue is being offended here? A jury sitting there worrying about how much work they’re missing while stuck in court? The many people who bought or rented the tape? And whose community standards come into question when you’re talking about a consumer product? Attorney General John Ashcroft finds the exposed breast of a statue in the halls of his own Justice Department to be obscene, and ordered it covered up. I find the one-million-dollar per episode salary for each cast member of Friends to be obscene (that was 22 episodes per season, girls). But an act of mutual sexual pleasure between adults? Please — spare me, and my tax dollars.

Legality and porn is a big crapshoot for retailers and pornographers. In many cases manufacturers have decided to avoid material that could cause problems, though some producers are becoming willing to take a chance and portray sexuality in a more diverse and realistic light, and ready to face the consequences (such as Buttman making The Fashionistas, which shows both S/M and sex). In my opinion, I say let us consumers decide — keep the courts out of it.

I knew three things about Braun: he is Italian, the son of a legendary golden age Italian pornographer. He is the director of adult features that win awards. His fingers are insured for two million dollars by Lloyd’s of London for his ability to “make any woman female ejaculate.”

As much as I enjoy masturbating to porn, I have to admit that for me, the adult industry became a morbidly fascinating car crash in slow motion long ago. So the fact that I felt like I was in a Sam Fuller film meeting a pornographer downtown at midnight on a rainy San Francisco night mingled perfectly with the fact that the stranger had a mysterious European past, wealth and success in an antiestablishment business, and a fat insurance policy on his body parts.

I rode a glass elevator up into one of the highest-class hotels in The City, and inside the suite I met Braun — who, as I realized within minutes, was one of the most articulate and composed men I’d met in a long time. We sat at a table, drank wine and smoked cigarettes in a very European fashion for hours, conversation running the gamut from my work in the machine arts to Braun’s life as the son of a pornographer. We also talked about our favorite car chase scenes and non-explicit sex scenes in various films and our favorite film directors. The former Armani model and psychology graduate had not only lived to the fullest; he wanted more of what was on offer.

What intrigued me most about Braun was his perspective on making porn. A man making his way to the top of the mainstream porn heap with one increasingly successful film after another, he managed to become even more interesting when he started talking about his porn filmmaking process. For example, his 35mm film, Compulsion is a film that, by porn standards, cost a mint and took an unprecedented six months to make. Braun said, “I had to do everything for that film. I wrote the screenplay. I had to make sure the casting was just right, you know, it’s so hard to find porn stars that can really act, and I even shot the film myself. I had cameramen hired, but I couldn’t communicate what I wanted to see to them, my vision for how the film needed to look. So I did it myself.”

Intrigued that I was a real live female porn consumer, he asked me what I thought was erotic in film — he wanted to know what I looked for when I wanted to get off. He also asked me what had been the last scene I’d watched in a mainstream movie that I’d found truly erotic, a real turn-on. I had to admit that I hadn’t seen a scene like that in a long time — and usually when I watch porn for personal use, I fast-forward to what I want to see, get off, and I’m done.

Braun told me, “The dialogue in between sex scenes is so bad. The films where they tell me ‘I watched the whole thing, I didn’t fast-forward because I wanted to see the movie’ — that’s the films I want to make. And you know, I don’t watch porn and masturbate to it. I grew up with my father making porn, and it isn’t what I want to get off to. Everyone is doing it for the money, and you can tell, I can tell the women are doing a job. It doesn’t turn me on, and who can get off when they know that? I shot this scene once with Tina Tyler and she was in reverse cowgirl, and I had the camera on the cock, you know, close-up, pounding cock. And I could see she was about to come. And I just got in there, right up to her face, and kept the camera on her face as she had this big orgasm — and I got in trouble. You have to have the pounding cock, the gaping asshole in every video. [waves his hands dismissively] I was supposed to stay on the cock, but she was coming!”

I couldn’t help but ask Braun, that since he isn’t a porn consumer, but is a porn auteur, how he makes the connection with porn and masturbation. “Well… I don’t,” he smiled. “I’m not shooting a scene because I’m getting turned on; that would be for myself and not for the viewer. Every once in a while a scene turns me on, but it’s a surprise. When I was editing a recent film only one of the scenes turned me on, and it was one I was very far away from while shooting, there were lots of shadows, and it had a connection. You know, there was a kiss in the film that was over three minutes long and they had me cut it down to a little over a minute — but I added in another thirty seconds. The quality of the film is the most important thing to me.”

We talked into the early hours of the morning, veering off into discussions about favorite 1960s and ’70s horror movie directors (I have many), and where Braun’s creative forces will pull him next. “I can do the all-sex films for money, but making movies is what interests me, and I only want to do things that are creative and interesting to me. I have a screenplay that I wrote with my father that I want to make into a movie; I hope to get the money to make that. It was looked at as a mainstream film but nothing happened. People ask me, ‘Why don’t you just go and make mainstream films,’ and yeah, like it’s that easy. Besides, in Hollywood there are so many things you can’t do.” I tell Braun that at least in adult he has more freedom with his films, and he gives me a look like, ‘Yeah, right.’ “No, not really.” I ask him what kind of film he would make if there were no rules, at all. He smiles, “The next film.”

And his fingers? They look like regular fingers to me.

Their newest video Talk to Me Baby: A Lover’s Guide to Dirty Talk and Role Play is a delicious treat for couples like no other. Much like their perennial bestseller Bend Over Boyfriend, Talk to Me reinvents the sexually explicit instructional video and illustrates each pointer with a hot sex scene using real (and very attractive) couples who just can’t stop smiling, kissing, loving and making each other come. It’s almost too hot to be a sex guide, yet exactly what I’ll be recommending to customers in our stores who want to learn how to talk dirty, share fantasies and explore role-play. It’s a hot video: Get it, watch it, rewind — and share it with a lover. I managed to catch up with Shar Rednour, the video’s hot hostess and half of SIR Video to ask her a few questions about this groundbreaking sex ed film — and she had many hilarious, and insightful, answers.

Where did the idea for “Talk to Me Baby” come from?

On a personal level, I love dirty talking and role-playing. I was always a good girl growing up, didn’t smoke cigarettes, didn’t drink until I was 17 and only then in moderation (unlike the kegger-sucking teenagers). I didn’t cuss, either. So saying naughty words in the bedroom really turned me on. But I really perfected my nasty tongue when I started dating butch women who sometimes didn’t want their bodies touched in certain ways but wouldn’t mind masturbating in front of me, my words would push their orgasms over the edge. And of course get me turned on again. I soon realized that you don’t have to be dating a butch to make the most of talking dirty.

Talk to Me Baby shows how to make the most of dirty talk as a sex toy, and is a video whose time has come. I think that couples discuss non-monogamy or their fantasies of who they think is hot a lot more than people used to. Role-playing or a little dirty talk is an easy way to have 50 lovers yet remain perfectly monogamous with your partner. It’s so hot to be the waitress, the delivery boy. It’s often much hotter than actually having sex with that stranger who might look good in a uniform but sucks in bed! (No offense to waitresses or delivery boys — I know they are all great between the sheets.)

Where did the fantasies in the video come from?

Our twisted imaginations and some from our cast. Like Pony Boy and Mistress for example, that fantasy was one they really do at home. But L.P.S. (Lesbian Postal Service) is one of my favorites that Jackie and I do at home. “Rough Biker Guy and Lady Producer” was my idea. We were copying an old Joe Namath and Ann Margaret movie called C. C. Rider.

Are all of your performers amateurs?

None of our performers are professional porn actors. Some perform their art locally, like writing or dancing, but they have sex for us to a) be exhibitionist because they love showing off for us, and b) because they are in on our company’s mission statement which is to “change how people have sex for the better.” They really care and want to put their pussies and cocks where the mouths are, uh, so to speak. What I mean is, it’s easy to sit at home and complain about what porn or sex-ed is out there — it’s another thing to use your body and mind to change the status quo.

Your past films feature either boy-girl couples or lesbian/dyke combinations. What made you decide to mix it up in Talk to Me?

We see our company as having two wings, dyke entertainment and sex ed. As a sex-positive person, I’ve found that sharing advice is the best and most fun way to learn new things to try. Straight, bi and gay; men and women and trans, can each have different ways of approaching sex. Often in our inclusion we don’t ask, we just assume that we are all doing the same things at home in the sack. I like collecting those ideas and differences and sharing them. Most of us can try something the other group might do more often than we do. For instance, my gay male best friends were trying to have no ejaculation and prolong orgasm because of my lesbian Tantra stories — right about the same time I was trying TO ejaculate! Mix it up with techniques, share ideas — you might not keep that new sex position, but trying it out might be fun if you and your partner are both into it.

Did you have any strange or unusually funny moments on the set?

Oh, we always have our secret stories, like the idea we had about oiling up a couple and rolling them around on a fake bearskin rug in front of a fireplace — looks sexy but leaves our talent with icky little hairs all over their nooks and crannies! We were saying “roll more, luxuriate,” and when I said “cut” they were spitting out hairs. It was so funny. We had already let the make up artist go so Sophia had to shower but not get water on her face. Also, I just have to plug our outtakes section because you see how silly I got especially referring to my “candy cock.”

What’s next for SIR Video and Shar Rednour?

We actually have something pretty serious coming up that comes right from the foundation of our mission; we co-produced Staci Haines’ Healing Sex: The Complete Guide to Sexual Wholeness. It’s based on her book about reclaiming your body, sexuality, love and intimacy after surviving sexual abuse or trauma, The Survivor’s Guide to Sex. We wrote it together, and I directed it. It’s basically a $1000 week intensive workshop on healing from sexual abuse, in a $40 DVD. That should be out early February if not sooner. This will be our first non-sexually graphic movie. We made the film so that as many people as possible can access the information. It’s really about being whole and present. The stories within the video leave you in awe, and we’ve all learned some amazing stuff from it.

As for me, I’ve been writing more for On Our Backs lately. I’m their new Adventure Girl where I am telling all my extremely true and, I think, extremely titillating sex adventures. I am also writing a new book featuring a triad, a super hot butch/femme couple who take up with a femme girlie girl, and, um, let’s just say they have one exciting adventure after another. If anyone wants to get on my mailing list and keep up with my adventures, and SIR’s latest projects, write to me at shar@sirvideo.com.

The determination and unrefined sex appeal of the trashy blond isn’t lost on me at all, but in Traci Lords it’s personified and launched into the realm of icon. The very dirty past she struggles to keep in a tightly closed closet gives her that much more of an aura of bad-girl sexiness. Her pixie pucker, now self-proclaimed squeaky clean, screams “dirty” more than ever before.

But Traci Lords moves through this mystique like a woman half-asleep and half-awake, like a medicated bombshell, a lurid Ophelia. Nowhere is this more evident than in Traci Lords: Underneath It All, her book about her life as a troubled teen and a “together” grown-up. In it, as in most authorized biographies written about people who are still alive, we get a roughly filtered version of Traci’s life experiences. This is not a well-written book, nor does it seek any sort of self-reflection above the typical higher moral ground sought by porn stars who want mainstream acting careers. It’s a piece of candy fluff, as bad as you’d expect a book plucked from the supermarket shelf to be, a sensational morality play about a girl who triumphed over evil. And like all morality tales derived from far more interesting real-life experiences, it is full of bizarre contradictions. But, unfortunately, it falls short of the contradictions that make Traci such an appealing symbol.

The narrative is an artifice of Traci’s “voice,” no doubt cobbled together by the mysterious woman — presumably the book’s ghostwriter — who is mentioned nowhere in Traci’s life as a meaningful character, but appears in pictures near the book’s end as Traci’s “soul sister.” The roughshod voice gives an impossibly detailed account of Traci’s childhood which, while as exciting as watching paint dry, is punctuated with Traci’s first sexual experiences, early glimpses of the book’s stance on sexual morality. In a shockingly graphic description, Traci is raped as a young teen, the scene described with more detail than in any other sex scene in the rest of the book. This was a disturbing feature to stumble across early in the book, though no more disturbing than any “movie of the week’s” handling of similar subject matter. And I’m sure turning this book into a movie was an idea not far from the writers’ minds.

Traci runs away from home and becomes the biggest porn star, the most outrageous, sex-hungry, wild woman to rule porn stardom — and she reigned for three years. This fact is not included in her book. Neither is the fact that the starlet contract system — the “contract girl” — was invented to promote Ginger Lynn as the next, the better Traci Lords. Studios had to compete with Lords’ sexual ferocity, and devised the contract girl system as sort of a big-studio “it-girl” marketing campaign. The idea was well received — but none of this is in Traci’s book.

Instead, we’re told that Traci was drugged and coerced through her porn career, and that she hardly made any movies at all. Everything Traci does in the book is anchored by reminders that she was on drugs, that she really didn’t want to do it, and that at each turn she was desperately trying get out of porn. In fact, we’re beaten over the head with these points so repeatedly, it’s tough not to want to gloss over the protestations and get to the good stuff.

Certainly, some of Traci’s assertions may be true. Young kids do all kinds of things. Adults and their peers manipulate them, boyfriends mess with their heads and they do drugs to escape. But while Traci disavows her porn past vehemently throughout the book, she does slip and state “I was the Princess of Porn. They gave me awards at the Porn Oscars.” We also get brief peeks into the reality of Traci’s competitiveness with Ginger Lynn when Traci describes doing a scene with Ginger:

“Ginger’s moans grew louder. Didn’t she ever shut up? I was pissed off and disgusted by the thought of the upcoming lesbian scene I was supposed to have with this bitch on wheels… She’d given me attitude from the moment I’d met her a few months earlier, clearly seeing me as competition. And she was right. Within months my tormented, aggressive sex acts and youthful good looks stole her flavor-of-the-month title, and she made sure I knew she didn’t appreciate it one bit.”

For someone who makes a point of being “unwilling and drugged,” and “desperately seeking a way out” of porn in every porn-related moment the book describes, being the “Princess of Porn” seems an odd point to drive home. At 18, Traci gets busted for being underage, and attempts a comeback with her only legal adult film that she wrote, directed and co-produced, Traci I Love You. The porn industry, angry as hell at being duped by her fake ID — and having their businesses and careers put at risk by a troubled teenager — stood back and allowed the picture to flop. Charges were never pressed against Traci because she’d used her ID to get a U.S. Passport, fooling even the government. Later in the book, Traci calls the people she worked with in porn “child pornographers,” an after-the-fact accusation made reality only by Traci herself.

Later, after a spate of B-movies, Traci is plucked from obscurity by the master of irony, John Waters, casting her in Cry-Baby as Johnny Depp’s girlfriend and, hilariously, as Patty Hearst’s daughter. After all the ups and downs, dragged out descriptions of Traci’s struggle for acting success, and her experiences behind the scenes on every set she’s ever been on, we find out at the end that Traci considers herself “…another runaway, another molested child, another victim of sexual predators.” Her career ups and downs are plagued by her past; at each turn we find her golden keys to Hollywood’s superficial acceptance being whisked away by the specter of her past. But underneath her dreamlike trance, surely she knows that her past is the reason she’s even a blip on the present’s radar. She even states, “I’m constantly reminded all these years later that I was a teenage porn star by people from all walks of life…”

But now, though our fantasies may make Traci into more than the sex symbol she wants to be, and her porn past makes her a contemporary cultural icon, Traci Lords hates porn. “…I just can’t stomach it. Today porn is everywhere I look… Porn stars play themselves on television shows, appear on billboards and give interviews on how ‘liberating’ porn is for women. Well, I believe it’s anything but… I believe hard-core porn is desensitizing to the viewer and that it objectifies its performers… I have never met one [performer] who wasn’t damaged by a business that makes it impossible to think of its ’stars’ as human at all.” To wit, in an MSNBC News interview, beloved porn star and empowered performer Nina Hartley replied to Traci’s statements saying, “Well, I would invite her to come have lunch with me.”

Traci Lords: Underneath It All is a disappointment, but not an unexpected one. But just imagine for a minute, if sexy pouty, potty-mouthed Traci owned her porn past. If she reveled in the sexual pleasure and power it gave her. If she understood the appeal of her ironic countenance, her real-life white-trash Poison Ivy femme fatale persona. Good girls gone bad are way more interesting than bad girls gone good, don’t you think? Someone wake Traci up from her ordeal and tell her.

Author’s note: “Porn Music Still Sucks Part Three” will appear next month.

Movie music that works well goes largely unnoticed by the rapt viewer, but still subtly manipulates the feelings inspired by the filmmaker’s images and narrative. It adds to the creepiness of a David Lynch film or takes you into dreamy worlds crafted by Danny Elfman. Bad music interrupts the scene, distracts from the story (usually by trying to be showy, or too hip) or gives away the impending danger (Freddy, Jason, et al).

In porn we have a whole different ball of wax — porn music by nature must be different than the type of movie music we’re used to, because generally we watch porn for an entirely different reason — to get off on a particular sex scene (or scenes). Adult films seldom have a watchable plot, and because decent plot in porn seems so fragile, elusive and shakily held together when you do find it, the music seems like it would be just another thing that can go wrong. So unless the porn video is going to have a professional treatment on all levels, we can only assume that a good score is going to be hard to find (pardon the pun) because you not only have to score an actual film, but also a film with the unusual element of extended scenes of explicit sex, intended for the masturbatory gratification of the watcher. This is something that Hollywood pros have no experience with either, though it would be interesting to see what concept Angelo Badalamenti would come up with.

Porn without plot is sometimes put to music. Such “wall-to-wall” films, where the sex scenes take place in their own world and the scenes are loosely strung together by a theme, are typically the most egregious offenders of bad music put to sex. “Gonzo” films, where the cameraman directs and participates in the scene, giving a first-person experience, rarely ever have music in them — thus lending the “reality porn” feel. Maybe this is why I’ve become such a fan of gonzo porn lately, because nothing is worse than awful music when I want to lose myself in fantasy onscreen sex, and when porn is shot sans music, I get to hear the real, natural sounds of sex (an incredible turn-on).

Some adult filmmakers have gotten it right in the porn music arena, intentionally creating audio atmospheres that subtly enhance the viewer’s experience. It’s no surprise that these auteurs are musicians themselves, though I don’t mean the likes of wanna-be singers and rock stars who populate porn and subject helpless masturbators to their pet projects (such as Sharon Kane and The Hills Have Bis). John Leslie is perhaps the best-known example of a porn-industry filmmaker-musician. A former golden age performer, he is recognized as a skilled jazz musician and a jazz aficionado. A jazz player long before he entered porn, Leslie was a member of a 1970 band called the Brooklyn Blues Busters, which produced the legendary guitarist Brian Bisesi and bassist Johnny Ace. Leslie cultivated his refined tastes in both sex and music over the course of his 25-year-plus performing and directing career. His wall-to-wall films combine hot sex with smooth camerawork and cool jazz, with music always audible in the opening credits and wafting to the surface of some sex scenes (though not all). Leslie knows when to add, and when to take away sound, often allowing the natural noises of the sex and the performers to come center stage — and often doesn’t include music during the sex at all. Any of his Voyeur series will show his skill at blending sex and music.

Michael Ninn, on the other hand, would be the David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti combination in porn. His visceral, visually liquid features take you into dark, dreamlike future worlds where women and men succumb to their most carnal desires and act upon them, usually in gothic, fetish-fueled, music-video-esque panoramas. They’re really all that — and it’s no wonder that Ninn used to direct music videos for Capitol Records. He knows the power of music to transport, and to convey shadowy moods, and he uses music that adds to the erotic detachment of his characters that are often compulsive, crazy or spiraling into madness. Yet his music — ambient techno mixed with classical influences — seldom interferes with the sounds of sex, though it is always present.

Andrew Blake’s films are like long explicit Playboy-style music videos come to life. To his credit, however, the fetish elements, energy and attractiveness of his performers outdoes Playboy’s dated standards of beauty and arousal. But his movies are all about watching the women preen, pose, pout and play with each other for the camera, and while they are low on penetration (and even cunnilingus), they come across as visual foreplay. Adding to this atmosphere is the music scored and arranged by Raoul Valve exclusively for Blake’s films — modern infusions of tribal, techno, operatic and classical arrangements. Playthings, The Villa (which was nominated for best music at the 2003 Adult Video News awards), and Possessions (avant-garde jazz) all are great examples of Valve’s original scores.

What if you wanna rock? Then Chloe’s your girl. Beloved performer, notable size queen and orgasm hound and lately skilled director, Chloe is also a talented bass player, in and out of bands throughout her career. She’s got good taste in good ol’ rock-and-roll music. She says her all-time favorite band is the Chainsaw Kittens, but also cites faves Mötley Crüe and Fuel. In her plot-driven films that she’s been directing for VCA lately, you can see her rockin’ influence. Heart Strings is perhaps the best example, and a really great film that excellently mixes sex, story and music. In it, a rock band is on the verge of success, but is threatened by internal conflicts over sexual infidelity. The music is good and no one fakes orgasms or guitar riffs — I’ll look forward to more of this all-around high quality from Chloe in the future.

As we’ve seen with John Leslie and Chloe, some porn performers are secretly good musicians. But not all are so secret, or so good, and lately the intersection of porn and music cultures has overlapped considerably as musicians, rockers and rappers have gotten into porn. In “Porn Music Still Sucks, Part Three: The Musicians,” I’ll explore the brave new worlds of musicians making porn.

But not everyone feels this way — people’s reactions to porn music vary widely, resulting in several blossoming porn-music-related subcultures. Detractors despise it and decide to reinterpret sex soundtracks, fans adore it and create compilations, remixes and streaming Internet radio stations. Pornographers handle it with distaste and disdain for the viewers, use it as personal vehicles for their ego-fueled rock star dreams, or create innovative, intelligent soundtracks that set them apart from the pack. Independent pornographers apply their understanding of movie soundtracks to their porn and use haunting, romantic — even appropriate — music for their enterprises. And the porn music crossovers are endless, with rappers and rockers making and starring in porn while some porn stars pursue their love of music and work on their own side projects, using profits to pursue jazz hobbies, performing in rock bands and bringing the music they love to their work on the blue screen. This three-part series begins at home, with you and me, the listeners.

My first encounter with porn music happened long before I began watching porn, when I worked and lived a block away from a famous San Francisco recording studio. I became good friends with the engineers and after work I would stop by the studio and drink beer, meet and hang out with whatever current band was at work on their new album. They handled a lot of high profile bands such as NOFX, but in the studio’s downtime they recorded and mixed porn music. I got to see firsthand the sleazy producer telling the saxophone player to make it sound “more sexy,” and listened to some of (what I thought then) was the cheesiest music ever made. If this was porn music, then, the thought of porn and sex intersecting in my life was a laughable concept. Make myself come listening to the “sexy sax”? No way!

Obviously things have changed for me as a porn viewer, but complaints about the music are something I encounter weekly in the course of my job. Local Bay Area audiophile Shannon Mariemont took her feelings a few steps further and joined with other porno music upstarts to form the renegade orchestra group PornOrchestra. This somewhat spontaneously assembled orchestra creates live (and lively) reinterpreted porn scores in Bay Area movie theaters and art galleries, complete with an authentic conductor. Allegedly one of the founding members of PornOrchestra became so fed up with the bad music in her porn that she re-mastered porn rentals with thoughtful soundtracks, returning the rentals in devious silence. PornOrchestra goes further, out of homes and into movie theatres, and not only with their live music accompanying big-screen porn but with their mission to “…radically reinterpret the soundtrack to pornographic film.” Their web site states that they “are the equivalent of a circus band with its eye on the trapeze artist.” They perhaps sum up the conundrum of porn auteurs vs. viewers with their statement claiming that porn music is a “complicated genre that has taken its share of scorn, from adult film producers who refuse to pay it any mind to legions of consumers who instinctively snap the sound off after pressing ‘play.’”

However, the definition of “good” is as subjective as the definition of “obscenity” — and the recent emergence of cheesy porn music as a trendy and cool music genre perhaps demonstrates that “community standards” may be a faulty measure. One stop in a hip Lower Haight bar and seeing Pornosonic with Ron Jeremy (a collection of porn music soundtracks) on the jukebox hints at a porn-music lovin’ subculture bubbling beneath the surface of our sedate lives.

Take for example the Deep Note series, audio CDs that compile cuts from classic 1970s porn films. They do their best to ensure plenty of wa-wa guitars, analog synthesizer music, random bits of dialogue and yes — the sexy saxophones. Inside Deep Note: Music of 1970s Adult Cinema is the newest in the series, further fetishizing the genre with more cheeseball grooviness and includes a 16-page booklet and an eight-page full color digipack. People who love this music might also enjoy 1970s softcore/horror Spanish director Jess Franco’s soundtracks, such as the music to his cult lesbian vampire film Vampyros Lesbos. In fact, there were oodles of softcore and erotic horror films made in Spain, France and Italy in the 1960s and ’70s that were tracked with a lot of very cool music — Chet Baker worked with Jess Franco on a few films — and music collections from these classics are usually hidden gems that suggest influences such as Bossa Nova, nouveau lounge and campy funk. Some favorites from my collection include the Beat al Cinecitta series, the Easy Tempo series (through #6) and Shake Sauvage.

While Deep Note and other audio anthologies covet and catalog the old-time music of onscreen screwin’, beware the modern impostors who reinterpret the music of yore, creating some of the most unbearable instrumentals ever spawned. Pop Porn by the Pop Porn Band is one of such monsters, masquerading as 1970s effluvia while imitating music that was questionable to begin with. Sex-O-Rama might be the best-known of these audio nightmares, again a collection of late ’90s imitations, replete with ’90s blandness, lots of “wokka-wokka,” and the very media-overexposed Jenna Jameson trotted out on the cover hawking the curious lack of innovative content in a strangely fitting way. Pornosonic falls neatly into this stiff unsexy genre of imitation, with both their Ron Jeremy album and Cream Sheets, music from an unreleased ’70s-stylized porn film.

But retro porn music isn’t all that is loved by porn music fans, there is an equally growing fan base for modern audio wankers. Take a sample of the cream of the crop by picking up the soundtracks to Michael Ninn’s Latex and Shock, both available at Amazon’s UK site. Look deeper into listener opinions on porn chat sites and find arguments on web sites claiming that in general, European porn music is superior to all, while others claim that German porn music is the best in the world.

Further proving that there are really connoisseurs of porn music out there is the emergence of people such as Texan John Dial (aka DJ Vanyanovitch) who claims to “watch porn for the music.” Much like the PornOrchestra T-shirt I bought which reads, “I just listen to the music,” Dial shares with the ‘Orchestra hopes of a better tomorrow in adult soundtracks and devotes an entire web site to adult audio fetishists, fluffertrax.com. On this site, one can not only read sporadically entered reviews on porn music in general, but one can also download porn music MP3s or listen to Dial’s own brand of streaming porn music radio. Soulstrut.com is an MP3 and streaming site dedicated to “crate-digging DJ and hip-hop culture” that features the retro Porn Beats 1 and 2, a “fondu (sic) of lost porn scores” ranging from funk psychedelia to disco soul. The recordings are selected with care, and though quality is inconsistent due to the found nature of the source material, some of the recordings have comparisons and hyperlinks relating certain funk songs to the porn scores.

Whether you love or hate the genre, the fact remains that porn music needs to be different than music for non-explicit films. In the next article, we’ll explore contemporary porn music that transcends the typical, and where the people who capture the money shot care just as much about their viewers’ listening experience as their masturbatory enjoyment.

When people really let go, close their eyes (or maybe not), tune out everything but what feels good and abandon their inhibitions enough to graphically touch themselves in the ways that feel best, the world seems to stop in that one moment of complete focus. The person masturbating touches his or her hot spots, revealing what works best for that individual at each stage of arousal. We see where, how hard, how fast and the various rhythms the person prefers. Their bodies show all of the signs of arousal we read about but seldom see (especially in mainstream porn): nipples hardening, a rosy flush across the chest, neck, and face, and sometimes more. Clits can get firm and erect, testicles expand and then get close to the body. Then there’s the moment of orgasm itself, where the individual’s time-tested techniques are on full display and the body shakes, blood courses through everything, and while breathing hard and gasping, their genitals pulse in blissful contractions. It’s for real — and it’s an eyeful in every respect.

Having your lover put on a show for you is an outrageous thrill, but you can watch as many masturbation shows as you desire in adult videos. Problem is, it’s tough to find videos where the female masturbation isn’t faked, and in straight porn, men usually only masturbate in the three seconds before the “come shot” — very disappointing to those like me who like to watch guys masturbate, too.

To watch men jack off onscreen for more than the those aforementioned three seconds, we must turn to gay male porn or male sexual instructional videos. Though taking a male sex ed video out of context makes me feel a bit dirty, and sometimes a bit silly, they can be a real turn-on. Solo Male Ecstasy fits this bill, showing long scenes of non-porn-looking men taking their sweet time getting themselves off, though the music is beyond my tolerance levels (I turn the sound off). We carry three gay male titles, and of those three, Raiders of the Lost Arse has the best male masturbation scenes, with some pretty rugged, sexy older guys. The men’s well-muscled body types aren’t necessarily to my taste, but I’m well trained in the arts of remote-control-kung-fu and just zip to the parts that “show me the money.”

If you want to watch women masturbate, the world of porn is your oyster. For the real thing, stay away from formulaic plot-driven porn (which usually has to squeeze in an obligatory female masturbation scene) and seek out a series that focuses on women alone (or together), sex ed videos (again, there’s that delightfully dirty feeling) or plot-driven videos directed by women. Mainstream adult videos with women masturbating alone and in pairs tend to have more authentic female orgasms in them, and series such as Screaming Orgasms and Four Finger Club deliver many such scenes. With Screaming, young porn starlets use whatever toys they enjoy getting off with, often explaining to the camera what they like. Then after having an orgasm or two, they hop on a vibrating machine (the pricey Sybian) for more fun. Four Finger Club features more solo and paired starlets, specifically women who get off on penetration from big toys or multiple fingers. You’ll see lots of intense orgasms here, G-spot stimulation and occasionally an authentic female ejaculation.

Women’s sex ed videos contain women who are not like porn stars in appearance (though they’re not always “amateurs”) masturbating to orgasm for educational purposes. But “education” is in the eye of the beholder, no? Here you’ll see less surgical enhancement and “perfection,” and a less rushed feeling around the women’s performances. The videos are generally a little dry in presentation and for some reason always look like they were made in the 1980s, but they provide a wealth of authentic and explicit masturbation demonstrations. The Selfloving video is like eavesdropping on Betty Dodson’s female masturbation workshop and shows all kinds of women masturbating with a wide variety of techniques. Carol Queen’s Great Vibrations and How to Female Ejaculate contain women demonstrating their masturbation techniques directly to the camera, while tapes like Fire in the Valley and Please Don’t Stop feature scenes of women masturbating indirectly for the camera.

Plot-driven porn directed by women has the advantages of higher budgets, filmmaking skill, great storylines, professional porn actors — and authentic female masturbation scenes. Films by Veronica Hart (White Lightning, Taken, Love’s Passion) all have torrid female masturbation scenes in them, and Candida Royalle’s films also make the grade. Not directed by a woman, but with a fantastic female masturbation scene featuring Kylie Ireland (and a glimpse of male masturbation) is Paul Thomas’ Bad Wives 2. And still directed by a woman, but without any plot to get in the way, are all of Chloe’s all-sex videos — Chloe’s I Came, Did You?, Chloe’s Catalina Cum-Ons, and Welcome to Chloeville. Each and every one contains searing masturbation scenes with Chloe and other starlets.

While it might be tinged with irony to seek out masturbation scenes to masturbate to, when you find a masturbation scene that really turns you on, you’ll understand the appeal. Meanwhile, those like me seeking out more male masturbation representation in adult videos will just have to wait — I guess while there’s the obligatory female masturbation scene in mainstream formula porn, it’ll be a while until straight women viewers are given their due with obligatory male masturbation scenes. Until then, it’s back to the video stacks for the likes of me… Happy Masturbation Month, everyone.

Many see the practices in porn — even with the occasional condom use — as a crazy and possibly deadly game of Russian roulette. What’s worse, some viewers may imitate the practices onscreen — unwittingly learning how to spread disease. They may be unaware of the risks — and precautions — that performers are taking by working in an industry that often expects unsafe behavior of its stars.

There have been a good number of porn stars who have contracted AIDS and other STDs while working in the business. The most famous case was legendary über-dick John Holmes, who had unprotected sex with actresses on camera after testing positive for HIV. Holmes did not inform his coworkers, and put many people’s lives at risk. In the late 1990s, male star Marc Wallice contracted HIV while working, infecting four of his female costars. Call it selfish or call it murderous, their actions sent a wake-up call to everyone who works in porn. And HIV isn’t the only thing that can be contracted from unprotected sex. Herpes, syphilis, genital warts, gonorrhea, chlamydia, bacterial infections and other diseases and viruses can be passed by intercourse sans condoms.

In 1998 there was an HIV outbreak in the adult entertainment industry. Former porn actress Sharon Mitchell discovered that many of those who tested positive had worked with her when she was in movies. Mitchell responded by founding AIM, the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a non-profit agency offering HIV and STD testing, gynecological services and treatment, counseling of many types and informational services for sex workers and the general public. The industry responded with a surprising amount of support.

AIM’s motto is “Health for the sex worker in body, mind, emotion and spirit!” In a recent collection of data, AIM administered voluntary tests to a group consisting primarily of adult film workers. Of 483 people tested between October 2001 and March 2002, about 40% had at least one STD. Nearly 17% tested positive for chlamydia, 13% for gonorrhea and 10% for Hepatitis B and C, according to Mitchell. None of the tests came up positive for HIV, Mitchell said. The 40% infection rate statistic compares to that of the mainstream population: according to San Francisco Sex Information, around 40% of the non-porn population has some form of sexually transmitted condition, too.

By industry standards, an adult entertainment worker should be tested for HIV/AIDS every 30 days, though there is no standard for testing for other STDs. Most — though not all — producers and directors will not hire an actor if he or she does not have a written record of an HIV test less than 30 days old, but testing for other STDs is on a case-by-case basis depending on performers and directors. Some gang-bang shoots require the participants to arrive with certification from AIM that they have tested negative for HIV and other STDs. However, since the industry is self-regulating in all aspects of testing and condom use, safer-sex risk assessment ultimately falls into the hands of the performers.

AIM Healthcare serves over 400 clients a month and is making plans to expand. Since its inception, the organization has successfully lowered the spread of HIV in the porn industry, and has certainly increased awareness among performers. AIM uses an HIV test that produces results in one to three business days, though this is by no means the most reliable test for HIV. AIM uses the PCRDNA test because it is the best test for quick-result early detection of HIV and functions as an effective screening test for adult entertainment workers and the sexually active. The standard test for HIV is the ELISA test, which has a window period of up to six months because it tests only for the HIV antibody, not for the virus itself. That antibody can take up to six months to show up in detectable levels in the blood of a healthy person. The PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test looks for the virus itself. The PCR test can detect HIV after about two weeks (give or take a day or two). So far, AIM has reported only two false positives and no false negatives. They confirm each positive result with standard HIV tests like ELISA.

Besides worrying about the spread of viruses and STDs from unprotected sex, there are a large number of activities you’ll see in porn sex that are unsafe and even dangerous. There is currently a trendy fetish for ass-to-mouth contact, using everything from penises and fingers to sex toys, and there are even a few porn series specifically devoted to showing the practice. Ass-to-mouth contact puts the recipient at great risk for contracting Hepatitis A, which can be treated but not cured. The penetrator is at no risk in this situation. Hepatitis A comes from getting fecal matter in the mouth, and many starlets reduce their chances by taking multiple enemas before anal sex scenes, though this is not a foolproof measure. Anal-to-vaginal penetration is another sex act fetish, which by bringing E. coli bacteria from the anus to the vagina causes a severe bacterial infection. Again, enemas are used beforehand, but this is not a reliable safeguard.

Sometimes there is anal penetration with objects or sex toys that do not have a flared end, which is unsafe because the flared end prevents them from being pulled into the anal canal by the involuntary sphincter muscle. Performers are at risk every time they shove something like this up their asses, all covered in slippery lube and difficult to hang onto, because an item lodged in the lower colon is a major health emergency. Similarly, starlets seem to be able to just take a toy, penis or huge object in their asses without any warm-up. They never show you that the performers spend lots of time off-camera relaxing their anuses with lubed fingers and toys, and some will even prepare the night before a shoot. To insert anything without preparation and sufficient lube can seriously damage the dry, thin tissues of the anus, and can even result in fatal injury. Don’t try it at home.

Speaking of lube, it’s usually nonexistent in porn. As if by magic, the penis or sex toy slides right in the vagina or anus, or a little licking will precede a fast penetration. Lubrication is used in shooting porn videos, but it is very rarely shown to the audience. Dry sex, especially anal sex, increases the chances of disease and virus transmission and doesn’t feel as good as sex with slick sex parts. If lubrication is shown in porn, it’s usually saliva — but saliva is not a substitute for lube; saliva dries out in seconds, doesn’t provide the slip necessary for extended in-out thrusting, and is in no way sufficient for safe anal penetration.

Condom use in porn is hotly debated by everyone involved. Some companies and directors have a condom-only policy; most leave it up to the individual performers; some are against condom use because it “interferes” with their portrayal of sexual fantasy.

But condom use doesn’t prevent every infection, disease or virus. And in the manner that condoms are generally used (with the exception of smarties like Ed Powers of Dirty Debutantes fame) there is much room for error. In fact, when condoms are only used for penetration and the man ejaculates on a woman’s external genitalia, the participants have greatly undermined the use of the condom. Ejaculation in the eyes and nose are other unsafe practices engaged in by porn performers. Ejaculation in the eyes and nose can transmit herpes, chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea, and the latter three viruses cause conjunctivitis when contracted via the eye.

Porn is great for getting off and learning about our own sexual fantasies, but it is certainly not a source for accurate sex information. Even so, we must remember that we take our own risks every day, with every sexual encounter we participate in. Choosing to watch porn with no condom use or unsafe practices — and being turned on by it — does not make you an accessory to unsafe behavior. You are watching fantasy enactment to get off, period. Enjoying unprotected sex on-screen is nothing to feel guilty about, and remember that you will never really know the circumstances surrounding what you’re watching, or the relationships of the performers. Enjoy your porn, and your fantasies to their fullest, but be smart when you want to make your own fantasies come true. And support a good cause: Give money to AIM Healthcare.

For the people who are already DVD porn consumers, “DVD vs. VHS” is a moot question. In their minds, the benefits of DVD porn far outweigh the pluses of VHS porn. What bears examining is the way porn is used as a sex toy, and how that applies to the interface for the user. People use porn to get off in a variety of ways, but in general there are two kinds of viewers: One enjoys being pulled into a storyline or visual world, being aroused by a variety of fantasy imagery; the other relishes their visual sex straight, no chaser so to speak, and wants to view a particular sex act for instant fantasy fuel and release. One wants to receive fantasy from an outside source, while the other has a predetermined fantasy they want to see acted out — and this equates to watching plot-driven porn or all-sex, no story porn.

For the all-sex crowd, DVDs are ideal. Say you want to get off watching one sex act (like cunnilingus), a particular part of the sex act (like a facial come shot), a specific fantasy scenario (a guy with one woman on his face and another going down on him) or sex with a certain actor or actress. With VHS, you need to watch the whole tape to get to the scene you want to see. Then, when you find the scene you masturbate and rewind repeatedly until you see enough of the scene to reach orgasm — a scenario that is frustrating, rife with opportunity for operator error, and difficult to time with your orgasm. Believe me, it can be done, but the effort often outweighs the enjoyment of the resulting orgasm.

With a DVD the all-sex viewer can avoid many of these frustrations. The person who wants to go right to a particular scene with one actor or actress can first view the menu, with an overview of all scenes broken down into “chapters” and go right to the scene they want to see. Looking for a specific sex act is much easier, as some DVD players have “jog/shuttle” on their remotes, making moving around the disk a breeze. On all DVD players, the viewer can fast-forward and rewind at multiple speeds, from slow to super-fast, and the picture is crystal-clear, so you don’t miss any subtleties when searching for that one thing that gets you off. Some players have zoom functions, allowing the viewer to examine certain elements of a scene in greater detail. And for repeating the sequence you like, most of the new, inexpensive players have what’s called an “A-B” function, or “repeat” where you can program the player to show a specific segment over and over, until you’re done — hands free.

Viewers who like to sink into story and enjoy the seduction of a well-shot, carefully constructed porn film will find that DVDs take their viewing style even further. In this case, the bonuses are in the DVDs themselves, rather than the DVD player. The first thing to notice is the unbelievably crisp, clear picture — and I’ll admit that once you see the remarkable picture from a DVD, you won’t want to settle for less again (and on an HDTV it’s like watching a clear 3-D picture, but without those annoying red/blue glasses). The sound quality is amazing, though this feature is seldom a plus in porn, where sound quality is usually lacking and the soundtracks often are lame. However, some DVDs will allow the user to eliminate the soundtrack altogether, eliminate dialog or offer options to hear the director or an actor’s commentary throughout the film. Some porn DVDs offer true multiple angles, allowing the viewer to virtually move the camera around to watch from different angles. And many offer other pluses after the feature, such as extra scenes, interviews with stars and directors, porn bloopers, alternate endings, outtakes and more — which you can skip to from the menu at any time.

Those who appreciate a good story with their plot will also appreciate the DVD system of “chapters,” where scenes or plot points are broken down on the main menu. If you have to stop viewing for any reason, you can eject the disk and come back later to the specific point in the story that you left by selecting that chapter from the menu.

Also, if you find a film that you really like, DVDs will outlast VHS tapes, barring any surface scratches to the disk. VHS tapes stretch, get eaten in VCRs and are fallible by virtue of their clunky design. The DVD is wafer-thin, strong and can’t get mashed by (or stuck in) tape rollers. However, not all porn films are available on DVD, so you may need to seek out some classics, independents, fetish-specific or difficult-to-find videos on VHS. But DVD players have come down so much in price — so much that they cost the same as or less than a new VCR — that many distributors are rushing to get as many movies onto DVD as they can to cash in on the also-plummeting price of the DVDs themselves.

It has become much easier and cheaper to rent DVDs as well, much easier in fact than VHS tapes. Many of the garden-variety adult stores here in San Francisco dropped their DVD rental prices right after the 2002-03 holiday season, from the cost of a new VHS rental (for non-new releases) to the same cost as a regular VHS rental. Web sites that rent and sell DVD porn have sprung up like weeds, operating the same way as other DVD rental sites, making DVD selection and rental fantastically easy. Gone are the worries about late fees and going into adult stores, not to mention whether they’ll have your tape or not. Now, you can browse an online selection in the privacy of your home, do research on a particular title and read reviews, then rent online, have the disks sent to you, and drop them in the mail when you’re done. Each site has their own policies regarding price and rental rules, but they’re incredibly economical, and you can go to any store online you want.

While I was a hardened tech skeptic, now I have to say that with DVD, porn is a better sex toy. And getting off better is the bottom line.

In the adult industry, the pay for men is much lower than for women. It’s an industry where men must perform more often to make the same pay as female performers. There are fewer male performers than female due to the specific physical requirements of the job, and just a few men are in literally hundreds of films. But quite a few of the guys have, for power, money or artistic reasons, become writers and directors of their own films — with much success. Each develops his own style, appeal and personality, or sinks into the sea of male-ego-driven porn directors with all the rest.

With John “Buttman” Stagliano, it’s all about the booty. Beautiful, lush, buoyant, bouncing, round and enthusiastic booty. If you like backsides, anal sex in all its permutations, and women who like it too, any film by Buttman is a gold mine. Stagliano has done for women’s asses what Russ Meyer did for women’s breasts — elevated them to objects of worship. Stagliano transgresses taboos in pursuit of an iconic fetish, and he has committed his adoration and obsession to film. And though he shoots in a “gonzo” style, where he is consciously part of the action as the cameraman and director, unlike those of most other gonzo auteurs, Stagliano’s tapes have high production values and great quality all around. They have interesting locations, often being shot in Europe and Brazil, and sport terrific lighting, no music, excellent camerawork, respectful interactions and gorgeous performers who really want to be there and are really enjoying the sex. It’s easy to see why his work is so highly regarded, and why he himself has become legendary.

Born in Chicago in the early 1950s, Stagliano moved to Southern California in the early ’70s to go to school, intending to pursue economics. He began to pick up jobs for extra cash as a nude model. By 1979 he was a Chippendale’s dancer — can you imagine Chippendale’s parties in the late ’70s? Whoa. At any rate, by 1983 he was involved in porn, and produced videos with Bruce Seven until 1989, when he formed Evil Angel Video with Patrick Collins. The name came from his old stripping name, Evil John, and a former girlfriend, Angel.

The Adventures of Buttman was released in 1989, changing the face of porn forever with the introduction of gonzo-style shooting, also seen around the same time in Ed Powers’ Dirty Debutantes. These no-plot, all-sex, “horny guy with a camera” adventures were groundbreaking and well received by porn consumers. Over the years, Stagliano refined his fun-loving, butt-grabbing Buttman persona and his own filmic style.

Stagliano performed in his videos until he contracted HIV, when he openly announced his condition and retired from filmmaking. Since then, his life has become an open book for the industry, which you can see in Buttman Confidential, where he talks openly about his outlook and about his experiences with sexual risk-taking, contracting HIV, and working in the adult business. Fortunately for us, Stagliano returned to his place behind the camera to direct more Buttman videos, turning out his highest quality work yet. In addition to his gonzo work, he’s now added feature films with outstanding character-driven plots. His new work has extremely high production values, is well-developed in cinematography and story arc, and when shot gonzo-style, it’s still unscripted and improvised. And the scene framing is clever as hell.

The sex acts in Stagliano’s films are not for the porn novice. You’ll see lots and lots of anal sex, group scenes, masturbation, cunnilingus, deep throating, rimming, ass-to-mouth*, spanking, facials, voyeurism, domination, very light S/M, face sitting, fetishwear and toys including various butt plugs, nipple clips, anal beads, dildos and vibrators. There can be some gaping (spreading open the anus or vagina in between acts of penetration), spitting on genitals (and in faces in a loose dominant/submissive context) and some grabbing of the women’s heads and throats — this stuff, though consensual in Stagliano’s videos, is not for everyone. There is intense chemistry between performers. Some even feature real-life porn couples, such as Jazmine and Nacho Vidal. Safer sex choices are left to the performers — so condom use is rare.

His recent features are some of his most mind-blowing work to date, creating feature epics that look and feel just like a big-budget Hollywood film, though they contain (sometimes literally) hours of sex. The remarkable aspects of Stagliano’s latest videos are particularly evident in The Fashionistas, which took an unprecedented 10 awards at the recent Adult Video News video awards show. Here, Stagliano presents a story that is driven by the main character’s sexual obsessions, and when the male character is seduced and delivered his sexual fantasies on a very clever, remarkably disguised platter, we have a reason to believe that the ensuing sex belongs in the film — no easy feat.

Keeping up with Stagliano will be very interesting as he continues developing his high standard of filmmaking. To see a light (no rough stuff), fun and very hot Stagliano flick, check out The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women.

* “Ass to mouth” is when a finger, penis or sex toy is inserted anally and then orally. It is a common practice in porn, though it is considered unsafe and is the main transmission method for contracting hepatitis A. Don’t try it at home.