DVD Review: “The Pornographer”

As you know, porn reflects society. How else to explain "Phat Buttz Drain My Nutz"? Do I have to paint you a goddamn picture? In Hustler's "The Pornographer", Steve Austin (no relation to Oscar Goldman) plays an imposter compromising individual liberties in the name of his own dubious morality. Unlike the president, however, Austin's character admits he's an asshole. Our review after the gap. - G. Ponante

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Studio: Hustler
Director: Andre Madness
Cast: Hillary Scott, Eva Angelina, Cindy Crawford, Claire Robbins, Chloe Dior, Steve Austin, Joe Friday

"When an apartment supervisor sets up a surveillance system to reduce crime, he can't resist watching his tenants fuck their brains out."

In the transition between what was shot and what was written on the boxcover, poor slob Anthony (played by Steve Austin) has had a job change from cable guy to apartment supervisor, but this is only the first of the injustices which populate this movie, including confusion over who is actually in the movie, who pays utilities, cops with highlighted hair and chin studs, and date rape in one long pornographic allegory of the current wiretappers-against-terrorism controversy.

In seedy downtown L.A., the police answer a routine fire alarm call (?) to discover a building security system and a box of surveillance tapes that capture the sordid doins of tenants.

Each social commentary/sex scene is played in a place the cable guy has just visited. His recent presence acts as an aphrodisiac. Somehow our hero has managed to install not only basic cable + Showtime but also several wireless cameras. Then Anthony leaves to watch the hot renter-on-renter action on his own television.

The fist scene features Cindy Crawford and her boyfriend, Kris Knight. They are fighting because she has discovered a tape of him servicing her sister in their bed. The tape was placed in Cindy's purse by Anthony, indicative of the way consumer culture contains the mechanics of its own sabotage. The discussion that follows touches on how the tape got there, who actually pays the utilities, if it is worse for Knight to have fucked her sister or to have taped it, and where did they get that nice couch (actually, that was my question).

As everyone knows, one's girlfriend will stop telling you to leave your own apartment if you force her to have sex with you, which happens here. My jury is still out about the morality of having sex with one's girlfriend's sister, though. If Cindy's sister was a twin, it would be tough to pass up. But Crawford's potty mouth made me think that even I might be driven into the arms of her sister.

Scene two deals with our nation's ambiguity about the Iraq war. Post-boobjob Hillary Scott's fiancee, Jerry, is home from a six-month tour of Iraq. He is foreign and unenthusiastic, symbolizing our coalition partners in the War on Terror. Despite having not seen him in months, Hillary does not appear particularly enthusiastic. After their debriefing session, he pops an incriminating tape into the bedroom VCR. We only hear Hillary's adulterous moans. He kicks her out. The message: war is stupid, and people are stupid.

Nice-haircut Claire Robbins' scene is next. Her purple lingerie and carpeted apartment (the rest of the dwellings have hardwood floors and high ceilings) symbolizes the church, I think.

For fans of Lexi Love, who is credited in the beginning and the end of The Pornographer for a scene actually performed by Claire Robbins, understand that sometimes getting up in the morning and showing up to work is a chore and a torment.

Anthony encounters struggling model Eva Angelina in the stairwell and gives her directions to the modeling agency in 318. Not one minute after Angelina tells creepy model agency hack Tony T. that she will not do nude modeling, she is both nude and scissoring her legs to accommodate both him and the regret that is Hollywood. Regret has never been so satisfying as with Eva Angelina, however. She gets her glasses fucked off.

The Javert of this story is Detective Lee, played by Joe Friday. Why he could not play himself is problematic. More problematic, though, is the ineffectuality of our nation's law enforcement personnel, for Det. Lee's own wife, played by Chloe Dior, is the final victim of Anthony's cable promotion, penetrated aloft by Lee Stone.

It turns out Friday didn't get enough evidence to bust The Pornographer, so this film is ripe for a sequel. Austin does a great job as the low self esteem cable schlub, and director Madness doesn't mess around during the sex scenes, keeping the camera just where it should be and not sweating the small stuff, like why Gram Ponante Towers doesn't have such a high hottie residency.

· "The Pornographer" (DVD ordering info @ Adult DVD Empire)
· Hustler (hustlervideo.com)

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Previously: Porn Valley Dispatch Archive