When Art Imitates Porn: “How To Make A Cheap Porno”

10 years ago, Fuzzy Mainstreet was living high on the hog as a porn director. Now he lives in an apartment in North Hollywood and rides the bus. It's funny because it's true. The shameless Tommy Pistol is great as the shameless Mainstreet in "How To Make A Cheap Porno."

How To Make A Cheap Porno

Studio: 3rd Degree
Director: Mike Quasar
Starring: Tommy Pistol, Lexi Belle, Liv Aguilera, Adrianna Luna, Alyssa Branch, Victoria Lawson, Danny Wylde, Anthony Rosano, Mark Wood, Michael Vegas

Review by Gram Ponante

Liv Aguilera is getting ready for her scene with Danny Wylde in the very entertaining "How To Make A Cheap Porno," in which Tommy Pistol plays down-on-his luck porn director Fuzzy Mainstreet.

"Can we fuck already?" she says.

"Sure," Mainstreet says, "let's just get rid of this guy! Ha ha ha."

Pistol channels writer/director Mike Quasar in this clever production, a series of sex scenes mixed with the cinema verite of a porn industry low on cash. Pistol and Quasar draw on actual events, so the movie is a documentary but for the camera angles.

Lexi Belle is uncertain about giving a free scene to the director.

"I'd hate to set a president," she says.

Meanwhile, Mainstreet tries to get Anthony Rosano to take a lower rate. Rosano prepares to walk.

"Anthony Rosano," Fuzzy says, the violins rising. "You disgust me. There are men out there with cold, frigid, ugly wives. They would cut off the hand they jack with for a chance to bang Lexi Belle. But you, Anthony Rosano—'My rate is my rate'—you think you're so fucking special that you should be paid for the privilege?"

"I've been so selfish with my gift!" Rosano says, crying.

Later, Mainstreet tells us one way to lens porn on the cheap is to film through the window of another production.

"They key is to be very quiet and zoom in a lot."

Another trick is to take advantage of the tanking Rental McMansion market and film in a foreclosure property.

"I've never fucked in a place this nice before," Adrianna Luna says. "It's way better than a Motel 6."

"Indeed it is," says Fuzzy. "Now why don't you go upstairs and wash your private parts. Then come down here where there is a man waiting for you with a pharmaceutical erection."

Fuzzy gets Alyssa Branch to take a $10,000 check made out to "Porn Girl" and later persuades Victoria Lawson to fuck him for free. There is grim humor throughout this movie, as each one of these situations has happened.

Movies like this one do not have a great deal of marketing behind them, and thus tend to disappear. That is a tough break because "How To Make A Cheap Porno" is not only really good—Pistol, Rosano, and Belle turn in silly, wonderful performances—but it documents porn much more entertainingly than a cable special with ten times the budget.

· 3rd Degree (thirddegreefilms.com)
· Buy "How to Make A Cheap " (tlavideo.com)