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Watching sex disrupts continuity. According to pornographer Roberta Findlay, hardcore resembles opera: "You have the opera story, but then everything stops when the soprano has to sing. It's the same thing in sex films. The story goes on, then it stops, then they have to screw."

Al Goldstein says plot in porn plays the same role as a picture frame. No one looks at the frame.

Such discouraging sentiments don't stop porners from trying to justify sex for without some plot, you're reduced to genitals grinding away. Too much plot and you distract from the sex.

"Although I succeeded in writing two believable normal screenplays," writes George Lois on RAME, "when I tried my hand at a porn script, it was a dead-end as far as believability was concerned. To my dismay, I found that prurient interest is irreconcilable with the higher human emotions. And, to my knowledge, that feat hasn't been accomplished either in porn. No scripted hardcore movie that I've seen, Golden Age or not, seems remotely believable to me. They all are laughable."

Pat Riley: "I wonder if you're trying to set too high a standard. Surely you don't expect the drama/characterization/action of a Gone With The Wind, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Big Sleep, etc?

"As part of the believability you have to cut the movie makers a little slack as I think every movie (porn or otherwise) watcher does. Do you insist on the same standard for Clockwork Orange and Star Wars? Both are acclaimed movies but because Clockwork is set in the fairly recent future you can pick it apart scene by scene; not so Star Wars where you have no basis for reality. Do you accept the unrealistic scientific premise of Jurassic Park? If you don't the movie is totally unbelievable but millions did and found it an enjoyable experience. Bring it out of the scientific realm into the cops and robbers field. Was the plot of the movie Ransom believable? I don't think so. I don't think the Mel Gibson character would have done anything but pay the ransom and as for the believability of a Donald Trump type being able to do all the feats of derring-do that Mel did, well that was unbelievable too. But the movie as a whole is interesting, exciting, and believable because the viewer (me) is willing to accept the parameters that the scriptwriter/director established.

"Let's try a porn movie: Bachelorette Party (1984) starring Gina Valentino and Herschel Savage. Gina is getting married to Herschel the next day and having a last fling with her girlfriends and old boyfriends prior to getting hitched. Herschel isn't invited of course but wants to know what's happening so he puts on a series of (laughable) disguises and brings in the food. The girls can't pay in cash but pay him in sex.

"In real life would a girl about to be married be screwing her old boyfriends in a last fling? Of course not! Would any girl pay for pizza with a screw? Don't be silly! Would the party guests go off individually to the bedroom and screw? Actually, that's not too unbelievable in real life. So for one part you have some reality and for the other two you have to accept:

1) Girls consider marriage as an end to all that wonderful promiscuous sex and want to have a last fling, and

2) Girls will exchange sex for a pizza and when they do they enjoy the sex. I find those no harder to accept than Mel Gibson/Carl Ichan diving fully clothed into the deep end of a swimming pool (to collect some keys) and come up hardly winded.

"You will undoubtedly argue that Bachelorette Party isn't a plot but rather a series of situations into which the characters are placed without any overall story (working on the basis that story = plot) but that's also true for many mainstream movies. Living In Oblivion has no real story; it's a character study of a group of people making a movie. The African Queen is far more the development of the characters of Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn than a story of the boat and 'What I did in the war.' Porno movies are far closer to the model of the character movie than the action thriller.

"The key to porno movies is to establish a premise, make the viewer aware of the premise and then keep within it. The viewer, having accepted the premise can now suspend disbelief and concentrate on building sympathy/lust for the character. In Bachelorette Party you feel sorry for Herschel but not too much because he's being paid with all that pussy. You evaluate each of the girls and their character (which you derive from body language, dress, and some dialog) and then fantasize what it would be like to be in the place of Tom Byron or Marc Wallice. Are sympathy and lust "higher human emotions"? They're certainly human emotions but does it matter whether they're higher or lower?"

Another poster: "I've come to believe that porn should stay within its limits, which are much more akin to sports than to art. Sports and porn are physical activities in which performers are not necessarily required to emote to attain the purpose at hand. Unlike art, whose purpose is to communicate emotions, I believe porn's main function is sexual arousal. Part of that sexual arousal comes from identifying with the characters and their emotions. That's why talented actors tend to not consider porn as a vehicle for their talents."

Riley: "Talented actors don't do porn for a myriad of other reasons starting with not enough money, no long term future, fear of STD's, disapproval of the display of explicit sex by most people, etc…

"The real problem I think you have (in common with the "I want to see a movie with Chasey taking a huge facial" crowd) is in your inability to merge yourself into the characters. You're a voyeur type--you watch but don't participate--whereas others (myself included) are participators. If the character of the performer is well enough formed (subject to all the suspension of disbelief above and very hard to find today because of the lack of acting and the sludge-like performers) I become part of the action. I'm the character played by Marc Wallice and I'm giving my soon-to-be-married ex-girlfriend (played by Gina) a farewell f---. From her body language I can tell she's enjoying it and because she is, I am too. Love it ain't but it's certainly an emotion." (Pat Riley on RAME)

Internet Gadfly wrote: "In The English Patient, there is a hot R rated scene in a bathtub between an adulterous wife and her lover. The acting, of course, was first rate. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see just one film of this caliber where the acting was just as good but it was completely explicit too?"

Essex9999: "Yes, but I think you're overlooking something: That scene from "The English Patient" was hot not only because of the sex itself and the good acting, but also because we had already spent 45 minutes or so getting to know the characters -- who they are, what they are like -- and watching the attraction between them grow. Such a build-up is impossible in porn,

where any movie that doesn't have a sex scene in the first ten minutes is deemed a bore and a failure.

"Character and personality are important parts of sexual attraction, along with appearance. Mainstream movies can develop these in ways that porn cannot because they have the time and the pool of acting talent to do so.

"Frankly, even when porn producers try to create a character who has an appeal beyond his/her looks, they usually fail. Sometimes this is because the performers are lousy actors. IMO, however, the fault lies just as much with the writing. Porn dialog is almost always laughable. Porn plots are not only unbelievable, but also usually incoherent and senseless. And the "characters" in porn movies are usually written to be cardboard stereotypes at best, with no similarity to any kind of human being who might actually exist in the real world.

"I suspect that porn will never have the kind of characterization that allows legit movies to create truly erotic characters. It's just not the nature of the beast to devote that much time and attention to character and plot development.

"What I think you're looking for, Gadfly, is not pornography as we know it, but rather erotica: Mainstream entertainment with explicit, hardcore sex. Unfortunately, the trend in recent years has been *away* from explicit sex in mainstream movies. Until the pendulum swings back, I doubt we'll see much of what you describe."

Pat Riley writes on RAME, with "Sarcasm mode ON."

Phone: "ring....ring..."Sony Pictures executive: "Hello"

Gunn: "Hi, this is Jim Gunn from Pleasure Productions. I just wanted to tell you you're making your pictures the wrong way."

Sony: "How so, Mr. Gunn [Aside to assistant: "How did this crank get through to me."]

Gunn: "You should make them like we do in the porno industry. For the tens of millions you invest in a picture I can make you 100--even 1000 movies."

Sony: "But that sort of money wouldn't be enough to pay the actors..."

Gunn: "You don't need actors. I've got plenty of strippers willing to give acting a whirl...they act every time they have an orgasm in my movies."

Sony: "...or the directors..."

Gunn: "Every performer out there is a director in the making. In the porn industry as soon as they know where the "record" button is on the camera, they're qualified to be a director or cinematographer."

Sony: "But these days directors spend four years in college..."

Gunn: "They don't need no stinkin' college degree. They can pick it all up on the job, and if they don't so what. Those mooks renting the tapes won't know any difference."

Sony: "Well, what about a script. Writers are expensive you know."

Gunn: "What writers? I write all my scripts on the back of an envelope over breakfast or make it up as I go along. Works for me. My "f----Me Edith" series is one of the most successful in the industry."

Sony: "And just how successful is that?"

Gunn: "We sold 10,000 units of #29 at $8 a pop. Can you beat that?"

Sony: "Well, we consider any videotape release that sells less than 300,000 units a failure and our unit price is generally greater than $30 and then there's the cable, TV, foreign, theatrical..."

Gunn: "Oooh...still, if you change your mind, just give me a ring."

Sony: "We sure will, Mr Gunn."

Phones: "click" Sarcasm mode OFF

"Now I realize neither Pleasure nor Vivid will ever be a Sony--for one thing at least 50% of the population will never watch a porno movie (most women, religious fanatics, kids, etc)--but they are all competing for the public's entertainment dollar. You can take your choice: compete for an ever-diminishing slice of the (tiny anyway) raincoater dollar with dozens of other two-bit companies or, as I think Vivid and Wicked (correctly) want to do, try to expand their market to include the rest of the mainly male population. Unfortunately, they don't do it very well. You complain that I have >absoultely zero common sense or >understanding of how anything actually works in a practical sense. That simply indicates your unwillingness to shift from the business-as-usual mode--the rut you're in. Some of my suggestions may indeed be impractical--they're quickie off-the-cuff ideas--but they address the problems I, as a consumer, see with Vivid (and the like) productions. If anyone has better suggestions...well that's the purpose of this NG. But your find-a-trivial-problem-with-each just shows a lack of vision. Maybe you're content with low volume sales and an endless grind of look-a-like unerotic releases but this consumer isn't and I don't think Vivid (and the like) are. When you say, "If you were to really follow these rules as the head of Vivid, or any other company, then you would not only be flat broke before you started..." you're just pointing out the serious lack of foresight and low capitalization of the industry. It's a phenomenon common to lots of small businesses (and occasionally large business) when faced with declining revenue. Instead of finding new markets, researching, innovating, etc, they economize, cut back, and reduce product quality to maintain profit. Unless they wake up, the future is extinction or in the porno industry's case relegation to intense competition for a specialized segment, the raincoater market. None of this is new--even Fishbein seems to think along the same lines (of course he pussies around so as not to offend anyone)--and it's just paraphrasing Business School 101. The difficulty is to see what's happening before it kills you; i.e., get away from the problem of whether Sally takes one or two dildos up her ass in #34 and start thinking of where the company's going to be ten years from now."