TheVulture wrote:... If you were to flip this on its head - if you go to see the latest instalment of Mission: Impossible you know that Tom Cruise isn't really doing all of that stuff and that he's just an actor. ...
I'm a fan of Mr. Grandi's work, so I want to be clear that I'm not talking about him in particular, or even him generally. That being clearly understood:
Most porn stars aren't Tom Cruise. However good or bad you think he is as a professional dramatic actor, he is indeed a professional dramatic actor. Surround him with other professionals -- other professional actors, professional directors, producers, screenwriters, editors, key grip, best boy, yada yada, dial in some special effects, put it to a John Williams orchestral score, and you can get people to show up in movie theaters to see his movies.
People in the porn industry can also be very professional -- I'm not saying otherwise! Indeed, the difference between, say, Mr. Grandi's best work, and some of the other dreck we all see out there, confirms how much difference there is between well-made,
professionally made, pornography, and home-made amateur stuff, even if you have the same performers with the same physical attributes and looks doing the same sex acts.
But mostly, people in the porn industry who've tried to make dramatic movie scenes have failed miserably, comically, ridiculously. Exhibit 1, for those of you with any kind of memory in the porn business, would be Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse, a pretty good pornographer, and one of the very worst non-porn movie makers ever to get the cap off a lens. What he ended up making was bigger-budget thematic porn films -- e.g., "Caligula" -- that are now only memorable at all because they were such huge disappointments as
either dramatic cinema
or porn.
Now maybe someone else can do what
no one else has yet successfully done since Edison invented the movie camera in 1897 -- which is to combine genuine porn with mainstream cinematic/dramatic moviemaking. But so far, I respectfully submit that everyone anywhere in the world who's tried -- and there have been lots! -- has ended up producing half-assed porn and half-assed cinema. Maybe Mr. Grandi's "Clockwork Gang Pilot" will end up being feted at the next Oscar Awards Ceremony by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or it will take the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Of anything I've yet seen at LP, his work would have the best chance of that. But it's still a chance that begins with a zero, a decimal place, and then at least another zero.
If you ask me, I'd rather not hold my breath for that. I don't think he, or anyone, has remotely exhausted all of the possibilities for making compelling, hot porn, and so I wish he and his colleagues who distribute through LP would stick to that.
Again, opinions on this will vary; I intend no offense to those whose opinions are exactly opposite of mine. But for purposes of their guessing what the "marketplace" demands, count mine as a vote against investing time & resources in trying to make cinematic art, and in favor of spending that money instead on, say, flying Alex Grey to Prague to teach her how to DAP.