Porn Valley Dispatch: Plight of the Hunter

During a sprightly conversation at the Fleshbot Correspondents' Dinner last week, between the Chicken Kiev and Tony Orlando & Dawn (Daryl Dragon sent his regrets), one of our number wondered, "At what age does one's interest in pornography make one lecherous?"

Because everyone else on the editorial staff is some variety of callow hipster with shaded prescription glasses and/or coccygeal butterfly tattoos, it was left to me to speak up: "Tod Hunter's older than we are, and he's pretty cool!" Read more after the gap.- G. Ponante

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"It's a matter of self-preservation," Hunter (pictured here with Selena Silver) says of the political content of his eponymous blog, which he updates in between bouts of editing the urban and amateur subsidiaries of AVN competitor Adam Film World magazine. "I think porn and politics go together. There are people who want to stifle individual rights, and they start with unpopular targets like porn (which they usually call "violent" or "child porn"), putting the Porno-American community right in the crosshairs."

Bloggers like Hunter, Mike South, and Jimmy D. wear their politics on their sleeves in daily posts, which represent the mindset of guys who grew up when porn was just realizing its mainstream potential.

"I saw 'I Am Curious (Yellow)' and 'Deep Throat' when they came out," Hunter said, "at theatres in the San Fernando Valley. I saw the porn business as it evolved from moviemaking to wall-to-wall video making. I was a big fan of directors like Alex de Renzy, Henri Pachard, Bob Chinn, and Gerard Damiano, more than the stars. I lament the decline of storytelling and its replacement with all-sex videos."

After several years writing questions for "Jeopardy!" and work on other game shows, Hunter joined AVN in the late 90's. His online feuds with AVN, which he left in 2003, continue to provide an account of why the giant trade journal has such a love/hate relationship with the adult industry.

Hunter's blog is just as likely to detail an account of the author's meeting with a high school crush and 60's Playboy model as it is to rail against the Schwarzenegger/Bush administrations, and through his personal historical snapshots one sees a portrait of an industry that is older and more complex than the people it exploits to keep running.

Hunter remembers (as does former AVN colleague and contemporary Mark Kernes) more than a lot of people, which makes reading his site like History with Boobs In It.

· Tod Hunter (tod-hunter.net)

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Previously: Porn Valley Dispatch, Being Simply Jimmy D.