They Shoot Porn Stars Don't They - new book(?) about porn in the recession

[Bill]

boingboing covers a book/article/whatever it is by Susannah Breslin about the porn biz.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/16...porn-star.html

Sounds like a lot of it is the same old consumer tripe - "oh those pitiful porn star girls, ruined for life by the porn biz and those nasty perv men.".

http://theyshootstars.com/

"Without warning, one of the three-way’s woodsmen stepped backwards, moving away from the woman bent over in front of him, with whom he had been having sex. He stared down at his flaccid penis in his hand as if it belonged to someone else. Tension filled the air. “Lube!” the woodsman cried like a soldier calling for a medic, and a small bottle sailed across the cloudless sky, landing in his upraised palm with a smack! Within minutes, the woodsman had resumed his mechanical plowing. Disaster had been averted.
Two hours after the scene had begun shooting, it was time for the men to deliver their money shots. To one side, two crewmembers discussed a “fip.”
“What’s a FIP?” I whispered to the nearest porn writer.
“A fake internal pop” was the answer.
A few feet away, the camera hovered in front of the face of one of the three-way’s woodsmen, now feigning orgasm for footage that would be intercut in the editing bay with his soon-to-be-delivered money shot. His face contorted. His mouth gaped open. “Oh!” he announced. He looked more pained than pleasured.
Once the footage was obtained, the camera shifted focus, tracking downwards, cutting the woodsman’s head out of the shot, and the day’s indisputably one true thing landed on the heaving, freckled, fake breasts of the porn star kneeling at his feet."

It gets better deeper in, talking about the economy of the biz.

http://theyshootstars.com/page5.html

Then, everything changed. In 2004, “VHS fell off a cliff.” DVD sales, expected to take the place of VHS sales, weren’t happening in the now glutted adult video market. “I warned people. I go, ‘You know what? Get ready, because the fallout is about to hit. We are about to die.’” Upstart online companies like Reality Kings, Brazzers, and Bang Brothers were shooting on the cheap and slapping their product on the Internet, all in the same day. “Tube sites” were giving pirated porn away. Forget VHS. Forget DVDs. Heck, forget movies. The Valley was floundering.
Once upon a time, pornographers were kings. Now, content was king. “Everybody talks about ‘content,” Powers bemoans, disgusted. “What the fuck is ‘content’?” he sneers. “That’s what it’s turned into. Content. Even that word is offensive!” he shouts, banging his fist on the desk. “The average shooter, nowadays, he has no interest in making a good movie. He shoots content. We might as well be pimps!” he hollers, waving his hands in protest. “Pimps and whores! And we shoot content!”
His voice softens. “It’s not near as fun as it was. They’re just shooting content to fill these specs they need for some website they’re shooting for,” he sniffs reproachfully. “They’re not being creative,” he pouts. “They’re not doing anything interesting.”
I debate whether or not to point out some might question the “creative” caliber of his work, but don’t.
Either way, more trouble was coming.

Mostly blah blah blah I'd say. But it's only ten pages on the net, so I thought I'd post it.

im isn’t the bad guy. He’s the good guy. “I sleep at night,” he informs me, his voice rising, “because I know, in my heart of hearts, I’m giving people money, that could not hold a job at fucking McDonald’s, for the most part. I’m paying people’s rent.” He waves his hands spastically. “It’s a lot more than I can say for a lot of the companies in America, pieces of shit, like Madoff, and Enron, all of these son of a bitches the Bush administration funded that do nothing but take, take, take! Here, I just give, give, give! And this is a fact!” he shouts, wild-eyed. “We are helping these girls! Anybody that comes into this business, for the most part, is a broken toy.” He leans towards me, earnestly attempting to make himself understood. “We’re giving them a place where they can make money, and get by, so they’re not standing on line in a welfare department. Thank God for people like me!” He bangs the desk. “You ever see the movie ‘Rollerball’?” he queries, turning pensive. The 1975 film is set in 2018, when the world has become a global corporate state, and the most popular game is called “rollerball.” To win the game, Americans brain each other to death with metal balls, sating the bloodlust of the watching populace and “to demonstrate the futility of individual human effort,” according to one overseer. But when a veteran player, Jonathan E, played by James Caan, becomes a star survivor and refuses to retire, the government decides to kill him.
“They do not want James Caan being successful, because he was getting older, and he was showing how one man could survive against the system,” Powers explains. “People still went to watch gladiators in the future … to see if they could persevere.”
Many years ago, Jim’s boss, the prosecuted Mike Norton, reminded me of porn’s indisputable bottom line. If people didn’t want it, it wouldn’t be made.
“Pandora’s box has been opened,” Powers observes darkly. “The Internet did that.”